Cogito 2018 Semester 2 Issue

From the Editor Diverse topics and opinions are to be found in the ensuing pages.

Arguments for free will and arguments for its impossibility. Odes to Aristotle and to the promise of predictive processing. Timely bioethics and the nuanced dissection of a music video. Distributed cognition on the rock stage and dialogue from Socrates in a tavern lively with revelry.

That we respect one another’s passion and challenge each other with playfulness and patience is a testament to two things: the unique space philosophy occupies amongst disciplines and the nature of the department we are guided by. We’re grateful for dedicated teachers who engage, encourage and skilfully challenge us.

To the continued growth of a society that has a place for all, curious or compelled. For the pattern enchanted and earnest pupils of maths and logic. For those enticed by the abstract and those driven by practical promise. For those who toil for love of God and those who toil, ensnared by the boundless intricacies of nature.

For all who step not in sync but tread together, pursuing glistening links we know will illuminate the path, but never quite enough to diffuse the wonder that inspires our walk.

1

Cogito Semester 2 2018 Head Editor: Marianne McAllister Editorial Committee Alexander McDonald, Christopher Whyte, Elia Dokos, Jeremy Amin, Liam Johnson, Matthew Su Reviewers Alexander McDonald, Christopher Whyte, Elia Dokos, Jeremy Amin, Jordan Heckendorf, Liam Johnson, Matthew Su, Robert Lawson, Thomas Keywood Layout Rupam Bhatia Cover Artwork Matthew Su Photographs Shay Tobin

Contents: Ethics and Politics 4-10

Organ Donation- Reframing Presumed Consent - Ellen Konza

11-15 Work and the Good Life- Matthew Su 16-19 Luck and Desert- An Examination of Retributive Justice - Marianne McAllister 20-23 Virtue Ethics as an Excellent Ethical Theory Jeremy Amin 24-29 The Choice to Conform: A Defence of Moral Enhancement as an Alternative to Prison - Elia Dokos

Philosophy Of Cognitive Science 31-34 A Mechanistic Synthesis of Functionalism and Identity Theory - Christopher Whyte 35-40 The Emergent Ensemble - Samuel Jones

Contributors: Ellen Konza, Matthew Su, Marianne McAllister, Jeremy Amin, Elia Dokos, Christopher Whyte, Samuel Jones, Katrina Woodforde, Nicholas Webb-Wagg, Greg Johnson, James Hoy, Thomas Keywood, Liam Johnson, Alexander McDonald

41-48 Time Scales of Explanation in Enculturated Predictive Processing - Christopher Whyte

Platonic Society Executives:

61-63 Proof from conceivability - Anselm’s ontological argument - Greg Johnson,

President: Marianne McAllister Vice President: William Sforcina Treasurer: Ellen Konza

Aesthetics and Metaphysics 50-55 The Art of Mimesis - Katrina Woodforde 56-60 Talking About Time - Nicholas Webb-Wagg

64-68 Existential Self-Projects - James Hoy 69-71 A Common Sense Argument for Freedom of the Will - Jeremy Amin 72-76 Childish Gambino and the Super-Bold Thesis - Thomas Keywood

Dialogue and Poetry 78-84 Glaucon - Liam Johnson 85 Existential Poetry - Alexander McDonald

2

Organ Donation: Reframing Presumed Consent Ellen Konza: BA Philosophy, Master of Research, Philosophy (in progress) Across Australia the legal framework for both living and posthumous organ donation is that of informed consent. The suitability however, of an alternate presumed consent model for posthumous organ donation continues to be debated (Buzacott-Speer 2017). The aim of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing debate regarding presumed consent within Australia via a comparative analysis. I will argue that presumed consent is to be ethically favoured, suitably balancing the benefits to society of organ donation and individual autonomy through the notion of a social contract. To demonstrate the suitability of this approach, Coronial autopsies will be presented as a comparative procedure, offered as already effectively utilising the architecture of presumed consent and a social contract.

To begin, part one of this paper will outline the need to reassess Australia’s approach to organ donation consent in light of other currently legislated procedures.

Coronial autopsies will be introduced as a suitable comparison, sharing with posthumous organ donation many of the same ethical concerns, including: the invasive nature and urgency of the procedures; varying religious and cultural beliefs; involvement of grieving families; and the often-conflicting nature of benefits to society versus individual autonomy. Part two will examine the modern consent process for Coronial autopsies, positing that it can be conceived as a form of presumed consent. The ethical force of the presumed consent model in Coronial autopsies will then be argued as residing within a social contract framework; citizens required to share a presumption of consent in return for the justice and health benefits that the system provides. Finally, part three will argue that presumed consent in posthumous organ donation can therefore be similarly

justified through a social contract model. In conclusion, this paper will claim that comparing posthumous organ donation with Coronial autopsies furthers the debate on posthumous organ donation by offering a novel perspective of presumed consent.

Part One Organ Donation in Australia Between 2006 and 2008, a government initiated review was undertaken of Australia’s approach to organ donation. The aim of the National Clinical Taskforce on Organ and Tissue Donation was “to provide evidence-based advice to the Government on ways to improve the rate of safe, effective and ethical organ, eye and tissue donation for transplantation in Australia” (National Clinical Taskforce on Organ and Tissue Donation 2008, 25). The result was the 2009 establishment of the Australian Organ and Tissue Authority (OTA), providing a nationally coordinated and multidimensional approach to increasing organ donation rates across Australia (Australian Healthcare Associates 2011, 14-15). Of interest, the resulting 2009 national reform package did not include suggested changes to consent legislation and across Australia the legal framework for organ donation consent remains that of informed consent.

This ‘opt-in’ model requires individuals to register their consent via the Australian Organ Donor Register. In addition, the position of the OTA is that families of the deceased will be asked to confirm consent, and donation will not proceed if strong family objections exist (Organ and Tissue Authority 2017c). An alternative consent model, utilised by numerous other countries in relation to organ donation, is that of presumed consent. Under this ‘opt-out’ model, consent to donate organs is assumed

4

unless explicitly denied by an individual prior to death (‘hard’ opt-out model) or withdrawn by the family after death (‘soft’ opt-out model) (Siegal and Bonnie 2006, 420).

In rejecting a move to presumed consent, the Taskforce cited research indicating that a presumed consent model alone does not successfully increase organ donation rates (Thomas and Klapdor 2008, 23).

Further, a normative ethical justification provided was that “When Australia’s predominant social attitudes and legal traditions are considered, the principle of informed consent model better balances individual rights with the community’s need for organ, eye, and tissue donation” (National Clinical Taskforce on Organ and Tissue Donation 2008, 157). This approach to consent however, isolates organ donation as an exceptional concern, perhaps best witnessed in the prominent rhetoric of organ donation as an altruistic ‘gift of life’ (Thomas and Klapdor 2008, 28, Siegal and Bonnie 2006, 417). The problem is that this siloed approach to thinking about organ donation fails to consider the philosophy underlying other social traditions and legislated procedures with deceased persons. A comparison of other procedures with deceased persons could in fact inform how the ethical framework of organ donation may be conceived.

A Comparative Approach - Coronial Autopsies The Coronial autopsy, being the post mortem examination of a deceased person as directed by a Coroner (Ranson 2007), provides a unique comparative procedure to organ transplantation. Though not intended to be an exhaustive list, the nature of Coronial autopsies reveals the following shared ethical concerns with posthumous organ transplantation: Intrusive nature of procedure– both organ transplantations and traditional Coronial autopsies involve an intrusive level of physical interference with a body.

For example, in a traditional three-cavity autopsy (head, thorax and abdomen) the body is cut open and organs removed for examination. In addition, partial or whole organs (including the brain) may be retained for further analysis (Ranson 2001, 154, Hershenov and Delaney 2009, 379). Such intrusions violate notions of bodily autonomy and arouse concerns for the retainment of one’s bodily integrity.

Urgency of Procedure – for organs to remain viable for transplantation, once death has been established (brain or circulatory death), the process of transplantation needs to occur as soon as possible (Organ and Tissue Authority 2017b).

While time frames for Coronial autopsies are not as tight, significant post-mortem changes can interfere with accurate interpretations of the body. The framework of consent for both organ donation and Coronial autopsies must therefore allow for a timely carrying out of the procedures.

This timeliness places increased pressure and constraint on the decision-making processes of both family and medical staff and can lead to ethical concerns regarding decisions made under duress.

Religious and Cultural Beliefs – the invasive nature of each procedure may hold significant concerns for people of certain religions or cultures. This include those with beliefs that the body after death not be interfered with, or that the body must be returned complete within a certain timeframe for proper burial (McGuinness and Brazier 2008, 306-9).

Grieving Families – since both posthumous organ donation and Coronial autopsies involve deceased persons it is likely that each procedure will include families in an emotional and vulnerable state. Appreciating the welfare and concerns of grieving families is therefore equally valid in both (McGuinness and Brazier 2008, 305-6).

In considering the above concerns it is apparent that both organ transplantation and Coronial autopsies involve tensions between the ethical concerns of individual autonomy and the possible greater benefits to society through legislatively mandated procedures. If the above are recognised as shared ethical concerns, it would appear acceptable to assume that the consent legislation

5

would also be similar, reflecting a consistent emphasis on either individual autonomy or the benefits to society. This however is not the case. Although varying to some extent in detail, most Coronial functions in Australia are now part of statute law under various state and territory Coroners Acts (Ranson 2007, 464). Consent relating to organ donation meanwhile is legislated under state and territory Human Tissue Acts (Thomas and Klapdor 2008, 10). It is of interest then to examine how consent relating to Coronial autopsies differs to that of posthumous organ donation.

Part Two Consent and Coronial Autopsies In relation to deaths, the primary duty of the Coroner is to preside over the investigation of reportable deaths to determine the identity of the deceased, date and place of death, and cause and manner of death. Reportable deaths include, but are not limited to, those that are sudden, unexpected, violent or unnatural; where the cause of death is unknown; where the person has died within police custody or a public institution such as a prison or psychiatric hospital; and where the death is not a reasonably expected outcome of a medical procedure (Vines 2000, 428). To assist in gathering information, the Coroner may order the carrying out of a Coronial or medico-legal autopsy (Ranson 2007, 463-4).

In all Australian jurisdictions, the Coroner is not required to obtain consent from family or a next of kin prior to issuing a Coronial order (Vines 2000, 428). Historically seen as a mandatory and “coercive process because it takes place by force of law” (Segal 2006, 101), a more nuanced conception of the consent process, reflecting the modern landscape of Coronial autopsies, can provide an alternative view of Coronial autopsies as comprising a form of presumed consent.

Coronial Autopsies and Presumed Consent

Despite the Coroner’s mandate to direct the carrying out of an autopsy, in recent years all jurisdictions across Australia have reviewed their Coronial Acts in order to create “… more consistent, efficient and transparent coronial system(s)” (Tait et al. 2016, 572). The changes include various mechanisms through which the senior next of kin can raise an objection to the carrying out of a post mortem (Tait et al. 2016, 572).

Reflected in this change is recognition of Australia as comprising individuals with diverse beliefs and traditions relating to death and the body, and the psychological harm that occurs when these beliefs are ignored (Vines 2000, 422-4). The shift to objections being heard, and the upholding of those objections in numerous circumstances (Ranson 2007, 465, Segal 2006, 108-10), is evidence of a structural form of presumed consent. This means that rather than mandatory conscription, the Coroner orders an autopsy with the assumption that there is no objection to consent. If there is an objection, appropriate mechanisms are utilised to hear, and wherever possible accommodate, those objections. The ethical justification of the presumed consent model is premised on the notion of a social contract.

Coronial Autopsies and the Social Contract Throughout Australia, only between 10 and 20% of all deaths result in a Coronial investigation (Tait et al. 2016, 571). Those Coronial deaths can be divided into two general types: (i) deaths of judicial concern, where a criminal or negligent act is suspected to have caused or contributed to the death and (ii) deaths of health or medical concern (Hershenov and Delaney 2009, 367).

Any information gained from an autopsy in either type of case is not of benefit to the already deceased person. The benefit of the autopsy must therefore lie elsewhere. There is no doubt that an autopsy can have significant value to the family of a deceased person. This may include providing the correct identification of the deceased person; allowing for an understanding of how and why the death occurred; and identification of genetic diseases that may impact the future health of family members (Royal College of Pathologists

6

of Australasia 2017, 5). Coronial autopsies however, also have wider social benefits, beyond that of the immediate family.

Coronial autopsies for suspicious deaths are integral to the governance of civil and criminal justice (Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia 2017, 6). A Coronial autopsy enables the collection of relevant forensic evidence and determination of cause of death; critical elements required by the legal system to effectively facilitate the societal expectation of determining responsibility and administering justice in relation to a death. In addition, the overwhelming majority of Coronial cases relate to natural cause deaths (Tait et al. 2016, 571-2). The wider social benefits of these Coronial autopsies include: informing government health policy by contributing to accurate mortality statistics; the early detection of emerging health threats such as contagious diseases and epidemics, allowing for timely governmental prevention and containment measures; and the thorough investigation of deaths of vulnerable individuals such as those in nursing homes, psychiatric hospitals and prisons, ensuring ongoing public confidence in the operation of these institutions (Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia 2017, 6).

Underpinning the benefits of Coronial autopsies is a belief that the state has a responsibility to not only ensure the administration of criminal justice for the good of the community, but also a responsibility to oversee and assist in the healthcare of its citizens (Hershenov and Delaney 2009, 370). Health as a common good and state concern is exemplified in Australia through the provision of the Medicare system, where Australian’s are provided with a certain level of free or subsidised health care services (DoHS 2015). State responsibility for such matters as justice and health however, are only one half of a social contract between the state and its citizens (Hershenov and Delaney 2009, 370), where “the sovereign is committed to the good of the individuals who constitute it, and each individual is likewise committed to the good

of the whole” (Friend 2017).

The consequence of the social contract is that a state can only effectively function if its citizens give up certain freedoms and rights in return for state assistance and protection for the greater benefit of all. For example, citizens relinquish part of their income through taxation to assist in funding the Medicare system (DoHS 2015). In Coronial autopsies the emphasis on the social good that results, is established by invoking a presumption of consent to the procedure. That is, in shifting the default status to one of consent rather than non-consent, the state makes clear its normative position that the Coronial autopsy is of significant social benefit (Siegal and Bonnie 2006, 420). Importantly, this does not mean that individual beliefs and customs are ignored as perhaps feared, but rather the onus is transferred to those who wish to declare an objection to the assumption of consent to actively do so.

Anchored to the social contract, presumed consent in Coronial autopsies is not representative of a denial of the importance of individual autonomy and choice, but rather recognition of the need for citizens to collectively share in the responsibility of consent for the benefit of all.

Characterised as advocating a “norm of reciprocity” (Siegal and Bonnie 2006, 419), the question then becomes whether this conception of presumed consent can be suitably transferred to the issue of organ donation.

Part Three Organ Donation, the Social Contract and Presumed Consent There is no doubt that organ donation saves the lives of many Australians. In 2016 across Australia, the organs of 503 deceased donors were used to improve the lives of 1447 Australians awaiting organ transplants (Organ and Tissue Authority 2017a). If it is accepted that the social contract provides the state with the appropriate ethical force to utilise a form of presumed consent to advocate that Coronial autopsies occur, then it may seem at first straightforward to simply demand the same regarding life-saving organ transplantations. There are however, a number of possible arguments that may be raised

7

against the suitability of the comparison between consent in Coronial autopsies and organ donation. The following is a consideration of the core differences and whether they do significantly impact the comparative model..

Broad versus Narrow Benefits – Coronial autopsies may be argued to provide broad social benefits, by aiding in the effective functioning of the criminal justice system and healthcare policies. That is, it is in the interests of a much greater number of people to ensure that Coronial autopsies are performed. With organ transplants, the organ recipient benefits, as does their family by having the life of their loved one saved.

Beyond this, the beneficial effects of each organ transplantation may be argued to be negligible to the wider community. Such a characterisation of the benefits of organ transplantations fails however, to account for the burden of patients requiring a transplant on the healthcare system. Patients requiring a transplant may be kept within the healthcare system for extended periods, amounting to a significant cost to the state and thus community. Projections for the cumulative cost of end-stage kidney disease in Australia between 2009 and 2020 is between $11.3 billion and $12.3 billion (Kidney Health Australia 2006, 1). Organ transplants, identified as providing economic savings as well as health benefits (Kidney Health Australia 2006, 35), therefore do impact broadly on the community.

Furthermore, one cannot predict if in their lifetime they will require the life-saving procedure of an organ transplantation.

Having an appropriate pool of organ donors within the community is therefore of benefit to all individuals, save for a small minority who for religious reasons would refuse a transplant.

Timing of Objections – for Coronial autopsies objections occur after death and are raised by the family through the senior next of kin (Tait et al. 2016, 572). There is currently no opportunity for an individual to object to their own autopsy prior to death.

This appears to conflict with the ideal of

presumed consent in organ donation, whereby an individual could register their own objection prior to their death. While significant, this difference does not preclude the notion of presumed consent through a social contract. Suitable opportunities for individuals to register their withdrawal of consent for organ donation can still be developed; the focus of the presumed consent model not being the elimination of choice but the shifting of the default consent position due to the social contract.

Overruling of Objections – a significant feature in Coronial autopsies is that despite family objections, the Coroner possesses the legislated power to overrule objections. If the family still wishes to object, the supreme court hears the matter and may either uphold the objection or find in favour of the need for the autopsy to occur (Segal 2006, 104). In contrast, it may be argued that any presumed consent model for organ donation should not include any overruling of withdrawal of consent. While this is certainly a possible model, the force of the social contract may, as with Coronial autopsies, introduce reasons to consider the possibility of overruling objections for organ donation. An example may be overruling the withdrawal of consent of those who possess a rare tissue type. In this case, the low probability of finding a similar donor may be considered to provide the necessary moral force for the transplantation to occur, given its benefits. As in Coronial autopsies, where most individuals cannot predicate whether their death will be of such importance or interest as to warrant the overruling of any objections, it may be the circumstance that an individual, who has not chosen their tissue type, has their own wishes overruled for the benefit of others in the community.

Alternative Procedures – if the invasive nature of autopsies and organ donation require ethical consideration, then arguably a growing difference that must be acknowledged is the opportunity for modern autopsies to utilise less invasive procedures. The use of MRIs, CAT scans, x-rays and external-only examinations, has resulted in pathologists being able to obtain the necessary information without cutting the body at all. This provides a mechanism through which to not only alleviate concerns regarding objections based .

8

upon mutilation of the body, but the upholding of those objections (Ranson 2007, 464).

In contrast, organ transplants necessarily require the cutting open and removal of organs from the body. Where then body mutilation is the primary concern, there is no opportunity to compromise regarding the invasiveness of the procedure. This difference would prove to be significant when developing any framework through which to introduce a presumed consent model Consideration of the above differences demonstrates that while there are issues that would require further exploration and development, they do not immediately prevent a suitable connection being made between the use of presumed consent in Coronial autopsies and its relevance in organ donation. As a procedure that has both direct health benefits and indirect economic benefits for the community, the state rightly takes responsibility for promoting organ donation. The effect of developing the presumed consent model for organ donation within a social contract framework is to emphasise the underrepresented idea of citizens also contributing to the social contract; citizenship not only providing individuals with protections regarding rights, but a responsibility to support an obligation of reciprocity (Siegal and Bonnie 2006). As a result, an understanding of permissions in Coronial autopsies can indeed inform the debate on presumed consent organ donation within Australia; the act of posthumous organ donation considered not just altruistically but as also concerning collective responsibility and socially mandated reciprocity.

Conclusion There can be little argument that increasing organ donation rates in Australia is a valuable objective. To do so however, will likely require challenging the prevailing norms regarding the most effective and suitable model of consent. Coronial autopsies, as an integral part of the provision of criminal justice and health policy, provides a comparative procedure that enables an

alternative understanding of the ethics of presumed consent. Conceived as arising due to the social contract that exists between the state and fellow citizens, a presumed consent model in Coronial autopsies is a visible demonstration of the expectations of consent due to the resulting collective benefits. Applied to posthumous organ donation, the debate on presumed consent can therefore be moved beyond concern for direct effects on organ donation rates, to an advocation of reciprocal obligation, where the standard is one of assumed consent.

References: Australian Healthcare Associates. 2011. Organ and Tissue Donation Reform Package Mid-Point Review Report. https://donatelife.gov.au/sites/default/files/Midpoint%20Implementation%20Review_Final%20 Report.pdf DeFina, R., Hannon, L. (2010). The impact of adult incarceration on child poverty: a county-level analysis, 19952007. The Prison Journal.Vol. 90, No. 4.pp 377-396.

Buzacott-Speer, Eliza. 2017. "Opt-out organ donation unlikely to become reality in Australia despite international trend."

ABC News.

DoHS. 2015. "Medicare Services." http://www.humanservices.gov.au/ customer/subjects/medicare-services.

Friend, Celeste. 2017. "Social Contract Theory." http://www.iep.utm.edu/soc-cont/#SH2c Hershenov, David B., and James J. Delaney.

2009. "Mandatory Autopsies and Organ Conscription." Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 19 (4):367-391.

Kidney Health Australia. 2006. The Eco nomic Impact of End-Stage Kidney Disease in Australia - Projections to 2020.

9

http://kidney.org.au/cms_uploads/docs/khaeconomic-impact-of-eskd-in-australia-projections-2020.pdf.

McGuinness, Sheelagh, and Margaret Brazier. 2008. "Respecting the Living Means Respecting the Dead too." Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 28 (2):297-316.

National Clinical Taskforce on Organ and Tissue Donation. 2008. National Clinical Taskforce on Organ and Tissue Donation Final Report: Think Nationally, Act Locally. edited by Department of Health and Ageing: Australian Government.

Organ and Tissue Authority. 2017a. Aus tralian Donation and Transplanta tion Activity Report 2016. http://www.donatelife.gov.au/sites/default/fi les/Australian%20Donation%20and%20Tra nsplantation%20Activity%20Report%2020 16.pdf: Australian Government.

Organ and Tissue Authority. 2017b. "Dona tion after death." http://www.donatelife.gov.au/donationafter-death.

Organ and Tissue Authority. 2017c. "OTA Position Statement." http://www.donatelife.gov.au/ota-positionstatement-legal-framework-consent-donation.

Ranson, David. 2001. "Law, Ethics and the Conduct of Forensic Autopsies."

Journal of Law and Medicine 9:153-158.

Ranson, David. 2007. "Objections to MedicoLegal Autopsy - Recent Developments in Case Law." Journal of Law and Medicine 14:463-468.

Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia.

2017. Autopsies and the Use of Tissues Removed from Autopsies.

Segal, G. P. 2006. "Law and Practice in Relation to Coronial Post Mortems - A Social Perspective." Medicine and Law 25:101-113.

Siegal, Gil, and Richard J. Bonnie. 2006.

"Closing the Organ Gap: A ReciprocityBased Social Contract Approach."

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 34 (2):415-423.

Tait, Gordon, Belinda Carpenter, Carol Quadrelli, and Michael Barnes. 2016. "Decisionmaking in a death investigation: Emotion, families and the coroner."

Journal of Law and Medicine 23:571581.

Thomas, Matthew, and Michael Klapdor. 2008.

The future of organ donation in Australia: moving beyond the 'gift of life'. In Parliament of Australia Research Papers. https://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/library/pubs/rp/ 2008-09/09rp11.pdf: Department of Parliamentary Services.

Vines, Prue. 2000. "Objections to Post-mortem Examination: Multiculturalism, Psychology and Legal Decisionmaking." Journal of Law and Medicine 7:422-433.

10

Work and the Good Life Matthew Su: BA Philosophy and LLB with Honours This paper proposes to assess the place of work in light of a ‘Contemplative model’ of human flourishing, inspired by the Aristotelian account of human flourishing. It will argue that work is ultimately a realm of secondary activity, and that human flourishing is instead found in the contemplative life, and that the conditions of the contemplative life are modest and compatible with a variety of working conditions, but incompatible with others. I will then consider the implications of this finding for work, and assess conceptions of freedom in and from work. I will argue against the libertarian view that any arrangement voluntarily agreed is just. I will argue, contrary to Marx and also contrary to Gourevitch, against the idea that freedom in work entails democratising the administration of the workspace. I will also argue against the justification of measures like Van Parijs’s universal wage in freeing people from necessity.

Work For the purposes of this essay, ‘work’ is that sphere of human activity aimed at supplying the means of one’s subsistence and exchange. This sphere is distinctly productive, of that which will serve directly as the means of subsistence, or of exchange. This serves to distinguish the sphere of work from that of either the hobby or of contemplation. The question will be how work so conceived fits within the scheme of human flourishing.

Work and Human Flourishing: Praxis, Poisesis, and Theoria In order to understand the place of work in the scheme of human flourishing, it is necessary first to have an account of human flourishing, or well-being. As the word implies, flourishing is the act of beinghuman done well. It is important, therefore,

to give some characterisation of human nature in order to think about human flourishing. Here I follow the Aristotelian characterisation of human being as the rational animal (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1098a). It is this characterisation which situates our intelligent agency (that is, our ability to act in accordance with reasons derived from reflection upon the intelligible structure of reality, which is the precondition of rational understanding and inquiry) within the world. The task of finding the place of work within the scheme of human flourishing, is to find out how to see subsistence and exchange as extensions of “rational-animal” activity.

