The Axiom - Issue 4

THE

FEATURE ARTICLE

AXIOM ABINGDON SCHOOL'S PHILOSOPHY MAGAZINE

CHRISTMAS ISSUE 4 • THE THOUGHT BEHIND SAVING LIVES • IS ARTIFICIAL SUPERINTELLIGENCE POSSIBLE? • IN DEFENSE OF EUGENICS • THE GOD IN THE GAPS • MILL'S HARM PRINCIPLE • WHAT MAKES A SOUND MUSIC? • THE BANKNOTE CALLED LIFE • EVALUATING DEVLIN'S LEGAL MORALISM • SWIPE RIGHTEOUSLY • PRESENT SUBJUNCTIVE • EXISTENTIAL COMICS

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for music?

How much is a life worth when faced with a budget?

Does Mill's Harm Principle offer a solution?

Is God stepping in everytime something goes wrong?

Introducing Hinder, with dating profiles for philosophers

Letter from the Editor

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hen dealing with philosophy, I find there is one important phrase to be remembered: ‘don’t be afraid’. Fundamentally this applies to myself as I take on editorship and continue my work on The Axiom. However this is important when dealing with philosophy, as the main problem it faces is its reputation for being intimidating and vast. So it is the advice I would give to those reading and writing about philosophy and it should bring you through. Therefore when reading this issue keep in mind the rather pretentious motto ‘don’t be afraid’.

Before I continue I must commit myself to eulogising about our late editor, Tomas Brown. Tom founded The Axiom when I was in fourth year, and thus I signed up due to my simple interest in religion and reflection. However when given the opportunity to research and write, with someone to support that, my true love of philosophy began.

With the trust of Tom’s counsel and encouragement, I was able to break away from the fear which comes with philosophy and take a leap into the misty unknown. Tom was, and still is, truly an inspiration. His joy, excitement and knowledge of philosophy is what allowed this publication to be created, and without that I may never have found what I am sincerely passionate about. I wish Tom all the best for the future, and thank him for what he created and handed on to me.

Furthermore, there are many other people who The Axiom depends on. Giannis Giortzis is the one member of the Axiom team still left after last year and my incredible debating partner. Without him writing would never begin and ­­­­I would not have the confidence in myself I need to run the magazine. Asten Yeo was the original designer of The Axiom and taught me how to design myself. His core design continues to be part of the publication and I am grateful for everything he has done. Miss Holt has provided the basic structure to The Axiom organisation and been very supportive over this term. Finally, this whole publication relies on the writers. Without the writers there would be nothing and their commitment and hard work is what has motivated me in my editorship, so I am completely indebted to them.

Therefore going back to our original idea of not being afraid when facing philosophy, I hope I have provided the answer. One doesn’t need to be afraid. Philosophy is endless, it is inconceivable how many thousands of years and billions of words can be spent on it, however it can be faced. All people are flawed, all people are unable to hold a comprehensive understanding of philosophy in their minds, but all people can try and all people contribute in some way. Therefore trust in other people, they will help you and you can learn from them. Philosophy can be understood, even if not every crack is filled, because philosophy would be boring if everything had been answered. So don’t be afraid, all pieces of philosophy have meaning, and enjoy the most liberating thing of all: the love of knowledge.

Blake Jones

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Contents

THE THOUGHT BEHIND SAVING LIVES

5

IS ARTIFICIAL SUPERINTELLIGENCE POSSIBLE?

9

IN DEFENSE OF EUGENICS

14

THE GOD IN THE GAPS

16

THE LIMITS OF THE LAW: MILL'S HARM PRINCIPLE

20

WHAT MAKES A SOUND MUSIC

24

THE BANKNOTE CALLED LIFE

29

EVALUATING DEVLIN'S LEGAL MORALISM

34

SWIPE RIGHTEOUSLY

40

PRESENT SUBJUNCTIVE

44

EXISTENTIAL COMICS

45

CONTRIBUTORS

46

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The Axiom

The Thought Behind

Saving Lives Words by Aran Johal

Imagine having an operation. Fine, right? Now imagine having that operation without any anaesthetic. Not fine. This is all part of a hypothetical scenario illustrating the need for a philosophical approach in medical ethics. Consider for the example that you must have an incredibly painful operation, in which there are no anaesthetics administered. You will be in excruciating pain and agony for several hours, but then you will be given a drug that induces amnesia. You will not remember any pain. This could be regarded as a perfectly sound way of doing things. There has been, however, a mix up and there are two patients who are due to have this procedure, but they do not know who has had it. This is a problem.

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How to save a life

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hilst this is still a hypothetical case, there is a real life correlation of sort. Patients may become aware during an operation, which is where they become either partially or fully awake meaning they cannot move or speak due to the neuromuscular blockers, but can still think, feel and experience their overwhelming sense of pain and fear. This has lead to many later life problems such as post-traumatic stress, but like in the scenario, the anaesthetist can administer a drug such as propofol or midazolam, which both have the ability to induce amnesia.

The next question then is that of which pain is worse: past or future pain? Past pain may end up being better than future pain, but there is no doubt that this can have a large and unwanted impact. We just don’t know which is better.

Should they receive compensation? Should they be asked about receiving amnesia? There are countless arguments suggesting that it is not morally right to put a person through such pain, no matter how they feel afterwards; there may be as much torture to the mind as there is to the body. The matter of consciousness and awareness are deeply philosophical ones. Science cannot tell what to look for, only how to measure it.

This is why doctors should rely not only on sci-

ence, but also philosophy and ethics. The use of philosophy and ethics can be employed to determine if forgotten pain is better than future pain.

In this case the amnesia could be seen as better than anaesthesia as the anaesthetic comes with unwanted and unneeded risk.

With such a delicate situation as this, there will obvious practical and moral problems that arise. The first may be that of the drug itself. If it has the ability to induce immediate amnesia, why not prescribe it to the people who have also experienced incredibly traumatic events such as rape or war? There is also the problem of data collection itself, because patients cannot know that such bad events occurred or that the operation even took place if they can never remember the experience due to such drugs. This leaves us with a scientific trial problem, as the amnesia will not provide adequate results for us to treat these patients in a more appropriate and delicate way.

In clinical practises, there are also the gaps between what doctors say and do. Short bowel syndrome arises in premature babies, which results in the whole small intestine dying. There is an intestinal transplantation offered, but only by 1/3 of clinics surveyed in the USA even though it is thought that at least 90% of par-

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How to save a life

ents should be given that option. Now, we see the ethical problems not from just the patient's’ side, but from the family’s and the parents’.

Having this operation offered not only gives the child a chance, but more importantly gives the parents a hope A similar situation can be found in rare diseases that children may possess and the disclosure of this information to parents. It is obvious to say that parents believe they should be made aware of all results pertaining to their child’s health status, irrespective of severity. To you and me this would seem apparent, but it may not be so simple. Surely a mother and father should have the right to know what is happening or could happen to their child? In reality, revealing this information may compromise the right to an open future for the child. There is no potential for them to grow in, but rather their future is prescribed. There may be psychological benefits to the information, giving parents a peaceful state of mind as well as them being able to make the next decision. This child may now be accepted and integrated into the norms of the day. Most arguments are often misplaced. What is really on offer is not the choice of a more and less open future, but rather two mutually exclusive and different futures. Having said that, this

it is purely down to the morals and thought processes of the parents; the child is far too young to decide yet. An example may also arise in adults.

In cases of Multiple Sclerosis, it is common to to tell the patient, even if they are an adult, that they have it.

The information not will only have a role to play in the child’s life, but also the doctor’s. Any discrepancies may undermine the relationship between the doctor and patient, making a decision that would be beneficial much less likely.

Life is all about choices. This may mean you chose amnesia over anaesthesia or it may mean you chose to know the genetic results of your child. What matters is that it is the decision should be legitimately justified; no large choice in life has a dominant or correct path. The decision even may be to do nothing. The philosophy behind the ethical decision can determine its success and choices need to be made thoughtfully and mercifully. No matter who we are or what we do, these situations are life or death and affect all around us. The manner in which we handle it both scientifically and philosophically can determine whom we come out as afterwards since the philosophical side can help cushion the trauma and intensity of the scientific side.

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The Axiom

Is Artificial Superintelligence possible?

Words by Yuan Han Li

Whenever Artificial Intelligence (AI) is mentioned, people often imagine an anthropomorphised robot intent on taking over the world. This popular misconception is fueled in part by AI’s portrayal in popular culture.

Thus, many people nowadays, or at least until recently, would think of Artificial Intelligence as a silly concept straight out of a Sci-Fi book or movie.

However, the term is being used more and more in the news recently, often by renowned thinkers, physicists, or entrepreneurs, and most people do not really understand exactly what it is, or just how serious of an issue it is.

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Is artificial superintelligence possible?

