Southampton Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy (Issue 2, 2017)

SOUTHAMPTON JOURNAL OF

UNDERGRADUATE PHILOSOPHY ISSUE 2

Editors: Josef Nickerson & Bruno Russell

2017

nklin (Editor) Bruno Russell (Editor)

2016

Southampton Journal of Undergraduate Philosophy

Edition 2, 2017 Journal Editors: Bruno Russell and Josef Nickerson

All material contained in this Journal is copyright its authors and cannot be reproduced without their permission.

Contents Academic President’s Foreword ............................................................................................................. 3

Winner of the Star Paper Award 2017: ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’: Adorno’s post-Nazi perspective on Philosophy Miles Eades ............................................................................................................................................. 4

The Reciprocity Requirement of Permissible Sexual Action: A Critique of Lars Ericsson’s Defense of Prostitution Bruno Russell ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Has Nietzsche Misled Us? Fraser Launchbury………………………………………………………………………… .................................................... 19

A Response to Lichtenberg’s ‘New Harms’: Neglecting ‘Aggregative Helps’ Tegan Easterbrook ................................................................................................................................ 25

Are there genuine pragmatic reasons for belief?

Simran Matharu .................................................................................................................................... 29

Matter as the Substratum Supporting Extension: Locke and Hume Revisited Shaun Moore ......................................................................................................................................... 37

‘Uphill and Downhill Lives’: Can the Shape of A Life Determine its Value?

Brunna Pimentel.................................................................................................................................... 42

‘Hume’s Descriptive Solution: Solving the Aesthetic Problem of Taste?’

Simeon Carter........................................................................................................................................ 46

Academic President’s Foreword It seems weird that this message will be the last thing I write as Academic President for Philosophy at Southampton! I have had an incredible two years in the role, which have been filled with so many amazing memories. I have got to work with so many incredible people, and I must thank all the staff and students for making my time as Academic President so enriched. Specific thanks, though, to Jonathan Way who, as DOP, helped me endlessly throughout my two years. Without his eagerness to work with me, I could never have helped make the improvements we did.

But now, back to the journal. Last year’s edition was so successful and I was so glad to see such a positive uptake again this year, with over 20 papers submitted! The eight that find themselves in this journal are the best of the best! Thank you to everyone that submitted!

Congratulations must go to all our authors and specifically to Miles Eades who took the first ever award for star article, introduced this year to recognize the most impressive paper submitted to us. The range of topics this year go from Hume’s paradox of taste in aesthetics, metaphysical examinations of Locke and ethical approaches towards prostitution and the global poor. Hopefully there is something for everyone to sink their teeth in to it.

Until next time,

Bruno Russell Philosophy Academic President 2016-17 and Journal Editor

WINNER OF THE STAR PAPER AWARD 2017 ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’: Adorno’s post-Nazi perspective on Philosophy Miles Eades Interpretation of one of German literature’s most oft quoted dictums,1 ‘nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch’ (to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric), 2 has been subject to decades of superficial exegesis.3 Since entering philosophical discourse by means of Frankfurt philosopher Theodor W. Adorno’s essay, Cultural Criticism and Society (1951), the German’s dictum has been deemed frequently as an axiomatic Darstellungsverbort on poems about Auschwitz.4 In this essay, I provide a proper, non-literal, interpretation of Adorno’s dictum; I then explain how, in the context of this non-literal interpretation, Adorno’s conceptualization of philosophy after Auschwitz offers humanity an escape from barbarism.

That eminent thinkers Ramin Jahanbegloo, Paul Celan and George Steiner have, amongst many others,5

interpreted Adorno’s dictum as an injunction against poetry testifies to a

propensity for misreading: “…Adorno once asserted that it was not possible to write poetry after Auschwitz”,6 claims Jahanbegloo; literature must reject his verdict”,7 argues Steiner; “obviously for [Adorno’s] remark about the impossibility of poetry after the Holocaust, I would answer with impossibility of not having a poetry after the Holocaust”,8 reasons Celan.