It is useful for our purposes to adopt the Aristotelian classification of human activity into poiesis, praxis, (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1048b) and theoria (Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1249b) in order of their centrality to being-human. Poisesis is activity aimed at some object outside the human being, that is, productive activity, which is part of the human good only accidentally. That is, these activities aim at the human good only insofar as they are performed for an end extrinsic to themselves. Work in this scheme would most plausibly be a form of poiesis, since it is, qua work, performed not for its own sake but for the purposes of sustaining life and enabling the satisfaction of wants. Praxis is activity aimed at moral and political virtue, which are fulfilments of human nature in and of themselves (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1178a).

These acts are intrinsic parts of beinghuman, and are perfected insofar as they properly derive from human nature. I agree with Aristotle that the highest form of intrinsically valuable activity is Theoria, or contemplation. This is the case because the rational agent qua rational seeks the cause and principle of its own being, and this basic rational act, when accomplished, just

11

is the act of contemplation (Kraut 2016).

Thus it is in contemplation, that is, in knowing and conforming oneself to the first principles of one’s own being, that one achieves the human good in a most perfect way (Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1249b).

Since human nature finds its perfection in the act of contemplation, its ability to sustain that act is the proper measure of the degree to which the other virtues are pursued (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1177a).

The capacity for theoria demands leisure, which is exclusive of work and activity, though this does not mean that the contemplative life (as far as a human is capable of it) consists entirely of leisure.

Since man is a composite being, he properly concerns himself with both practical activity and contemplation, with the former in subjection to the latter (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b). This means that if work has a place in the most complete pattern of human activity, it is not as the totality of that life, but a subordinate part of a greater whole. The obvious place that work has in the contemplative life is in supplying the means by which the agent, as a rational animal, is maintained in his needs and able to secure himself against turns of fortune.

It is interesting to note that pursuit of contemplation within a sphere of dedicated leisure can be added onto a wide variety of forms of working life, from the politician to the factory worker; the only condition of contemplation is sufficient leisure to do so, not infinite leisure. Because contemplation is thus to a large degree indifferent to the particular means which support it, and yet is a sufficient condition of happiness, the contemplative idea of human flourishing entails a high degree of indifference with respect to the form of working life which may be pursued consistently with happiness.

Thus, however one is engaged in supplying his own necessities in order contemplate the first principles of things (rendered in the Eudemian Ethics as ‘God’) (Eudemian Ethics, 1249b) one is nonetheless living the

contemplative life.

Objection: The contemplative view of human flourishing is unrealistic.

The chief objection to the contemplationcentred concept of flourishing is that it seems unrealistic and elitist, an objection to which Aristotle himself might have held some sympathy. For most, by far the greater part of one’s work week for most of mankind is taken up supplying the necessities which support a smaller portion of leisure time. If contemplation occurs primarily in that sliver of leisure one ‘rescues’ from the work week, and the conditions of work primarily supply one’s sense of self and worth in one’s community, it would seem that work, in virtue of being the greater preoccupation of the two in terms of time spent, has the better claim to centrality. This objection seems to present a serious practical problem for the contemplative view of human flourishing, and at worst betray a theoretical mistake somewhere along the way.

Certainly there are some work-leisure arrangements which seem to implacably oppose working activity, and contemplation as a ‘hobby’ during one’s leisure. Yet these are not the only possible work-leisure arrangements, nor are they historically the most prevalent ones. The most common historical experience of contemplative leisure, I would contend, is best exemplified in religious days of rest and holy days. The communal acts of worship and celebration which seem to make sense of life as a whole allow such spaces to rationalise the rest of life in an act of communal contemplation.

These moments, I contend, are nothing less than the popular participation in theoria.

Through this popular theoria, the rest of the working week for the whole community takes on a teleology pointing towards contemplation, and so ordinary life becomes an extension of the contemplative life rather than opposed to it. The Protestant ethic at the root of modern capitalism, which seeks sanctity in the ordinary (Weber, 2008), is at its best understood in this light.

12

That this rhythm of life has survived well into the modern day, and continues to inform the lives of many, shows that the life of contemplation is not only an option for the few, but has only modest requirements and a long and successful history as a mass lifestyle.

Work and Freedom The importance of contemplation entails that a mode of life consisting in nothing but work, or a life which is concerned with nothing but work, is contrary to the human good. The contemplative vision of human flourishing sets limits on a laissez-faire view of employment conditions, as well as requires that we correct an overemphasis on work as a determinant of all social standing and honour in broader society. It provides a strong motivation to reform society in a way which opposes the tendency of work to dominate our concerns. It also shows that a life without space for contemplative activity by unreasonably eliminating leisure, is intrinsically contrary to the interests of the worker, and is therefore to be avoided. The kinds of practical recommendations I would favour to improve the lot of the worker would include limited work-hours, minimum wages, as well as publically funded entertainments and cultural opportunities, which emphasise the importance of work and life outside it.

Objection: people should be free to contract One might object in the libertarian vein that the sovereignty of the individual entails allowing people to pursue the form of work they think best, and that no categorial judgements may be made about the disposal of their self-owned labour, even if they want to exclude contemplation from their pattern of life (Vallentine and der Vossen, 2014).

However, if freedom is a human good, it must be a good because it preserves the possibility of distinctly human action, which as we have seen above, is rational action.

Only a rational agent could be sovereign, after all, for only a rational agent could

exercise deliberate control of itself and thus benefit from the doctrine of sovereignty. If rational action for the human being is properly rational only insofar as it aims at contemplation, it is necessarily irrational to act so as to inhibit contemplation. The very reasons that make it important to be free from interference, then, also demand that space for the contemplative life be taken into account for every workplace arrangement.

Freedom in work For all that the conditions of human flourishing absolutely require consideration be given to leisure and contemplation, those conditions are also, I argue, quite tolerant of hierarchical arrangements which other theorists would see as incompatible with the fullness of human freedom. The Marxist, for instance, finds the order of subjection and control of the worker within employment by the employer, aided by the impositions of biological necessity, to be oppressive of the worker’s freedom (Marx, 1993). The Marxist abhors the relations of domination within the workplace which serve to impair the outworking of the worker’s rational (that is, free) nature (Marx, 1993) The Marxist envisions a sphere of work as free from relations of domination, where the worker is rationally and meaningfully engaged in making decisions as to where and how to work, rather than acting as the instrument of his employer. A similar line of criticism comes from the Labour Republicans like Gourevitch, who abhor the existence of arbitrary power of interference in the workplace (Gourevitch, 2013). Both advocate democratising the governance of the workplace in order to remove the structures of unjust domination.

If there is a sphere outside of and superior to work, however, in which the rational faculty finds a sufficient and proper fulfilment, the limited surrender of autonomy in the course of work does not entail an unjust loss of agency. Thus the worker may see his work ‘redeemed’ in the context of a larger, transcendent act, given he has the leisure to

13

contemplate and affirm his condition as so justified. Granted such a means of fulfilment outside work, the worker is not under any necessity to engage the full range of his contemplative powers and the freedoms they require in the course of his work (for he finds sufficient fulfilment elsewhere, in a way that successfully justifies his work for him), and so should be free to contract all kinds of hierarchical working arrangements without his agency being threatened. It is true, however, that only the successful provision of a truly contemplative leisure would serve to justify work in this way. A society which as a whole does not value and cannot achieve contemplation in its labour, cannot benefit from this kind of justification, and would remain subject to the Marxist and Republican criticism. Nevertheless, the serious possibility of such a contemplative life (arguably, the kind of life lived by the inheritors of the Protestant ethic, among others) does mean that being subject to another in the limited context of work need not be seen as inherently unjust.

Objection: Does the contemplative modelof flourishing allow oppression?

It might be objected here that the use of the contemplative sphere to justify relations of domination simply obscures real conditions of oppression which may exist. To state the objection most powerfully, might this idea not entail that even slavery is permissible, as long as the slaves received time to contemplate?

I respond that there are limits in my account to the exercise of dominationspecifically, those which hinder the achievement of contemplative flourishing. Thus mistreatment and deliberate infliction of intrinsic evils, being objectively contrary to human flourishing, are also contrary to the contemplative life and to be avoided in justice. A degree of freedom from interference, however, is also necessary for the contemplative life: specifically, there must be space given for individual practical agency as a result of the contemplative life to manifest.

Slavery treats the slave as if their agency were categorically an extension of their master’s. This is inconsistent with treating the slave also as a rational agent, since rational agency is to act autonomously, out of internal principle achieved through contemplation. Thus my model cannot be used to justify just any degree of imposition on freedom outside the sphere of contemplative leisure. While it is possible to enter into a limited relation of subjection or domination to authority, such a relation must involve at some level a rational reckoning by the individual with his circumstances in order to be licit.

Freedom from Work In response to the disproportionate domination of our concerns by work, some like Van Parijs have advocated Universal Basic Income schemes which free us from the necessity of work (Van Pariks, 2005). The idea is that to secure true freedom in contract, the prospect of work must be freed from the threat of necessity, which compels the worker against his will to enter into whatever work he can obtain (Van Parijs, 2005). This critique has an antecedent in Marx, where he speaks of man being dominated by ‘blind power’ (Marx, 1993). The mode of agency here seems to be that of the individual whim, unconstrained as far as possible by circumstances beyond the agent’s own desire.

I respond that there is simply no compelling human interest in setting up a standard of universal freedom, where freedom is defined as maximising the ability to follow just any whim. This is because necessity is not hostile to a life of rational agency, which the protection of freedoms aims to protect. Even to perceive a realm of necessity and act in accordance with these principles is a rational act, after all. Constraint of rational action occurs not when the rational act responds to the demands of nature, but where it is wholly subsumed into the act of another, such as in the case of the master of the chattel slave. That one might not like one’s options is not sufficient to show that

14

those options are not sufficient to sustain a contemplative life. While it may be nice to maximise our options, the good of ‘choice’ in this regard is entirely supererogatory.

Such choices are not required to necessarily maximise our happiness (since that is found in contemplation), so there is no obligation to maximise ‘freedom’ conceived in the libertarian sense.

8. Alex Gourevitch, ‘Labour Republicanism and the Transformation of Work’ (2013) 20(10) Political Theory 1.

9. Van Parijs, Philip, A Basic Income for All (2005) Boston Review <http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR25.5/v anparijs.html>.

Conclusion If the proper place of work is bound up with a ‘contemplative’ account of human flourishing, then we have good reason to reject both a lassiez-faire attitude towards working conditions as timid, and necessity-despising freedom as ill-motivated. This does not mean that reforms to work-leisure balance cannot be countenanced, but it is quite compatible with a flourishing life to be subject to both necessity and hierarchy.

Bibliography 1. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2. Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 3. Aristotle, Metaphysics 4. Kraut, Richard, "Aristotle's Ethics", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition), Edward N. Zalta(ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/ entries/aristotle-ethics/>.

5. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Routledge, 2008) 6. Vallentyne, Peter and Bas van der Vossen, "Libertarianism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/ entries/libertarianism/>.

7. Marx, Karl, Capital, (Penguin Books, 1993) Vol 3

15

Luck and Desert: An Examination of Retributive Justice Marianne McAllister: BA Cognitive and Brain Sciences (in progress) Distributive justice emphasises collective responsibility for the collective good, while retributive justice emphasises individual responsibility and desert. In what follows, I will draw from John Rawls’ principles of distributive justice to argue that the retributive justification for punishment is insufficient, its use therefore an example of injustice.

Retributive justice holds that offenders morally deserve to suffer, even if no future good (such as deterrence), is achieved. It is importantly linked to the problem of free will - one that falls well outside the scope of this essay. I will, therefore, focus on how constitutive luck dilutes the argument for free will, thereby weakening the retributive justification for punishment.

2. Constitutive Luck I shall start by demonstrating that constitutive luck poses a significant problem for free will, commonly defined as the ability to freely choose one’s actions, in such a way that one is truly responsible for them. In the philosophical literature, luck is primarily defined as an absence of control (Nelkin, 2003). Constitutive luck, developed by Nagel (1979) as one of four kinds of moral luck and explored further as Levy’s (2001) non-chancy luck, is best understood as the luck in a person’s genes and environmental influences that result in them developing a particular set of values, inclinations, traits and capacities. In short, it’s the luck that makes one who one is. Here lies the problem: These early-life factors are clearly outside of our control. Since these factors contribute to making us who we are, it follows that who we are is at least partly a matter of luck.

3. The Problem of Choice

Consider this link between who we are and our actions: When we choose a course of action, we appear to choose from a range of options. But where did the range of options come from? Specifically, are we free to choose an option that doesn’t occur to us?

The following example highlights the issue at play: An adult who suffered significant, ongoing abuse as a child is bullied and humiliated by another man. In the moment, three opportunities for action occur to him: 1. Physically attack the man 2. Use a gun to shoot the man 3. Steal a bottle of spirits to sedate his anger Granted he has the ability to choose between these options, is the fact that a fourth option - say, to use deep breathing to calm down - doesn’t occur to him, really his fault? Is he free to choose a better action, if none occur to him? This example shows that who we are limits the choices available to us. Since who we are seems to be at least partly a matter of luck, it follows that the range and moral quality of our choices are somewhat outside of our control.

4. The Natural and Social Lottery Rawls’ conception of a “natural and social lottery” is analogous to that of constitutive luck, in that both consider a person’s starting point in society a matter of fortune, or luck, and both acknowledge the natural and social influences that make a person who they are (Rawls, 1971, p. 65-90). The problem I see with Rawls’ line of thinking is this: He claims that these factors are “arbitrary from a moral point of view” (Rawls, 1971, p.72), which hints at his justification for the roughly retributive system of punishment he briefly describes would operate in his ideal society.

16

However, we needn’t look far to bridge the gap from economic and social inequality to morality and crime - a ready example being the correlation between race, education and incarceration rates in the US, where twothirds of African American male dropouts are expected to serve time in prison (Western & Pettit, 2010). Did Rawls think that moral character develops independently of the social and environmental causal influences operating on a human being? If so, this is inconsistent with what we know about the determinants of crime.

5. The Determinants of Criminal Behaviour The social and economic inequality Rawls was trying to balance out is a predictor of criminal behaviour. Jencks, in 1979, identified the determinants of economic success: family, schooling, disposition, intelligence, personality and socioeconomic status.

Caruso, in 2017, identified the determinants of crime: genes, poverty, socioeconomic status, adverse childhood experiences, housing, mental illness and access to healthcare. As many of these factors are outside of our control (those that are imposed on us in early life or in such a way that we have little to no capacity to choose otherwise), there is a predictive link not only between constitutive luck (and thus, Rawls’ natural and social lottery), and the likelihood of achieving economic success, but also to the likelihood of committing a crime.

6. A Matter of Desert Rawls classified the character traits that lead to economic success as social goods, and justified a redistribution of taxes on the grounds that they are not completely deserved (Rawls, 1971, p.65-90). This leads us to the following: If a person is not completely deserving of the benefits of economic success, to the extent to which their coming about depends on constitutive luck, then it seems to follow that a person is not completely deserving of the suffering caused by retributive punishment, to the

extent to which its coming about depends on constitutive luck.

It may be the case that any theory that endorses distributive justice principles on the grounds that ‘favourable’ traits (those that predict economic success) are, to a large extent, undeserved, would be inconsistent to endorse retributive justice principles on the grounds that ‘unfavourable’ traits (those that predict criminal behaviour), are a matter of personal responsibility.

7. Objections I expect the primary objection to this line of thought to be the compatibilist view that while we may be subject to the causal influences of determinism or luck, we still exercise a certain kind of freedom over our actions, one sufficient for responsibility (McKenna & Coates, 2016). I draw from Matravers (2007) in response. He suggests that in outright rejecting arguments for “seeking the wrong kind of freedom, compatibilists risk being too complacent” (Matravers, 2007, p.142). By searching for a way for responsibility to co-exist with our current practices, he says “compatibilists may fail to see how those practices demand, if they are to be legitimate, the kind of freedom and responsibility that compatibilism cannot deliver” (Matravers, 2007, p.142). I agree - it’s reasonable to think that the kind of ultimate free will many compatibilists seem to concede we don’t have is the kind required for the legitimacy of retributive justice.

A secondary objection - the view that we need retributive justice for social order, is also surmountable, in that the remaining three justifications for punishment (incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation), remain legitimate (Levy, 2011). We would be strongly justified in punishing offenders as far as is useful in achieving those aims to protect ourselves within a safe and ordered society.

17

8. Behind the Veil A thought experiment allows us to examine our retributive notions one step further.

Imagine you are behind Rawls’ “Veil of Ignorance” (Rawls, 1971, p. 11-22) Like the subjects in the original position, you are unaware of your social circumstances and personal characteristics. You are to choose between two principles that will ground your criminal justice system - one retributivist, the other non-retributivist. Both provide the same level of public safety, the only difference being the retributivist system imposes greater suffering via harsh punitive practices. The non-retributivist system punishes only as far as is useful in achieving the aims of incapacitation, deterrence and rehabilitation. After considering what your starting point in society could be, which system would you choose? I think it likely that the majority of people would choose the non-retributivist system as a safe bet to achieve social order but avoid the risk of extra hardship should they offend. If you would choose a desert-based, retributive system of punishment, consistency would seem to require you choose a desert-based, non-distributive economy.

9. A Multidisciplinary Approach There is an alternative to retributive justice that seems more consistent with Rawls’ A Theory of Justice overall. Noting that social and criminal justice are closely intertwined, Caruso suggests that “retributive and purely punitive approaches to criminal behavior end up missing the mark, since they see the problem as generally a matter of personal responsibility and desert” (Caruso, 2017, p.27). In his Public Health-Quarantine Model, Caruso draws on research “from the health sciences, social sciences, public policy, law, psychiatry, medical ethics, neuroscience, and philosophy,” to develop an approach to crime he says is both “practically workable and ethically defensible” (Caruso, 2017, p.3). Policies enriched by research from a broad range of disciplines seem appropriate for a problem that is

impacted by – and goes on to influence – social and economic inequality as well as health – particularly mental health – in 2005, more than half of all people incarcerated in the US had a mental illness (Caruso, 2017, p.6).

10. Conclusion Our commitment to retributive justice requires a robust free will. The US Supreme Court considers free will “a universal and persistent element” of law (Waller, 2015, p.100). But as I have shown, constitutive luck weakens our control over who we are and reduces the opportunities for action available to us, to a level that appears to diminish real freedom of choice. Does this dilute free will to a degree insufficient for the retributive justification of punishment? I think it does. This matters, because when a state punishes a person, it does them harm.

The onus is on the state to justify that harm.

Bibliography Caruso, Gregg D. Public Health and Safety: The Social Determinants of Health and Criminal Behavior. UK: ResearchersLinks Books, 2017.

Jencks, Christopher. Who Gets Ahead?: The Determinants of Economic Success in America. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1979.

Levy, Neil.Hard Luck: How Luck Under mines Free Will and Moral Respon sibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 Matravers, Matt. Responsibility and Justice.

Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.

McKenna, Michael & Coates, Justin D. "Compatibilism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter 2016 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL= <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2016/entries/compatibilism/>.

18

Nagel, Thomas. Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1979 Nelkin, Dana K. "Moral Luck", The Stan ford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Winter 2013 Edition, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL=<https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2013/entries/moral-luck/>.

Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice.Original ed. Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Waller, Bruce. The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility. MIT Press, 2015. 100 Western, Bruce & Pettit, Becky.

Incarceration and Social Inequality.On Mass Incarceration.Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010.

19

Virtue Ethics as an Excellent Ethical Theory Jeremy Amin: BA Philosophy This essay will be arguing that Virtue Ethics (abbreviated to ‘VE’) as derived from Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics has sufficient resources to be a complete normative ethical theory. Specifically, I will argue that when understood in the broader framework of Aristotelian metaphysics and philosophy of nature from which it derives its principles, and the Natural Law Theory which emerged from it, Virtue Ethics successfully provides an action guiding framework which is capable of addressing the practical affairs of human life. I will first touch on a few key concepts in Aristotle’s metaphysics and philosophy of nature, and Natural Law Theory. I will then connect these concepts with human beings and morality. Finally, I will explore why VE is capable of being sufficiently action-guiding due to its conception of practical wisdom and character.

For any ethical theory to be a successful normative theory, I assume that it must be grounded in a metaphysical system which is capable of informing us of our proper natures as human beings, and of our proper ends as human beings. I will not defend this thesis further in this essay however consider it prudent to note for the reader to inquire further.

I will first give a few definitions and clarificatory examples in order to explain later in this essay why VE is successful as an action guiding system.

VE is born out of Aristotelian metaphysics and philosophy of nature, and is best understood when grounded in the theory of Natural Law derived from it. For the Natural Law Theorist, the good for a thing is necessarily dictated by its nature. In the case of human affairs, when we speak of morality what we are really doing is referring to those thoughts, intentions and actions which

are good for us in actualising ourselves and our ends as human beings. In order to know what is good for any being, its proper nature and final end must be known. To use Aristotelian terms, its material, efficient, formal and final causes must be known if any judgement of good or bad is to be done well or even in the first instance. Knowledge of its material, efficient, and formal causes tell us that which is good for the sustained existence of a thing. Knowledge of its final cause tells us that which is good for its proper end. This leads to two senses of the term ‘good’. In one aspect, the ‘good’ for the being is that which produces and promotes the flourishing of it at any moment it exists. In the other aspect, the ‘good’ for the being is that which promotes and produces the flourishing of the being towards it becoming what it is intended to be by its nature. Using the example of an acorn and the oak tree it grows into, in the first case, the good is that which aids in maximising its being as an acorn in the moment. Examples include the right temperature in its environment and being firmly attached to the branch it is on. In the second case, the good is that which aids in maximising its being in its final proper end as an oak tree specifically. Examples include the proper functioning of its DNA for the process of growth from seed to plant and the right soil conditions once it has been buried. This distinction I have drawn is not one of mutual exclusivity. There are many overlapping variables which are both good for the flourishing of the acorn qua acorn as well as good for the acorn as it develops into an oak tree. VE tied to Natural Law is a theory which is grounded in both senses of ‘good’ as I have described above. I will now expand on how it relates to human life and morality.

Once the four causes of human beings are understood, ethics and moral action

20

come to be seen as a particular instance of the good, in this case in us fulfilling our potentials as humans and living in a flourishing society. As rational beings, it is thought, intention, and action in accordance with reason and to further our intellectual virtues that is good for us. As social beings, it is thought, intention, and action in accordance with life with others and excelling socially which is good and moral for us. So too for us as political beings, as aesthetically motivated beings, and the other aspects of our nature. There is also a hierarchy to our nature which is important to know if we are to flourish. Our rational aspect supervenes on our physical in a way that makes the physical best understood as serving to further the rational, our social aspect supervenes on our self-interest in a way that makes us think that our selfinterests are best satisfied by also serving others. We flourish when not only our more basic aspects but, more importantly, those aspects which are distinctive to us as humans are cultivated. Knowing this hierarchy creates a balance in us such that no one aspect can be developed to excess without our short and/or long term well-being becoming affected. For us, the right actions are those which maintain or further our being in one or more aspects of our nature taking into account the hierarchical nature of our being. VE in this way provides a criterion of rightness by explaining that the right follows non-arbitrarily from the good for us which follows from our natures and proper ends in the immediate and long term.

When I am contemplating the right life to live overall, all I need to do is know what my proper nature consists of and then proceed to fulfil it. This provides the overall set of principles, rules, and duties I have as a human. When it comes to the specifics of my individuality and context such as historic context, culture, tastes etc. as long as what I do does not contradict or in any way stifle my proper nature, I will be living in accordance with the ethical norms for humans. Related to this, wrong or bad actions are considered wrong or bad to the degree that they stifle or deprive us of fulfilling our natures.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Evilâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; actions are the subset of the wrong or bad actions which are in the ethical and moral realm of human life and existence, actions which directly or indirectly contradict ours and othersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; natures at least in the rational, social, and political aspects. For VE, the agent is as morally valuable as any other outside of themselves. For this reason, even if an action is not harming others directly or indirectly, it may be considered evil if it does affect the agent in a way that causes a loss in their proper nature as rational, social, etc. and thus deprives them of a flourishing life.

I now turn to the final part of this essay where the practical action guiding capacity of VE is explored and addressed. One of the more common objections to VE, and the objection I address in this essay, is that it does not seem to have strict action guiding rules for our daily affairs which are based on duties or ends. This supposed lack of rules then leads the critic to conclude that it does not provide enough of a theoretical algorithm for practical affairs as we experience in reality, it seems to only work for the already perfect virtuous agents in a vaguely defined sense of action and character. It is not deemed a worthy alternative to Consequentialism or Deontology, both theories being explicitly rule governed, proscriptive, and normative for the ideal agent as well as the agent in concrete, day-to-day situations.