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here are various reasons for this lack of understanding. For instance, as mentioned earlier, AI’s portrayal in popular culture—especially in movies— makes the whole concept seem rather fictional. So to clear things up, it is important for people to realize the distinction between AI and robots. A robot is just the container for an AI, whereas the AI itself is the computer that resides within the robot. Put it this way, the brain is the AI, while the body is the robot. Artificial Intelligence is also an umbrella term that refers to various things, ranging from your calculator, to the world’s best chess ‘player’, to that thing in the future hell-bent on taking over the world. So we must therefore be more specific when using the term ‘AI’, because as mentioned earlier, AI refers to many different things. However, we only need to think about the three main types of AI that everything else would fall under: Narrow AI, also known as Weak AI, or Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI); Strong AI, also known as Human Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI), or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI); and also Artificial Superintelligence (ASI).

As referred to by Nils Nilsson, Narrow AI is defined as an AI that specializes in one specific area, such as Deep Blue, who beat the Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. Ask our friend Deep Blue to do anything else, such as compose music, and it will be about as useful as a chocolate teapot. Strong AI, a term also penned by Nils Nilsson, is defined by Nick Bostrom and Vincent Müller as “one that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human”1. This means that a Strong AI will be able to do anything that you can do as easily as you can. Artificial Superintelligence, on the other hand, is defined by Nick Bostrom as “an intellect that is much smarter than the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom and social skills.”2. This means that ASI can range anywhere from being only more intelligent than us by an infinitesimal amount to being more intelligent than us by an infinite amount. ASI is also what is causing Professor Hawking and many others to say that AI could spell the end of mankind. But before we get on to why that may be the case, we must first examine how we would even reach that point.

This then leads to the question of how far are we from Strong AI, and according to a survey conducted by Vincent Müller and Nick Bostrom, AI experts believe there is a 10% chance of this happening by 2022, a 50% chance by 2040, and a 90% chance by 2075 provided that there are no major disruptions to scientific activity. So basically, it is reasonable to assume that we would have Strong AI systems within our lifetimes.

However, before we get on to looking at how we may even get to AGI from ANI, it is important to understand why it is so hard to create an AGI system, because surely, if we are capable of creating computers that can do multivariable calculus in a fraction of a second, then creating a computer capable of explaining why ‘Black Square’ by Kazimir Malevich is worth more than a canvas I painted black, right? Wrong. For example, to a computer, a pic-

The Road to Strong AI and Beyond:

Currently, Human technology is at the level of ANI, meaning that computers exist that are capable of doing specific tasks better than or equal to human ability. Examples of this include Google search (with its ability to show you specific pages based on what you entered), Google AdSense, Google Translate, Calculators, Email Spam-Filters, Algorithm High Frequency Traders (Which according to the TABB group, already accounts for over 50% of equity shares being traded on American markets). So even in such an early stage, AI is already integral to the functioning of our world.

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Is artificial superintelligence possible?

ulating evolution, emulating the brain, or creating an AI capable of recursive self-improvement.

Recapitulating Evolution:

Given that evolution by natural selection can produce a human level intelligent being—as this outcome has already occurred at least once—we can argue that by recapitulating evolution, we would be able to replicate what nature has done and create a Strong AI system. Essentially, because it would be logical to assume that the key insights to the creation of AGI would lie in the structure of nervous systems, we would simulate the development of neurons over the history of life on Earth. We need not start from the time when life first started, as that is a long time before neurons first came into existence, so if we eliminate the time between these two events, we can cut down on the number of simulations we need to run.

Also, if we were to mimic evolution’s fitness function—An objective function used to evaluate the quality of all outcomes in each iteration of a genetic algorithm—it would make more sense to evaluate the number of neurons in biological organisms than the total number of organisms with complex nervous systems.

Now if we estimate that there are approximately 1025 neurons in the world (See below). If we simulated this number over a billion years of evolution—which is a lot longer than the existence of nervous systems—and allowed the simulation to run for a year on our computer, we would require approximately something upwards of 1030 FLOPS (Calculated by assigning a cost of 1.2 million FLOPS per neuron as per the Hodgkin–Huxley model). This is also without taking into account the possibility that attaining intelligence is improbable. This would mean that even if Moore’s Law continued for a century, we would still be unable to carry out this simulation. Thus, although this method will not be feasible for a long time, it still shows that Strong AI is ultimately possible. ture is a variety of different geometric shapes and colors arranged in a specific way, but to us we are able to instantly recognize it as something, for example a collection of white and black shapes may mean nothing to a computer, but to us is a cow. While yes, the computer can be taught to identify the cow, but once you show it a different type of cow, facing a different direction and looking a different way, it will have much more difficulty. So to be classified as Strong AI, a computer has to be able to do everything that you and I take for granted: Recognize the difference between a smile and a frown, subtract 2 from 7, and know why Mr Kendry is the best maths teacher.

We can get a crude estimate of the total number of neurons by looking at the makeup of biomass of terrestrial animals. Insects makeup the vast majority of Earth’s biomass, so if we multiply the number of insects (1019) with the number of neurons in fruit flies (105, which will result in a conservatively high amount), we will get an approximate total on insect neurons (1024). We can then account for the rest of the animal kingdom by bumping this number up by an order of magnitude to 1025.

Is it possible and how?:

There are multiple arguments that indicate the feasibility of machine superintelligence: You could do so by recapit-

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Is artificial superintelligence possible?

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an "intelligence explosion," and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.”3

- I.J. Good, a former colleague of Turing at Bletchley Park The Brain:

properties—to be scanned. Afterwards, the scanned data could be processed by a computer to create a representation of the 3D neuronal network that gave the brain its ‘intelligence’, which is then combined with various neurocomputational models of neurons and neuronal structures such as synapses. Finally, the resulting structure would be implemented onto a computer, preferably one that rivals, if not surpasses, the brain in computational power. If everything goes to plan, we will effectively get a digital copy of the original owner of the brain’s personality and memories, existing as software on the computer.

This would mean that this ‘software’ can then either exist in a virtual reality, or interact with the real world through the use of a body, like a robot, or simply through the use of the I/O of the computer. If this Whole Brain Emulation is pursued, we would not need to know much about the brain other than the basic functions of the computational part of the brain. What is required, however, are sufficient advances in scanning, translating (‘translating’ raw scanned data into a 3D model of relevant information), and simulation technologies. Thus, despite this method having more promise than simulating evolution, it may not be feasible for some time.

We can also make a case for Strong AI by looking at the human brain and suggest that it can be used as a sort of template for such a system. This is because it is reasonable to believe that given time, neuroscience and cognitive psychology will have advanced far enough to be able to identify what gives the brain its cognition. This knowledge could then be used to create Strong AI by plagiarizing the brain, either in full, or only to an extent.

An example of an early type of ‘mimicking’ are neural networks, essentially, they are a system of artificial neurons that communicate with each other, the connections are also assigned numeric weights that can be altered based on experiences, allowing it to learn. These have been employed to do tasks such as speech or handwriting recognition, computer vision, identifying objects given acoustic profiles in a set of sonar signals, basically any task that is hard to achieve using rule-based programming.

The process of completely mimicking the brain is known as Whole Brain Emulation. This would be reasonably straightforward. First, a human brain (post-mortem of course) can be vitrified, and then dissected into thin slices—perhaps even stained to help identify structures or

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Is artificial superintelligence possible?

Seed AI:

This is a variation on Turing’s original idea of a ‘child machine’ as outlined in his 1950 paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, where he believed it would be easier to program a ‘child’ of sorts, then to subject it to an education until it matures into an intelligent ‘adult’ mind. The key difference between this concept and that of a ‘Seed AI’ is that Turing’s machine merely develops itself by accumulating content, whereas the more complexed Seed AI would be capable of improving on its own design. So if we were to start off with a relatively simplistic Seed AI, and guided it while it brings about improvements on itself mainly through trial and error, we would inevitably end up with, over many iterations, a vastly more sophisticated version. Perhaps even better at improving itself than a human can. This would largely occur when the Seed AI is able to understand its own design as well as humans, and would probably require it to have reached sufficient level of human-level intelligence in at least the fields relevant to improving itself, specifically mathematics and computer science.

Recursive Self-Improvement and ASI:

As mentioned previously, a Seed AI can reach human-level intelligence by improving on its own architecture constantly. This is an extremely important concept, perhaps one of the most important ones in all of AI. This is because the Seed AI will inevitably reach general intelligence through this process, at which point humans will likely see it as a sort of a milestone. But to the AI itself, it has no reason to stop itself at Human-level intelligence, to the AI, this milestone is completely irrelevant and is no more than an arbitrary human measure. This is extremely scary, as by recursive self-improvement, the AI can make larger and larger leaps every time. Look at it this way: when the AI first reaches the level of AGI, it will have a low level of human intelligence. But due to recursive self-improvement, it can eventually reach a point comparable to Einstein’s level of intelligence. This is because an Einstein-level AI will be better at improving itself than one with an IQ of 80. The AI will also start to make bigger and bigger leaps in intelligence until it has completely eclipsed us and has become Superintelligent. However, before we move on, it is important to note that this recursive self-improvement is not exclusive to Seed AI. No matter how we reach AGI, the end product will be something which is comparable in intelligence to a human, and it will be more likely than not that it is in the self interest of the AI to improve itself as much as possible, and so it will be reasonable to assume that it will also recursively self-improve and thus lead to the same outcome.