To properly contextualise Adorno’s words and to realise their relevance to philosophy after Auschwitz, one must begin with the Frankfurt philosopher’s revocation of the Western legacy of

1

Charlotte Ryland, 'Re-Membering Adorno: Political and Cultural Agendas in the Debate about PostHolocaust Art', German Life and Letters, ii, 62 (2009), 140–156 (p. 140).

2 Stephen Brockmann, German Literary Culture at the Zero Hour (Columbia, SC: Boydell & Brewer, 2009), p.141.

3 Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 1.

4 Howard Caygil, 'Lyric Poetry Before Auschwitz', in Adorno and Literature, ed. by David Cunningham and Nigel Mapp (Bodmin: MPG Books Ltd, 2006), pp. 69–83 (p. 69).

5 Andrés Nader, Traumatic verses: On Poetry in German from the Concentration Camps, 1933-1945 (Columbia, SC: Boydell & Brewer, 2010), p. 36.

6 Ramin Jahanbegloo, 'Thinking Culture After Auschwitz', in Wounds of possibility: Essays on George Steiner, ed. by Ricardo Gil Soeiro (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp.

301–313 (p. 301).

7 Alex Danchev, On Art and War and Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 126.

8 Detlev Claussen, Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, trans. by Rodney Livingstone, ed. by Detlev Claussen (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008) (p. 328).

positivity.9 The Western legacy of positivity is Adorno’s ironical sobriquet for the inner most substance of traditional philosophy: the time honoured philosophy of history as theodicy, as endorsed by G.W.F. Hegel.10 Hegel assessed history as a “slaughter bench”11 on which “the happiness of peoples, the wisdom of states, and the virtue of individuals [are] sacrificed”. 12 These sacrifices are justified by the ultimate end of freedom that humanity will achieve via the unfolding of a teleological history. Hegel’s teleological history resolves to subsume and absorb individuals as a means of realising its end goal of freedom. This disregard for individuals is affiliated with a disregard for suffering, since it becomes a paltry instrument in the achievement of freedom’s end.

Just as the earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of Leibniz’s optimistic theodicy, 13 Auschwitz, as the modern synecdoche for man’s capacity for moral evil and barbarism, cured Adorno of any positive identification of the telos of history:14 “After Auschwitz, our feelings resist any claim of the positivity of existence as sanctimonious, of wronging the victims”. 15

In

Commitment (1962), Adorno quotes a character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s Mort sans sepulture: “Does it still make sense to go on living, while there are people who beat others till the bones in their bodies are broken?”16 Indeed, how could the Western legacy of positivity reconcile itself with the monstrous human moral condition responsible for the “Final Solution”? In Adorno’s opinion, it could not; western culture had failed fundamentally to provide sufficient moral and cultural resistance to the Holocaust,17 of which Auschwitz was irrefutable proof. Auschwitz is “the rock on which all dialectical theodicies – with their promises of rationality, continuity and reason – are shattered”.18

9

Langer, p. 1.

Theodor W. Adorno‘The Melancholy Science’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 87-83 (p.82).

11 Glenn Alexander A. Magee, The Hegel dictionary (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), p. 218.

12 Allen W. Wood, Hegel’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 230.

13 Michael J. Murray and Sean Greenberg, 'Leibniz on the problem of evil', in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/> [accessed 25 February 2017].

14 Ross Wolfe, Adorno’s Critique of Hegel’s Theodical Philosophy of History in Negative Dialectics (The Charnel-House, 2008), <https://thecharnelhouse.org/2008/06/20/adornos-critique-of-hegels-philosophyof-history-in-negative-dialectics/#_ftn3> [accessed 28 February 2017].

15 Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Meditations on Metaphysics After Auschwitz’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 79-84 (p. 85).