Contrary to such objections, I think that VE is the best way to explain our attachments to both duties and considerations of consequences, and in a way that neither Deontological or Consequentialist theories can do. I maintain that the relatedness of action to our nature and flourishing as our end is what makes our common sense judgements of right and wrong, good and evil intelligible and fully explained. It explains why we have the duties we have and also explains our supreme sensitivity to consequences which are so commonly referred to and considered during moral deliberation. Our duties to each other and to ourselves follow from our natures. As inherently social beings, we have duties to our families and the community at large to be involved in

21

common projects and to contribute. Our consideration of the consequences of our actions follows from us having the power of practical wisdom, and the deliberation of the ends of our actions given our duties derived from our natures. VE as a teleological theory grounded in a stable and knowable nature very neatly combines our duties and the consequences of our actions.

As noted above, the important point for VE as a normative theory is that it must be capable of informing right action on the whole and from moment to moment. There must be some way at least in principle to bridge the gap between the actual and imperfect, and the ideal state of action. This is achieved by the cultivation of both character and practical wisdom. Character as a stable yet malleable power in humans which can influence action and be influenced by education, conditioning, and the will.

Practical wisdom as the foundational and necessary intellectual virtue which makes morally virtuous action possible in the first instance. Character provides a dispositional nature to our actions. The right character found in the virtuous agent is that which informs the right action in any given moment. It is the combination of practical wisdom and the virtuous character together in an agent which is sufficient for the guiding of action. Given the right conditioning history and education, the agent will be prepared to act rightly by considering both the duties they have based on their proper nature as humans, and on the consequences of their actions as they relate to our final ends, our final causes as humans. VE provides both prescriptions and prohibitions based on the kinds of beings we are, and the practically wise agent is one who is capable of coming to know precisely where the line is drawn over the course of their moral education. The virtues and vices which VE is built upon are the action guiding scope within which all action is contained.

In any given situation where an agent is required to deliberate between actions, the duties of the agent given its nature as human limits the scope of possible action. Once

said duties are known, then the practical wisdom cultivated does the work of doing the utilitarian calculation of deciding which action is the best over the scope of possible action restricted by our duties. Maximising utility is not considered an end in itself but the tool in the virtuous agents arsenal of practical wisdom to bring about the most excellent state of affairs. The virtuous agent would have sufficient moral education to know which decisions are best for the flourishing of themselves and others overall.

For VE flourishing is accomplished both in the results of our actions and, referring to the first sense of the term ‘good’ above, in doing the actions which are the right actions to do, the actions a virtuous agent would do.

Another version of the problem stated above is that moral education seems to be hard to come by and difficult to get right in the agent. I don’t think this is a problem for VE since morally excellent people are not easy to cultivate on any ethical theory. To answer this objection directly, I think that the sheer volume of work and research done in defense of and championing VE is sufficient to know that the knowledge and resources are readily available for the person seeking to find it. From Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and the Scholastics, there is no shortage of guides and treatises for living the life of virtue.

I have argued that Virtue Ethics has sufficient resources to be a normative ethical theory. Once the first principles of the theory are known and grounded in Natural Law, the good for us is known.

Once the good for us is known, right action follows logically and necessarily through the cultivation of virtuous character and practical wisdom. Our duties and the right consequences to our actions become clear thanks to practical wisdom, and the acting of this wisdom in the real world becomes manageable and practicable thanks to the dispositions our character gives us.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

22

Aristotle, Translated by J. A. K. Thomson: The Nichomachean Ethics (Penguin Classics, 2004) Feser, Edward: Aquinas (London: Oneworld Publications, 2009) Feser, Edward: The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (USA. St. Augustineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Press, 2010)

23

The Choice to Conform: a Defence of Moral Enhancement as an Alternative to Prison Elia Dokos: BA Philosophy, Master of Research, Philosophy (in progress) Exclusion from society has long been the predominant response to antisocial behaviour. Ranging from death to exile, we engage in a collectivised protection of the ingroup from maladaptive elements. In recent times, more recently than one might imagine, prison has become the predominant form of this tool. It evolved from the dungeon, which inflicted long periods of isolation and darkness on prisoners. While retaining the essential element of the caged criminal, prisons invert these characteristics â&#x20AC;&#x201C; they are characteristically well-lit, open, and near-omnipresently subject to the watchful eyes of the wardens. (Foucault, 1975) The effect of constant surveillance and the regimented nature of the daily schedule is one of an exertion of everpresent control that gradually erodes the will. The power exerted over the subject is in stark contrast to the older punishments of torture and arguably death. It is a power over the mind that profoundly dominates the entire being of the person.

Another kind of power has been receiving growing attention of late: the power to shape the mind more directly and precisely than has been possible in the past. We have developed and are developing techniques for deep brain stimulation, psychopharmacological treatments, electroconvulsive therapy, and countless more direct neural interventions. The main question I want to answer is: is it permissible to allow direct moral enhancement to be performed on convicted criminals as a consensual alternative to extended prison sentences, or as a mitigation of such a sentence? Direct intervention refers to the range of techniques that achieve enhancement or alteration of behaviour by affecting the brain directly, as opposed to indirect means such as therapy and other influences which affect behaviour via the sense organs.

Moral decision-making is a multi-faceted process that manifests in various ways in different situations. One possible way to represent it is as a motivational hierarchy: a hierarchy of desires. Desire for some state of affairs drives people to act, which could be incidental to a higher goal or directly fulfilling it. A given desire could clash with another desire, one superseding the other. A person might kill someone to take their money because they desired the money more than they desired not to kill. Or, they might simply have desired to kill, and this desire outweighed the strong social incentive not to kill. I call this the hierarchical view of moral decision-making. In this paper I will take moral enhancement to be something that somehow alters this hierarchy.

In my treatment of the ethical issues I will avoid the specific consideration of one or another of these techniques. This is not out of a lack of concern for their implications; the practical impacts of specific treatments is essential when considering their application in real-world scenarios. I wish to discuss the ethical issues that affect moral enhancement in principle. No matter how well our techniques might develop in future, ethical concerns will remain. I will consider the ethical issues that are distinct from the consequences of medical or physical side-effects of the direct intervention.

They regard something fundamental about the human person, their sense of self, and their authentic mode of being. There are two foundations from which I will build my defence of its permissibility: the effect of prison on many of the exact moral elements that concern intervention, and the choice that the individual is afforded.

The capacity to consent

24

It could be argued that the punitive context means the direct intervention is performed under coercive circumstances. I will argue that this is not the case, first examining an ethical argument against direct moral enhancement. HĂźbner and White (2016) have recently defended the moral impermissibility of neurosurgery aimed at "correcting" the condition of psychopathy. A key element of their argument is that such surgery does not fulfil the criteria of voluntary informed consent. They argue that psychopaths lack of a second-order desire to be moral in the way that the rest of us are, and that they could never truly understand the downstream effects of their psychological changes.

Second-order desire can be thought of as desire about desire; that certain other desires that one has would be better off not existing.

For instance, an addict may wish that they did not have the desire to use, thus we can say that they have a second order desire regarding their addiction. In such a circumstance, we can say that they are capable of consenting to the treatment of their first order desire. This resolves the tension between the desire to use, and the desire to not desire to use. The key difference between a desire about desire and these other desires is the internal direction of the desire; it is directed at self-improvement or self-adjustment. As such it tracks authenticity-preserving enhancement and motivations to enhance.

However, under the hierarchical view of moral decision-making the concept of a second-order desire is misleading. It meets the standards of authenticity not because of the direction of the desire, inwards or outwards, but because it supersedes the other desires in question. It is not necessarily motivationally sufficient to change action, which may be influenced by a range of neurological and environmental obstacles, (Kennett et al, 2015) but the desire to desire outweighs the desire for something else when, if offered a choice, a person would choose to not desire the thing. The same standard can be applied to two inter-

nally directed desires, or two externally directed desires, and in these cases we can observe the same weighing of one desire over another, as is the staple of many a playground conversation: "would you rather..." "for a million bucks, would you...".

In the case of intervention as an alternative to or a reduction of a prison sentence the same desire-weighting is evidenced. The moral pertinence of the direction of the desire is less important than the weighing of the desires by the person, which is no less relevant in the situation I am arguing for, where they are between a rock and a hard place. Further, it is paternalistic to impose certain moral criteria about the direction or order of the desires, when the person for whom the decision is most impactful has their own criteria, resulting in a preference. Fundamentally this is a choice that the pre-enhanced person is making with respect to their own desire hierarchy, even if the result of that choice is an altered hierarchy. Nobody can make the choice better than they can with respect to their own desires, not even the post-enhanced future version of themselves.

The criteria of voluntary informed consent notwithstanding, any discussion of the permissibility of interventions in punitive contexts must take into account the punishment that they are replacing or reducing. In a situation where we are imposing such an outcome on a subject, pushing against the introduction of an element of choice because of issues with consent is inconsistent.

Prison as a punishment is nonconsensual by nature. It is not the case that freely-chosen direct interventions can be nonconsensual, but even if they were, the justifiably coercive nature of punishment itself puts consent to treatment in a different moral context. Treatment of the issues of consenting to moral intervention in a vacuum is like defending the impermissibility of mental illness treatment by only looking at the sideeffects of the drugs. As I will argue, the alternative can be, and often is, worse. Long-term prison sentences come at a profound cost to many of the same issues in disfavour of moral intervention; authenticity, personal responsibility, passivity of the agent, and the socially defined self. (Levy, 2007; Focquaert & Schermer, 2015)

25

The costs of prison On the surface the personal costs of prison primarily appear twofold: freedom and time.

Criminals are forced to exist within the spatial confines of the prison, often further restricted in their freedom of movement within the prison, and this is imposed on many for years on end. However, these are not the only costs of imprisonment. The wrong way to think of prison is as a removal of a piece of one's lifespan, such that a person sentenced to serve ten years simply loses ten years of their life. Those ten years cost more than the time it takes for them to pass; they come at a cost to their values, personality, and sense of self. Nor does this end after the sentence is served.

In a psychological report presented at the US national policy conference Craig Haney identified six psychological effects of incarceration: dependence on institutional structure, hypervigilance and suspicion, emotional alienation, social withdrawal, adoption of exploitative norms, and a diminished sense of self-worth. (Haney, 2002) It is important to note that these are not exactly incidental side-effects of incarceration, but adaptive modes of being.

Behind bars, each one of these features plays a vital survival role at a terrible cost to the psyche. Whether or not new prisoners are inclined towards thinking and behaving in these ways is irrelevant, as they learn they must.

Institutionalisation is the process by which prisoners begin to accept the prison structures, its rules and regularities, and the subservient role to the authority of the guards. The long years that comprise many prison sentences make it incredibly difficult to resist, with the erosion of the self that it entails. When there is no possibility of parole, the difficulty becomes almost an impossibility. (Wahidin, 2006) Hypervigilance and suspicion are the results of an environment of fear. Richard McCorkle surveyed 300 inmates of a maximumsecurity Tennessee prison and found high levels of fear among inmates, strongly

correlating with experiences of victimisation; a too-common occurrence in prison. He speculated that increase fear was a paradoxical result of the prison reforms in the 50s and 60s that gave prisoners more independence and rights, shifting the focus of the power dynamic away from the guards and towards the internal pecking orders and racial and gang affiliation. (McCorkle, 1993) This is an awful catch-22 where the slightly increased freedoms allowed to modern prisoners has exacerbated some of the psychological impacts.

The adoption of exploitative norms is often referred to as prisonisation, the process by which the prisoner comes to accept the social dynamics and code of conduct of the other inmates. (Smith & Hepburn, 1979) Roles and behaviours proper to the prison environment are acted upon, though after years of imprisonment they become more than just acts. Here lies a potentially deeper cost to authenticity than enhancement. The new prisoner, with their own values, personality, and modes of behaviour, is thrust into a situation where they are forced to contradict their own values insofar as prisonisation and institutionalisation do so, and to maintain this mode of being for years on end. Rowe (2011) reports the account of Paula, an English inmate: "You lose your identity as soon as you come into prison [...] from the minute you’re found guilty in court and you’re sent down, everything is started to be stripped from you [...] any rights that you have, anything. You lose total control [...] they literally strip you; you take your clothes off, they take everything away from you [...] And then they take away your property [...] Yes, you’re just stripped, you’re a name; you’re a number" Compare this with the alternative of moral intervention. At worst, the criminal who chooses enhancement could be seen as being coerced into doing so. After the fact, they behave and think in ways that align with their altered desires. But the cost to the prisoner is a continual state of valuecontradiction, where the necessity of survival motivates the contradiction without appeasing it.

The enhanced individual experiences no such contradiction; the issue lies with the fact of the difference between the person before, and the

26

person after.

The purpose of punishment

It could be argued that these problems are a result of reformable features of modern prisons. But this is not entirely the case. Two of the defining characteristics of prisons are the exclusion they afford criminals from broader society, and the fact that this exclusion is imposed on principally serious criminals for long periods of time.

Flanagan (1980) found that the most psychologically significant deprivation experienced by long-term prisoners was not the conditions of the prisons themselves, but the separation of the inmates from their families. Visitations are uncommon; only a small minority have regular visitations, and the majority of prisoners receive very few visitations. (Monroe & Begun, 2012)

The utility of correctional measures as a social response to crime is undeniable. Moral justifications for such measures are abundant and multifaceted, but the majority of these can be categorised under the two broad umbrellas of retributivism and consequentialism. The former might be thought of as agent-centric: an agent has broken their moral and/or social obligations, and as such they are deserving of a response. This could simply be a punishment, or some expressive act that communicates social displeasure, or re-imposes social authority. The latter in this context could be seen as society-centric: there is a member of the society that poses a risk of harm, and as such we ought to prevent further harm.

This effect is often exacerbated by restrictive visitation regulations and isolating barriers made possible through the adoption of communication technology by modern prisons. However, even if reforms reduce or eliminate these restrictions, the difficulties involved in maintaining contact for the visitors remain. Prisons are rarely close to the homes of the families, visitation costs in both time and money, and often prisoners elect to conceal their imprisonment and thus their wrongdoings from their children. Many prisoners choose to reject visitations entirely. (Dixey & Woodall, 2012) Nor are negative effects restricted to the prisoners themselves. The exclusion from broader society plays a fundamental role in fuelling the cycle of poverty and crime.

Families with an imprisoned parent lose a major source of income, and single parents take on all the burdens. Children of already-single imprisoned parents are simply left without parental providers, needing to rely on relatives to survive.

(DeFina & Hannon, 2010) The disproportionate effects of this cycle preserve and magnify the socioeconomic effects of poverty, a social group already incarcerated at significantly higher rates than the rest of the population.

A significant subset of retributivists are punishment theorists, those who maintain that the visitation of some level of harm, in the appropriate and morally justified form, is what criminals are owed. (Kolber, 2009)To these people, discussion of the harms and alternatives of punitive measures always contain a limiting factor; a complete reduction of harm would be counterproductive. As such, they would probably draw the line at successful prison reform; I do not imagine that my arguments here would be convincing to them. Not all punishment theorists are retributivists, however. There are valid arguments on consequentialist grounds in favour of punishment as a deterrence. In light of this, direct moral enhancement could be objected to on the grounds of its lack of efficacy in deterring crime. People might feel empowered at the possibility of "getting away easy", as it were.

This may be the case. Beryessa et al found that the general public showed little concern for the moral costs associated with such interventions as applied to other criminals, with the exception of any potential medical side-effects. (Beryessa et al, 2016) The fact that the public seem unconcerned about issues of authenticity and related moral issues may seem to lend weight to the objection, but I should stress that they were testing moral judgements of its permissibility applied to people who were not them. I suspect that public sentiment would shift rather strongly in the other direction were they to be the hypothetical criminals in question.

27

One factor to consider is that the role of deterrence is ultimately to minimise crime, and that there are good reasons to believe that a reduction in prison terms served would do just that. In the US, 76.6% of prisoners were rearrested within five years of their release. (Durose et al, 2014) High levels of incarceration are correlated with high levels of child poverty, which is itself highly correlated with juvenile delinquency and crime, which itself contributes to the high levels of incarceration. (DeFina & Hannon, 2010) On a social level this contributes to both a growing economic divide between the higher and lower classes, and entrenches racial socioeconomic disparities.

Conclusion The option of moral enhancement provides a lifeline to those who are justifiably averse to the prospect of imprisonment. It provides them the opportunity to live their lives, to be close to their families, to raise their children, and to be functional members of society. Most importantly, it provides them a choice. Disproportionately from the lower stratum of society, many criminals have lived lives where choice is, if not entirely out of their hands, severely restricted compared to members of other social classes.

Prison exacerbates these impacts.

On an individual level, the choice between moral enhancement and prison is a choice between two conversions of personal values. One choice imposes the adjustment of desires and the motivational hierarchy that drives decision-making and action to align with pro-social values, and the other choice restricts the person to an area where they will spend years of their life, adapting to, absorbing, and hopefully surviving the constant power dynamics that are at play, resulting in a forced adjustment of desires and behaviour that is more profoundly misaligned with social values upon eventual re-entry into society. There may be no way out of the choice, but there should be a way out of one side of that choice, if they so desire.

References: Berryessa, C. et al. (2016). Public attitudes towards legally coerced biological treatments of criminals. Journal of Law and the Biosciences.Vol. 3, No. 3.pp 447-467.

DeFina, R., Hannon, L. (2010). The impact of adult incarceration on child poverty: a county-level analysis, 1995-2007. The Prison Journal.Vol. 90, No. 4.pp 377-396.

Dixey, R., Woodall, J. (2012).The signifi cance of 'the visit' in an English category-B prison.Community, Work, and Family.Vol. 25, No. 1.pp 29-47.

Durose, M. et al. (2014). Recidivism of prisoners released in 30 states in 2005: patterns from 2005 to 2010.

Bureau of Justice Special Report.

Flanagan, T. (1980). The pains of long-term imprisonment: a comparison of British and American perspectives.

The British Journal of Criminology.Vol. 20, No. 2.pp 148-156.

Focquaert, F., Schermer, M. (2015). Moral enhancement: do means matter morally?.Neuroethics. Vol. 8, No. 2.pp 139-151.

Foucault, M., Sheridan, A (Trans.). (1989).

Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. NY: Random House. p200-202.

Original work published 1975.

Haney, C. (2002). The psychological impact of incarceration: implications for post- prison adjustment. National Policy Conference, the Urban Institute.

28

Hubner, D., White, L. (2016). Neurosurgery for psychopaths?An ethical analysis.AJOB Neuroscience, Vol. 7, No. 3. pp 140-149.

Kennett, J et al. (2015). Drug addiction and criminal responsibility. In Levy, N.Clausen, J. (eds.), Handbook on Neuroics. Dordrecht: Springer. pp 1065-1083.

Kolber, A. (2009). The subjective experi ence of punishment.Columbia Law Review.Vol. 109, No. 1.pp 182236.

Levy, N. (2007).Neuroethics. NY: Cam bridge.

McCorkle, R. (1993). Living on the edge: fear in a maximum-security prison.

Journa of Offender Rehabilitation.Vol. 20, No. 1.pp 73-91.

Monroe, A., Begun, A. (2012). Effects of prisoner location on visitation patterns.Boise State University McNair Scholars Program in Criminal Justice and Social Sciences.

Rowe, A. (2011). Narratives of self and identity in women's prisons: stigma and the struggle for self-definition in penal regimes. Punishment & Society.Vol. 13, No. 5.

Smith, C., Hepburn, J. (1979). Alienation in prison organisations.Vol. 17, No. 2.pp 251-262.Wahidin, A. (2006).

Time and the prison experience.Sociological Research Online.Vol. 11, No. 1. Retrieved from http://www.socresonline.org.uk/11/1/ wahidin.html

29

A Mechanistic Synthesis of Functionalism and Identity Theory Christopher Whyte: BSc Cognitive and Brain Sciences 1. Introduction The cognitive revolution in the late 1950’s gave rise to a renewal of philosophical interest in the mind. Within the early literature, two canonical positions emerged, identity theory (IT) (Place, 2004) and functionalism (Putnam, 1967). Until recently the majority of work has presented IT and functionalism as orthogonal positions and while IT has some contemporary defenders (see Polger, 2004; Brown, 2006) functionalism is the dominant position.

However, with the rise of neo-mechanistic explanation the empirical plausibility of one of functionalism’s core commitments, the multiple realizability of mental states, has come into question (Bechtel & Mundale, 1999; Prinz, 2012).

The purpose of this essay is to advance the position termed neurofunctionalism that synthesises the afore mentioned approaches.

I will argue that viewed through the lens of mechanistic explanation, instead of being in competition, identity theory and functionalism offer levels of analysis that are complementary. We begin by examining the points of tension between IT and functionalism.

We will then explore the place of mechanistic explanation in cognitive science. Next, I will analyse multiple realizability and IT from a mechanistic perspective. And lastly, I shall introduce neurofunctionalism.

2. Points of Tension The debate between IT and functionalism is at bottom a disagreement about the metaphysical status of mental states and the level of analysis at which to conduct inquiry.

According to IT the metaphysical status of mental states is that of identity, that is, mental states are identical to brain states.

Functionalism on the other hand, has it that although in us mental states are realized by brains the substrate is ultimately irrelevant.

Instead, the nature of mentality lies in the relations that hold between the functional states of a system. The appropriate level of analysis follows directly from these divergent stances on metaphysical status. IT privileges bottom-up analysis of the structure of neural systems whereas functionalism privileges top-down analysis of psychological processes (Churchland, 2013).

Before we can examine these two positions we must first locate ourselves within the framework of mechanistic explanation, the task to which we now turn.

3. Mechanistic Explanation Like many views in philosophy mechanistic explanation is most easily understood in the context of it its competitor, the deductivenomological model of explanation. On the deductive-nomological model, the task of science is to explain and reduce phenomena to a fundamental level by appeal to a set of laws and bridging principles. This, however, is not an accurate portrayal of scientific practice within the life sciences (Bechtel and Abrahamsen, 2005). Biological phenomena are typically explained in terms of mechanisms. Whether accounting for metabolism or action potentials the explanatory work in virtue of which the prediction and manipulation of a target system is made possible is by appeal to the structure and operation of mechanisms. A mechanism according to Bechtel & Abrahamsen’s (2005) view is "…a structure performing a function in virtue of its component parts, component operations, and their organisation. The orchestrated functioning of the mechanism is responsible for one or more

31

phenomena". From this perspective, it is simply a conceptual error to seek a set of laws as a consequence of which psychological phenomena could be reduced to a lower level.

To investigate the levels of a system (see fig.1) the input-output profile of the mechanism under study must be identified. The mechanism must then be decomposed into the components that perform the operations of the input-output profile. And in turn, these high-level components need to be decomposed into the lower level components and the operations that account for their behavior (Bechtel, 2006).

Figure 1 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Schematic of mechanistic decomposition. Top level represents the input-output profile. Middle level represents the component parts of the mechanism and their operation. The bottom level represents the operation of the lower components that make up the higher level components X and Y (drawn from Bechtel, 2006) 4. Identity, Function, and Mechanism The debate between IT and functionalism far from being empirically motivated, has, for the most part, turned on thought experiments about the multiple realizability of mental states. With advancements in mechanistic philosophy of science leading to the development of new conceptual tools we can now do better.

4.1 Multiple Realizability The multiply realizability objection to IT was first raised by Putnam (1967). He argued that the apparent display of pain like behaviour in octopuses is an example of a creature with a radically different type of nervous system realizing a mental state of the same psychological type. This was taken as a powerful counter example to the relation of type-type identity required by IT. I follow Bechtel and Mudale (1999) in arguing that the intuitive appeal of this objection turns on a mismatch in the grain of analysis. The grain used to characterise psychological types in this example is extraordinarily coarse while the grain used to identify neural types is very fine. Far from displaying anything like human pain behavior when an octopus suffers tissue damage it usually sprays a jet of ink and searches for a rock to camouflage itself against. The inference from this behavioral response to the psychological type pain is dubious at best (Prinz, 2012). I am not arguing that only human brains can support mentality. Octopus nervous systems probably do instantiate mental states. Insofar as we can interpret their behavior by taking an intentional stance towards them we can at least instrumentally interpret states of their nervous system as displaying aboutness (Dennett, 1987). This, however, is not the point as it does nothing to aid Putnamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (1967) claim that mental state types such as pain are multiply realizable. We have no reason to assume that the mental states involved in an octopusâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; withdrawal behavior are functionally isomorphic in any kind of fine-grained sense to human pain states (Bechtel & Mundale, 1999; Prinz, 2012).

The mental states instantiated by such a radically dissimilar nervous system are likely to be unrecognisable in terms of our folk psychological categories. From a mechanistic perspective this is exactly would we should expect. Both the inputoutput profile of the mechanisms responsible for the two behavioral responses and operation of their component parts are distinctly different.

3 32

As for the metaphysical question of whether mental states can be realized in a fine-grained manner by substrates of a different type such as silicon and copper, this is an open empirical question. It is, however, a question that has no bearing on how mentality in biological systems should be studied.