The two most scary aspects of such an intelligence explosion, also known as The Singularity, is the speed in which all of this would occur at, and also the consequences of such an event. The road to Strong AI from Weak AI would be a relatively long process, but the road from an AGI system to that of an ASI system would not be anywhere nearly as slow, due to the AI making larger and larger leaps in intelligence. But as I said earlier, the other element that is extremely scary are the consequences of an intelligence explosion, as with no doubt the resulting AI will be vastly more intelligent than even the collective intelligence of mankind. If we as a species are capable of sending a man to the moon, and capable of genetic modification, then what would stop something infinitely more intelligent than us from being able to fully harvest a star’s energy?

We have met our first match in our domination of this planet. And as far as we are concerned, our opponent’s intelligence exceeds ours more than ours exceeds that of a prokaryote. It would be able to do basically anything, ask it to cure cancer or solve the issues of poverty, hunger, inequality, perhaps even mortality, and it would be able to do it. But should it so choose to, it could also wipe out all life on Earth in pursuit of its own selfish goals. This poses the all important question:

Will we be able to control it?

Bostrom, N. and Müller, V. (2014). Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion. Future of Humanity Institute, Department of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.

2 Bostrom, N. (1997). How Long Before Superintelligence?. Future of Humanity Institute, Department of Philosophy & Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.

3 Good, I.J. (1964). Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine. Trinity College, Oxford University.

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The Axiom

In Defense of Eugenics Words by Giles Stratton

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irst of all, no, this is not what Hitler did in the Holocaust, however, he did try this on a small scale on the German population. This confusion is often brought about by a lack of knowledge as to what the difference between eugenics and ethnic cleansing is (that's the Holocaust one). Therefore here is the dictionary definition of eugenics: the science of improving a population by controlled breeding to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics and here is ethnic cleansing: the mass expulsion or killing of members of one ethnic or religious group in an area by those of another.

I have highlighted the important bit from that definition, because that is the most important difference; no-one has to die in eugenics.

You may notice that the definition of eugenics is awfully similar to that of artificial selection, i.e. the breeding of animals to produce offspring of greater inherited characteristics (e.g. more meat in the case of livestock). That would be because they are the same, eugenics as a term is just used more in relation to humans. Eugenics is merely the pathway to a better human race, evolution on steroids, if you will. We have been doing this for centuries, but as

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In defense of eugenics

Illustrations from Safe Counsel or Practical Eugenics by B.G. Jefferis and J.L. Nichols published in 1922 soon as the same theory is applied to humans, people tend to be outraged. The question is why? Is it because people fear that they are no longer in control, or perhaps they are afraid that if they are deemed inferior on a genetic level, they will be killed? I cannot say. However it could lead to things such as a faster human race, through the genes of black people. This should not be seen as racist, considering how few white people are in the Olympics as long distance and sprint runners.

One must look at all the good that eugenics could do in this world. A world without the terror of Alzheimer's or Cystic Fibrosis, or any other crippling inheritable disease.

Think of it as a genetic vaccine; prevention, not a cure. The money that is currently poured into these diseases would be freed up, able to be put into areas in need as we all live longer lives, such as cancer research, or mental health. I would like to think that we could all agree that it is better to reduce or remove as much suffering in the world as is reasonably possible, and so surely the removal of suffering from future generations is better for the world? This is only reasonable, and this is the important bit, as long as the suffering induced through eugenics is less than there would be if it was not used. Therefore it would not be morally right to exterminate large swathes of the population for carrying defective genes, nor was it right for Hitler to have his SS officers rape Aryan girls in order to produce the superior Aryan race, as the harm inflicted is much greater than the loss of suffering.

Now some may argue that if the same was applied to those with mental illnesses such as autism (not the likes of depression or anxiety), where would the line be drawn?

For instance those with autism may be experts at one thing in particular, such as in the example of Stephen Wiltshire,

who rose to fame through his ability to draw a landscape after seeing it once, but may be inept in all other areas of life. That is a significant problem as the skills of a person are only recognised late in life and as such if they are deemed to be more of a liability than an asset to the human race, what could be done? They cannot simply be killed; that would contradict the idea of not causing more harm than good. It is certainly a significant problem, and as such I say that in terms of implemented eugenics, it is only going to become better in the long run, as objectively superior genes are passed on.

I have not really mentioned the issue of implementation of these ideas as this is where it gets very difficult.

Again that question rears its head: where is the line? When do we say no, that is too far? One could suggest mandatory screening for all adults in order to find those with defective genes. The vast majority of the population would be unaffected, if you just wanted to remove defective genes which produce illnesses from the gene pool. You could offer a monetary incentive to those who were carriers to be voluntarily sterilised. Note the lack of any mandatory measures that would be harmful. Therefore whilst some genes which produce illnesses would still be around, the population would experience a general decrease in such genes and an overall improvement to the human race, though a slower one. Of course there would be those who would wish to abuse these ideas and twist them for their own racist or other such agendas. Despite them, let us remember what is at the core of the idea: hope for a better future for the generations to come. Is that not what every parent tries to do for their child? Build a better future full of hope. I may sound like a bad romance film, but the cold clinical science may provide a brighter, less painful future.

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The Axiom

The God in the Gaps

If you were creating the universe, how would compensate for the fact that it constantly changes and is filled with unpredictable beings? A set of natural laws which you might write, with which you could govern this world, would struggle to have meaning. There would be an infinite number of irregularities which would not be foreseen and new laws or responses would be needed. So creating consistency in this ever changing world would be problematic. However in response to this, a minister could be put in place to regulate the universe and ensure that there is consistency within it. At every irregular incident, this minister could fix the crack and restore the balance to your universe. The minister could be yourself if you felt fit to fill such a role. As peculiar as this may seem, the question which arises is do we have this minister correcting the world or instead a naturally consistent world?

Words by Blake Jones

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The God in the gaps

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irstly you are not expected to create the universe, that was a hypothetical question outlining the situation God may have been in. Definitions of God vary and give Him different powers, but for the sake of this article I shall assume that He exists and question His nature of being omnipotent and omniscient. Would God create a perfect world or be ever-present to ensure that it stayed perfect? This question cannot be answered empirically, because if the universe was not created perfectly, under this hypothesis it would seem perfect to us, with God correcting what would cause us to doubt it. One would assume that if God is omnipotent and omniscient then the perfect world would be created. However, God’s omniscience may only refer to knowing all of the past and all of the present, with the future being impossible to know. His power would rely on what He knew at the time, so the best possible universe could be created, but it would be based on His knowledge at the time, and in the future it may not be the best possible universe. Furthermore if we were to assume that God is all powerful, there are several issues which arises including the impossible nature of being omnipotent from the paradox of the stone.

Added to this, a powerful, but not all powerful Higher Entity, is more likely to existence than an omnipotent one. Therefore is there a God in the gaps? Is God constantly updating the universe and giving patch up jobs to irregularities here and there? I shall explore this by looking at three areas God seems to intervene: pain, emotion and morality.

The feeling of pain is the first example of ‘divine intervention’. There are many ineffable qualities,

which cannot be described easily in words. Many of which we have explanations for, yet pain has always been a murkier area in philosophy and science.

To further complicate matters, dualism can be introduced. Dualism is the idea that the body and the mind are completely separate and the soul simply resides in the body. Under dualism, think of souls as ghosts within machines – the machines being the bodies. Whilst dualism faces several issues, a significant problem arises when something physical is felt by the soul and there are mind-body interactions, for example in pain. When we get stabbed by a needle there is a sensation of hurt which is felt by the soul.

If the physical body is completely separated from it, the soul should not also feel hurt when a finger is pricked. Locke proposed that God was placing this sensations in our mind as ‘God’s good pleasure’.

Locke considered pain and other secondary qualities to be implanted by God, secondary qualities being nothing but the power to produce a sensation in our minds, which therefore are mind dependent.

If God created us in a mind dependent world, having secondary qualities sent to us by Him would be an appropriate way to allow us to still have the sensation of experiencing the universe. God would cause us to feel pain so that we would notice the harmful action, such as having a needle in our finger, and stop the cause of the pain. Leibniz on the other hand considered pain to not be something sent by God in each moment, but instead a sensation which God had correlated with the physical world. Thus when we did something harmful we would receive an appropriate amount of pain to indicate to us what was happening.

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The God in the gaps

Whilst this concept may seem peculiar, it introduces the idea of the flaws in the universe and the way we experience it being corrected by God. By God causing us to experience pain each time we prick ourselves, there is an impression of consistency and natural laws, whilst God is able to protect us from harm. This may seem as though it is an over-elaborate way to create one’s universe, but if God could not predict the way humans would evolve or what they would do, it is a potential solution to the dilemma. Furthermore, whilst God could update the universe as every necessary change was revealed from the subsequent evolution of the universe, changing the universe so frequently would make the impression of a consistent universe harder to believe. This hypothesis does not have to make God seem less powerful either. God still created a perfect universe, it simply relies on God being there.