16 Langer, p. 1.

17 Elaine Martin, ‘The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs’, in German and European Poetics After the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity, ed. by Gert Hoffman (Rochester: NY, 2011), 19-34 (p. 23).

18 Dana Villa, Public Freedom (Ney Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 217.

10

Adorno’s dictum applies not just to poetry; it is a synecdoche for culture as a whole. 19 Adorno understands culture and philosophy as being indistinguishably barbaric purely as a result of their existence in a world post-Auschwitz.20 Therefore, argues Adorno, anyone who pleads for the preservation of the “radically guilty”21 culture which failed to repel the Holocaust becomes its collaborator.22 This does not mean that Adorno wishes to silence poets, artists and philosophers in the name of “that which happened”, as articulated by Primo Levi. 23 On the contrary, Adorno considers culture and philosophy as necessary for humankind to address the new categorical imperative imposed on us by Hitler: “to arrange [our] thinking and conduct, so that Auschwitz never repeats itself”.24 The sole adequate praxis following Auschwitz is to “work our way out of barbarism”,25 to provide escape routes from the ontologically aporetic condition26 imposed on us by our “mere survival”.27 Ex-Auschwitz inmate and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Elie Wiesel, remarked that “Auschwitz negates all systems, destroys all doctrines.’’28 Wiesel provides an instructive assessment of Adorno’s conceptualisation of philosophy after Auschwitz. Adorno believes that western culture and philosophy must acknowledge their own finitude; they must use new methods to repair the collapse of the traditionally dialectical relationship between themselves and barbarism. Time honoured aesthetic values, such as harmony and consonance must be rejected, for they aim at reconciling tension:29 Art and philosophy are “true to the extent to which [they are] discordant and antagonistic in [their] language and in [their] whole essence…provided that [they]

19

Rolf Teidemann, Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. xiii.

20 Robert Fine, ‘Arendt and the Final Solution’, in Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by Maria Pia Lara (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 131-153 (p. 144).

21 Gerhard Schweppenhauser, Theodor W. Adorno: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), p. 144.

22 Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics (London: Routledge, 1973), p. 336-337.

23 Ulrich Baer, Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), p. 199.

24 Martin Shuster, Autonomy After Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity (Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 2014), p. 71.

25 Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchphrases (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 268.

26 Anna-Verena Nosthoff, 'Art after Auschwitz: Responding to an Infinite Demand: Gustav Metzger’s Works as Responses to Theodor W. Adorno’s ‘New Categorical Imperative’', Cultural Politics an International Journal, iii, 10 (2014), 300–319 (p. 2.).

27 Adorno (2000), p. 87.

28 Naomi Mandel, Against the Unspeakable: Complicity, the Holocaust and Slavery in America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006), p. 31.

29 Patrick John Pritchett, 'Writing the Disasters: The Messianic Turn in Postwar American Poetry', University of Colorado at Boulder: English Graduate These and Dissertations, xii (2011), 1–203

synthesize… those diremptions, thus making them determinate in their irreconcilability”.30 Adorno believes that philosophy after Auschwitz is possible because “philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, lives on because the moment to realize it was missed”.31 Here, Adorno launches one of his central convictions; living not only means living with the “drastic guilt”32 of being spared, it means paying a debt to the squandered opportunities of the past. As Adorno explains in Negative Dialectics (1966), for this debt to be acknowledged, philosophy must “ruthlessly criticize itself”; “it must measure itself by its distance from the continuity of the familiar”.33 Adorno provides such a measurement by making reference to Marx, who claimed in his Theses on Feuerbach that “philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it”.34 Adorno compares this notion with an assessment of the actual course of history: he discerns that philosophers failed to influence the world for the better. Indeed, enlightenment notions of sagaciousness, independence and freedom culminated in the barbarousness of the Holocaust. The result of philosophy’s failings mean that we must reconsider the role that philosophy should and can play in a world of new antinomial oppositions.