4.2 Identity without Function With multiple realizability out of the way, it may be tempting to adopt some sort of IT. I think this is a mistake. Proponents of IT are committed to the view that while functional description helps in identifying the neural substrate once this has been achieved the functional description can be disposed of (Prinz, 2012). This is puzzling. Once neural descriptions are divorced from functional descriptions they lose their explanatory force. Consider, for example, Prinzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2012) account of visual attention. At the psychological level attention is what makes intermediate-level representations available to working memory. At a neural level, this process is realized by vector-waves in the gamma-band at the intermediate-level of the visual hierarchy (V2, V3, V3A, V4, MT, V7, and V8) facilitating the availability of representations to working memory. Notice that attention and intermediate-level representations are both functionally defined.

Without appeal to function it is next to impossible to explain why attention is realized by firing in the gamma-band at the intermediate level of the visual hierarchy as opposed to gamma-band activity in V1.

Adopting IT comes at the dire cost of losing the ability to explain why a particular neuronal population constitutes a psychological state as opposed to an adjacent population.

4.3 Neurofunctionalism If the previous two sections are on track it would appear that neither IT or functionalism are tenable. There is no evidence for multiple realizability and without functional description, IT is explanatorily inert.

I argue that viewed through the lens of mechanistic explanation instead of being in competition IT and functionalism offer complementary approaches. Given that all currently known systems displaying sophisticated mentality are biological systems, explanation of mental processes ought to consist of identifying the input-out profile of mechanisms, decomposing them into their component parts and specifying the operation of those parts. This approach leads naturally to the metaphysical position termed neurofunctionalism. On this position, mental states have identity conditions at both psychological and neurobiological levels. Crucially, psychological and neurobiological levels are interdependent. Function depends jointly on the high-level input-output profile of cognitive mechanisms and on the operation of the neural components that realize the input-output profile (Prinz, 2005; 2012). The appropriate level of analysis is thus multileveled. The structure of neural systems studied by neuroscience and the functional profile of psychological processes investigated by psychology are both crucial to understanding the mind.

5. Concluding remarks Contrary to much of the contemporary literature I have argued that IT and functionalism provide complementary levels of analysis. Once the debate is placed within a mechanistic framework functionalism can be cut free from the assumption of multiple realizability and the explanatory inadequacy of IT becomes manifestly apparent. Instead of dichotomising these views, I have argued that we should adopt a neurofunctional approach that synthesises the two positions.

On this multileveled view mental states have identity conditions at both psychological and neurobiological levels. We need to stop thinking in terms of one privileged level of analysis. All the levels of a system are mutually constitutive.

References:

33

Bechtel, W. (2006). Reducing psychology while maintaining its autonomy via mechanistic explanation. The matter of the mind: Philosophical essays on psychology, neuroscience and reduction, 172-198.

Prinz, J.J. (2012). The conscious brain.

Oxford University Press.

Bechtel, W., & Abrahamsen, A. (2005).

Explanation: A mechanist alternative. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 36(2), 421-441.

Bechtel, W., & Mundale, J. (1999). Multiple realizability revisited: Linking cognitive and neural states.

Philosophy of science, 66(2), 175-207 Brown, R. (2006). What is a brain state?.

Philosophical Psychology, 19(6), 729-742.

Churchland, P.M. (2013). Matter and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dennett, D.C. (1987). The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Place, U. T. (2004). Is Consciousness a Brain Process? Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place. G.Graham and E. Valentine, Oxford University Press.

Polger, T. W. (2004). Natural Minds, The MIT Press.

Putnam, H. (1967). Psychological predi cates. Art, mind, and religion, 1, 37-48.

Prinz, J. J. (2005). A neurofunctional theory of consciousness. Cognition and the brain: Philosophy and neuroscience movement, 381-96.

34

The Emergent Ensemble: A Distributed Cognition Approach to Music Ensembles Samuel Edward Jones: BA Philosophy

1. Introduction Distributed cognition is the thesis that states the cognitive architecture of a group possesses properties and capacities that no individual agent within the group holds.

In this paper, I will be arguing in favour of a distributed cognition framework for music ensembles. Primarily, music ensembles consist of multiple individuals with preexisting technical proficiency, playing specific functional roles in conjunction with one another. Insofar as the properties of an ensemble performance are emergent, it is beneficial to frame analysis of these groups as partaking in a distributed cognitive system.

I will first discuss the way in which individual musicians and their instruments are exemplary of an extended cognitive process. The instruments have a causalhistorical function pertaining to cognitive tasks. Then it is important to note the internalised cognitive techniques that underlie any given artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s proficiency.

In the second section I will be establishing the way in which an ensemble is cognitive. First, by discussing the musical layers that determine functional roles of each ensemble member. Then, the transactive memory processes that make proficient ensembles capable of performing large amounts of material with minimal memorisation or familiarisation with any given piece. Lastly, I will discuss the situated cognitive properties of an ensemble, and the ways in which the performance space (or stage) becomes an information processing state-space.

In the third and final section, I will discuss niche construction and the way in which an ensemble shapes the phenomenological and epistemic environment around them.

If performing music is a cognitive process, then it is essential that group performances are discussed as a distributed cognitive system.

1. When Art Meets Artefact 1.1 Artefact Integration When the creation and performance of music is taken to be a cognitive process, the artefacts involved in the creative process must in turn be discussed as cognitive artefacts. Insofar as the properties of an artefact are defined by their functional role, it follows that musical instruments have a function in the situated cognitive system (Heersmink, 2016). From this point forward I will be applying Richard Heersminkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conception of artefacts to explain the function of instruments. First, musical instruments have a proper function. One may improvise a functional role onto an instrument, a guitar may be used for hanging a coat off, or for wedging a door open, however this is not the causal-historical function of the guitar (2016, p.80). However while instruments have these metaphysical properties, they are not epistemically relevant. For the purposes of this current analysis, what is important is the guitarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s successful reproduction being predicated on its functional role in the musical process.

The primary functional role of the guitar

35

is not improvised or determined by the current context, nor is its performance a novel prototype. For this reason, instruments like the guitar, or piano, are not defined by their system function (2016, p.81).

As instruments are defined by their proper function in the musical process, it is now important to distinguish instruments as not just causally relevant, but as constituents in the cognitive process. To do so I will utilise Richard Menary’s “manipulation thesis” (MT). MT states that cognitive integration is most clearly defined by the embodied agent’s engagement in the world, in which much of the practices and vehicles for cognitive function are “governed by cognitive norms” (Menary, 2007, p.84).

Epistemic actions like playing music occupy and transform an external information processing space, as governed by predating norms. Through the coupling between the artist and their instrument, the state space for music production has become presidential in the cognitive economy (Kirchhoff, 2014, p.274). It is not that the instrument is relevant to the musical production, but that without this coupling, the process would be inexplicably difficult comparatively.

1.2 Cognitive Technique Integration It is now important to discuss the way in which the different learning structures and techniques construct the cognitive architecture of performance. A cognitive technique is the method underlying a particular cognitive process. This can be culturally learned, or have an evolutionary history. Cognitive agents have cheap and dirty techniques, that make for a multitude of improvised applications (Clark, 1998). However for specialized cognitive processes, techniques must be learned and continually refined, for ease of performance. One does not merely improvise on preexisting cognitive techniques to do calculus. These complex tasks are performed through learned and integrated cognitive techniques.

This proves valuable when discussing epistemic action, as the degree to which we assess the performance of a situated system is largely based on the ease of integration.

The “ease” of integration, can be seen as in part the transparency of the coupled agent and artefact (Heersmink, 2015). Transparency is in turn predicated on how well integrated and refined the techniques for cognitive performance are in the agent’s embodied interactions with the given task.

Turning to the way cognitive techniques apply to music. Many of the techniques involved in playing particular musical instruments are highly specialized and vary in difficulty. While performing a single string progression on guitar with minimal note variations, this can be seen as a relatively easy task, and requires minimal pre existing techniques. However, to play increasingly complex songs or progressions, the cognitive “load” increases. To an idealised coupling between artist and instrument however, the increase in difficulty is in conjunction with continued refinement and integration of techniques that make for a transparent system function. The task as determined by a piece of music, is carried out successfully when the artist is capable of utilising complex techniques with ease.

2. From the Bedroom to the Wild 2.1 Group Function & Transactive Memory Work has been done in the past conceptualising ensembles and performances as distributed cognitive system (Tribble, 2005). Insofar as multiple cognitive agents are involved in a music performance, the ensemble acquires mental properties that surpass the capacity of any given individual (Theiner et al., 2010).

In any given distributed cognitive structure, the functional role of individuals are determined by hierarchical structures. This is most notable in Edwin Hutchin’s seminal work “Cognition In The Wild”, in which he

36

analyses the cognitive structure of navigational teams (1995). Hutchins notes that many of the cognitive properties of the group are not held by any one individual member. Rather, they are emergent through the effective orchestration of task-based performance. By ascribing different individuals particular roles, the emergent structure need not be affected by who performs these roles. Music ensembles show much of the same cognitive-structuring, as the roles defined by music assign functionality to each member, distinct from their individual cognitive character.

In a music ensemble, individual roles can be best understood with the musical concept of texture. When discussing texture, there are three fundamental layers in a contemporary music ensemble First, there is the rhythmic layer, in which the function of percussion and low range stringed instruments (bass guitar, cello) is to establish the tempo and time signature of the given piece of music. This can be seen as foundational to preceding layers.

Second, there is the harmonic layer. The harmonic layer encompasses a wide variety of instrumentation, in which the sole purpose is to outline the chord progressions and harmonic content. When chords in a jazz piece modulate, for instance, it is up to the piano or guitars to clearly define these changes.

Finally, the most prominent layer in any given contemporary piece, is the melodic layer. This layer functions as the primary engagement for listeners, as it generally portrays a narrative, either through lyrical content, melodic contour, or both.

These layers set clear functional properties for each instrument to maintain, and have a selective causal history. In the context of a distributed cognitive system, each agent can be seen as at the lower level of the structure, with the ensemble and music being an emergent, more complex

cognitive system.

One of the more poignant properties of the emergent ensemble arises in the form of transactive memory.

Any given ensemble member need not be knowledgeable on the structure of a particular song. Instead, the movements between sections are indicated by performance techniques like fills, dynamic variation, or bodily gestures. The knowledge of the “song” in this respect is distributed across the differing layers and their individual roles. The culmination of each individual performing their role in orchestration with one another, is a mechanism for the ensemble to perform large bodies of work with minimal preparation. This bares resemblance to Tribble’s analysis of performers in the Globe, wherein due to the demand of a constantly changing roster, performers relied predominantly on fragmented scripts and visual or linguistic cues.

At no point does any one member of the ensemble need the entire script, or sheet music with every part on it. Rather in both instances, the individual members are presented with fragmented information that provides them with enough mental content to perform their functional role. This capacity is wholly dependent on the cognitive capacities of the whole group, meaning it is an emergent phenomenon (Theiner et al., 2010).

2.2 Situated Cognition On The Stage The way in which ensemble members are situated in their environment plays a functional role in the performance. Insofar as the environment is seen to be structured for cognitive processes, the epistemic actions and taking place in the state-space take precedence over the individual agents’ neural spaces (Menary, 2007; Kirchhoff, 2017). As noted by Tribble, the structuring of the cognitive environment aids in creating a situated awareness (p.142).

Taking the aforementioned functional

37

layers of an ensemble into account (see 2.1) it becomes clear the spatial placement of these layers is a constituent of the cognitive process. In a contemporary ensemble, the drums are centred at the back of the stage, with the bass player most commonly being the closest member to the kit. The two agents with roles in the rhythmic layer being stationed next to each other aids in communication and synchronization between the individual components of the layer. The individual given the role of the melody, will stand at the front and centre of the performance space. This means they are capable of signalling hand gestures and cues in and out of sections, which is a staple of communicative processes in a distributed cognitive system (Clark, 2013). The orientation of each member behind the melodic ensemble member ensures a hierarchy, wherein the various cues are easily seen and exchanged throughout the entire ensemble.

The placement of members also has a strong impact on each agent’s perception.

By standing close to the drums, the individual playing bass has a large portion of their sonic space occupied by the rhythmic layers alone. This creates a stronger coupling between these performers, as they are able to focus their attention on synchronising rhythmically. In this way, the individual placement of each member informs their sound-space and is used as a mechanism for creating rhythmic unison.

The stage becomes a cognitive workspace, wherein the architecture of the group’s cognitive task is sculpted by their spatial interactions with one another. The ease with which a technically proficient group communicates is predicated on the efficient structuring of their environment and artefacts. In this way, the information processing does not just extend out of each individual’s brains and into the state-space, but the state-space and interactions become precedential to the cognitive process.

3. Composition of The Emotional Niche

3.1 Criteria For Niche Construction Up until this point, little has been said about the effects the cognitive process has on the wider environment. One of the more compelling effects of the ensemble is the constructive of an emotional niche. Humans as cognitive agents are continually acting on the environment both physically and epistemically to create a cognitively rich space to operate within (Menary, 2014). Cognitive agents act as epistemic engineers in their given niche, continually acting on the environment and thereby scaffolding the preceding cognitive processes of anyone encompassed within it. This becomes a developmental process, when the niche construction carried out by a paternal figure scaffolds the cognitive environment of the preceding generations (Stotz, 2010). To construct an emotional niche, would be to act on and in an environment, in a way that scaffolds the phenomenological experience of emotions, and by extension, epistemic actions.

So what can be said of niche construction in an ensemble? To account for such a process, it must be demonstrated that niche construction takes place in two forms. First, the agents involved in the ensemble itself must be selective of their environment and the way in which they alter their own emotional feedback. Second, any individuals situated in the ensemble’s environment as an observer, must be experiencing a phenomenological change in their experience of the ensemble performance. I will now turn to works in which the situated, material content of music and its performance become relevant to an agent’s emotional niche.

3.2 Emotional Niche and Situated Artists In Joel Krueger’s paper “Musicing, Materiality & The Emotional Niche”, he shows how the music listener engages in active construction of their own emotional niche.

The music that emerges from the ensemble itself has spatial content, as it occupies the

38

very space it is both performed in, and listened to in. Ensembles are selective of their repertoire given particular contexts and audiences, as to engage with their environment. As presented by Krueger, music is â&#x20AC;&#x153;a persistent material feature of our expressive repertoireâ&#x20AC;? (Krueger, 2015, p.50). By situating ourselves in either the music performance, or as a listener in a performance space, we are actively stimulating emotive and cognitive responses by manipulating the emotional content of the music in conjunction with our own emotional processes. These interactions invoke a phenomenological response to the environment, as we create a coupling between ourselves and the music performed (p.52).

The musical environment then becomes an ontogenetic niche, rich with scaffolded interactions between artefacts, artists and ensembles. The relations in the cognitive structure are continually refined and passed on, through social interactions and teaching methods. This turns the construction of ensembles into a developmental process, that constantly cumulates past cognitive tools and techniques (Stotz, 2010).

Concluding Remarks Over the course of this essay, a wide array of cognitive properties in both individual musicians and ensembles have been discussed. Each of these properties are essential to the ensemble as a system. First, each individual agent must possess a degree of technical proficiency, reinforced by internalized cognitive techniques. Secondly, the ensemble structure has clearly defined functional roles in relation to performances. When each individual carries out their roles, we begin to find the emergent properties of the ensemble as a cognitive system. Namely, the transactive memory utilised for performing bodies of work without prior memorisation, and the situated nature of how different members couple with their spatial surroundings. The situated processes in an ensemble are valuable insofar as they shape the cues and

interactions between members. It is then fundamental to discussions of ensembles to discuss the emotional niche that these interactions shape. The real time, scaffolded interactions between agents, ensembles and their environments are a fundamental part of music creation.

By discussing ensembles in terms of distributed cognition, the epistemic actions carried out in the performance space become coherently linked to the cognitive function of the group. As previously applied

by Tribble (2005) and Hutchins (1995), a distributed cognition framework unearths the underlying processes and interactions between members of task-based group performances. By demonstrating how this framework applies to music ensembles at the fundamental level, further philosophical enquiry utilising distributed cognition can explain ensemble structures and processes far more complex than this current paper is capable of. Explanations of improvisation, recent innovations in artefacts and their role in the music process, and differing cognitive structures across styles and instrumentation will hopefully be viable as a result of embracing distributed cognition in the ensemble.

References Clark, A., 1998. Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again .

MIT press.

Clark, A., 2013. 11 Gesture as Thought?.

The hand, an organ of the mind: What the manual tells the mental , p.255.

Heersmink, R., 2013. A taxonomy of cognitive artifacts: function, infor mation, and categories. Review of philosophy and psychology , 4 (3), pp.465-481.

Heersmink, R., 2015. Dimensions of integration in embedded and extended cognitive systems.

39

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 14 (3), pp.577-598.

Heersmink, R., 2016. The metaphysics of cognitive artefacts. Philosophical Explorations , 19 (1), pp.78-93.

Hutchins, E., 1995. Cognition in the Wild .

MIT press.

Kirchhoff, M., 2014. Extended cognition & constitution: Re-evaluating the constitutive claim of extended cognition. Philosophical Psychol ogy , 27 (2), pp.258-283.

Krueger, J., 2015. Musicing, materiality, and the emotional niche.

Menary, R., 2007. Cognitive integration: Mind and cognition unbounded .

Springer.

Menary, R., 2014. Neural plasticity, neuronal recycling and niche construction. Mind & Language , 29 (3), pp.286-303.

Stotz, K., 2010. Human nature and cognitiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;developmental niche construction. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences , 9 (4), pp.483-501.

Theiner, G., Allen, C. and Goldstone, R.L., 2010. Recognizing group cognition.

Cognitive Systems Research , 11 (4), pp.378-395.

Tribble, E.B., 2005. Distributing cognition in the globe. Shakespeare Quarterly , 56 (2), pp.135-155.

40

Time Scales of Explanation in Enculturated Predictive Processing Christopher Whyte: BSc Cognitive and Brain Sciences 1. Introduction The evolution of culture is typically explained over relatively long time scales.

This mode of explanation stands in stark contrast to the majority of work done in cognitive science which focuses on the millisecond by millisecond and second by second operation of sub-personal mechanisms. In her 2017 paper Betwixt and between: the enculturated predictive processing approach to cognition Fabry argues that these two approaches are in fact complementary. Cognitive practices are dependent on temporally extended interactions between human and niche. And predictive processing (PP), a theory of brain function, offers a framework for explaining the sub-personal mechanisms that facilitate these temporally extended interactions.

The goal of this essay is to bolster Fabry’s (2017) framework which proposes to explain cognitive practices over three interdependent time scales. Physiological, organismic and evolutionary. I will argue that cognitive practices require explanation over four time scales as opposed to Fabry’s three. Specifically, I shall argue that Fabry’s evolutionary time scale involves two distinct processes and as such needs to be divided into two. The first being the Cultural Scaffold time scale which encompasses the processes that allow stable inter-generational transfer of information.

And the second being the evolutionary time scale, which aims to provide an account of the origin of the domain-general processes that enable the acquisition of cognitive practices. Crucially, I shall suggest that at all of these scales a key component of explanation lies in the reciprocal feed-back loops that exist between human and niche.

Throughout this article I will use reading as

my primary example. Reading is too recent a practice for genetic factors to play a dominant role and thus depends on neural plasticity and the enforcement of cognitive norms (Dehaene & Cohen 2011; Menary, 2015).

This essay will begin by outlining the theoretical backdrop of the project. We will then direct our attention to an overview of the four time scales. This will be followed a description of reading at the physiological time scale. Next, literacy acquisition at the organismic time scale will be explored.

After this, the discussion will turn to cultural scaffolding. And finally, we will explore the deep origins of the process that underpins PP. 2. Theoretical Backdrop Part One: Predictive Processing and Free Energy PP encompasses a family of related accounts in computational neuroscience all of which model brain function as a Bayes approximate process of hierarchal prediction of bottom-up sensory input based upon prior expectations (Clark, 2016). The mismatch between input from the sensorium and top-down prediction is termed prediction error. The brain invariably tries to predict the incoming signals then revises its predictions in response to prediction error.

The revised prediction serves as the next set of priors. Bottom-up signals that are not predicted at one level result in prediction error being fed forward to the next level in the hierarchy which in turn tries to predict the incoming prediction error (see fig.1).

This process is iterated throughout the cortex with each successive level trying to minimise prediction error over greater and greater time scales (Hohwy, 2013).

41

entails minimising free energy (Friston, 2010).

Before directing our focus to the place of PP in the time scales of explanation we must first gain a synoptic view of niche construction, the topic of the following section.

2.1 Theoretical Backdrop Part Two: Niche Construction

Figure 1. Simplified schematic of hierarchal prediction error minimisation, vertical arrows indicate prediction error being fed up the hierarchy and top-down predictions being brought to bear on the level below.

The minimisation of prediction error through predictive processing is a specific expression of what is arguably a fundamental principle in all self-organising systems: the free energy principle (FEP) (Friston, 2010, 2013). According to the FEP living systems resist thermodynamic equilibrium by minimising an information theoretic equivalent to thermodynamic free energy in their engagement with the environment.

This process is cashed out in terms of minimising the difference between an organism’s internal model of the world and the world itself. The long-term mean of free energy in a system - termed surprisal places an upper bound on the probability of sensory states given the organisms model of the world (Clark, 2017). To borrow Hohwy’s (2013) example, given our model of the world the probability of finding ourselves at the bottom of the ocean is very low indeed. Avoiding such a surprisal-ing state is obviously crucial for maintaining homeostasis. Surprisal is formally equivalent to the long-term sum-total of prediction error so for creatures who engage in PP minimising prediction error necessarily

Niche construction, broadly construed, is the process by which organisms selectively modify their environment and in doing so shape their niche and the niche of neighbouring organisms. The spinning of webs by spiders and the building of dams by beavers are both obvious examples (Laland, Matthews & Feldman, 2016). Organisms modify the environment to suit their phenotype, the environment is in turn inherited by and exerts selection pressure upon subsequent generations of organisms. Crucially, because the expression of genes is highly context-sensitive the phenotype of subsequent generations is scaffolded by the niche construction activity of previous generations (Sterelny 2011; Stotz, 2014).

Following Stotz (2017) I distinguish between two processes operating within the above characterisation. The creation of adaptive variation and the selection of variation. Developmental niche construction (DNC) accounts for the former and selective niche construction (SNC) explains the latter.

An organism’s developmental niche comprises the parameters of the social, ecological and cellular inheritances that facilitate a stable life cycle. he creation of adaptive phenotypes has a significant influence on selection pressures and the stability of plastic phenotypes is dependent on a stable developmental niche (Stotz, 2008). SNC, on the other hand, is the process by which organisms modify their selective niche and thus have an impact on the selection pressures operating on the species in question. Instead of viewing organisms as being passively shaped by

42

the environment SNC stresses the active role organisms play in modifying their environment. Organisms shape the selective environment and in doing so alter the selection pressures operating on populations which ultimately affects the fitness of later generations (Laland, Matthews & Feldman, 2016; Stotz, 2017).

With a description of PP, FEP and niche construction now in hand we can direct our attention to the paper’s main project, the theoretical extension of enculturated predictive processing (EPP).

3. Enculturated Predictive Processing and the Time Scales of Explanation EPP has two principle tenants. The first is the complementarity of Menary’s (2015) cognitive integration account and PP. The cognitive integration aims to account for cognitive practices such as reading and writing in terms of the hybrid interaction of neural, bodily and extra-neural resources over developmental and evolutionary time.

What PP offers is a specific story about the neural resources involved. The second, is the inclusion of an explicitly temporal dimension to explanations of cognitive practices. Frabry (2017) following Drayson (2012) distinguishes between vertical and horizontal explanation. Vertical explanations are so named because of the hierarchal way in which sub-personal components are represented as they relate to whole organisms. Horizontal explanations, by contrast, refer the way in which personal level diachronic relations are represented as progressing along a horizontal axis. Building on these distinctions Fabry presents three time scales of explanation, physiological, organismic and evolutionary. The physiological scale aims to account for the millisecond to second level operation of neural and extra-neural mechanisms in sub-personal vertical terms. The organismic time scale documents the horizontal changes that unfold and progress throughout an organism’s lifetime. And lastly, the evolutionary time scale outlines the structure of the feedback loops between epistemic

engineering and enculturation that facilitate the inter-generational transfer of information over tens of thousands of years.

While I follow Fabry’s (2017) characterisation of the physiological and organismic time scales I depart from her account at the evolutionary time scale. There are two distinct long-term time scales that need to be distinguished. The first is the cultural scaffold which encompasses the intergenerational transfer of information. The second is the evolutionary time scale which targets the emergence of the domain-general processes that enable the acquisition of cognitive practices. The domain-general processes that underpin cognitive practices such as PP and social learning have evolutionary explanations that stretch far-further back than the five orders of magnitude accounted for by Fabry’s evolutionary time scale (Friston, 2013; Sterelny, 2011).

A detailed examination of cognitive practices at each of the four time scales is well beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, using the practice of reading as an example, I will outline the mode of explanation that is proper to each timescale, the task to which I now turn.

3.1 Reading at the Physiological Time Scale Investigation into the practice of reading is an exceedingly active area of research in cognitive science. Because reading is such a recent practice literacy depends on plastic changes to the left ventral occipitaltemporal area (vOT). Within illiterate populations vOT is bilaterally specialised for processing faces. It is thought to be recruited when learning to read because of a pre-existing functional bias (Dehaene & Cohen, 2011). One of the most detailed accounts of reading acquisition in the literature is Price and Devlin’s (2011) three-stage PP model. They describe the changes in BOLD (blood-oxygen-level depended on)1 signal observed in vOT that accompanies changes in reading proficiency in terms of the updating effect reading experience has on top-down predictions.