How else might God or this hypothetical minister regulate the universe? An example of a seemingly unnecessary experience is emotion. There are arguments for and against having emotions on an individual scale but to God, not giving humans emotions would be the simpler option. One can say that giving us emotions gave us the ability to believe in him, love him and develop as humans, yet we may only need to do this things because we have emotions. Instead there may be a greater reason as to why God gave us emotions -through emotions God can straighten up the errors in the universe.

Humans were supposedly all created equally.

However it seems that some humans have a much worse lot in life than others and it can become hard to believe that God gave us all equal circumstances.

However there is a force which is able to level this out, a force which is known for being frequently changing and unpredictable, as though it was controlled by someone else: emotions. Privileged teenagers are known for having uncontrollable emotions and getting upset easily, whilst rich lawyers spend their lives miserable as they try to gain even more wealth. They end up feeling like their very fortunate life is worse than it is. In contrast, those living in poverty tend to be thought of as very kind and having lived in that way for a long time, can take the pain.

This suggests that their horrible circumstances are made to feel better than they are.

Though emotions do not solve the inequality dilemma, they suggest that in this world which is supposed to be balanced there is more fairness than there would be. This balance is brought upon the world through emotions corrected our perceptions of our lives. Ergo could God be trying to make up for the inequality by now going to people and helping them rethink by intervening with emotions to fill the gaps?

Finally, morality is a variable which may require God to intervene. Perhaps the universe does have a fixed moral code or ‘natural law’ which is sown into the universe. The natural laws which God determined could be considered the Ten Commandments and other laws of the Torah which God would have written into the laws of the universe. However as shown in human history since these rules were first directly stated to humans, it is uncertain what they mean. The discourse about the true interpretation suggests that a fixed set of natural laws is impossible to have and impossible for us to figure from the universe. Thus Divine Command Theory enters the equation.

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The God in the gaps

The Divine Command Theory, which was first put into form by St. Augustine, can be thought of as the Euthyphro Dilemma applied to theology. The Euthyphro Dilemma questions whether morally good acts are either commanded by God because they are good, or good because they are commanded

by God. The DCT is based upon everything which is good, being good because God commands it.

When there are morally ambiguous situations, it seems as though there is no definite right or wrong. However in a system created by God in which all acts are either morally right or wrong and affect the soul, this ambiguity should not exist. Ergo the God in the gaps is needed again, to clarify what constitutes as good. Augustine argued that providing one loved God and acted in respect to that in all they did, they would live a morally good life. John Duns Scotus suggested that some things are good because God commands them and some are good irrespective of that. However he believed that the two moral obligations which God could not alter were for humans to love each other and to love God. Finally, traditional Scripture based theology, suggests that God can announce what is good and the world alters itself around that. All the same, Divine Command Theory suggests that morality is highly reliant on God to help determine it. Thus when a new situation arises which had not been thought of when the ten commandments were written, morality can still be decided so long as God is there to calibrate it.

Nevertheless, I have only been able to give a brief look into these different areas regarding the potential involvement of God in our universe. However I hope that they suggest that the world could have been made with gaps and God must fill them in. This hypothesis does not take away from the ability of God to create a perfect universe, only suggests a reliance of the universe on God, who should always be there. This universe may be unlikely, but it certainly creates a more personal and understandable perception of God, who could still have His classical characteristics. Therefore whilst this all may be a long shot, next time something happens which did not have to be coded into the origins of the universe, consider if it is a very humble and understated moment of Divine Intervention.

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One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from Celestial dictation?

- Christopher Hitchens

The Axiom

The Limits of the Law Mill's Harm Principle Words by Giannis Giortzis

In the previous article, we exhibited the main variants of Legal Paternalism, engaging in some of the more practical arguments for and against such intervention.

We eventually came to the conclusion that, should the Paternalism be used responsibly as part of domestic policy, the practical considerations vastly outweighed any possible moral concerns about the liberty of individuals and their suitability for determining their own future. We will now look at Mill’s Harm Principle in an attempt to highlight the views that are, if not completely opposing Paternalism, offering a viable alternative.

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The limits of the law - Mill's harm principle

An Outline of On Liberty Personal Ideals (Chapters 1 and 2)

will a human utilise his natural abilities to the fullest. Nonconformity, as mentioned above, leads to progress and innovation; conforming leads to “collective mediocrity” and intellectual stagnation. He highlights the worrying fact that the majority in a society may use the forum of public opinion in order to stifle dissent; when those attitudes are endorsed by the press then the “tyranny of opinion” becomes a measurable force. A “healthy” society must make it possible for its citizens to choose to follow any path they wish to in their lives, maximising their potential in the way that suits them individually, instead of being confined to prevalent social beliefs that simply have authority (that of the State for instance), but may in fact carry little justification.

Mill exemplifies this attitude in comparing 19th century Europe compared to conformist China, blaming a cultural plateau for the collapse of the once-great Empire. Likewise, he blames the “despotism of custom” for England’s delayed improvement, seeing individuality as being underappreciated in Modern Europe. Those afraid of rocking the boat will be deterred from challenging social norms and advancing society forwards, and we could infer that a public authority (through legislation on the freedom of expression and the press) should allow people to do just that in the interests of progress.

Mill therefore outlines the delicate balance between a man’s liberty and society’s benefit, with the individual retaining his freedom (under the law), without however being drawn into excessive freedom that would lead to society devolving back into the uncivilised world.

Interestingly, Mill also highlights the need for individuals to maintain a certain conduct that includes not violating the freedom of others and defending society and its members from injury. Individuals should, in his opinion, be censured by public opinion (the reaction of their fellow citizens), not through legal coercion. He then goes on to clarify that society should not have the right to actively intervene in their peoples’ affairs to which they have consented to that affect themselves only. He stresses that it is one thing to criticise one’s faults in their behaviour, and another thing entirely to use moral reprobation to attempt to force others’ beliefs on them. Civilised dialogue and intimidation are to be distinguished between. Mill observes that one’s knowledge about another’s personal matters is “trifling”, meaning it is near impossible for him to gauge what would give his fellow man maximum utility.

P

erhaps the cornerstone of Utilitarianism, Mill’s treatise defines “liberty as the freedom from the “tyranny of political rulers”, referring to cruel oppressive governmental rule. It welcomes the advent of a system in which the people “expected their leaders to be their servants”, confident that there is no possibility of self-oppression by the population itself. Nevertheless, disillusioned by the USA’s federal republic, Mill feels the need to justify the necessity for a model in which neither the law itself nor public opinion was allowed compel individuals into conforming, maintaining plurality and dissent in society. Debate over beliefs is perfectly acceptable; (legally) coercing someone into conforming, on the other hand, is not, considering that “…Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign." In doing so, he is not only serving man’s interests “as a progressive being”, but also preventing a civilised or civilising society from stagnating, as development encourages conformity that may undermine further future evolution.

Mill finds Government restriction of the content of the media as undesirable (“No argument can be needed… permitting a legislature [to] determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear”). “All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”; but human thought is fallible, and so restricting one’s actions or thoughts based on another’s own conviction that he is wrong is mutually detrimental. The coercer’s views are not challenged, something that would force him to re-evaluate or attempt to strengthen his case, and the “silenced opinion”, that has the potential to benefit society, is never heard.

Mill was convinced that humans do indeed have the capacity to correct their mistakes, but only through experience and discussion. After all, an idea parroted to the point where society blindly follows it becomes a prejudice that is no easier to neither defend nor expand upon. This idea is contextually understandable, considering the fact that scholarly content, by his time, was no longer just confined to the intellectual elite at his time, with every Protestant man being considered to be responsible for his ideological choices.

Actions and individuality (Chapters 3 and 4)

Even though any society in its infancy may have too much individuality, Mill argued that contemporary society faced the exact opposite: a stifling of one’s creativity and uniqueness that impacted upon his character due to the evolution towards democratisation and homogeneity. For he believes that an adult individual, having learnt the process of accumulating knowledge as a child, has reached the stage at which he is able to interpret life experiences as he sees fit and adjust his behaviour accordingly. Only then, he argues,

Applications (Chapter 5)

Hence, we come on to the summary and application of the aforementioned thoughts. Mill claims, firstly, that the only tools society in general has when confronted with actions or thoughts that it disapproves are “advice, instruction, persua-

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The limits of the law - Mill's harm principle

sion, and avoidance by other people if thought necessary by them for their own good." These, importantly, allow the offending individual to maintain his freedom without limitations. Secondly, Mill reminds us of how an individual is still responsible for causing harm to others, and is therefore to be punished by society in response to his transgressions (either socially, or legally, depending on the circumstances). He therefore concludes that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”.

Mill’s final act in this treatise is to add some depth to his ideas by applying them to real-world situations. In preventing crime, he argues that law enforcement should not have the right to intervene in situations that have the potential to cause harm or evil, but should rather be content with simply warning the individuals involved against such dangers.

Warning someone not to cross a bridge would be satisfactory, but forcibly preventing them not to would violate their freedom to potentially cause harm to themselves.