Adorno’s conceptualisation of philosophy after Auschwitz addresses his guilt at being spared.

Crucial to this is the idea of memorialization, something Adorno’s philosophy shares with modern artworks, such as Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw, and Beckett’s The Unnamable, works grasped via their own philosophical and historical impossibility.35 If philosophy after Auschwitz is still possible, it can only be a philosophy that holds in all of its propositions the memories of anguish in the death camps. “It will be a philosophy”, as Rolf Tiedemann explains, “that recalls not the shadow of the tall plane trees on the banks of the Ilissos, like Plato’s Phaedrus, but the ‘shadow of the scar up in the air’ of which Paul Celan speaks”.36 Adorno’s guilt is at some level related to that which he believes to have inherited from philosophy: “a sense of shame bids philosophy… that its history shows amazingly few

30

Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: A&C Black, 1997), p. 241.

Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Negative Dialectics’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 54-78 (p. 55).

32 Adorno, ed. by O’Connor, p. 87.

33 Adorno (1973), p. 3.

34 Etienne Balilibar, Philosophy of Marx (New York City: Verso, 1995), p. 17.

35 Theodor W. Adorno, History and Freedom: Lectures 1964-1965, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), p. 4.

36 Adorno, ed. by Tiedemann, p. 4.

31

indications of the sufferings of humankind”.37 In this sense, Adorno criticises western philosophy’s attempts to justify anguish and torture as serving a greater purpose: “The smallest trace of senseless suffering in the empirical world… belies all the identitarian philosophy that would talk us out of that suffering… Like the immanence of fate, the world spirit drips with suffering and fallibility”.38 On Adorno’s view, philosophy must reject Hegelian optimism in favour of Schopenhauerian pessimism. This acceptance, however should not betray itself as the actual negativity of existence; as Adorno reminds us “the need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth”.39 Adorno views Beckett’s Endgame as exemplary post-Auschwitz literature.40 Indeed, Adorno’s approach to the play is based entirely on his understanding of history.41 Adorno understands the work as reflecting upon configurations of control that have been present throughout history, and that culminated in the barbarism of Auschwitz. Endgame negates the chthonic and tragic poetic traditions of purpose and meaning. In full awareness of the importance of tragedy for the philosophical history of Hegel, an arena in which humankind’s suffering is the result of fate, Adorno rejects any implication that catharsis could be applied to Auschwitz. Adorno promotes a nihilism that will not fall into positivity as a result of turning the victims of senseless violence into martyrs for a noble, higher purpose. To do so would fail to memorialize the true horror of western civilization’s degeneration.

In regards to Adorno’s statement “philosophy, that once seemed obsolete”, it can be argued that it is only because the philosophy of which Adorno speaks was not realised that its actualization is yet to come. That it once existed without becoming an actuality means that it still remains to be thought, both as a failure and a promise.42 Philosophy after Auschwitz cannot forget the violence and sadism of the camps; nor can it propose that these sufferings are justified by a higher purpose. The only hope after Auschwitz is to acknowledge the world in its hopeless entirety, and to insist that it change. This is communicative of Adorno’s formation of negative dialectics: “[it] lies in the definition of negative dialectics that it will not come to rest in itself, as if

37

Adorno (1973), p. 153.

Ibid, p. 361.

39 Jonathan Arac, Postmodernism and Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987), p.

107.

40 Peter E. Gordan, Adorno and Existence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 108.

41 Espen Hammer, Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 133.

42 Gerhard Richter, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Ivory Tower? A Conversation with Theodor W. Adorno’, Monatshefte, 94, 1 (2002), 10-23 (p. 10).

38

it were total. This is its form of hope”.43 Adorno believes that this form of hope can enable humanity to discover escape routes from barbarism, the discovery of which will ensure that Hitler’s new categorical imperative, that Auschwitz never repeat itself, is addressed. I am compelled, therefore, on the basis of the Adornian literature referenced in this essay, to conclude that philosophy after is Auschwitz is not barbaric.