43

At Stage one of the process prior to any changes in literacy, when participants were exposed to word-form stimuli the BOLD signal in vOT was negligible. Participants lacked of any kind of task-specific predictions and were thus unable to differentiate precise and task-relevant aspects of sensory signals from irrelevant aspects of the stimulus so prediction error was minimal. At Stage two the BOLD signal in vOT increased significantly. Participants had acquired task-specific predictions that despite being inaccurate were able to coarsely predict task-relevant aspects of the bottom-up signal. The coarse predictions inevitably led to prediction error. At stage three the BOLD signal in vOT was again minimal. Participants had become adept in their ability to read and the task-relevant predictions being deployed were accurate enough to account for the bottom-up signals without generating substantial prediction error (see figure 2.).

3.2Reading and Organismic Change

Figure 2. Three stages of literacy acquisition, drawn from (Price & Devlin, 2011).

The changes associated with literacy also appear to affect other areas of cognition. In a study conducted by Ventura, Fernandes, Cohen, Morais, Kolinsky & Dehaene (2013) holistic processing was assessed in literate, ex-illiterate and non-literates using a complete-design composite task. Participants were presented with either a face or a house and asked to assess whether the bottom half of the face or house image matched the top half. The experimenters manipulated the alignment of images and the congruency of the top with bottom half of the images (See figure 3). In misaligned trails object hood was disrupted thereby also disrupting holistic processing mechanisms.

The difference in dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; (a measure of hits to

misses) between the aligned and misaligned trails was taken as a measure of holistic processing. It was found that both literate and ex-literate subjects had smaller differences in dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; compared to ex-literate participants between aligned and misaligned trails.

The authors suggested that the reduction in holistic processing was a function of changes in attentional mechanisms as a consequence of literacy.

Increases in BOLD signal is the neural correlate of prediction error.

Figure 3. Aligned and misalignedface \ Figure 3. Aligned and misaligned face images in the complete-design composite task. Drawn from Ventura, Fernandes, Cohen, Morais, Kolinsky & Dehaene (2013).

These example are limited in their scope, however, it is likely that the changes associated with enculturated practices such as reading as well as boot strapping other more complicated tasks such as mathematics (Menary, 2015) bring about attentional biases that aid the acquisition of more complex capacities. Bootstrapping processes are ubiquitous at the organismic scale and cultural scaffold scale so despite the limitations of the example it serves as a useful link between these scales.

3.2 Reading and Organismic Change The previous section looked at the plastic changes and sub-personal neural mechanisms involved in reading acquisition. While such vertical level explanation is important we must not lose sight of the fact that these mechanisms operate in the context of an organismâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s diachronic interaction with a developmental niche.

Humans have a long developmental

44

period even compared to other primates.

Highly refined cognitive-motor capacities such as reading have very slow developmental trajectories and the acquisition of these abilities is almost entirely dependent on prolonged interaction with and instruction from caregivers. While this extended developmental period has made juvenile humans more vulnerable it has also endowed our species with an extraordinary capacity for behavioural plasticity (Menary, 2015; Stotz, 2010).

Through a process Menary (2015) terms cognitive transformation cognitive practices structure the developmental niche and in turn, the niche scaffolds the acquisition of further cognitive practices through neural plasticity. The acquisition of reading, for instance, is driven by the reinforcement of cognitive norms by caregivers and the availability of physically manipulable tools and aids. Think of teaching a child to read.

A childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s capacities are scaffolded by books with simple narrative and grammatical structure accompanied by advice from a caregiver who reinforces the cognitive norms (a set of standards such as correct pronunciation and semantic interpretation) that govern the relevant language. In this way, children acquire skills that endow them with the requisite concepts to understand and implement symbolic representations such as letters. Importantly, this entire process occurs in a public space where mistakes, which are defined by cognitive norms, can be corrected (Menary, 2015).

As I have already alluded to reading, being a cognitive practice that is a part of the developmental niche, is inherited by succeeding generations. The next section will address the processes that allow the inter-generational heritability of information.

3.3The Cultural Scaffold As was stressed in the previous section as humans we are unique in our capacity for behavioural plasticity. It must be emphasised, however, that this capacity is only

adaptive because of the inter-generational transfer of information facilitated by a stable developmental niche (Stotz, 2008).

The often disastrous exploration attempts of European explorers demonstrate that survival in hostile environments such as the Australian outback requires generations worth of slowly accumulated knowledge (Boyd, Richerson & Henrich, 2011).

The implications of our behavioural plasticity become increasing noteworthy as group size increases. With larger groups sizes individuals can specialise, dividing both epistemic and physical labour (Sterelny, 2011). Further, social learning in the context of large cultural groups (cultural learning) enables the cumulative and stable transmission of adaptive information.

Individuals are able to seek guidance from a number of experts and imitate only the most successful experts thereby increasing the amount of adaptive information in the population (Boyd, Richerson & Henrich, 2011). The development of this pattern of behaviour increases the fitness of individuals imitating successful experts which in turn leads to selection for a prestige bias in imitation. I argue that this is a case where the developmental niche and selective niche have over-lapped (Stotz, 2017). The developmental niche of humans, in this case consisting of a large cultural group, has led to the creation of an adaptive phenotype â&#x20AC;&#x201C; prestige bias â&#x20AC;&#x201C; which has in turn altered the selection pressures operating on the population.

Critically, the process of cultural learning does not require individuals to have causal knowledge or insight into the reasons for their imitation behaviour. Humans, particularly children, have a propensity to interpret causally meaningless behaviour as causally meaningful (Boyd, Richerson & Henrich, 2011). In an experimental scenario illustrating this phenomenon, children were shown how to open a puzzle box containing a reward using a number of obviously superfluous steps. When allowed to open the box themselves the children imitated the entire behavioural sequence misinterpreting

45

the whole sequence as causally meaningful (Lyons, Young, & Keil, 2007). Many cognitive practices involve numerous complex steps that are not clearly important, interpreting otherwise easily forgettable steps as meaningful may facilitate highfidelity transmission.

Together with over imitation cultural learning constitutes a plausible causal explanation for stable and cumulative inter-generational transfer of information.

We now move on to the evolutionary emergence of the domain-general processes that underpin the practice of reading.

3.4 The Evolution of Domain-General Processes.

Somewhat paradoxically the more recent the cognitive phenomena the more likely it is to depend on domain-general processes that have an evolutionarily deep explanation. In the case of reading, there are two key processes that are in need of explanation, social learning, and PP. The evolution of social learning is an extremely active area of contemporary research (e.g. Sterelny, 2003) and as such, any attempt to do justice to the literature here would be sorely lacking. I only wish to flag the topic before moving on to what is, I suspect, a more fundamental process. Namely, the origin of the process that underlies PP. Research into the evolution of PP is still in its infancy so I can by no means even gesture towards a satisfactory account. Still, I can map-out some early speculations. The prediction error minimisation process is only one instance of the type of model fitting that the FEP describes. Even very simple organisms minimise free energy not by minimising prediction error but by embodying a model of the world in their morphology such that states of low surprisal are entailed by their specific morphology.

The process of chemotaxis, for example, enables bacteria to stay within the set of states that permit homeostasis (Clark, 2017) I argue that the genesis of the process

that underpins PP, namely the FEP, is likely to have a profoundly deep evolutionary origin. Self-organising biological systems have four features that seem to entail approximate Bayesian inference as an emergent but universal property: One, they possess a Markov blanket (MB) which, to borrow some network terminology, is the set of nodes whose states allow the behaviour of any given node - call it node x - to be predicted. MBs are constituted by parent states, which act upon node x and children states which node x acts upon. In free energy minimising systems, the MB constitutes the bounds of the system in question.

Sensory (parent states) and active states (children states) statistically mediate the internal states (the model) from the external world (Clark, 2017). Two, the existence of a MB induces a set of reciprocal dependencies. External states influence sensory states which in turn influence the internal model which determines active states aimed at minimising free energy (see figure 4).

(Clark, 2017; Friston, 2013). Three - These reciprocal influences allow internal states to embody a probabilistic model of external states that guides action (active states) aimed at staying within states that are predicted by the model and avoiding surprisal-ing states. Think of a bacterium â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;sensingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; a potentially harmful change in the chemical gradient of their local environment and engaging in chemotaxis until it finds itself in a location that is more suitable. The set of states that permit the bacterium to maintain homeostasis are entailed by the bacteriumâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s morphology. By employing processes such as chemotaxis that keep it within this set of states the organism minimises free energy in the sense that it minimises the difference between the predicted state of the world and the world itself. In this technical sense creatures embody a model of the world that predicts their continued existence. And finally, since active states (which are aimed at minimising the difference between the embodied model of the world and the world itself) alter but are altered by external states (the world itself) active inference minimises free energy by acting such that predictions of

46

incoming sensory states are fulfilled, maintaining both the homeostatic integrity of the biological system and maximising Bayes model evidence (Friston, 2013). The outcome of all this is that all self-organising systems, from simple bacteria to human beings, resist thermodynamic equilibrium by engaging in a process of actively minimising free energy (Clark, 2017).

the afore mentioned time scales are mutually interdependent.

References: Boyd, R., Richerson, P. J., &Henrich, J. (2011). The cultural niche: Why social learning is essential for human adaptation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(Supplement 2), 10918-10925.

Clark, A. (2016). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action, and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press.

Figure 4. Schematic of the partitioning of states into internal (?) and external states (?) by a Markov blanket encompassing sensory (S) and active states (A) and the direction of influence between the states. Drawn from Friston (2013).

If the above account is on track, then approximate Bayesian inference in the guise of the FEP is an inevitable consequence of self-organisation in biological systems.

While the implications of this process for evolutionary dynamics are unclear it is tremendously exciting in that it represents a conceptual shift in how we should think about the place of cognition and agency in the biological word (Friston, 2013).

4. Concluding Remarks This essay has surveyed the EPP framework for explaining cognitive practices across multiple interdependent time scales. As we have seen cognitive practices such as reading are as dependent on extra-neural resources as they are on neural resources.

Moreover, the diachronic interactions between humans and their developmental niche that allow cognitive practices to evolve are underpinned by a set of culturally scaffolded processes that have evolutionarily deep origins. I hope to have shown that far from being epistemically independent the modes of explanation proper to each of

Clark, A. (2017). How to Knit Your Own Markov Blanket: Resisting the Second Law with Metamorphic Minds. Philosophy and predictive processing. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group.

Dehaene, S., & Cohen, L. (2011). The unique role of the visual word form area in reading. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15(6), 254-262.

Drayson, Z. (2012). The uses and abuses of the personal/subpersonal distinction. Philosophical Perspectives, 26(1), 1-18.

Fabry, R. E. (2017). Betwixt and between: the enculturated predictive process ing approach to cognition. Synthese, 1-36.

Friston, K. (2010). The free-energy princi ple: a unified brain theory?. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127-138.

Friston, K. (2013). Life as we know it.

Journal of the Royal Society Inter face, 10(86), 20130475.

Hohwy, J. (2013). The predictive mind.

Oxford University Press.

47

Laland, Kevin N., Blake Matthews, and Marcus W. Feldman (2016) An introduction to niche construction theory. Evol Ecol. 2016; 30: 191â&#x20AC;&#x201C;202.

Lyons, D. E., Young, A. G., &Keil, F. C. (2007). The hidden structure of overimitation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(50), 19751-19756.

Ventura, P., Fernandes, T., Cohen, L., Morais, J., Kolinsky, R., &Dehaene, S. (2013). Literacy acquisition reduces the influence of automatic holistic processing of faces and houses. Neuroscience letters, 554, 105-109.

Menary, R. (2015). Mathematical cognition: A case of enculturation. In Open MIND. Open MIND. Frankfurt am Main: MIND Group Price, C. J., & Devlin, J. T. (2011). The interactive account of ventral occipitotemporal contributions to reading. Trends in cognitive sciences, 15(6), 246-253.

Sterelny, K. (2003). Thought in a hostile world: the evolution of human cognition. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Sterelny, K. (2011). From hominins to humans: how sapiens became behaviourally modern. Philosophi cal Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 809822.

Stotz, K. (2008). The ingredients for a postgenomic synthesis of nature and nurture. Philosophical Psychology, 21(3), 359-381.

Stotz, K. (2014). Extended evolutionary psychology: the importance of transgenerational developmental plasticity. Frontiers in psychology, 5.

Stotz, K. (2017). Why developmental niche construction is not selective niche construction: and why it matters.

Interface Focus, 7(5), 20160157.

48

The Art of Mimesis Katrina Woodforde: BA Philosophy and LLB (in progress) Introduction Poetry has been historically understood to be mimetic in nature; it reflects aspects of reality through words used to create imagery, sound and rhythm. In this essay, I consider how the focal point of this mimesis changed around the beginning of the twentieth century from the external world to an internal gaze into the nature of art itself.

Further, I explore how this change has resulted in a shift from poetry’s value being located in its usefulness to now being located in its uselessness. I look first at Plato and Aristotle’s understanding of the nature of poetry when it was externally focused before turning to Blanchot’s understanding of twentieth century poetry as inwardly focused. To illustrate this argument, I draw on the respective works of Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and Cummings’ ‘No 63’ (see, Appendices 1-2).

Finally, I consider poetry as valuable because of its usefulness looking particularly at Aristotle’s conception before looking to Blanchot’s analysis of poetry’s value as uselessness. Overall, while poetry’s nature has remained mimetic, the way this mimesis is produced and its subject matter has resulted in a fundamental shift to poetry’s value coming only from its uselessness.

Focal Point of Poetry’s Mimesis Poetry traditionally has had an external focus, reflecting aspects of the natural world or of the human condition. While Plato and Aristotle took competing views of whether poetry was beneficial or harmful, both saw it as reflective of the external world. For Plato, poetry is a third degree removed from the truth of a form (Plato, 1997, p. 1203).

Humans have some form of access to the ideal form of a thing, but versions of that thing made in this world are inevitably not

perfect imitations of the ideal form (Plato, 1997, pp. 1200-2). Art, including poetry, reflects the versions of the thing existing in this world—it imitates an imitation (Plato, 1997, p. 1202). Plato sees this as detrimental as poetry therefore does not reflect truth (Plato, 1997, pp. 1206-7). Because of this, it encourages and strengthens the irrational parts of the self, to the detriment of the individual and of society (Plato, 1997, pp.

1209-11). However, even on this analysis, poetry’s external gaze plays an active, functional use in the world, albeit negative.

Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ typifies this mimetic nature of poetry. The poem centres on a Grecian urn that the poet either is looking at or conceives of. It is a reflection of an existing thing in the existing world. It is not an entirely accurate representation; the Urn was probably fictional given the poem describes it as having two different scenes whereas Grecian urns typically only have one. On Plato’s account, this goes towards showing the flawed nature of a third hand imitation of an ideal form.

Poetry’s external mimetic focus was created through conventions using word patterns to create sound and rhythm and poetic devices to produce imagery. Aristotle conceives of the poem as usefully mimicking particular types of people and events through poetic conventions (Aristotle, 1996, pp. 3-4, 6-7). He sees tragedy and comedy as distinguished by how the former imitates admirable people and actions, while the latter imitates the inferior (Aristotle, 1996, p. 5). Aristotle particularly emphasises how devices of rhythm, melody and verse are variously used in different forms of poetry to create different effects, particularly to evoke emotions (Aristotle, 1996, p. 4).

Imitation is central and includes the imitation of events that provoke pity or fear so as to ‘purify’ those emotions in the audience (Aristotle, 1996, p. 10). In ‘Ode on a

50

Grecian Urn’, Keats’ uses regular iambic pentameter to create a smooth, rhythmic feel fitting to a reflection on an ancient artefact and a rumination on human mortality. He personifies the urn as a wise, ancient onlooker to humanity, especially through addressing the urn in second person: ‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness,/ Thou foster-child of silence and slow time’. He then uses imagery to describe the images on the urn itself. ‘Bold Lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,/Thou winning near the goal – yet do not grieve:/ She cannot fade’. The scene evocatively describes a quintessential part of human love while underscoring it with the tragedy of the mortality of human life and beauty. Consequently, traditional accounts and forms of poetry are mimetic in their imitation of the external world, using words as the building blocks of imagery and sound.

However, with the beginning of the twentieth century came a shift in the focal point of poetry’s mimesis—turning inwards to consider what its own nature is. The beginnings of this shift can be seen, in fact, in the self-reflexivity of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. It is a poem reflecting on a different form of art—a decorated urn—and it concludes with the aphorism: ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’. Greenburg argues that modernism pushed all art forms to determine what was essential to each (Greenburg, 1960, p .1). He posits the essence of each art form was explicitly tied to what was ‘unique in the nature of its medium’ (Greenburg, 1960, p. 2). For painting, this was its two-dimensional flatness (Greenburg, 1960, p. 2). Blanchot similarly identifies a shift in poetry and literature more generally (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 232, 245-6). Literature originally was the voice through which the gods spoke, but with the decline of the gods, literature was ‘the language in which their absence sp[oke]’ (Blanchot, 1982, p. 218). In turn, with the deepening of this absence, literature moved to giving humanity a means of ‘self-recognition, of self-fulfilment’ (Blanchot, 1982, p. 218). However, literature went further again to seek to become its

own presence—to throw off values not its own and to be wholly and exclusively in its own service (Blanchot, 1982, p. 219). Out of this, poetry’s essential nature seems to be the characters of the letters or symbols themselves, as they appear and are arranged on the page—‘it is the point from which words begin to become their appearance’ (Blanchot, 1982, p. 223).

With this shift of poetry’s focus came also a disruption of traditional poetic conventions, devices and forms. Cummings’ ‘No 63’ exemplifies this change. Mimesis is now created through the characters themselves used to create verbal rhythm and sound, but also through the visual appearance of letters on the page. Patea describes Cummings’ poems as being ‘based on iconicity’ and that ‘[t]hey are poempictures that demand to be looked at’ (Patea, 2011, pp. 149-50). In ‘No 63’, imagery is still created, but it comes from the rise and fall of the characters across the breadth of the page. Further, the poem creates sound through, for instance, assonance with the repetition of the ‘a’ sound, and alliteration with the ‘s’ or ‘c’ sounds. Rhythm is created through the syllables per line varying between only zero to three, as opposed to through iambic pentameter. Such disruption to traditional poetry illustrates how modernist poetry experiments with the limits of poetry’s form and medium to reveal its essence in its printed characters on a page and how these characters create sound, imagery and rhythm. However, in contrast to Greenburg’s argument that each art form distinguished itself from, and eliminated aspects of every other art form, poetry is seen to intermix visual and textual aspects.

This intermixing arises from poetry’s medium—letters printed onto a pagewhereby poetry’s material nature necessitates an inclusion of the visual, not simply textual. Consequently, with the beginning of the twentieth century, poetry shifted from being mimetic of the external world to becoming increasingly self-reflective, producing poems which created mimesis through the characters of the poem themselves.

51

Poetry’s value shifting from useful to useless While poetry’s gaze was externally oriented, its value stemmed from its usefulness in edifying and educating its readers.

This edification and education came through the poem functioning as for example, a political critique, recreation, a didactic or sacred text. Shelley sees poets as the ‘unacknowledged legislators of the world’ (Shelley, 1909-14, p. 48). Poems could be politically subversive in content, resulting at times in censorship.1 Poetry could also function as a tool of dissimulation of orthodox ideas, exemplified in religious poetry.2 Alternatively, Aristotle views the poet’s role as ‘not to say what has happened, but to say the kind of thing that would happen’ (Aristotle, 1996, p. 16). In this way, poetry expounds universal ideas about the connection between certain qualities of a person with particular events (Aristotle, 1996, p.

16). It thus edifies and educates its audience, especially through imitating the worthy through tragic or epic forms, and the laughable or disgraceful through comedic forms (Aristotle, 1996, pp. 9-10). Poetry was also, more simply, a recreational pastime, either in its written form, or in song form through, for instance, ballads.

Therefore, poetry’s usefulness spanned across a broad spectrum of functions, so giving it its value.

In contrast, with the inward turn of poetry’s mimetic gaze came also a shift to poetry’s value being based in its uselessness. In this context, uselessness refers to the lack of a material function; it is the appearance of the work as well as the sound and rhythm of it that is significant (Blanchot, 1982, p. 223). Poetry’s value is the fait accompli of its existence alone. Yet although it is the poem’s lack of material function that makes it useless, it is the materiality of the poem on the page itself that gives it its value in uselessness. Blanchot describes what makes something a piece of art (including literary forms) as whatever makes the thing’s material nature and matter visible (Blanchot, 1982, pp.

222-3, 258). An ordinary, everyday object like a chair is not art because the thing itself is lost within its uses. It cannot be seen behind its functional value. It is only when a thing is no longer functional but rather becomes its appearance does it become a work of art (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 222, 258). ‘[T]he work is eminently what it is made of’; in the context of poetry, it is ‘the verbal rhythm of the poem’ and the visual appearance of the words (Blanchot, 1982, p. 223).

Thus, a poem’s value comes from its lack of usefulness in the external material worldyet paradoxically its essence comes from the very materiality of the poem’s physical form.

Notwithstanding this, a poem still contains some sort of substantive contentit still says something, no matter how difficult to understand. In this way, it may still be said to be useful. However, it is in its formal difficulty that a poem is removed from being useful. Its formal difficulty shows how the poem, as Blanchot argues, does not bring with it any certainty or clarity—those attributes belong only to the material, useful, externally existing world (Blanchot, 1982, p. 223). Art, by contrast, inhabits an anterior region to the external material world; it exists where all possibilities no matter how contradictory exist together, where ‘impossibility is an affirmation’ (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 30-1, 228-9).

Blanchot considers this the ‘elemental depth’, which is opened even as it is closed in the poem and where the essence of the thing appears in material work (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 223-5). The work necessarily has a semblance of truth because it materially exists and interacts with a reader who exists in the material, certain world (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 229-30). But this semblance of truth is also the illusion (for there cannot be truth in the indeterminacy of the work by itself) which is beauty (Blanchot, 1982, p.

229). Because of this, certainty or clarity cannot exist there (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 24, 30-1, 226).In this way, Blanchot’s analysis is similar to Plato’s, although different in locating the poem’s value in uselessness and not ascrib ing to it the power to corrupt

52

the individual. A poem’s content cannot contain what is useful, because to be useful a thing must be incorporated into the physical, material world in which possibilities harden into realities, certainties and truth.

Insofar as Blanchot’s account of poetry requires positing an extra metaphysical region, namely what he refers to as the ‘anterior region’ in which the work of art properly exists and in which the normal laws of reason and nature do not apply, it is problematic. Blanchot seeks to give some resolution to this by explaining how the experience of art is how art ‘—as images, as words, and as rhythm—indicates the menacing outside, a neutral existence, nil and limitless’ (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 242-3). This seems to refer to a sort of cosmic nihilism; namely that with the absence of the gods comes death as a human being’s ‘possibility par excellence’ necessary to envisage and explore all possibilities (Blanchot, 1982, p.

240). To be an authentic being, a human being needs all possibilities open to them, which must therefore include death (Blanchot, 1982, p. 240). However, death is still a nullity. In some ways, it parallels Blanchot’s ‘anterior region’ because of this (Blanchot, 1982, pp. 30-1, 242-3). Consequently, where art is creation, it comes from the nothingness and carries with it the shadow of this non-realness, this indefiniteness and non-truth. Therefore, this extra metaphysical region seems to be more a way of speaking to an existential awareness of the indeterminacy that exists outside beyond physical, material existence. Showing this deficit and how close a work of art is to it makes the work of art’s ‘coherence, exactitude, and limit all the more impressive’ in its materiality (Blanchot, 1982, p.

244). In this way, art has value in its uselessness where it retains some form of the indeterminacy of non-existence and its proximity to it, making a work of art’s existence that much more so impressive.

Conclusion Poetry is mimetic in nature but what it is mimetic of and how it is mimetic depends

on an understanding of poetry’s essence.

Where poetry is taken to be usefully reflective of the external, material world, its essence is lost in how amorphous its substance and function is. Where, by contrast, poetry is understood to have an inward gaze concerning its own nature, it finds its nature is valuable in its functional uselessness. Its value is in its medium’s materiality—the physical characters against a page, which, when pronounced create sound and rhythm and when regarded create imagery. Further, poetry’s value comes from its proximity to the nullity of nonexistence, which, by virtue of its own creation makes a poem’s existence the more impressive as a thing in and of itself although without any material usefulness.

When poetry’s mimesis is of itself, poetry becomes poetry for poetry’s sake, that is, existence.

Appendix 1 Ode on a Grecian Urn Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

53

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parch ing tongue.

birds( here, inven ting air U )sing

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens over wrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Appendix 2

tw iligH( t's v va vas( vast ness.Be)look now (come soul; &:and who c es ( are ar

s)e

voi

a

1. See, eg, Shelley’s ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ following the Peterloo Massacre in 1819.

2. See, eg, the poetry of Christina Rossetti.

54

Reference List Aristotle, Poetics, (Malcolm Heath trans, Penguin Books, 1996).