In defence of people's’ rights to counsel or to inform someone else, Mill once again underlines the importance of the exchange of information as a societal good. This can be used in order to criticise someone whose actions may be interpreted by others as acting against the greater social good. Societal pressure in general, rather than governmental intervention, is used as a way to shift the behaviour of those whose profit arises from a detriment to the public good (such as owners of gambling houses). He views other restrictions and duties, such as taxation on gambling, as unjustified, considering that punishing people for their vices is hypocritical and invalid as they have been allowed in the first place.

The question of the legitimacy of a contract that causes harm to an individual is also mentioned (such as selling oneself into slavery) with Mill arguing that it is imperative

that no human should be held to such agreements that violate the most basic principle of freedom itself. He does however accept nuance in allowing for the obligations and expectations created by the contract to be considered prior to nullification, believing that certain cases should be judged individually.

Equally important is defining the boundaries for one’s actions that may adversely affect other people, with Mill being particularly interested in what he calls “family relations”. He reminds us about how certain individuals within families have the capacity to harm others, and proceeds to outline how education for children should be mandatory as leaving children uneducated “is a crime against society and the child”. Here, the law is being used in order to prevent the parent from selfishly restricting the child’s future and thus, according to Mill, doing it harm. Similarly, he more controversially proposes marriage as being restricted to those who have the means to raise a child and give it a normal existence.

Mill closes with a rejection of Governmental intervention, characterising it as unnecessary due to his conviction that the person most qualified to perform an action is usually the person with a direct interest in it. Maintaining autonomy instead of relying on a third party for aid is vital for personal development, he states, not least because it actually offers the individual the opportunity to learn from his mistakes and correct himself in the future. Big Government, after all, should not be trusted, as he predicts that a powerful state will abuse the people’s trust and stifle reform (with the Law being a primary tool) in order to serve its own interests, leading to a stifling of human development that will have the ironic unintended consequence of eventually stifling the state itself. Thus, to prevent this political minority from ever beginning this cycle, Mill argues for the decentralisation of power, but for a central, widespread mechanism for the dissemination of information to the public.

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The limits of the law - Mill's harm principle

Criticism of On Liberty

I

t is perhaps unsurprising that, for such a firm, progressive set of ideals, Mill’s theory has since quickly attracted criticism. Mill preemptively addresses potential criticism of his argument on the truth being something definite that will always exist and eventually be uncovered in Chapter Two by looking at the proposition that principles such as that of Christianity represent the whole truth, instead of part of it. He had previously claimed that absolute certainty is a mistaken belief on the behalf of someone who is certain themselves – the truth, crucially, may not be absolute or complete, and in the case of conflicting doctrines may find itself to be somewhere in between. He therefore replies by referencing Christianity, remarking that Christian morality is "incomplete and one-sided”, with even its own ethics being derived from Classical Roman and Greek influences. Mill argues that Christ himself intended his message to be incomplete, and that it is a mistake to reject secular supplements to Christian morality, implying that a diversity of opinion would be necessary in advancing our interpretation of its texts.

The above claim would however require a paper of its own in response to evaluate how far Christianity offers a coherent “whole” to its teachings. The flawed implication is that utilitarian truth (where the 'trueness' of an idea is based by its ability to serve the greater good of society) is a definite entity. This would certainly be an objectionable idea, considering the fact that what is considered to be socially beneficial varies from age to age, and will undoubtedly continue to be dynamic. How exactly do we define the “greater social good”, in matters other than fundamental everyday affairs that form the basis of our lifestyle (such as food, good health, life etc.)? Could even an all-knowing, all-encompassing omniscient being be able to acutely weigh up everyone’s preferences and dislikes and create an ideal utilitarian state? More importantly, can we, as mere mortals with an inherently limited, imperfect view of the world, even in collaboration, ever approach this utilitarian truth, and how can we verify that “progress”, even when taken in context of popular demand, is any closer to this end goal?

In addition, we would have to question what would happen when conflicting opinions in civil dialogue were based on entirely different presuppositions. Should the participants not share a common denominator in their discussion, having different vocabulary for moral and political issues, it is equally likely that there would be no clash (and therefore no learning or progress), as the individuals could easily just as well talk past each other, automatically rejecting each other’s arguments based on their assumptions alone. While it may therefore be convenient to suppose that all humans from the same back-

ground would share similar preconceived notions that would help them engage directly with the issue at hand, this may not necessarily be the case. As such, intellectual debate and free speech may not necessarily help us reach any valid conclusion.

Mill also renders his argument vulnerable by broadly allowing humans to react in a “natural” way to an activity that they find objectionable. He assumes that social pressure would confine itself to just dissuasion, rather than active punishment against the offending individual. However, human psychology may suggest that humans may just as well prefer to actively punish the offender, as, according to the deterrence rationale, they perceive punishment to reduce the frequency and likelihood of future offences, rendering it a favourable solution. Hence, hoping that humans would somehow never harm or punish others in response but rather constrain themselves to polite debate in response to transgressors is wishful thinking, challenged by even the most basic theories of psychology.

But any help (governmental intervention), according to Mill, is not beneficial to either the individual or to society. To this one would simply have to read the previous article in this series (on Legal Paternalism) to discover that Governmental intervention can be classified under several different names depending on its scope and can, should it be used responsibly, have a distinctly positive effect on the public.

Finally, we must question whether rapid change will grant society the maximum utility in the medium- to longrun. After all, if Mill wishes to encourage people to act out against deeply ingrained social norms, one might wonder if society might simply lose cohesion and become polarized under his system, with people divided between the conservative and more radical new views. Should this be the case, internal struggles between opposing groups could easily be the breeding ground for future bigotry, intolerance and political extremism, only leading to further dilution of any social cohesion and a net fall in utility. This was seen in the rise in the demand for secularism and liberal democracy during the Arab Spring, when the influx of new ideas largely through social media urged some to fight for civil rights and greater liberty, while generating an adverse response from religious fundamentalists and other supporters of the current regimes. Moral vacuums, where no-one can be wrong or right, may not necessarily lead to tolerance, respect and diversity of opinion, but rather to the physically strongest side attempting to force the others into submission. One might also wonder if there aren't some actions that are simply worthless for human development as a whole, that may masquerade nonetheless under the pretentious banner of “progress”.

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The Axiom

What Makes a Sound Music?

Words by Jamie Corish

When approaching the task of defining music, most do so with a common sense view, of which music is defined by its intrinsic properties; with the concept of sound, or frequency as I will refer to it, as a key idea. I will argue, to the contrary, that music must be defined by the intentions of the performer, with the necessary condition; for something to be considered music, the performer must intend for what they are producing to contain at least one musical feature.

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What makes a sound music?

I

n this article, I will layout both subjective and intrinsic conditions for music and demonstrate their weaknesses, as well as illustrating the success of an intentional definition in providing both necessary and sufficient conditions for music. The term music here applies to both “pure music” (that which is not accompanied by a non-musical component) and “impure music” (that which is accompanied by a non-musical component) i.e. lyrics or dance.

These definitions are applicable to both as the musical component of impure music can be isolated from the non-musical components.

A common approach towards the definition of music is to argue that intrinsic properties of music are successful in distinguishing between musical and non-musical properties, an example of said intrinsic properties being the frequencies produced by musical instruments and the relative position between each frequency. Despite these intrinsic properties appearing universal across all musical instruments, they are neither sufficient nor necessary for a definition of music. The first issue I will raise is over the fact that this condition is not sufficient in providing

a definition for music, due to the fact that there are frequencies which comply with this definition of music, which would not be considered musical frequencies. After a range of frequencies is defined as requisite for a definition of music, it is highly possible that a sound of identical frequency is produced, by coincidence, in nature, an example of this being the frequency of wind rushing through a drain matching the frequency of a woodwind instrument such as the flute. This illustrates the definition’s failure in distinguishing between musical and non-musical sounds.

This condition also fails due to its circularity.

In order for the condition to distinguish between musical and non-musical properties, musical properties must be defined. However, in order to define said properties as musical, there must be prior knowledge of what constitutes as musical and non-musical, and subsequently, knowledge of what is and isn’t music. This condition therefore relies on knowledge of what music is in order to define what music is and consequently must be both circular and unsuccessful.

Lastly, I will demonstrate that intrinsic properties of music are not necessary for some-

25

What makes a sound music?

thing to constitute as music; that meaning that there are examples of music of which intrinsic properties that it possesses aren’t necessary for its musicality. For this condition to be necessarily true, there would have to be no examples in which something constituted as music but did not abide by the condition, however this is not the case. This can be demonstrated through the example of unpitched percussion. The musicality of the sound does not rely on its frequency, or any other intrinsic property of the sound for that matter; any sound produced by the unpitched percussion instrument would still be considered music, despite the intrinsic properties of said sound. The musicality of the unpitched percussion remains no matter what sound is produced.

This demonstrates that intrinsic properties of sound are not necessary for something to constitute as music.