Bibliography Adorno, Theodor W., Negative Dialectics (London: Routledge, 1973) Adorno, Theodor, W., ‘Negative Dialectics’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), pp. 54-78 Adorno, Theodor, W., Aesthetic Theory (London: A&C Black, 1997) Adorno, Theodor, W., Critical Models: Interventions and Catchphrases (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2012) Adorno, Theodor, W., History and Freedom: Lectures 1964-1965, ed. by Rolf Tiedemann (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014) Adorno, Theodor, W.,‘The Melancholy Science’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 87-83 Adorno, Theodor, W., ‘Meditations on Metaphysics After Auschwitz’, in The Adorno Reader, ed. by Brian O’Connor (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), pp. 79-84 Alexander, Glenn and Magee, A., The Hegel dictionary (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010) Arac, Jonathan, Postmodernism and Politics (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987) Balilibar, Etienne, Philosophy of Marx (New York City: Verso, 1995) Brockmann, Stephen, German literary culture at the zero hour (Columbia, SC: Boydell & Brewer, 2009) Caygil, Howard, 'Lyric Poetry Before Auschwitz', in Adorno and Literature, ed. by David Cunningham and Nigel Mapp (Bodmin: MPG Books Ltd, 2006), pp. 69–83 Claussen, Detlev, Theodor W. Adorno: One Last Genius, trans. by Rodney Livingstone, ed. by Detlev Claussen (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008) Danchev, Alex, On Art and War and Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009) Gordon Peter, E., Adorno and Existence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006)

43

Adorno (1973), p. 406.

Greenberg, Sean and Murray, Michael, J., and Sean 'Leibniz on the problem of evil', in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz-evil/> Hammer, Espen, Adorno’s Modernism: Art, Experience, and Catastrophe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Jahanbegloo, Ramin, 'Thinking Culture After Auschwitz', in Wounds of possibility: Essays on George Steiner, ed. by Ricardo Gil Soeiro (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp. 301–313 Langer, Lawrence, L., Holocaust and the literary imagination (New Haven, CT, United States: Yale University Press, 1975) Mandel, Naomi, Against the Unspeakable: Complicity, the Holocaust and Slavery in America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006) Martin, Elaine, ‘The Poetics of Silence: Nelly Sachs’, in German and European Poetics After the Holocaust: Crisis and Creativity, ed. by Gert Hoffman (Rochester: NY, 2011), pp. 19-34 Nader, Andrés, Traumatic verses: On Poetry in German from the Concentration Camps, 19331945 (Columbia, SC: Boydell & Brewer, 2010) Nosthoff, Anna-Verena, 'Art after Auschwitz: Responding to an Infinite Demand: Gustav Metzger’s Works as Responses to Theodor W. Adorno’s ‘New Categorical Imperative’', Cultural Politics an International Journal, iii, 10 (2014), 300–319 Pritchett, Patrick, John, 'Writing the Disasters: The Messianic Turn in Postwar American Poetry', University of Colorado at Boulder: English Graduate These and Dissertations, xii (2011), 1–203 Remnants of Song: Trauma and the Experience of Modernity in Charles Baudelaire and Paul Celan (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000) Richter, Gerhard, ‘Who’s Afraid of the Ivory Tower? A Conversation with Theodor W. Adorno’, Monatshefte, 94, 1 (2002) 10-23 Ryland, Charlotte, 'Re-Membering Adorno: Political and cultural agendas in the debate about post-holocaust art', German Life and Letters, ii, 62 (2009), 140-156 Schweppenhauser, Gerhard, Theodor W. Adorno: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009) Teidemann, Rolf, Can One Live After Auschwitz?: A Philosophical Reader (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003) Villa, Dana, Public Freedom (Ney Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008)

The Reciprocity Requirement of Permissible Sexual Action: A Critique of Lars Ericsson’s Defense of Prostitution Bruno Russell This essay argues that the ‘reciprocal requirement’ of sex, a development of Nagel’s ideas on arousal, is fatal to Ericsson’s defence of prostitution. I will first explain Ericsson’s argument, before proposing my critique. I shall then respond to two potential objections. Firstly, that reciprocity is beneficial rather than required and, secondly, a pertinent counter-example to my view.