Blanchot, Maurice, The Space of Literature (Ann Smock trans, University of Nebraska Press, 1982).

Greenburg, Clement, ‘Modernist Painting’ in Forum Lectures, (Voice of America, 1960).

Patea, Viorica, ‘The Poetics of the AvantGarde: Modernist Poetry and Visual Arts’ in Deborah L Madsen and Mario Klarer (eds) The Visual Culture of Modernism (2011, Narr Verlag).

Plato, Complete Works in John M Cooper (ed), (Hackett Publishing Company, 1997).

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, ‘A Defence of ` Poetry’ in English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay (P F Collier and Son, 1909-14).

55

Talking About Time Nicholas Webb-Wagg: BA Philosophy, Master of Research, Philosophy (in progress) Introduction When we think of time, certain concepts come to mind: ideas of duration, of the time it takes to accomplish something, how many minutes since I sat down, how many hours until I decide to eat. We think of past, present, and future; of histories and timelines; of what we know happened years ago and what might happen tomorrow. In fact, our whole language seems loaded with temporal implications. 1 Any mention of causes, effects, events, motions, actions or processes will oblige some grounding in time. [Sklar 2009, p.570] Discussions of time are bound to be complex and easily tangled within inadequate language. Not only is it difficult to speak of time from an atemporal “external” perspective, but even the most basic descriptions of time seem bound up in metaphors that may mislead our intuitions as much as they help them. We speak of time “flowing” as though it is a river. We might say that time moves, but what if time doesn’t “move” any more than space “widths”?

While the philosophy of time has largely been concerned with the experience of time passing, and what that is like for a human being, recent scientific theories have generated enormous new challenges for our traditional notions. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was the catalyst for a competing image of the nature and structure of time. These opposed systems (passing time and relative time) are most well known as the A and B theories of time.

In this article I hope to briefly clarify these theories’ distinctive claims, and examine some of the most prevalent ontologies they have inspired. I will be paying particular attention to the role of language in shaping our intuitions and ideas, using spatial metaphors to highlight the problems at work

here. My aim is to show that, while each theory has its uses in our everyday discourse, only the B-Theory has the ontological integrity to describe time itself.

The Subjective Structure Of Time What do we know about time? From our native experience we intuit that time passes: What is here now will soon be in the past, relegated to memory. The past is “fixed” and unalterable. We think of future events that are going to happen: of moments that at some point will be present. The future is “open”, uncertain. The possibilities diverge and branch out in all directions, and at best we can guess what will happen. We notice an epistemic asymmetry: We can know things about the past and present that we can’t know about the future. From this we assume that there is also an ontological asymmetry: a fundamental difference in being between what is future, present, and past. It is easy to postulate that, since we can know nothing of the future, and the possibilities are endless, the future is not yet real. It becomes real when it settles into the present. [Sklar 2009, p.573] We tend to make some assumptions based on these observations. First, we take it that the present is privileged in some important way: it is the “active” moment in time.

Second, we assume that time is objective: that this present moment is universally simultaneous across every agent, object and event that exists.

1. I am referring to English, but I think it would be fair to extend this generalisation to other Western languages.

The Advent Of The Special Theory Of Relativity

56

However, the implications of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (STR) are radically opposed to these assumptions.

Briefly, the theory postulates: firstly, that uniform motion (motion with constant direction and speed) is relative, and secondly, the speed of light is constant, regardless of whether the observer moves towards or away from the source. While these points may seem innocuous, in unison they effectively infer that time will slow down for objects as they approach the speed of light, and that simultaneity itself is relative to observers. [Van Cleve 2009, p.81] Events that appear simultaneous to one person may just as well appear successive to another person (i.e. if one or both individuals are in motion relative to the other).

A popular thought experiment involves two observers, Emily and Patrick. While standing still, Emily sees two lightning flashes occur simultaneously. Patrick, while on a train passing by at speed, also sees the flashes, but sees them one after the other.

[Ney 2014, p.140] The issue is that neither observer is privileged: neither is incorrect in their observation. Therefore, what is “present” for any given person is relative. So either there are innumerable presents, or, as many have since theorised, no present at all.

Mctaggart’s A And B Series It was in response to these discoveries that McTaggart developed the ‘A-series’ and ‘B-series’ as a means of describing different modes of speaking about time. Each series contains the hypothetical set of all events or moments in time, and attaches either an A or B characteristic to each.

In the A-series, each moment is categorised as either ‘Future’, ‘Present’, or ‘Past’, in the same way we use tense in speech. The series is always changing, as it accommodates the transition of moments from one category to the next.

In the B-series, each moment is described only as ‘earlier-than’, ‘later-than’ or ‘simul-

taneous with’, in relation to other moments in time. These descriptors are ‘tenseless’ – they make no reference to “now” (In the B-series, “now” is taken to be shorthand for the moment at which the word is spoken, like a timestamp, in the same way “here” is shorthand for describing your current location [Williams 1951, p.458]). Where A-characteristics are transient, B-characteristics are permanent. [Van Cleve 2009, p.77] McTaggart used the two series to make the argument that time is a contradiction and cannot exist. He says that time essentially involves change, and only the A-series seems to accommodate change. But the STR proves that the present is relative, which creates a paradox: all events will have all three incompatible A-characteristics at once (something cannot be ‘Past’ and ‘Not Past’).

McTaggart thought that if we argue that each event changes their properties, we must create a new A-series to explain it, and ultimately an infinite regress. If the A-series necessarily involves contradictions, it is untenable, so McTaggart concluded that time cannot exist. [Van Cleve 2009, p.78] While few contemporary philosophers agree with McTaggart’s conclusions, his argument has shaped philosophical debate on the topic nonetheless. Those who reject his second premise (that the A-series involves a paradox), but defend the first premise (that time must exist as the A-series) are known as A-Theorists. Those who reject his first premise but defend the second are known as B-Theorists. B-Theory states that all A-characteristics can be reduced to B-relations, whereas A-Theorists would argue at least some statements necessarily denote past, present or future. [Ney 2014, p.149] Presentism & The Growing Universe Of the ontologies (theories of what does and does not exist) available to contemporary A-theorists, most follow the theory called Presentism. [Ney 2014, p.152] For a

57

presentist, the set of all things that are real is identical to the set of all things that exist now, at the present moment. Moments in the future are mere possibilities, a kind of fiction, inexorably approaching the event horizon of the active moment. There is a razor thin instant in which they pierce the film between future and past, at which point they attain existence, before immediately dropping out of existence, remembered only in echoes, as history, or by the word “past”.

The future cannot exist, because the moment it exists it becomes our present.

History is also unreal, another fiction that has slipped out of reach. [Van Cleve 2009, p.80] A related ontology is known as the Growing Block or Growing Universe theory. It resembles presentism, except that it postulates that the set of things that exists consists of that which is Present and also that which is Past, and so the set is always expanding and more moments come to pass.

For our purposes, I will focus on Presentism, as the two theories share most of the same values and vulnerabilities. [Ney 2014, p.142] As stated earlier, the primary source of arguments against Presentism (and other A-Theories) comes from the consequences of the Special Theory of Relativity. There can be no universal present at which events become real, as events occur at different times for different observers.

Another problem is called the ‘Truthmaker’ objection. According to truthmaker theory, all true statements must have something that exists out in reality that

makes it true: an object or situation the sentence corresponds to and attempts to represent. If I say “The glass on the table is full of water”, the truthmakers include the existence of the table at this moment, as well as the glass, and the water, in the right positions. The problem arises for the presentist making statements about the past or future. There are many claims they would like to say are true, but presentism commits them to the belief that nothing can be real that does not exists at this moment. So if I were to say the glass was on the table yesterday, the truthmakers (the table, glass, etc) are in the past, and therefore are not real. Most presentists therefore tend to argue that there is a problem with truthmaker theory itself, or else face a difficult challenge explaining their position. [Ney 2014, p.155] Eternalism & The Four Dimensions Of The Manifold 2. Image Source: http://i.kinjaimg.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--1yrbb7Zz--/18k1qxo4vsvfjjpg.jpg (accessed September 2015) B-theory requires a radical reimagining of the structure of time, such that we no longer have need of a single active “present” to explain it. It is common to describe time as a fourth dimension, analogous to the three familiar dimensions in space. So in addition to three spatial coordinates used to locate an object, we include a coordinate for its location in time. We may use other events as landmarks from which to compare our position in space and time, or conventional measurements (longitude, latitude, altitude, time and date, all of which are measured from relative landmarks too). We may also measure the physical scale of the object in the same ways: its height, breadth, depth, and duration. We can imagine the object’s temporal extension as a kind of space-time worm. [Williams 1951, p.462] As we are better able to comprehend spatial metaphors, we can compare this worm with a body in an MRI machine: we can observe

58

aany slice of the person’s body (facing up towards their head or down towards their toes). This image, while significant, is not the full extent of the body (indeed, it hardly resembles the same creature at all). And no slice is privileged over any other, nor do the others cease to exist when any one slice is observed. 3 The temporal end of an object (the point at3 which it ceases to be) is in this sense better understood as just another edge of its 4-dimensional structure, just like reaching the end of its width or height.4

Extending these principles to the entire set of objects and events reveals a striking image. For the B-theorist, all of these entities exist equally, no matter how far flung they may be. The future is just as set as the past. Our experience of “NOW” should not be taken as the limit of temporal existence any more than we take our experience of “HERE” to denote the boundaries of space. There is no universal “forward” motion in time any more than there is a universal “down” in space. [Sklar 2009, p.574] Our experience of forward-moving time may be nothing more than a local phenomenon, analogous to the earth’s gravitational field inevitably pulling a stone to the ground..

Part of the problem seems to be that when we say the temporal phrase “Napoleon is in 1800”, the “is” seems to imply we also mean now, whereas when I say the spatial phrase

Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MRI_Hea d_5_slices.jpg (accessed September 2015) 4

“The Eiffel Tower is in France”, I don’t seem to imply here as well. It seems we can’t help but make ontological claims when using tense. [Williams 1951, p.460] This collective of existing events is sometimes called the block universe, or the manifold. The ontology that derives from these ideas is called Eternalism. For the eternalist, all space-time entities are finite (in that they have limited dimensions), but the entity itself is “eternal” in a timeless sense. They exist at a particular point in the manifold of space-time, and will always be at that point. [Ney 2014, p.143] Conclusion Ultimately, the A-theory and its related ontologies (e.g. presentism) are insufficient to account for all the many features of temporality we have come to understand.

The more we attempt to force our subjective ordering of time upon the world, the more paradoxes arise from it. Conversely, B-theory (and eternalism) presents an unintuitive but robust structure for spacetime without leading to any absurd consequences. The only hindrance, as I see it, to a wider acceptance and comprehension of the manifold idea of time is the unfortunate way in which almost any statement we can make will usually become entangled in tense and temporal implications we do not wish to make. Until we can develop a tenseless, atemporal vocabulary, it may continue to be difficult to make sense of the rest of the space-time worm that lies ahead of us.

References

Here is an evocative image of the human body seen through MRI: https://sh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datoteka:Paras agittal_MRI_of_human_head_in_patient_wi th_benign_familial_macrocephaly_prior_to _brain_injury_%28ANIMATED%29.gif (accessed September 2015)

3

Ney, Alyssa (2014) – ‘Metaphysics: An Introduction’, Routledge Sklar, Lawrence (2009) – ‘Space and Time’ in ‘A Companion to Metaphysics’ (2nd Ed.) Kim, Sosa, Rosenkrantz (eds), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 569-579

59

Van Cleve, James (2009) – ‘Space and Time’ in ‘A Companion to Metaphysics’ (2nd Ed.) Kim, Sosa, Rosenkrantz (eds), Blackwell Publishing Ltd, pp. 74-82 Williams, D.C. – ‘The Myth of Passage’ in the Journal of Philosophy, vol. 48 #15, 1951, pp. 457-472

60

Proof from conceivability - Anselm’s ontological argument Greg Johnson, Bachelor of Information Technology (in progress) 1. Introduction This paper will demonstrate that the ontological argument for God’s existence developed by St Anselm succeeds, when the argument is understood in the proper intellectual context. The structure of the paper includes a brief statement of the argument, followed by a defence against the major objections to it, including those of Gaunilo, Aquinas and Kant.

The Argument Itself: The argument runs thus: when anyone thinks of something, it exists in his mind.

So, when he considers God, or that than which nothing greater can be thought, it exists in his mind. But if it existed only in his mind, then it would not be that than which nothing greater can be thought; since it could be thought to exist in reality also.

Such is contrary to the meaning of the words. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought, must exist both in the mind and reality. So God exists. The straightforwardness and brevity of the argument might seem to be its most glaring weaknesses. If one is going to attempt to vindicate religion, with all of its complex doctrines and theology, surely something more elaborate is needed? It cannot be that easy, granting the truth of the premises and the inferences therefrom. But of course, such an objection is really a mere reaction to it, not an assessment; it is an argument from incredulity, with no force at all. The objector must show exactly where the mistake in the argument is, or his resistance to it is unfounded Objections: Gaunilo, a contemporary of Anselm, has

several issues with this reasoning. Firstly, it does not follow that the being described by Anselm exists in reality just because it exists in his mind as understood, since “through this fact it can in no wise attain to real existence” (Deane, n.d.). Secondly, he denies “that this being is greater than any real object.”(ibid) Thirdly, its existence in the mind is not even really like that of other objects whose existence is doubtful, seeing as they don’t contain notions of greatness or maximums in their very definitions. In this special case, we need to prove it exists first, and then “infer that it also subsists in itself.” (ibid) He makes the thrust of his case by substituting a lost island having “inestimable wealth of all manner of riches” for Anselm’s being, and runs through the same logic, concluding to the existence of the island and thus reducing the argument to absurdity.

Anselm responds to the first point by arguing that that than which nothing greater can be thought, if it exists, its non-existence, “either in reality or in the understanding” (ibid), is impossible as it contradicts the definition. But whatever can be thought to be, though is not, if it existed, its nonexistence would be possible, again either in the mind or in reality. Therefore, that than which nothing greater can be thought, if it can be thought at all, cannot be nonexistent. His idea is that anything which even may not exist cannot have existence necessarily. The second and third objections are also answered by the foregoing reasoning; they were aimed at the dubious move from mental existence to actual existence. The problem with his island counterargument is clearly that anything which is not a greater than which nothing can be thought is not necessarily existent by the meaning of the words. Anselm’s

61

argument is thus immune to Gaunilo’s attacks.

A more formidable objection comes from the most celebrated medieval thinker, Thomas Aquinas. His main objection is that even if the word “God” is defined in the way Anselm defines it, someone understanding this definition is yet unaware that it exists actually, “but only that it exists mentally.” (Knight, 2016) This might seem to be merely a restatement of Gaunilo’s earlier objection, but some clarification is needed. Aquinas holds humans gain knowledge through grasping the essences or natures of things, and this is achieved via the genus-differentia paradigm expressed most famously in the Porphyrian tree. For example, to grasp the essence of a triangle (a closed-plane figure with three straight sides) is to know both its genus (closedplane figure) and its differentia (three straight sides). This is how we define the essence of triangles. While Aquinas agrees with Anselm that God is the greatest thinkable being, he also takes God to be absolutely simple or non-composite, containing no parts at all. Thus, for Aquinas God is not composed of either genus or differentia, so we cannot know his essence and therefore of his existence thereby. Though Aquinas certainly thinks it possible to know of God’s existence, he doesn’t think this argument is a valid method of doing so.

Anselm anticipatedly answers this objection in his reply to Gaunilo, arguing that everyone understands what is meant by that than which no greater can be thought; otherwise “these things cannot be understood with reference to it.”(Deane, n.d.) If the being does not exist, then the term greatness, which is essentially a comparative and that about being, could not be understood either; this is manifestly false.

Consider that anything is called good or great only insofar as it exists or has being.

Hence Anselm, in seeking the greatest thinkable being, is seeking that which “exists most truly“ (Deane, n.d.), or that which has the most being. Consequently, to say God is that than which no greater can be

thought is not to grasp his essence, even imperfectly. It is rather to understand that he is not limited so as to be known by the finite human mind.

The champion of modern philosophy Immanuel Kant put forward the most influential criticism of Anselm’s proof. Indeed, most contemporary philosophers consider it the decisive refutation. He employs a distinction between logical and real predicates, where the former can be anything, but the latter must be a “determination of a conception…which adds to and enlarges the conception.” (Aldarondo & Widger, 2003) As such it cannot be included in the definition of a concept. For Kant, then, being is fundamentally a second-order property. This culminates in the judgement that “being is evidently not a real predicate” (ibid), using the example of the proposition ‘God is omnipotent” to show that omnipotence is predicated of God, but the word ‘is’ is not, as nothing is added to God by saying he is omnipotent and he exists. Kant also takes concepts to be strictly limited to mere possibility, so that they are fundamentally concerned with content not existential claims. As he puts it “a hundred real dollars contain no more than a hundred possible dollars.” (ibid) Hence, the ontological argument rests on a basic logical conflation.

There are two problems with this.

Firstly, Anselm thinks being is absolutely prior; the most fundamental thing to know or consider. It is the precondition for the very possibility of predication. Insofar, then, as Kant contrariwise takes concepts to be prior and being to serve and extend them, he begs the question against Anselm. Secondly, the understanding of limited everyday beings requires the existence of the greatest thinkable being as its referent, as was discussed above concerning Aquinas. If existence is merely a second-order property, then it can be thought apart from actual existence. If it can be thought apart from actual existence, then its referent need not actually be, because its referent can be thought apart from being. But then the Kantian was never thinking about being at

62

all. Therefore, being cannot be a secondorder property in the Kantian sense. Finally, there is the legitimate worry that treating existence as a real feature of being leads to the Meinongian idea that there are things which do not exist, as saying ‘X does not exist” would imply that there must really be some X of which nonexistence is predicated. But this does not necessarily follow.

Instead it may be said that X, understood existentially neutrally, is not conjoined to any act of existing.

Conclusion Having outlined the ontological argument and defended it against the major objections, we can see that it is as strong as Anselm himself took it to be in surely establishing the existence of God. It is curious then that it has been found unpersuasive since its inception by believer and unbeliever alike. My own explanation of this is most lack the intellectual context needed to fully appreciate it, read into it assumptions it does not make, or else are ignorant of the detailed defence and expansion of it Anselm provides in his reply to Gaunilo. The argument is deceptively simple too, but each sentence is full of overlooked meaning. A discussion of the divine attributes logically following from the conclusion is beyond the scope of the paper. If God is that than which a greater cannot be thought, however, I think that Anselm’s argument succeeds in demonstrating that he exists, and the true debate vis-àvis God is between the various forms of theism, which has historically been the case.

If this paper plays a small role in reorienting the conversation, it has done well.

Deane, S. N. (n.d.). Proslogion, by Saint Anselm. Retrieved from http://www.uta.edu/philosophy/faculty/burg ess-jackson/Anselm,%20Proslogion.pdf Himma, K. E. (n.d.). Anselm: Ontological Argument for the God’s Existence | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosop hy. Retrieved September 20, 2017, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/ont-arg/ Knight, K. (n.d.). SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: The existence of God (Prima Pars, Q. 2). Retrieved from http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1002. htm Nelson, M., & Zalta (ed), E. N. (2016, December 21). Existence (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

Retrieved September 25, 2017, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existence/

References Aldarondo, C., & Widger, D. (2003, July).

The Critique of Pure Reason, by ` Immanuel Kant. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280h/4280-h.htm

63

Existential Self-Projects James Hoy: BA History (in progress) Acute changes are occurring in the traditional structure of marriages and families in western societies. The legalisation of samesex marriage and a proliferation of open relationships are but two examples of modern variations to traditional marital values. The speed at which these variations are occurring has created society-wide anxieties; anxieties that are further exacerbated by inherited bigotries. It can be said that slippery slope argument surrounding what constitutes marriage, that normally terminates at, “Does this mean in the future, a person could marry their cat?” and the strong reaction to the safe-schools program are manifestations of these anxieties. However, the LGBTQI community is well versed in what forms these anxieties and bigotries take, and by interviewing some members of this group I believe a situational similarity with earlier black existential crises can be established. Frantz Fanon was a writer, poet, and psychiatrist of the 1950’s. He wrote poignantly and passionately of his experience as a black man in the French colonial empire. I will call upon Fanon’s philosophy to align the existential crises that black communities faced in the 1950’s with similar crises that are still being confronted by the LGBTQI community today. Thereby, establishing a similarity between Fanon’s community, who were physically and mentally colonised by the French, and the LGBTQI community, who continue to be colonised by a judgemental public morality. In response to this form of colonisation, the LGBTQI community, and most especially, transgender individuals, should endorse a turn towards Fanon's philosophy and embrace existentialism’s equalising and unifying qualities by demanding they receive his concept of “reciprocal recognitions” (Fanon, 1952, p.

218). That is, to be seen equally; to be universally acknowledged eye to eye. After a necessary proviso to establish some

sensitivity, this article will look at some of the prejudices felt by gay men and how they compare with Fanon’s experience of black prejudice. Importantly, this exploration also highlights the ongoing impact of another concept—institutionalised prejudice. I will then turn from that topic to the phenomenon of internalised homophobia in lesbian existence, when seen through the lens of Fanon’s philosophy, shows some surprising results. Finally, I will explore gender as a self-project, by outlining some specific dilemmas faced by the most victimised group from within the LBGTQI community—transgendered individuals. I will argue that the black existential dilemmas of the recent past dovetail conspicuously with the dilemmas of transgendered people today. The aim here is show that the pain of being colonised either through state power or through a questionable public morality can be mitigated by existentialism’s power as it acts as a freeing and unifying force of awareness.

Writing from outside a particular community requires sensitivity for effectiveness, as such I have interviewed four people (identities withheld) from three different sectors of the LGBTQI community. My sample includes a gay man, a lesbian couple, and a transwoman to garner some first-hand, anecdotal evidence of contemporary prejudice or abuse and assess the alignment with Fanon’s experience and response. Therefore, without de-historicizing the often tragic experiences of people of colour, I shall take notice of national, cultural and religious bigotries. I am seeking to highlight discriminations committed against members of the LGBTQI community which have impacted upon their capacity to develop the full self-hood and autonomy that is central to Fanon’s existential philosophy. Doing so will demonstrate how these discriminations, while distinct,

64

are much the same as those that affected the Fanon’s black community. Sadly, there remain plenty of discriminations to evidence the ongoing relevance of contemporary existential struggles.

The analysis of how a gay man might exist in relation to the predominant heterosexual world will lead us to antiquated theological sources from which these discriminations emanated. For now, a pertinent contemporary question comes to mind—when a gay man curbs his behaviour to avoid an impending vilification, is he reacting to implicit discriminations? Fanon tells us, that for him “…not only must the black be black; he must be black in relation to the white man” (Fanon, p.110). I acknowledge that people cannot hide the colour of their skin in the same way that people can hide their sexuality. That being said, any gay man must still be gay in relation to straight society and if he modifies his behaviour to remain unnoticed, he is being gay in relation to the prevailing dominion of heterosexuality. The answer to that earlier contemporary question rests here—a gay man hiding from his sexuality for fear of torment or judgement is reacting in acknowledgement of a prejudicial reality in the first place. We can state, then, that sexuality as a self-project is a difficult road (Houghtaling, 2013). This is particularly true if you are suspected of being gay in Iran where over 4000 people have been executed since 1979 for this crime (Moore, 2006, p. 37). However, in western society, bigotry against homosexuals also has its roots in fundamental religious belief, as far back as the early Christian Church fathers, like Paul, who stated that the sexual act should incorporate the ‘natural use of the body’ in a way that could make procreation possible (Ronconte, 2011). St Augustine felt that any sex outside of marriage was sinful but the most influential was St Thomas Aquinas who stipulated that for a sex act to be moral it had to be vaginal intercourse thereby ruling homosexual love as immoral (plato.standford). Aquinas’ version of natural law ethics went on to become the mainstay of Catholic ethics. Therefore, it

could be said that the Latin tradition of Thomistic philosophy, as Church teaching, has been for LGBTQI people what white exceptionalism was for people of colour and formed the bars of a cultural prison. Fanon 5 understood that it was tradition that enabled the anti-Semites to ground their position against the Jews. Similarly, the tradition of white hegemony presumed a category for the black man and similarly again religious tradition tainted any couple who were not man and wife. Representing the disapproval and disavowal of one group in favour of those already in a state of dominioncolonisation through morality.

Disapprovals, like the examples offered above have long been made lawful with the help of hyper-moralised public entities like conservative political parties, newspapers and various church synods, whose individual members have ensured their views have been instilled into institutional practice across society. This has led to a reification of a state-sponsored bias that has oppressed and punished particular groups for their Otherness. In Fanon’s time, laboratories sought “to produce a serum for denegrification” (Fanon, p. 111) or more latterly, in the case of gay men, contemporary Mormon institutes, as just one example of many, that have sought to ‘de-gay’ same sex attracted men (dailydot). Surprisingly, even the medical community imposed an institutional bias—the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM) only removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from its 1980 edition. State-sponsored bias is neither new nor exhausted, given that eighty countries still hold that homosexual behaviour is illegal and that the Saudi Arabian government can consider forced gender reassignment surgery for recidivist homosexuals.