These arguments demonstrate that intrinsic properties of music both fail to distinguish musical sounds from non-musical sounds, as well as not being a necessity for a sound to be considered musical and are subsequently irrelevant to the definition of music.

A second strategy of defining music would be to introduce a subjective condition for the definition of music; stating that for something to be music, it is necessary for it to be perceived to be music. An immediate issue that this condition runs into is that when unperceived, it is impossible for any sound that is made to be music, an example of this being; the sound produced from a radio playing Mozart’s 40th when no one is listening to it, would not be considered music as it is not perceived to be music. This issue can eas-

ily be overcome if the condition is amended to; for something to be music, it is necessary that if perceived, what is played would be considered to be music. This resolves the unperceived radio example, as if it were perceived it would be considered music; so would therefore, under this condition be defined as music.

However, the amended subjective condition is insufficient for a definition of music due to the fact that people can perceive music when it is not the case that music is playing. Examples of this are common in classical composers with both Robert Schumann and Dmitri Shostakovich suffering from what has been labelled “musical ear syndrome�. This example demonstrates that it is not necessarily true that everything which is perceived to be music is in fact music.

Lastly, this condition results in an illogical meaning of the word music; that meaning that sense data could both be considered music and not music at the same time. If the state of what is being perceived is conditional on whether the perceiver thinks that what is perceived is in fact music, it is logically possible that when two people perceive the same sense data, one person may perceive the sense data to be music, while the other believes the opposite. Despite this being a logically sound belief to hold, it brings rise to ambiguity as music must therefore be dependent on the perceiver and not in fact, an absolute.

These arguments illustrate the failure of this definition in distinguishing what is perceived to be music but in fact is not, and music itself, as well as highlighting the irrationality of the condition in which it can bring to rise situations in

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What makes a sound music?

which sense data can be considered both music and not music simultaneously.

A final strategy that I will outline in order to define music focusses not on the thoughts of those that are listening to the sound, but on the intention of the originator of the sound. In order to ascertain the musicality of certain sounds, we must first distinguish between intentions that are musical, compared to those which are non-musical. However, if music is defined in this way, all that is achieved is the shifting of the problem from defining music to defining musical intentions. In order to resolve this issue, musical intentions can be defined as; that which is intended to possess a musical feature.

Now we are faced with the issue of defining a musical feature. A critique of the intentionalist approach would claim that all that a musical feature can be defined as is a feature which is contained within music. This illustrates the apparent weakness of the definition by highlighting its tautological nature (that meaning that the definition contains within it, that which is being defined). This criticism is easily overcome as all that must be done in order for it to prove unsuccessful, is that musical features be defined independently of any term that contains music.

While there is no all-encompassing term that is able to define all musical features, individual musical features can easily be individually isolated. If any person who has knowledge of music is asked what constitutes as a musical feature, they’ll list off qualities such as pitch, harmony, rhythm, and texture. While it could be argued that the musicians only provide this list as a result of a pre-conceived notion of what music is, I will argue that this is not the case. I propose that if someone were to listen to the sound of a mockingbird, they would describe the features of the sound as musical, while not describing the sound which they heard as music. From this, it is not because the feature is contained within music that the mockingbird’s sound is defined as a musical feature. Hence it is surely the case that it is not because the features are contained within music that musical features are defined as they are, but because they are innately musical. As a definition of music which contains musical features is therefore not circular, a definition which contains the term can be successful. Hence, music can be defined as that which is primarily intended to possess musical features.

This definition faces the issue that it appears to be insufficient in excluding music which

27

What makes a sound music?

while containing musical features, is not intended to possess them. That being because music which is created by non-sentient beings e.g. a computer program, can’t possibly be intended to contain musical features, yet it does, and has the capability of producing something that would be indistinguishable from the work of many contemporary composers.

This criticism proves unsuccessful however, due to the fact that the originator of the music is not in fact the computer program, but the person who created the program. While the computer program may be the one who created the music, the originator of the music intended it to possess musical features, so it must therefore be music under an intentional definition.

A third issue that faces an intentional definition for music, is music which is not intended to possess musical features. If it is the case that there is music which was not in fact intended to possess musical features, then an intentional definition of music is not sufficient in providing a definition. A prominent example of such work is that of Yoko Ono. The piece in question is simply referred to as Toilet Piece, and consists of no more than 32 seconds of flushing toilet. While it is evident that Yoko Ono’s piece wasn’t intended to possess musical features, those who tolerate her work claim that what she produced can constitute as music.

I would argue that Yoko Ono’s piece along with all others that were not intended to possess musical features can’t be defined as music as they do not align with the intentional definition. At most, pieces such as this may fall under the category of sound art.

In conclusion, an intentionalist approach to defining music provides the most coherent and sound definition for music, which encompasses all that which can be reasonably claimed to be music. While an intentional approach initially appears to prove circular, it is evident after further analysis that musical features can in fact be defined independently of any term containing music, illustrating that such is not the case. At the same time, an objective definition proves resoundingly unsuccessful in providing a definition for music due to its vast insufficiencies that result from too broad of a definition. Lastly, while a subjective definition does succeed in providing a logically coherent definition for music, it fails on the grounds of its counterintuitive nature that results from the definition allowing one instance to be defined as both music and not music simultaneously.

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The Axiom

The Banknote Called Life Words by Kelvin Chan

In the movie The Martian, it talks about an astronaut who was accidentally left for dead in space on a mission gone wrong in Mars, using his wits to stay alive while waiting for a thread, thinner than silk, of help to arrive. Eventually NASA discovered that he was still alive and used up two new rockets on top of the ones involved in the on-going mission in an extremely risky attempt to bring him back to earth. He spent over 500 sols (Martian days) on Mars, susceptible to its dangerous weather before he was rescued in the largest and most expensive operation of such ever undertaken by NASA and probably the entire earth to save one person. A disturbing question thus arises: how much money should a civilized society be prepared to spend in order to save a life? Is it ‘whatever it takes’, or should there be a limit? What determines a costly rescue operation to be not worth the risk?

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The banknote called life

H

ere is a more general question: What is the value of a human life? This is a question that we would normally avoid but ironically in some situations, avoiding the question may cost lives. Such is the case for allocating medical resources.

The best treatment cannot always be provided in all health care systems of the world and when that happens, choices have to be made. The quality and the quantity of thousands of people’s lives will be affected by how we choose to distribute our limited healthcare resources.

There are two types of treatments, one for the quality of life of the patient and the other for life extension. Medical treatments for the quality of life of a person has little effect on how long a person can live, one such example is a hip or ankle replacement. Treatments to increase life span includes many, if not most, parts of medicine such as screening for early detection and treatment, dialysis as a temporary replacement for kidneys that are absolutely crucial to the functioning of the human body, and even surgery. There is no way that one hospital can provide for all kinds of treatment to the best level with its limited resources. So how should a hospital spend its extra budget after purchasing its necessary supplies?

Imagine that you are sitting with the heads of departments of the hospital and there are three options to consider:

1. A new treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia that gives patients a small but significant chance of increased life-expectancy 2. A new drug that lowers the chance of death from heart attack for people with genetically induced raised blood cholesterol 3. A new dialysis machine that significantly increases the chance of stabilising a patient with kidney failure who would otherwise have a high chance of death in the year of diagnosis One way of approaching this issue is by choosing the method that gains the most life years by valuing one life year of life equally, regardless of whose life years are counted, thus treating everyone fairly.

However, with this approach, there is a distribution problem. Suppose all the options cost the same and the budget can only afford for one option. Assuming the first option can benefit 10 people with an average increased life expectancy of 3.5 years (total 35); the second option can benefit 15 people with an average increased life expectancy of 1.5 years (total 22.5); and the third option benefits 2 people with an average increased life expectancy of 10 years (total 20). Which option should we choose? If we think about buying the maximum number of life years possible, we should invest in the first option as it ‘buys’ 35 years, which is the most of all three. However, some may choose option two as it helps more people although each person gets fewer additional life years. Despite the above reasons, some choose the third option as the two people who receive the treatment receive a significant gain in life, more than double of anyone benefiting from the other two options. This is known as the ‘distribution problem’, which is the issue of whether the way in which the life years should be distributed should be equally as important as the view of choosing the maximum total life years

30

The banknote called life

gained for a fair treatment to everyone.

No health care system in the world takes up the system to use resources to only maximize total number of life years, which typically would be in drugs that have a small chance of increasing the life-expectancy of a certain percentage of patients. That position carries a flaw that takes us back to the outcast in Mars in the mission gone wrong – it gives no moral weight to the intuitively right ‘Rule of Rescue’.

The ‘rule of rescue’ is in regards to a situation where there is a particular person’s whose life is at high risk and there is a method that has a good chance of saving that person’s life. The ‘rule of rescue’ addresses the value that it is justified to spend more per life year gained helping someone who has been identified than in situations where anonymous people, who may not yet even be diagnosed, are being helped. Lets look back upon the options under consideration.