Ericsson’s liberal defence of prostitution argues that: P1. Fulfilling basic human needs is desirable P2. Sex is a basic human need P3. Given ‘permanent imperfections’ of human sexuality, this basic need cannot be universally fulfilled without prostitution.44 P4. In ideal circumstances, there is no good reason for prohibiting prostitution.

C. In ideal circumstances, prostitution is desirable.

Ericsson focuses on defending P4. He argues that there is no ‘relevant difference’ between a masseuse and prostitute: it is just another ‘economic arrangement’.45 Since we do not condemn massage it thus becomes ‘patently absurd’ to ‘maintain that there is something intrinsically wrong’ with prostitution.46 Instead, Ericsson claims, prostitution is deemed immoral due to the non-ideal circumstances prostitutes are placed in, including being pimped, abused by clients and judged by society.47 Ericsson thus argues that we ought to improve prostitutes’ working conditions and societies attitudes towards the profession.48 Then, ‘in ideal circumstances’, prostitution – given that it is not intrinsically wrong and fulfills a basic human need – is morally defendable.

I, however, shall attack P4. Even in ideal circumstances, there is a key difference between the masseuse and prostitute, as prostitution fails to meet the ‘reciprocity requirement’, while For the employment of this phrase, see Ericsson, L.O., ‘Charges Against Prostitution: An Attempt at a Philosophical Assessment’, Ethics, 90.3 (1980; pp. 335-366), p. 366 45 Ibid., p. 338 46 Ibid., pp. 338-9.

47 Ibid., p. 337 48 Ibid., pp. 365-6 44

massage – due to lacking sexual activity – is not faced with this requirement. This, I shall argue, intrinsically undermines the sex engaged in by most prostitutes and, therefore, even in ‘ideal circumstances’, ‘good reason’ remains to prohibit prostitution.

My idea builds on Nagel’s work on arousal, defined as being ‘stimulated sexually’. 49 Josh and Jane find each other attractive. Josh then realises that Jane finds him attractive and is turned on by that fact. Jane is then aroused by recognising that Josh is aroused by the fact she finds him attractive and so forth. Nagel claims that this forms the ‘basic framework of any fully-fledged sexual relationship’ as both partners desire for the other to be aroused ‘by the recognition of one’s desire that he or she be aroused’.50 When mutual arousal is absent, sexual activity is thus ‘significantly incomplete’.51 How can Nagel’s thinking be adapted to create requirements for permissible sexual action?

Firstly, arousal must be present. This, however, is insufficient, given that Josh, unaroused by Jane, could imagine sex with a pornstar to enjoy sex with Jane. Then, however, Nagel’s structure is unfulfilled and Josh deceives Jane. It must, therefore, be that mutual arousal exists between both partners. I shall henceforth call this the reciprocity requirement.

Reciprocity requirement: When two agents engage sexually, x should be aroused by y and y should be aroused by x.

A quick caveat. This requirement must be defeasible to allow for extreme counter-examples. If stuck between sleeping with someone repulsive or watching civilians die, the requirement loses its moral weight. It, however, is stronger than a particularist reading: this requirement holds except for extreme circumstances. Why is this required? Intuitively, the absence of arousal is problematic. Most people would not engage sexually with a partner who admitted to finding them sexually undesirable. Sex is also an intricate part of our identity and, for many, should not be exposed without mutual connection.52 This establishes the requirement. Why it is so fundamental shall be seen later by responses to potential objections.

For this definition, see ‘Arousal’, Online Dictionary. URL: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/arousal.