How far can this bias be taken? What if a black man was forced into racial reassignment surgery? This ridiculous thought experiment highlights the absurdity of surgically imposed conformity. Fanon bemoans that the black man was already incarcerated in the cultural gaol of a stereotypical past of tom toms, cannibalism, racial deficiency, and fried chicken (Fanon p.112).

65

Gay men, it could also be said, have been culturally imprisoned by perceptions of hedonism, promiscuity, AIDS, flamboyance, and a caricatured femininity. Amid 6 these isolating stereotypes, Fanon’s concept of ‘reciprocal recognition’ lies dormant, waiting to release the shackles of formulaic 7 and “crushing objecthood” (Fanon, p. 109).

Therefore, actioning reciprocal recognition releases the concept that is so fundamental 8 to equality—freedom—a concept that untethers the human spirit.

Conversely, the cultural gaol for lesbians can manifest as an internalised homophobia that for some is borne out of the memories of childhood stigma. Internalised homophobia is a concept whereby negative social attitudes directed towards lesbians are turned inwardly and then believed to be true. (revelandriot). Simone de Beauvoir understood this when she identified the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in women moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature (De Beauvoir, 1953, p. 25).

Emotional scarring caused by scenarios like being ‘un-invited’ from parties or not being allowed to flat with someone because of a friend’s mother’s disapproval—may “seem outwardly insignificant” but signify a discriminatory inheritance. Here, the friend’s mother is Fanon’s ‘white man’ ensuring that the ‘Other’ remains as such.

These bigoted positions are themselves hereditary, not through genetics but through public discourse—the language of politics and the pulpit. This public commentary has been hyper-moralised over time by religious influence in the political sphere and then legislated into institutionalised discrimination. The more the LGBTQI community stood in search of their full selfhood the more hyper-moralised the debate became and appeared as a reiteration of a colonised public morality. For example, prior to the marriage laws being amended, my sample couple could not be married so they had a

civil partnership ceremony which, upon a change of state government, was outlawed causing significant hurt. Another change of 9 government saw these civil partnerships restored, highlighting how politicised this issue has been. Further, when one of these 10 women fell ill and was hospitalised, her partner had to be described as ‘the sister’ otherwise hospital rules would not recognise 11 the partner as family, which is especially important if medical decisions had to be made. Similar bureaucratic bigotries in the 12 Australian taxation, medicare, and superannuation systems prevent a homosexual partner being recognised as a legal entity.

These two women felt that it was not only marriage inequality that was keeping them Othered and therefore multiple injustices caused emotional scarring. Fanon sardonically identifies the “white world” as “the only honourable one” (Fanon, p. 114), but it is a world that excluded his participation and even though he lamented this situation, Fanon still wished to partake. Topically, this is analogous to the recent ‘straight world’s’ same-sex marriage debate. LGBTQI people wanted the acceptability that straight marriage enjoys to outwardly legitimise their relationships but were being excluded from full participation in that ‘honourable world’.

By agitating for change, Simone de Beauvoir would say that the LGBTQI community authentically assumed a subjective attitude (De Beauvoir, p. 18). To do nothing would have affirmed that marital exclusion remained an effective way of ensuring that lesbian relationships remain in a state of Otherness and remain in their allotted boundaries. In this same way, Fanon, portraying every black man, had to stay within his allotted boundaries and likewise was denied full selfhood (Fanon, p.115).

Providing an even more emphatic parallel to Fanon—one of the women in this longstanding lesbian relationship was previously heterosexual, and was married with two children. When that marriage collapsed and she came out with her new partner, she was ostracised by her heterosexual friends and family and was held in suspicion by a lesbian community unsure of her commitment. In other words, she felt ‘in limbo’, as

66

unaccepted by any social circle as Fanon when he entered the ‘white world’ and achieved his education only to be shunned by both white and black society, thus remaining unsatisfyingly nowhere (Fanon, p. 116).

A lack of acceptance is also a common feeling for transgender individuals and Fanon encouragingly argues that there is much more to self-consciousness than bare existence (Fanon, p. 218). Gender, as a self-project, dovetails with some tactical responses from Fanon’s black existential crisis. Fanon tried for recognition as a black man in a white world as a loud, assertive black man, but to no avail. He reverted to anonymity, to keeping his head down (interestingly, a tactic that all of my interviewees have felt compelled to adopt at various times in their lives and is directly related why Fanon’s principle of “reciprocal recognition” is so important). Most strikingly, it remained the best strategy, for the transgender person from my sample to avoid trouble while working on typically heteronormative building sites. Initially, you might say that, for Fanon, putting your head down is not enough action to ensure your becoming of that which you hope to be; not enough action to rise up to where you can see eye to eye; certainly not enough to achieve “reciprocal recognition” (Fanon).

Keeping one’s head down, however, is an action of survival and Fanon’s position was not articulated to consider the action and bravery it takes to transition from a man to a woman—forced, by the facticity of a prewired brain that doesn’t coincide with the body, into such radical action to attain full personhood. I argue that gender as a selfproject is even more difficult than sexuality.

For instance, the transgender individual in my sample, as I said, works in the building trade and upon arriving on a new job site, found herself being confronted by several glowering alpha males and in response she decided that the best strategy was to do her carpentry work thoroughly and professionally. A few days later she arrived at work to find the same crew inspecting her work with nodding approval. She had to build a wall

to break down a barrier, with the same intent as Rosa Parks sitting down to stand up for her race. The building site anecdotally demonstrates that the dominant group feels the need to ratify those they might look down upon, in this case for transgendered difference. It is this dominant judgement that can also be recognised in the plight of the coloured medical doctors in Fanon’s narrative who were begrudgingly accepted after doing good work but could not help feel that one mistake would ruin it for them and for all who might follow (Fanon, p. 114).

Unlike most of the other strands of the LBGTQI cohort, transgendered individuals of either sex are unique in that they cannot hide their transition. This is another key connection to the situation of Fanon’s black man who cannot hide his blackness.

Transgendering males begin their transition by taking hormones and begin presenting as female, soon finding themselves neither a man or a woman; a different self. Like Fanon who, as stated earlier, found himself educated and socially unaccepted as either white or black or in-between (Fanon). Just as Fanon adjusts to the ramifications of being black and agitating for recognition, so too the transitioning man adjusts to becoming a woman with a similar desire for reciprocal recognition. By not accepting being born with a male body with the factory settings of a female is the action that Fanon would approve. For an emerging transgender person, it is the tension between the Sartrean in-itself and for-itself modes of being that motivates the existential action that Fanon advocates (Louden).

Sadly, we can see from this anecdotal evidence, that there is alignment between black and LGBTQI discrimination that led to respective existential crises. Fanon’s experience as a black man highlights that Sartre underestimated the magnitude of un-recognition because of the nonwhiteness of black skin and the ongoing perspective of black identity in relation to an ‘Other’. This same un-recognition can be applied, most notably, to transgender indi

67

viduals who cannot hide their gradual presentation as another gender while relating their identity to an heterosexual world.

There is a further philosophical challenge to be laid at Sartre’s feet that seems open to further study: if a person is congenitally hard-wired as a woman but goes on to exist in a male body and if one accepts that gender is a component of one’s essence then it may mean that the immutability of her hard-wired femininity indicates that her essence precedes her earthly being. If this is indeed the case, it could be said this is the same for the hard-wiring of all brains—that essence does precede being. Biological and psychological evidence exists to support this claim and past existentialist thought did not include the possibility of gender fluidity.

This could also break open a new debate that expedites a resurgence of existentialism because ‘transgendering’ appears as a full expression of one’s freedom. If the notion of essence preceding being were to be accepted, then reciprocal recognition of trans-difference might be achieved more easily. Future study aside, we can clearly see that Antillean colonisation for French national prestige and a western colonised morality provided the necessary conditions for the respective subjugations. However, out of the gloom, Fanon supplies the inspirational light; an LGBTQI existential response perhaps— I feel in myself a soul as immense as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers, my chest has the power to expand without limit

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

Albert Camus The Stranger Reference List De Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex London: Jonathon Cape 1953 Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks London: Pluto Press 1986.

Houghtaling, Melissa. “Materiality, Becoming, and Time: The Existential Phenomenology of Sexuality” Dissertation, 2013.

Louden, Peter. http://www2.bakersfieldcollege.edu/roughn eck/4-1/PeterLouden.pdf Moore, Patrick. ‘Murder and Hypocrisy’.

The Advocate. January 31, 2006. https://ronconte.wordpress.com/2011/04/02/ catholic-teaching-on-homosexuality-3-saint-thomas-aquinas/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexual ity/ http://www.dailydot.com/via/undercovergay-conversion-camp/ http://www.revelandriot.com/resources/inter nalized-homophobia/

… a rousing existential claim for staking your place in the world. The realisation that there is “Me, nothing but me”, represents an intimate but necessary narcissism of fundamental realisation that acknowledges the agent for reciprocal recognition is one’s own desire to be considered. We are all meant “to do battle for the creation of human world—that is, of a world of reciprocal recognitions” (Fanon, p. 218). In other words, existentialism’s freeing and unifying power lies in its ability to allow each of us to live an authentic existence.

68

A Common Sense Argument for Freedom of the Will Jeremy Amin BA Philosophy Introduction This essay will be arguing that the human will is free, and that strict determinism is false when it comes to explaining human existence. I will draw from an argument by Thomas Reid from his An Inquiry into the Human Mind to support my argument.

Reid’s claim was that the idea of causality would never arise in us unless we had an intuitive and basic understanding of ourselves as causal agents. Reid was criticising Hume’s account of causality in our minds arising solely from an inference based on observing constantly conjoined events. My argument will be using Reid’s account and making a similar argument for freedom. First, I lay the argument in a more formal structure. Then I give the definitions of freedom and determinism used in this essay. Then I defend what I consider the key premises in my formal argument. Finally, I answer two possible objections to my argument.

The Argument for Freedom 1. If X has the idea of freedom in its mind, then X must have had the experience of freedom at some point in its past 2. Since the experience of freedom is necessary for the idea, then if X has the idea of freedom then it must have experienced at least one free thing 3. The laws of nature dictate that natural objects are determined in their actions and relations, so freedom cannot be derived from simply observing or experiencing natural objects 4. X experiences itself as free, and X has freedom as an idea in its mind 5. From 3 and 4 it is shown that X is not just

a natural object wholly subject to the laws of nature 6. Therefore X is actually free If ‘Human beings’ is substituted for ‘X’ above, then the argument shows that freedom is a necessary condition for humans to have the idea of freedom in their minds, and that having the idea of freedom in the mind is sufficient to know that humans are free. I will first provide the definitions of determinism and freedom to be used in this essay. Then I will provide support for premises 1, 2 and 4 of my argument, illustrating some of the necessary conditions for any idea to be in a mind at all. Then I will show how the idea of freedom in any being can only arise if they have an awareness of themselves as free. Finally, I will answer a few objections which may be raised against my argument.

Definitions: Freedom and Determinism My definitions are taken from Brian Garrett’s What is this thing called metaphysics? I will be using the definition of freedom as the libertarian defines it: Y acts freely if Y could have acted other than they did On this definition of freedom, the past and laws of nature do not determine what Y did since Y could have done otherwise. This definition of freedom is what I am defending in contrast to determinism defined as: Given the laws of nature, and the state of the universe at time t, it is impossible for the history of the universe (before or after t) to be other than it is On this definition of determinism, humans, as beings in the universe, if entirely bound to the laws of nature, must be determined in their thoughts, intentions, actions and all other areas of their internal and external

69

lives.

Defence of premises 1, 2 and 4 1. If X has the idea of freedom in its mind, then X must have had the experience of freedom at some point in its past 2. Since the experience of freedom is necessary for the idea, then if X has the idea of freedom then it must have experienced at least one free thing 3. X experiences itself as free, and X has freedom as an idea in its mind I maintain in this essay that ideas are derived from experience, as the empiricist tradition holds. Premises 1, 2 and 4 draw on this tradition to provide their content. A mind cannot conceive of a truly novel idea which is not a combination of what it has experienced in the past. Even the most abstract and seemingly non-worldly ideas and imaginations can be shown to be derived from a person's experience. This includes ideas which cannot be experienced, such as the classic example of the chiliagon (a thousand-sided shape). This being said, an important distinction must be made between the content of our minds and the structure of the mind itself. As Leibniz stated in his New Essays on Human Understanding “Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses, except the intellect itself.” The structure of the intellect itself is not causally brought about by experience per se but must exist as an a priori ontological chalkboard, as it were, for ideas to exist in a particular mind. The intellect as such must first exist for ideas to exist in a mind.

For Reid, the idea of causality was in the latter category, which is not in the structure of the intellect in an a priori way but must must be acquired through experience. For Reid, this idea could not arise from experiencing the external world and I argue similarly for the idea of freedom. I will explain why presently.

In his critique of Hume, what Reid noted

was that the idea of causality would never arise from merely experiencing the external world of constantly conjoined events. All that would arise would be the idea of constant conjunction. For Reid, the inference to causality in the external world between objects is an inference made from our awareness of ourselves as causal agents.

It is in my knowing myself as a causal agent that I make the inductive inference that a similar relationship is occurring between objects in the world external to myself. The inference of external causation is only possible and intelligible if we know ourselves as causal agents. We become the source of the experience of causation necessary to have the idea.

The argument in this essay is following a similar line of reasoning to Reid’s for the idea of freedom itself. We would never arrive at the idea of freedom simply by observing the external world since all we see are patterns of behaviour between objects dictated by physical laws and causality. The only idea that would arise out of such observations would be that the world is governed by physical necessity and thus all beings are determined. The very existence of freedom in our minds at all is only possible by our understanding of ourselves as being truly free. If we were not free, and there is no free event or set of events to experience in the external world, then the idea of freedom would never arise in our minds.

Objection 1: We impose the idea of freedom onto ourselves based on how our minds work The obvious objection to my argument is that what is really going on when we experience ourselves as free is that we are simply imposing our own categories of thought onto ourselves and experiencing ourselves as if we were free. This argument would in effect be stating that the intellect itself knows freedom without needing to experi1 ence it and thus can impose the category of freedom onto experience. I answer that this

70

objection does not work. Just as the idea of causality is not derived from the external world, but from our experience of ourselves and then inferred to the external world, so too with the idea of freedom. If the argument in this essay succeeds, then what it shows is that the necessary condition for even the possibility of imposing the category of freedom is the actual experience of ourselves as free. Objections along the lines of the experience being illusory or imposed must presuppose the idea of freedom in the mind and beg the question. This answer is similar to the part in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics where he states that “the state of mind that apprehends the first principles is intuition”. Where the intuition-like first principle of freedom as apprehended by the understanding as such is what allows the inference at all.

Objection 2: One need not experience positive freedom in the world to have the idea. An experience of a lack of constraint in the world is sufficient for the idea of freedom.

This objection aims at premises 1, 2 and 4 of my argument. A positive experience of a free being or state of affairs is not required to generate the idea of freedom, only an observation that a being has a lack of restraint. An example would be a bird being released from its cage. I do not think this objection works. In order to identify an act of becoming free, freedom as such must be in the mind of the observer in order to make the inference that freeing has taken place.

Just as an unreflective understanding of causality must be present to identify the hand opening the cage as causing the cage to open, so too must the unreflective understanding of freedom be in place in order to understand the act of opening the cage as freeing the bird. Without the idea already in place to make the inference, opening the cage would just be another case of a deterministic state of affairs occurring, just as without our awareness of ourselves as causal agents, viewing a billiard ball colliding with another billiard ball and causing it

to move would not be seen as a causal relation but only one of conjoining events.

Conclusion Much more can be said for and against the arguments made in this essay. Freedom of the will and determinism are part of the most important set of questions to answer in philosophy and in daily life, the implications of which are the most momentous. I have argued that humans are free by the fact that at least some humans have the idea of freedom in their minds. Without an understanding of ourselves as free to act and do other than we did, the idea of freedom would not be intelligible to us. As with Reid’s account of how causality between external object arises from our awareness of ourselves as causal agents, so too does the idea of freedom as such occur by our awareness, and the reality, of ourselves as free.

References Garrett, Brian. 2011. “free will”. What is this thing called Metaphysics?

Second Edition. New York: Rout ledge, pp. 120-122.

Hume, David. 2008. “Section 2. The origin of ideas”. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

Leibniz, G.W. 2009. “Book 2.” New Essays on Human Understanding. Trans lated by Jonathan Bennett. Cam bridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 34.

Reid, Thomas. 1785. “Chapter 6: Of ` Seeing”. An Inquiry into the Human Mind. Fourth Edition. London. pp.

421-430.

Aristotle. 2004. “Book VI, Part vi. Intelli gence or intuition” The Nichoma chean Ethics. Further revised edition. Revised by Hugh Treden nick. Translated by J.A.K. Thomp son. London: Penguin Group, pp.

151-152

71

Childish Gambino and the Super-Bold Thesis Thomas Keywood: BA Philosophy (in progress) Livingston has outlined a number of claims about the philosophical potential of film as a medium (Livingston 2006, 11); I will defend, even extend, the boldest of all these claims. The claim has two parts: firstly a claim about what kinds of uniquely cinematic (non-linguistic) means are used to contribute to philosophy, secondly a claim film can do historically innovative philosophy which is not dependent on being paraphrased into language (Livingston 2006, 11-12). This paper will go further, defending the position that there is unique philosophy which only cinema can do, which Smuts calls the ‘super-bold thesis’ (Smuts 2009, 410). Film will be defined under Wartenberg’s conception as simply a stroboscopic display which may include images of objects (Wartenberg 2007, 128131). I will compare the music video for Childish Gambino’s This is America (2018) to Gorgias of Leontini’s On Not-Being, or On Nature to illustrate the point. The video uses (mostly) cinematic means to make an uninteresting political argument, referencing facts and threading them into a conclusion, but its thesis is neither original nor strictly philosophical; this will be called his explicit argument. The video also enacts a criticism of film which is implied through strictly cinematic means, is historically innovative, and does not depend on paraphrase, which will be called his implicit argument. No paraphrase, conducted though language or film, can carry the argument as effectively because the video acts as its own proof.

Likewise Gorgias’ explicit argument is nothing more interesting than a claim that there is neither nothing nor something nor both, the world is unknowable, and words are treacherous (Dillon and Gergel 2003, 43-75), the innovative contribution to philosophy he makes (which cannot be effectively paraphrased with language) is an implied one, a criticism of language as a medium of philosophical discourse.

In order to prove the super-bold thesis, I must demonstrate that the music video fulfils the two criteria set out by Livingston, and everywhere overcomes the paraphrase problem in the strong sense of unparaphrasability required for the super-bold thesis; the video must do philosophy that only film can do, which cannot be linguistically paraphrased effectively (Smuts 2009, 410-411).

Following Smuts’ terminology the criteria will be named the ‘artistic criterion’, the use of exclusively cinematic means, and the ‘epistemic criterion’, the qualification that it be historically innovative (Smuts 2009, 409-411). It does not need to be elaborated that a music video fulfils Wartenberg’s definition of film as a stroboscopic display.

A brief outline of Gambino’s video is necessary. It has a three act structure carried through five scenes. In the foreground, the acts depict cycles of dance and happy music, punctuated by abrupt violence. A pattern of violence is established, but each time a return to dance and upbeat music promptly distracts the audience. In the background there are many scenes of commotion and rioting. The last act ends in a twilight-zone-like chase, foreshadowing its overdue act of violence.

The explicit argument, which is not the topic of this essay, is carried out by the cycle of cheeriness followed by violence established in the first two acts. The first killing is individual, the second is mass, and the twilight-zone ending fulfils the formula, supplying the upbeat third act with worse violence (a collective sort). The guns are treated as sacred, the lives are treated with disregard. The choir killing is obviously a reference to the racially motivated Dylann Roof shooting. The argument therefore references American gun politics and a specific hate crime, and predicts a worsening of racial violence in America’s future

72

through its formula. Language is used in the title card, and in the (minimal) lyrics. This is not the argument which fulfils our criteria, the implicit argument does. We have seen, however, that film is likely capable of argumentation.

Artistic Criterion Smuts and Carroll have identified an ambiguity in Livingston’s term ‘cinematic means’ (Carroll 2017; Smuts 2009, 409410). I will outline what ought to be considered cinematic under the artistic criterion.

Firstly, it should not be linguistic. I consider two things to be uniquely cinematic means: the basketball-gorilla effect (a limitation of human attention, famously demonstrated in a video where gorilla-costumed men walk onto a basketball court, unnoticed by the audience (Simons & Chabris 1999)), and the fact of film. By the fact of film I mean that the video is itself film; this fact is something cinematic about it. The importance of this will become evident after a discussion of Gorgias.

In Gorgias’ On Not-Being, or On Nature he explicitly argues that the world neither is, nor is not, nor is both; that if this were false then we couldn’t know the world anyway; and that language is incapable of communication (Woodruff 2006, 305, 308). The deeper argument he makes is merely implied (Cascardi 1983, 220-222). If I call words “treacherous”, my proposition discredits itself because I use words to utter it. This is a vicious cousin of our familiar film-directed paraphrase problem. Gorgias’s implicit argument is that words are too subjective to philosophise with (Cascardi 1983, 220-221). He avoids self-discrediting by demonstrating the limits of language by deducing, through linguistic means, an absurdity (that neither nothing, nor something, nor both exist). This is a subversive use of language, an anti-linguistics (Cascardi 1983, 222-223). This is uniquely linguistic; he might have commissioned a painting or sculpture to non-linguistically call words unreliable, but instead he turns

language against itself. This implicit argument has two strengths: it acts as its own proof against philosophising linguistically; and the fact that it is made using language brings the argument to those who need to hear it, in their favoured medium. The medium contributes to both argumentation and delivery. Gorgias’ argument it is a fatal, purely linguistic, cancer.

Gambino’s video is similar: explicitly a criticism of American politics, it’s implicitly an anti-film which subverts and disproves film’s viability as a medium of communication in modern political, popular and media culture (henceforth called the image culture). The explicit political argument can be separated from this more philosophically interesting, implicit one.

The use of the basketball-gorilla effect and the fact that it is film here come together to demonstrate film’s deceptiveness. Film is shown to be capable of presenting the fact of gun violence, but also of being so distracting that every act of violence presented manages to surprise the audience; film can inform but this is nullified by its power to distract – the video criticises its own capacities as film via the tension between its distractive capacity and its formulaic repetition of violence. The film actively proves the potency of the basketball-gorilla effect’s nullification of film as a medium of communication by inducing in the audience a distraction with foregrounded vacuous entertainment; viewers will require two or three viewings to recognise the backgrounded commotion.

It is important to note that the basketballgorilla effect as self-proof is not merely described but enacted by the video; the audience confirms the criticism of film by their own distraction.1 Both of these features are non-linguistic and uniquely cinematic, Gambino’s film is therefore criticising film (including itself) by using uniquely cinematic means against film as a medium.

This is called a ‘performative’ argument.

My thanks go to Mike Olson, my lecturer, for teaching me this.

73

The fact that Gambino’s explicit argument uses language might be considered, in the words of Carroll, to render the video less than movie-made philosophy (2017, 269270). The video might fail to meet the artistic criterion, but no; the fact of film preserves the implicit argument. If the explicit argument is considered to fail the artistic criterion, consider it fodder for the implicit argument to subvert in the style of Gorgias. The political argument is enacted throughout the video, but the video demands of the audience a Gorgias-esque choice: one must choose either to believe the languagetainted explicit argument is film-asargument, and that film is therefore at least capable of philosophy (‘at least capable’ because we might not consider political criticism to be philosophy, though both require argument); the other choice is to reject that the explicit argument is film-asargument (because it uses language), thereby affirming the linguistically untainted implicit argument. This pincer manoeuvre is achieved simply by Gambino’s video’s questioning, by its implicit argument and while being a film, its own validity as a means of communication, alongside all other film. This will be examined more below in the context of overcoming the paraphrase problem.

Epistemic Criterion The second challenge that Gambino’s video must meet in order to demonstrate the validity of the super-bold thesis is the epistemic criterion, which requires a historically innovative contribution to philosophy not dependent on paraphrase; moreover, the super-bold thesis demands it be unparaphrasable. Both Gorgias and Gambino do this. Gorgias’ problem was that the statement “Language is treacherous” is a form of the liar’s paradox, is self-nullifying. Gorgias’ argument was innovative in its solution to this problem through irony (Cascardi 1983, 222-223). His explicit theses about existence and communicability are tools to make the implicit point: language can be used to demonstrate the absurd, so one must

abandon reason or language. To place this argument in the form of language (rather than art, which was earlier explained to lack access to the right audience) was Gorgias’ innovation, the use of language to subvert itself (Cascardi 1983, 222-223). The selfproof of his implied argument – carried by the absurdity of the explicit conclusion – is something, moreover, which cannot be paraphrased linguistically. “Gorgias demonstrates in his implicit thesis that language is treacherous” has the same self-nullification as earlier; no paraphrase carries that force of self-proof, but rather carries selfcontradiction. His implicit argument uses linguistic means in an historically innovative way to confute a notion about a philosophically interesting topic, in a philosophically interesting way, which cannot be paraphrased effectively.