Going back to our earlier three choices of treatments to invest in, there are three differences between the second option (A new drug that lowers the chance of death from heart attack for people with genetically induced raised blood cholesterol) and the third option (A new dialysis machine that significantly increases the chance of stabilising a patient with kidney failure who would otherwise have a high chance of death in the year of diagnosis).

The first being that a new dialysis machine saves lives in a short, noticeable period of time

whereas the effects of the new drug is not realised for many years. This brings up a moral argument as some patients who are undergoing the treatment described in option two may die from independent cases before benefits from the treatment could be gained, which then makes the calculation of the cost per life year gained quite problematic as some of the costs could be traced years down the line before the benefits are observed.

The second difference is that the third option almost certainly saves the lives of the patients undergoing the treatment whereas the second option only has a low probability of doing so. As a result, it is arguable that the third option gives us a greater benefit to individuals than the second option, as it is brings more definite help.

The third difference is that the third option benefits an identifiable person whereas the second option benefits a proportion of patients within a group of which the specific people being benefited are unknown – saving anonymous ‘statistical’ lives.

According to the rule of rescue, it may be right for heath care systems to fund the dialysis machine even though the second option is cheaper per life year gained. In practice, the British National Health Service provides renal dialysis at over GBP 50,000 per life year gained.

However it only pays for statins for those with high levels of cholesterol, despite the fact that treatment of patients with only moderately

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The banknote called life

raised cholesterol would only cost about GBP 10,000 per life year gained. To put it in another context, it means that if the money spent on dialysis was spent on people with moderately raised cholesterol, five times as many life years could be gained. However we do not do it, as it would feel like condemning the person needing the dialysis to death.

The most powerful reason in support of the rule of rescue is that in the case of rescuing an identified person like the astronaut left in space, they stand to gain a significant chance of survival whereas in the case of saving anonymous ‘statistical’ lives, no one stands to gain more than a small decrease in the probability of death. This seems to be a particular example of the distribution problem. Most people reject maximising life years gained (the second option) and believe in the intuitive approach: it is better to provide a great benefit to a few people than a trivial benefit in a large number of people.

This opinion can be argued against by the same case of the astronaut in space. Suppose that without rescue, the astronaut will die and

that given a large rescue party, the astronaut can be saved. The larger the size of the rescue party, the smaller risk of death faced by each individual rescuer, however, it is also the case that the larger the size of the party, the more people are likely to die in the rescue attempt. If theoretically, there were 100,000 rescuers and each faces a 1:10,000 risk of death, each member faces a very small risk of death (within the risks that we normally take for tasks such as walking to the post office and back). However, with such a rescue party, about 10 people are likely to die in order to save the one life of the astronaut.

Suppose that a senior NASA officer will lead the rescue. If he were to coordinate the rescue, with the foreseeable result that more people would die in the attempt to rescue than would be saved by the rescue, then the officer will likely be criticised, even if the rescue party were made up entirely of volunteers who knew and accepted the risks to themselves. His responsibility to leading the rescue operation that had been expected and caused more deaths amongst the fully informed volunteers than the number

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The banknote called life

of people rescued, is highly problematic from a moral point of view.

Looking back to health care, it is not clear that those who could benefit from treatment in option two have voluntarily agreed to forgo their treatment in order for identified patients to receive expensive life-extending treatment. A health care system that spends more money per life year gained on rescue type treatments such as funding for dialysis machines is effectively volunteering those who would benefit from the preventive treatment such as in option two to take part in a ‘rescue party’ for those requiring ‘rescue’ treatment. Due to limited resources, such decisions have to be made on whether to spend money on preventative or rescue treatments. Due to the lack of a clear mandate from the people who stand to lose by particular decisions, it seems to be clear that they should spend money on maximising life years gained. However, even if there were a clear mandate, it remains questionable whether it would be right for a health care system to let more die to save fewer.

So what do we learn from our empathy with

the astronaut in space or the person with renal failure? The answer, I believe, is not that we should refuse the attempt to rescue the astronaut or to provide renal dialysis. It is right that our human sympathy is awakened in these situations. What we should learn from the logic of the case of the rescue party saving the astronaut is that our moral imagination must also be aware of the sadness of lives cut short because we did not provide treatment for patients with genetically induced raised blood cholesterol, which ultimately led to death due to heart failure. Deaths are not less significant because we cannot put a name to the person whose life could have been saved.

The lesson we should learn from our empathy for those in need of rescue is to widen our moral imaginations. We rightly respond to the person in distress by being prepared to spend money to save particular lives, so, we should respond equally to preventing ‘statistical’ deaths, as these death are real people with families who are left behind to mourn their loss in the exact same way.

33

The Axiom

Evaluating Devlin’s Legal Moralism Words by Giannis Giortzis

An analysis of the English jurist’s controversial opinion regarding immorality and the degree to which it should be prohibited by the law.

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Evaluating Devlin's legal moralism

T

he Law has typically had a clouded stance when it comes to what it considers as morally acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, deeming certain acts as worthy of being permitted (such as homosexuality and polyamoury), as opposed to others (such as incest, polygamy and beastiality).

With the distinction between the two groups, in principled terms, seeming almost arbitrary, one has to question whether it’s possible to establish a coherent, universal philosophical rule when we are confronted with the issue of curtailing someone’s sexually- and privacy- related liberties in the name of morality. In this article, we will outline and then question what has been widely considered to be the most persuasive case for such a distinction between morality and immorality, which is the legally moralistic principle first proposed by Lord Devlin, a British judge and philosopher, in his 1959 Maccabean Lecture to the British Academy.

Devlin’s argument runs as follows: when it comes to the Law, there is no such thing as “private” morality as supposed by previous philosophers such as JS Mill. Every act of morality, by its very nature, has wide-reaching consequences to the wider public, thus rendering it a social issue (at which point the law can be invoked). This is due to the fact that immorality affects society’s moral code, and, by weakening it, we are leading to its detriment and its descent into chaos and immorality. Besides, such indecent acts may result in the faltering of our resistance to cruelty and a tendency towards apathy and disinterest when it comes to future immoral acts.

All criminal law, according to Devlin, is legislation based on morality - on what is considered “right” and is thus permissible, and what’s considered as “wrong” and is thus prohibited on that basis. However, he argues, in reality, our morals are simply rooted in the contemporary popular sentiments of “intolerance, indignation and disgust”, and do not have any rational justification behind them. This is to say that our morals are gathered organically and almost subconsciously through a process that it as much based on our social conditioning through our family, education, religion and so on, as they are “naturally” acquired by virtue of the fact that we’re human beings and thus deserve to abide by certain universal, ethically objective values. Any logical attempts to define the principle of immorality, in Devlin’s view, are bound to fail disastrously, due to the fact that our intuition and instincts are be-

35

hind them, and they, in turn, are both impossible to quantify and do not involve conscious reasoning. It is consequently difficult to come up with a general rule relating to which principles and actions ought to be exempt from morals-based legislation, and which should be permitted.

The above reasoning, however, is far from watertight. As H.L.A. Hart, a renown legal and political philosopher pointed out, the idea of a “popular morality” is hardly feasible in what is becoming a rapidly pluralistic and multicultural society. The “Man on the Clapham Omnibus” that was used to illustrate Devlin’s theory - the Victorian-era legal hypothetical of the average, diligent, reasonably educated adult male that was (and still is, albeit under the “Mondeo Man” moniker) used as a standard for behavioural and expectational rationality, is becoming an increasingly insensitive concept. This is not only due to the fact that this man’s views are likely to be conservative-leaning for modern standards, but it is almost impossible to pin down exactly what his morality are. It’s one thing to argue for this standard to be used when judging whether one’s behaviour was reasonable or not in practice, and another thing entirely to view him as a moral arbiter and a representative of our entire society. After all, most borderline acts that are the quintessence of this debate are not easily defined as undoubtedly right or wrong. For example, whereas we can all agree that murder and rape are universally abhorrent and should be outlawed, the public opinion tends to be more divided when it comes to issues such as homosexuality and polygamy. Nonetheless, as Hart warns us, even if the public was indeed united in its distaste for certain acts, this should still not automatically result in prohibition.

This is partly due to the means-ends limits of the law. Banning certain types of behaviour reveals the issues of enforceability and the opportunity for further criminal abuse of the system.

Firstly, it is notoriously difficult for the law to prosecute someone whose supposedly inappropriate sexual acts are confined to the bedroom, with even Devlin himself admitting that realistic concerns should be taken into consideration before implementing a new law. Laws on sexuality can also leads to unintended consequences, particularly when it comes to popular, widespread actions (such as adultery or homosexuality) that are partaken by thousands of adults across a jurisdiction. Not only do we have the logistical problem of attempting to prosecute so many cas-

Evaluating Devlin's legal moralism

es for such petty offences, but we also encounter the risk of more immorality springing from the prohibition - albeit immoral acts that are actually widely accepted as such, including dishonesty/ lying and blackmail or extortion in exchange for secrecy. To assume that these no longer happen would be dangerously naive; from the revelation of the extortion of a homosexual Californian senator by his male prostitute, to the numerous threats made in more conservative Middle Eastern countries to men whose adultery had been revealed after the Ashley Madison affair, banning something relatively innocent and natural has been proven to lead to a host of more sinister exploitations taking place.