Nagel, T., ‘Sexual Perversion’, The Journal of Philosophy, 66.1 (1969; pp. 5-17), p. 12. Nagel compares this to the Gricean account of meaning to defend the basic structure of the framework.

51 See Ibid., pp. 12-13 52 Though in a different context, for the central place of sex in identity, see Archard, D., ‘The Wrong of Rape’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 57 (2007; pp. 374-93) 49 50

What about American bathhouses where gay men have anonymous sex blindfolded.53 How can mutual arousal be present when one partner knows neither the name, nor appearance, of the other? Arousal, however, need not be individual specific. The blindfolded man is aroused by the situation, and by the sexual dominant, and the dominant knows he is aroused by him, even though their identity is unrevealed. Both parties being aroused by each other is the only base requirement.

How does this apply to prostitution? Empirical research is helpful here. Raymond’s research shows that most prostitutes do not enjoy sex, requiring drugs or alcohol to “do the job”.54 Various studies have linked prostitutes’ frequent non-aroused sex to increased psychological trauma. A Dutch study suggested that 80% of prostitutes develop depression, 68% develop PTSD, and 76% seek to leave the sex-industry.55 Though, naturally, distinguishing trauma resulting from the prostitute lifestyle (i.e. social prejudice) from trauma resulting from the sex they engage in is difficult, Salgado – given these statistics – suggested that many prostitutes suffer a ‘syndrome’ from constant non-aroused sex.56 This does not only affect prostitutes: Bouamama’s 2004 study suggested that men often, post-sex, find their experience ‘unpleasant’ as the prostitute's lack of arousal causes their ‘illusions to be frustrated’.57 The reciprocity requirement, then, is typically not met in prostitution, causing negative repercussions.

Now we can return to Ericsson’s puzzle. What difference is there between the masseuse and prostitute? In massage, though there is physical intimacy, there is no sexual activity. The reciprocity requirement, therefore, does not arise. In prostitution, however, the requirement arises. The need to fulfil this requirement marks the difference between these activities. The requirement also draws a fundamental line between casual sex and prostitution. If two men use Grindr to obtain a one-night stand, they will select a partner because, however superficially, they are aroused by their appearance and the idea of sex with them. Mutual arousal is thus This example is sourced from Morgan, S., ‘Sex in the Head’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20 (2003; pp. 1-16), p. 9 54 Raymond, G.R., Not A Choice, Not A Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade (Potomac Books: 2013), p. 19. Also see Persak, N., Reframing Prostitution: From Discourse to Description, From Moralisation to Normalisation? (Maklu: 2014), p. 204. For a real-life example, see Moran, R., ‘The sex was never, ever, fun: my lessons in prostitution’, Salon (2015). URL: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/the_sex_was_never_ever_fun_my_lessons_in_prostitution/.

55 See Farley, M., Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress (Haworth Press: 2003), pp. 62-3. These statistics are backed up, within a tolerance of 10%, by other studies ranging over the UK and US. See Farley, M., and Butler, E., ‘Prostitution and Trafficking – Quick Facts’, Prostitution Research and Education (2012; pp. 1-15), specific focus pp. 6-7. Also see Raymond, G.R., Not A Choice, Not A Job, p.

50 (‘The Denial and Recognition Narrative’).

56 Farley, M., Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress, p. 64 57 Study summarised in Caudura, A., ‘Review of the Research Studies on the Demand for Prostitution in the European Union and Beyond’, in Prostitution and Human Trafficking: Focus On Clients, ed. A. Nicole (Springer: 2008; pp. 5-23), p. 12 53

paradigmatically present in casual sex. The reciprocity requirement thus also explains why casual sex is permissible, while prostitution is not.