Gambino is the 21st century’s Gorgias.

His implicit argument against the viability of film as a mode of culturo-political communication is likewise historically innovative, and like Gorgias it cannot be paraphrased in a way that retains the force of proof. There is nothing new about the notion that image culture is politically deficient. This is not innovative. A popular image in counter-cultural music videos is the image of the sledgehammer smashing the television (for example; (Global Faction 2011; Rhymesayers Entertainment 2012)).

The message is “Don’t trust the screens!” but this obviously undermines its own credibility because it is presented on a screen (this mirrors Gorgias’ liar’s paradox problem). Gambino’s video’s selfencompassing criticism, elaborated earlier, like Gorgias’ absurd argument, demands thatit itself be discarded alongwith the rest of the medium; it dissolves the medium.

Stating that screens shouldn’t be trusted in words is commonplace, but this doesn’t destroy the image culture. Gambino’s video, however, is massively viral (234,161,628 views within a month (Donald Glover 2018)) and, like Gorgias’ literary argument, has injected itself into the heart of the image-culture whose medium of communi

74

cation it refutes. It too is like a cancer, it brings itself to the right audience the same way Gorgias’ argument brought itself to the philosophers in their own medium. The fact that it is film allows it to do this. The fact that it is an anti-film which self-criticises gets around the self-contradiction of the smashed TV, and is (to my knowledge) historically innovative, the film equivalent of the discovery of the anti-linguistic argument through irony.

The fact that it is an anti-video without self-contradiction (the first that I am aware of) means it carries within it the force of self-proof which cannot be paraphrased. If I paraphrased the argument in words I would not prove, through the experience of the interlocutor, that self-same image capacity for distraction which Gambino’s video induces and also criticises. If I were to paraphrase it in the medium of film, I would screen the sledge-hammer smashing the TV, which falls afoul of self-nullification in the same way the language paraphrase of Gorgias did. I also affirm Carroll’s argument to the effect that just because a viewer misses the arguments in Gambino’s video, doesn’t mean they are not there (Carroll 2017, 273). Similarly, though I can explain the implicit argument in words, I cannot paraphrase it more than weakly Conclusion In conclusion, Gambino’s video is a sort of two layered argument. The first layer, explicit, uses cinematic means, but also language, to make a political argument which is largely uninteresting to us. More interesting is the video’s subversion of film as a mode of communication in image culture through its self-criticism of the explicit argument through the implicit argument. This implicit argument uses two uniquely cinematic tools (the basketballgorilla effect, the fact that it is itself film) to criticise film as a mode of culturo-political communication. It criticises itself to overcome the problem of self-contradiction in anti-film that Gorgias overcame in anti-

linguistics. It cannot be paraphrased because it uses uniquely cinematic tools to actually distract the viewer from its more serious content thereby proving its own thesis.

Linguistic paraphrases cannot carry out this self-proof, and therefore lack the strength of the original. Film paraphrases fall afoul of the self-nullification problem. Like Gorgias, Gambino’s argument uses medium-specific means in an innovative way to argue philosophy in a philosophically interesting way, which cannot be paraphrased effectively. The super-bold thesis has its champion.

Bibliography Carroll, Noel. 2017. “Movie-Made Philoso phy.” In Film as Philosophy, by Bernd Herzogenrath, ed., 265-283.

Minneapolis: University of Minne sota Press.

Cascardi, Anthony J. 1983. “The Place of Language in Philosophy; or, The Uses of Rhetoric.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 16, no. 4, 217-227.

Dillon, John, and Tania Gergel. 2003.

“Gorgias of Leontini; On Not-Being, or On Nature” In The Greek Soph ists, byGorgias of Leontini;Dillon, John, and Tania Gergel, trans., 43-97. London: Penguin Books.

Donald Glover. 2018. “Childish Gambino This Is America (Official Video).”

YouTube. 5 May. Accessed June 4, 2018. https://youtu.be/ VYOjWnS4cMY. Genius. 2018. “This is America Lyrics.”

Genius. 1 June. Accessed June 1, 2018. https://genius.com/Childishgambino-this-is-america-lyrics.

Global Faction. 2011. “LOWKEY ft LUPE FIASCO, M1 (DEAD PREZ) & BLACK THE RIPPER - OBAMA NATION PART 2.” YouTube. 3 September. Accessed June 4, 2018.

75

https://youtu.be/bB-vYuYhdSE?t=4m16s.

Livingston, Paisley. 2006. “Theses on Cinema as Philosophy.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism64, no. 1, 11-18.

Rhymesayers Entertainment. 2012. “Brother Ali - Mourning in America (Official Video).” YouTube. 20 August.

Accessed June 4, 2018. https://youtu.be/dKHsGh-y8d8?t=4m20s.

Selective Attention Test. Directed by Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris.

Performed by (Performers not credited).1999. Film.

Smuts, Aaron. 2009. “Film as Philosophy: In Defense of a Bold Thesis.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criti cism 67, no. 4, 409-420.

Wartenberg, Thomas E. 2007. “Foreground ing the Background.” In Thinking on Screen, by Thomas E. Wartenberg, 117-132. New York: Routledge.

Woodruff, Paul. 2006. “Rhetoric and Relativism: Protagoras and Gor gias.” In The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy, by A. A. Long, ed., 290-310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

76

Glaucon Liam Johnson: BA Philosophy (in progress) Socrates and Glaucon are sitting at a tavern.

There is much music and revelry all around as men and women and children crowd in out of the cold to sup, for it is the season of feasting to the praise of Dionysus, son of Mighty Zeus, the god of wine and good spirits. There before the two is a pretty woman dancing, and Agoras the flautist who is playing a festive tune.

Socrates: Tell me, O Glaucon, of your travels abroad, whence you went into the high country and sang without end with the local men about the exploits of mighty Achilles, son of Peleus, king of the Myrmidons and of blessed Helen whose beauty no worthy suitor could but avail himself of. O that you might do me a rendition of your best tune such that I might repose and evince in my own mind the revelry had there. Alas, I was from memory elsewhere occupied.

Glaucon: But Socrates, do you not remember that in that day you met me on the dock as that morning I was due to head out for my expedition, though you were looking much worse for wear, having made the dock your bed, evidently having drunk much wine, with four or five rats in your beard whom I had shooed away for the sake of your dignity and your name?

Socrates: Aye, I recall. And what dogged companions they were, whose pretenses matched the quality of their odour. I found not a fool among them, for they knew nothing and knew as much.

Glaucon: However did you glean this notion from dumb animals?

Socrates: So it would seem.

Glaucon: In any case, what good could it possibly do to avail a one such as yourself, Socrates, of my songs, given you, a vagrant and a bum— Socrates: An ascetic and a midwife!

Glaucon:—should care even a jot for song and dance, or could recognise for himself beauty in the world, if he cannot even cultivate beauty in his own life, whether by way of gentle birth, for your face — you will permit me to say, my friend — is not easy on the eyes, and to my mind and to the mind of common wisdom bespeaks equally of a roughness of soul, nor, it can herein be evidenced, by a respectable manner of life and politic, wherein you commonly become drunk and disorderly, and often find your bed in the street, and wherein not even your beard is free of the fleas and vermin of the streets. How, then, can an impressionable prospective student count on such a one as you being in any wise a good and faithful witness to beauty as it is revealed to us by the good gods, such that he might be taught with power and veracity the truth of these mysteries? For is it not spoken of by those Christians that a man's worth is made known by his fruits and that by them and by them only we shall know him?

Socrates: I am inclined to agree.

Glaucon: Very well.

Socrates: Though I must apologise, Glaucon, for I know not of whom it is you speak.

Socrates: I inferred it from their silence.

Glaucon: Oh, I must be too early. Let us put it out of mind for the time being.

Glaucon: The rodents sought common company in you.

Socrates: Very well. You are quite right, my man, in asserting that I am not pretty,

78

for my nose is snubbed and my eyes are projected. Though I must protest, albeit in slightly terser terms than you are wont to, that for that, and for my tendency toward drunkenness and debauchery, as you put it, though I have never yet been known to be drunk, I am somehow disqualified from the business of discerning true beauty, whether in song or dance, or in creation. So let it be that to this end I will now prosecute you.

Glaucon: I suppose this is not implausible.

Go on.

Glaucon: Prosecute away.

Socrates: Then we do well to isolate for ourselves only those facets of existence that exist among all cultures at all times. It seems self evident to me that the laws of mathematics which themselves determine in like terms the laws of nature that pervade all things and are thus a shared if implicit experience of all men. On this count we may isolate proportionality as the first among these facets, as for a face to be qualified as having beauty it must be symmetrical, for the deformed are to our eyes an unseemly lot, and for that reason conceal their faces with makeup so as to reshape the contours thereof.

Socrates: Though firstly it would do us well to ask what beauty is — whether in manufacturing or in creation — such that I might better address your vain concern.

Glaucon: Nay, Socrates! We are but a little way in and you are by a sleight of hand shirking the question.

Socrates: Stay, Glaucon. I am merely clarifying it such that I might answer you more directly, and by my words demonstrate to you the superfluousness of your charge Glaucon: Then, I beseech you, commence!

Socrates: Let us first, by manner of introduction, derive for ourselves some categories of aesthetic perfection such that in so doing we might isolate perfection as a idea.

Let us take for example a sculpture of a great king which, on account of the competence of the sculptor, is displayed in a town square and is admired by all who walk past as a work of art, and of great aesthetic merit.

Glaucon: Yes. Socrates: Let us assume that this town is a byway for many merchants hailing from many diverse cities whose aesthetic sensibilities are primed to find this or that thing beautiful in its kind and who in this connection nevertheless give great consideration to this sculpture and bless it on account of its grandeur.

Socrates: We must from this observation thence conclude that beauty — when and if it is recognised — is recognised on the such same basis everywhere and at all times.

Glaucon: For the time being I will concede as much

Glaucon: Quite so Socrates: In this sense we might add harmony to the ranks of beautiful-making properties, as likewise, in music, say, it would be distasteful for Agoras the flautist, whose songs are nimbly contrived, and who is now providing for the people a wholesome jig, to harp on too much on one note such that the composition grows tedious and grates on the nerves. To this end a composer should focus his attention on producing in his piece a right proportionality of notes, harping not too long or too little on any one.

Glaucon: We are in agreement there.

Socrate: Very well. The third facet, after proportionality and harmony, is intelligibility; though it could be induced from the former two that the third follows naturally and is without need of further elaboration.

79

Glaucon: Quite right.

Socrate: Thence we must consider it in its completeness; that, indeed, it contains all of the aforementioned properties, and lacks not any of them in any degree.

Glaucon: Well enough.

Socrate: And as the apogee of all these, once the thing itself is apprehended and appreciated in all its beauty, there must in the onlooker be induced a sense of awe, nay, of sublimity, such that he is enraptured in the piece and cannot but behold it, whether in quietude or with vocal praise, and stand agasp. For this — a glimpse of the holy and the wonderful, of the Good — is the chief end toward which art is directed.

Glaucon: Hold now, Socrates!

Socrates: My good man, what is the matter?

Glaucon: It is of you quite characteristic to be given an inch with which to weave a nimble and compelling argument and then in a moment to dash the argument on the rocks of your vain superstitions! For to determine the chief end of art as being the seeking out of the Good — whatever is this toward which we are in your mind oriented — is to assume too much. For I have a plentitude of counterexamples toward which I can direct you and enfeeble your stiffnecked arrogance! For it is just as well for one to apprehend in art, in that which behoves our admiration, right proportionality, harmony, intelligibility and completeness, even — as you said — a sort of sublimity, though I would dispute the choice of words. Nevertheless, cannot one — and I have been one — find beauty in some such a way in that which to all eyes is disproportionate and to all ears is disharmonious?

Socrates: I will grant you that provisionally.

Glaucon: Indeed. For as a young tike my

father would haul me aboard his boat and we would sail for what felt like many days to the east, to the lands of the Israelites, and there we would dock and, ye, trek further still, deep into the Arabian wilderness, and thereat would set camp: out there in the Judean countryside where I saw not a single scrubby plant grow, nor a hint of any other life, be it plant or animal. For all intents and purposes this harsh and hostile countryside bore no resemblance to the picture you painted just now of the beautiful; for in the land there was no proportion of green to brown, no lakes or even oases such that the dreary landscape might be broken up and complemented by watery blues and greens of the southern occident. The proportionality of the landscape was not in any way suited to the traditional papyrus treatment of Delphi or the Italian Alps— Socrates: True enough Glaucon: —and yet, in the night — with my child's eyes, and safe in the arms of my father — I would survey the landscape under the soft white light of the moon, and a feeling of wonderment would wash over me such as I cannot now describe and yet cannot in good intellectual conscience attribute to some ethereal encounter with the Good, as you dubbed it.

Socrates: I see.

Glaucon: What do you say to that?

Socrates: I find no fault in my reasoning whatever.

Glaucon: And how is that?

At just that moment Demonos the Areopagite comes stumbling into the tavern carrying aloft his shoulder a large keg and two prostitutes in tow. Swaying back and forth he drops the keg by the doorway and rushes in to join the revelry. The children, now frightened, run back to their mothers and Agoras and the dancing woman stop their performance abruptly. Demonos

80

continues to dance clumsily though no music plays.

Unperturbed, Socrates resumes, gesturing toward the disruptive fool.

Socrates: Behold now you, Glaucon, the disorder of the passions! For like a drunkard the man, who in obliviousness to what is beautiful, whether due to intoxication or to mere ignorance, dulls his capacity for rational thought, and thence cannot distinguish for himself what is proportionate, harmonious or intelligible, any more than he can do a simple sum!

Glaucon: But surely, Socrates, you do not compare that sorry sight — the shameless debauchery of Demonos — to the simple musing of a child! To do so would surely be a perverse confusion.

Socrates: Aye, but that is precisely my point: for to the disordered mind what is beautiful is hardly discernible and what is wicked is to their mind elegant and seductive. And ye, in this respect, the mind of a child — — assuming no god-like precociousness — is a prime example of such disorderliness. For a child, all is beautiful and wise and good, and as such they must be kept a close watch on so that they do not fall into trouble. Likewise, a youth or a young man must be counselled by one who is older and wiser than himself, who has discerned the byways of wisdom and the trappings of folly, such that he might be instructed in such things as right moral conduct, which comes under the aspect of an awareness of the beautiful.

Glaucon: But Socrates, forgive my pugnacity, though I do believe you are in error.

Socrates: Do elaborate, good Glaucon.

Glaucon: Does not the realm of reason, order and music — those we call noble pursuits — belong to light-footed Apollo?

Socrates: Yes.

Glaucon: And are we not sitting in a tavern, listening to music, taking in the spectacle of the mass in their comings and goings, celebrating the feast of Dionysus — who himself is the god of passions, of revelry and dance, as well as wine?

Socrates: It is true Glaucon: Then you would surmise that this occasion, far from being a time for high spirits, ought instead be — to the learned mind — a time of lament?

Socrates: Wherefore do you induce that?

Glaucon: Why, beloved Socrates, from your very own mouth came the words ‘intoxication dulls man's capacity for rational thought’! For out of this pronouncement is it not sensible to induce that to the degree that man is imbibed, to that degree also that he is not in control of his faculties, and thus irrational, and to that degree is he not likewise shut off from an experience of beauty?

Socrates: I cannot fault your reasoning.

Glaucon: Then you are a hypocrite!

Socrates: I do not follow you.

Glaucon: For you yourself with many witnesses are partaking in drink, and you yourself, old man, are partaking now also in celebration of the cult of Dionysus wherein you implicitly condone the drunken revelry of others by association.

Socrates: To be amidst decadence in the flesh is not to partake in it, nor less to condone it, any more than to be amongst gravestones is to condone the act of murder.

Glaucon: Aye, true enough, though to their credit the masses do not put up a show of disdain where you, teacher, do, and in so doing betray your rough nature, of which your ugliness is reflective.

81

Socrates: You are playing a game of words, Glaucon. But how now, there is yet a distinction to be made that has heretofore eluded us.

such a device betrays not only a laziness in one’s own reasoning, which is demonic and to be shunned, but is also sodden through with an alacrity toward deception.

Glaucon: And what is that?

Socrates: Blessed Glaucon, this was surely not my intention!

Socrates: For a half hour now we have been waxing lyrical about what is beauty and yet have in our conceitedness failed to address the distinction between what is the fundament of beauty and what is the fundament of art. For — as you can scarce contest, Glaucon — this is a thing of difference.

Glaucon: There is beauty in each.

Socrates: That there is. And yet, what is it we mean when we call a thing a work of art? Do we mean simply that it is beautiful?

In which case must we then pronounce every evergreen, every moonlit lake, every beautiful boy’s face, a ‘work of art’?

Glaucon: No. Socrates: Thus, it seems to me that to call a thing a work of art is to call it firstly, beautiful — having right proportionality, harmony, and all the rest — and secondly, that it has been crafted by a skilled artist or artisan. Whereas to call the moonlit lake or the beautiful boy ‘beautiful’ is to say that by the providence of the gods above or by chance alone this light has shone becomingly on this body of water, and at such an angle that it appears radiant to my eyes, much as in the way a well cut diamond shines when held up to the sun.

Glaucon: So it would seem that nature is only beautiful insofar as it reflects some perfect aspect of a craft.

Socrates: Or reflects in it the aspects of beauty we have enumerated afore.

Glaucon: Right you are. But I must interrupt this spiel for a moment to protest that I will not accept any explanation that pertains to intervention by some god or other, for

Glaucon: And yet it is implied in your train of thinking, and is in fact presumed, that there in fact exists such proportionality and order — and to presume on nature bides not well for the presuming party. Instead, I propose to you that there exists on its own no order in nature. This theory is buttressed by the way in which many things are ill-shapen, many lakes not hit with the light of the moon, many children ill-formed and sickly. If such an Architect exists, surely beauty is by no means his primary concern, for he has created only some things beautiful, and all else, like those wretched newborns of Sparta left on the hillside to die of exposure, to be as chaff, thrown to the wind and better forgotten of time than lamented.

Socrates: You raise an interesting point, Glaucon.

Glaucon: Indeed, any sound thinker must find it a compelling rebuttal.

Socrates: But why did you as a young tike find such sublime loveliness in the wilderness east of Judea, given the terrain there is nothing like idyllic Italy?

Glaucon: This constitutes the reflex of my thought. For the other day at the marketplace I was surveying the wares, and I beheld a fascinating sight: two lovers in a loving, public embrace. My repulsion at such an unsanctimonious display of passion was overpowered by my curiosity.

Socrates: Are you telling me that you are a voyeur now, Glaucon?

Glaucon: Good heavens, no! I am only a voyeur for the truth.

82

Socrates: I have known many a voyeur to say much the same.

Glaucon: At any rate, I saw that this pair was none other than Anaximenes the butcher, and Monica, daughter of Parachles.

Anaximenes, it is well known, though not as unsightly as yourself, Socrates— Socrates: Granted.

Glaucon: —is certainly no prince. For he is well on almost bald, with many missing teeth, a over-dark complexion and more often than not smells badly of brine and sweat. And Monica, daughter of Parachles, is, among all of Athens’ maiden, much to be admired and sighed over. For her bright green eyes are a marvellous inheritance from her mother, and her bold red hair bespeaks beauty as fine and yet robust as a Persian bow made of the finest cedars of Lebanon.

Socrates: It is true that they are an odd match, though I fail to see how this relates.

Glaucon: Well as it happens, after they had got sick of kissing each other, I made toward them to investigate in a covert, roundabout way, what it was that brought them together. And so I beckoned a greeting to the two, made my introductions — for I had met neither of them formally — and made small talk, before asking for how long they had been going along together, and how it is they had met. Anaximenes, as could be expected of a common tradesman, commented forthrightly on her beauty and, as this was to be expected, I laboured not long with him. Though when asked the same, Monica blinked shyly and grinned, saying that when she watched the way he played with the children who came into his store while he was butchering, and did not chase them away with a whip as most merchants are wont to do, she was overcome with affection, for she saw in him in that moment a gentle spirit and, most importantly, the attitude of one not cowed by responsibilities to humour child, and not to

child, and not to chide them too much, and so, his odours and his comely business prospects aside, she decided to become engaged to him.

Socrates: Women are indeed a mysterious breed, rent from man at the beginning of the age it is obvious why the poets say they developed their own senses of things.

Glaucon: There is most definitely an implacable irrationality about her decision, though that fails to obtain to my point; that is, there is, among lovers especially, a spontaneity and an impulsiveness that drives them away from good sense, and leads them to find beauty in the strangest places.

Socrates: As I said, to find beauty in unbeautiful things is to be either in a state of drunkenness or of stupidity. In the case of lovers, I surmise, it is both.

Glaucon:I do not believe such an answer is forthcoming. For when I looked at the both of them, firstly in there lusty embrace, and then in the tender way in which one regarded the other as they spoke, I could not place a finger on the thing I saw — and to call it beauty, however irresponsible, is to me not out of place.

Socrates: Then you are deceived.

Glaucon: It may be so Socrates: But in the right sense! For, don’t you see, Glaucon, that you were privy then to a glimpse of the eternal. For in the temporal realm, the realm of sense experience, capable therein of distinguishing proportion and perfections in things, and in the realm of the material, wherein coin and purse are the order of the day, and to be in debt is to be in despair and to be destitute is to envy the dead, you see these things as foolish — and rightly so! For, if it is as Democritus and the other poets believe, that all is matter and that what constitutes matter is no eternal essence but rather atoms, forever in flux and always in a state

83

of becoming, then it is a thing of insanity not to bathe obsessively, and to coat your body in olive oil, and to seek after money such that you might afford purple garments and wear them around the forum, like a peacock advertising for a mate. If this is the case, dear Glaucon, then it falls to you to revile the poor, or else merely to pity them as a casualty of the fates, and to go about your business in the hopes of living out your many days in a beautiful house, with a wife or many wives, and many children to attend to you, whom will mourn you well on the day of your death, and remember you down through the generations evermore.

Socrates: Though such a beauty would transcend the categories for beauty that we have herein laid out.

Glaucon: That would indeed be the case.

Glaucon: Indeed. It would be a sorry thing then if we were to philosophise as such in honour of the blessed Apollo, whose bow is always taught, and not then to worship Dionysus with a visit to our friend the Oracle at Delphi.

Socrates: But it is a credit to you, my man, that you acknowledge to yourself the lack in the world — the sickness, the disease, the injustice — and have seen in the love of two mismatched lovers, and in the barren majesty of the Judean countryside, that love which springs eternal, and that beauty which never spoils or fades. For any such revelation, that all that is is not only and singularly good, and that there is indeed a disjuncture between our manifold desires and our manifold poverties, induces in one an orientation toward the eternal, and toward the Good.

Glaucon: Though that would mean that reason had led us astray, for this is where we have arrived.

Socrates: Then we must respect the mystery and speak nothing positive of it, for whereof nothing can be said, thereof one must remain silent. And to meditate on a mystery seems to me an enormous task about which I am not in a drunken enough state to speculate.

Socrates: Indeed. For all this talk of beauty and love has made my head swim. What I am now in need of is a revelation from the gods, confirming or disconfirming all our many words.

Glaucon: I suppose I am the more cynical of the two of us, my friend.

Socrates: That is not always a malady.

Glaucon: True enough. So how then must we live, the two of us, knowing what we now know? Does it fall on us, then, to love all those who come along our way, knowing as we do, the much hidden majesty in, or perhaps prior to, their being? And to love them besides and — perhaps, even in spite of — our many differences? That the eternal — if it exists — behoves us to see all men as things of beauty, in their own ways, and in many other ways which the mind cannot reason nor the soul fathom.

84 85

Existential Poetry Alexander McDonald, BA Philosophy MQ, Master of Research Philosophy (in progress) Existential Paragraph

Owed to Sartre

It is necessary to reconcile the past in order to provide a foundation sufficient for the future. The present is but the event horizon of a continuum of existence. The project and situation are the ebb and flow of this cycle. Time cascades through a keyhole. We observe, from either side, and objectify ourselves. Ambition rides the beast of history. Tomorrow sleeps among the Dragonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eggs.

There comes a bracketing [ ]â&#x20AC;Ś Void for nihilation Blankness is engendered As a necessary condition The death of self and of history Sufficient fuel for catalyst Combust into the future

Owed to Camus The irrational desert will desiccate any mind that inhabits it, a drowsy delirium will overcome the nomad that enters unprepared.

[ ]ness Breaker of chains, of bonds Enemy of anchors and counter-weights Bright nothingness illuminates What remains of the curve

One must find nourishment among the dunes of discombobulation, if necessary, lose sleep so to drench oneself in the ridiculous mist of dawn.

The barren wasteland of absurdity will evaporate any absolute meaning, only in faithful ambiguity can obscure foliage thrive through hopeless drought.

Death befalls the obvious beneath the indifferent daylight of the desert, irreconcilable nostalgia will eventually exhaust the body toward oblivion.

85

85