We also come to question the public on whether homsexuality, or indeed any other “immoral” activity, is indeed as harmful as claimed to be. To this, I personally would argue that society has encountered too many sweeping social changes in the past, with many more still to come, to make “descent into chaos” a valid argument. When the serfs rebelled against their feudal masters in 19th-century Russia, it was regarded as a “threat to order” in terms of the contemporary hierarchy; the same applied to popular manifestations for the democratic vote in the 19th century, and the emancipatory feminist movement in the 20th. If Devlin or his supporters can prove that everyone in our society

somehow objectively deserves to be confined to the roles and liberties that they occupy currently (or indeed the antiquated norms of the 1950s, the decade in which Devlin was active), and that the concession of social change through the granting of new civil liberties (such as gay marriage) will result in greater drawbacks than benefits, then we can discuss restricting certain actions. Until then, however, the “stability for stability’s sake” argument does not apply, and is used as a cheap way of avoiding the challenging the prejudices of the majority.

After all, we consider certain acts, notably homosexuality, to be “victimless” affairs, with the intercourse being voluntary and private, and the only benefit being that to the participants without any disbenefits to wider society. The same applies to transgender individuals - they’re aligning their physical sex and gender (and thus rectifying a potentially insecure and conflicted psychological state of mind) without depriving someone else of their own freedom or rights.

It’s another issue entirely to consider other potentially immoral acts that do have quantifiable negative effects on third parties external to the act. For example, incest leads to an increase in the possibility of the future child to develop mental deficiencies or behavioural problems, with the actors hence putting the well-being of the future human being at risk through their

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Evaluating Devlin's legal moralism

sexual relations.

But does that mean that, solely by using contraception, incest becomes an acceptable act?

This is where the grander universal moral principles come into play. Firstly, we must ascertain whether there are any universal ethical truths that underpin our human existence, to which there are numerous contenders.

The religiously-minded would undoubtedly cite the existence of God as the bearer of all divine truth and reason, whereas the epistemically conscious will alternatively prefer the cold rationality of scientific experiment and conclusion.

Rawls claims that the latter is superior, and cites the need for, above all, standards of evidence to take the subjectivity out of morality and thus avoid it becoming a tool for the advancement of the inherent prejudices of the masses. We, according to his theory, need the voice of “public reason”. This, hopefully, would be a voice of common authority, consisting an overlap of all our beliefs and ideas (political, religious, human-

itarian etc.), to which the public could appeal in an attempt to promote understanding and education for matters of morality. On the one hand, the idea of taking everyone’s sentiments about a topic and distilling it into a few key principles that are commonly shared by the vast majority may be more inclusive towards the minorities, whose views on controversial moral issues may have otherwise have been overlooked in favour of those of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus.

On the other hand, Rawls’ theory ends up supporting Devlin’s, as it fundamentally places the responsibility for the judgment of morality and immorality right back in the hands of those originally purported to hold it: the majority, whose views will undoubtedly be the most popular and the loudest. It would be nice, as Rawls hints at, to have educated debate on our views and as such address old misconceptions, and for us to wholeheartedly embrace the rationality of social science. At the end of the day, however, it’s the people deciding what is acceptable or not based

37

Evaluating Devlin's legal moralism

on their personal beliefs. This is an issue, not only because of the repeating issue of the “tyranny of the majority”, but also because basing one’s morals on public opinion is entirely relativistic.

Morals cannot exist in a vacuum, or be fickle and unpredictable by being based on the prevalent tendencies of the day.

In conclusion, we see that the democratisation of our morals is a process bound to result in the tyranny of the majority and the imposition of an inherently conservative, regressive legislation by the enfranchised against the voiceless and the marginalised. This is precisely why I advocate forgetting about “morals” entirely and moving back to far more objective criteria evaluating whether certain actions should be devoid of legal coercion. Inferring from J.S. Mill, these actions would be voluntary, consensual, strictly self-regarding, private, and physically and emotionally harmless. These can be justified as follows. Voluntariness and consent would be an expression of liberty, with the assumption that the individual(s) involved know what he/ they are doing and have understood its impact.

Self-regarding refers to any effects being confined to the actors involved and not to any third parties external to the act/transaction, be they positive or negative. Privacy is an extension of the above that reduces unwilling visibility to those uninterested and uninvolved in the process, and finally “harmlessness” applies to both the actors (them not deliberately wishing to

harm themselves), as well as others. Overall, this ideal revolves around a modified version of utilitarianism that assumes that the benefit gained by allowing a minority to do as they please overshadows any potential objections (or disbenefit) that the rest of society on moral or semantic grounds. This, for instance, would allow homosexuality and transgender roles, but not beastiality (where the animal has not consented and may be harmed through intercourse), or incest, as the unborn child is at an increased risk of resulting mental deficiency or physiological problems. In addition, polygamy would be acceptable as long as it maintained as a consensual arrangement between all parties in a marriage.

This proposition, as argued above, is not an ideal solution by any means: it, for example, allows for incest performed while using contraception to be tolerated by the law, something that would undoubtedly shock many in our society. However, and this is the final point to which the reader’s attention should be brought to, tolerance is not the same as approval. No-one is compelling anyone to accept certain practices that they do not wish to, but to only avoid bigotry in allowing them to carry them out in private without facing coercive legal measures. Ultimately, with morality being such as complex, multi-faceted area of discussion, the only truly objective, intellectually sound answer to this question is the maximisation of personal happiness, insofar as it does not occur at the expense of others.

38

The Axiom

Swipe Righteously After many discussions throughout time over the purpose of our existence, the answer which many have agreed on is to reproduce and have families. Philosophers are known for being hermits with poor social skills and thus struggle to find a mate.

Hence the creation of Hinder, an app where philosophers can find each other. We apologise for this site being male only, however our only female user, Simone de Beauvoir, has already been matched up with Sartre.

RenĂŠ Descartes

Bertrand Russell

I don’t take this too seriously by the way. I have my doubts about this app.

Ignore the pictures, I look very different from other angles.

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Plato

John Stuart Mill

Only looking for a platonic relationship.

Swipe right, what’s the harm?

Robert Nozick

Epicurus

I’m a monster who receives infinitely more pleasure than others.

I could play Counter Strike Global Offensive with you.

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George Berkeley

Karl Marx

You're always in my mind.

I think there's a rising in the lower classes.

Edmund Gettier

Voltaire

Is that ten coins in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

Sorry for the quality of the pics, it was a Candide painting.

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The Axiom

Present Subjunctive

A collection of possible gifts for your philosopher friends to wish them a very secular Christmas Aristotle and Homer Bookends

Slippers which Look Like Freud

Philosopher Finger Puppets

Karl Marx Money Box

This pair of bookends will be a grand and intellectual addition to any collection of philosopy books

So you can show off to everyone else how much more intellectual you are with your 'Freudian slippers'

For when your friend feels the need to hide their loneliness and they have internal discussions about how pointless existence is

An ideal place to keep your loose change.

You can trust communists with money, can't you?

A book by their favourite philosopher: they don't have the money to buy them themselves A beret: they may appreciate headgear which proves they're a philosopher Food: anything, they're hungry Gift card: for Epicurus said 'what is good is easy to get', so go for this lazy present A cardboard box: when everything is relative, this box is enough to keep them warm Clip on beard: real philosophers won't need this A gun: for when it all gets too much

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Existential Comics

Existential Comics

Existential Comics

THE

AXIOM ISSUE No.4

Contributors

Aran Johal Yuan Han Li Giles Stratton Blake Jones Giannis Giortzis Jamie Corish Kelvin Chan

Comic by Existential Comics Design by Blake Jones

"The Axiom is a publication wholly produced and owned by Abingdon School, a company limited by guarantee and a registered charity (Charity No. 1071298). Copyright in all articles and images remains with the creators and owners of those works. Previously published images and quotes or other excerpts from published works are used either by explicit permission or under the terms of Fair Use or a Creative Commons licence."

Page 15: "The Two Paths" courtesy of flickr user Sue Clark is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 28: "UNSP 12.09.10 180" courtesy of flickr user cecilia masiero is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 17: "Dualism of Power" courtesy of flickr user BlPlN is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 31: "Syringe - gauge" courtesy of flickr user Joe Flintham is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 19: "What is life?" courtesy of flickr user Sundaram Ramaswamy is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 34: "Kiss-in (22) - 12Dec09, Paris (France)" courtesy of flickr user philippe leroyer is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 24: "Cello makes me happy - 245:365" courtesy of flickr user Susana Fernandez is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 17: "Privacy Please" courtesy of flickr user ricky montalvo is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 25: "Sound Waves: Quiet Volume" courtesy of flickr user Tess Watson liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 38: "Bound" courtesy of flickr user rConnor Tarter is liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 27: "Music" courtesy of flickr user Robert Couse-Bakeris liscensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Page 44: Images provided by The Unemployed Philosopher's Guild

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2015 No.4 THE AXIOM