This does not necessarily condemn all prostitution. If a prostitute was aroused by the idea of being a prostitute, they would meet the requirement. This, however, is an exceptional minority of practicing prostitutes. Equally, this does not condone cases where the client wrongly believes the prostitute is aroused. This, given the evidence most are not, would be a blind ignorance. If I added arsenic to your soup, presuming it was a spice, I am still morally culpable for your death.

My ignorance is not justified but blind. P4 of Ericsson’s argument thus falls. There is something intrinsically wrong with ‘ideal’ prostitution which distinguishes it from casual sex or massage.

This is the Nagel-inspired reciprocity requirement. I will now respond to two potential objections, firstly that non-reciprocal sex is simply less good and, secondly, a pertinent counter-example.

Could non-reciprocal sex simply be ‘less good’ than reciprocal sex, rather than morally problematic? Primoratz argues that deriving from X being better than Y, that Y is wrong is ‘logically flawed’. All we know is that Y is less good than X; not that Y is itself not good.58 That my singing ability is not comparable to Adele, for example, does not logically mean I am a bad singer. To take a parallel case: Ericsson argues that casual sex being less fulfilling than ‘sentimental sex’ does not show anything problematic with casual sex.59 Reciprocity is a good ‘feature’ of sex, not a defeasible requirement. Lacking reciprocity, therefore, is not problematic and P4 of Ericsson’s argument is restated.

Non-reciprocal sex, however, is not different in quality from reciprocal sex but different in kind.

Reciprocity should, therefore, be understood as a basic requirement of permissible sex. When engaging in natural conversation, for example, a basic requirement is honesty. If I lie constantly, our conversation is not less good it is entirely different. Breaking the requirement thus makes it wrong, or ‘empty’. How does this escape the comparison with Ericsson’s link between casual and sentimental sex? Casual and sentimental sex differ in quality in terms of reciprocity. In casual sex, this reciprocity is basic, based on physical attraction and superficial connections. In sentimental sex, however, the reciprocity is deeper, based on authentic emotional connections.

This is why a natural path exists between casual sex and sentimental sex, but not between nonreciprocal and reciprocal sex.60 Introducing arousal, though possible, is a complicated process

Primoratz, I., Ethics and Sex (Taylor & Francis: 1999), p. 32; also see Ericsson, L.O., ‘Charges Against Prostitution’, p. 339 59 See Ericsson, L.O., ‘Charges Against Prostitution’, p. 339 60 On recent studies defending this ‘natural path’, see Fisher, H., Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray (revised edition; W.W. Norton & Company: 2017), pp. 147-168.

Also see Sanoff, R., ‘Casual Sex Can Lead to Long-Term Relationships’, Bustle (2016). URL: 58

which non-reciprocated sex might actually discourage. Casual and sentimental sex, then, is a difference in quality. Given that non-reciprocal sex is different in kind, the analogy falls and reciprocity is sustained as a requirement, rather than a feature, of permissible sex.

But then, why, if lacking reciprocity makes sex ‘empty’ must this make it wrong? A basic requirement of playing chess, for example, is playing to win. Teachers, however, often let children win and change the game itself by breaking this basic requirement. The teacher will even “fake” that they were playing to win. But the teacher does not seemingly do anything morally wrong in making the game ‘empty’. Why then is the prostitute in making sex ‘empty’?

Chess and sex, however, are not analogous. Sex is intimately connected to our identity in a way chess is not. An adapted form of Finnis’ logic is helpful here. One player breaking the requirements of chess does not impinge on either person’s ability to play properly in the future.

But could non-reciprocal sex stop one from having proper reciprocal sex in the future?61 In making sex ‘empty’, then, the prostitute is doing something wrong that the chess player is not, since the prostitute devalues the nature of sex itself. No in-depth studies have investigated this issue and future work would be enlightening. Individual memoirs in pornography, however, suggest this is true.62 Cooper also argues that prostitute’s sex – removing a base ‘connection’ between partners – rejects a ‘female value system’ within sex that cannot be reintroduced.63 Though far from conclusive, this suggests that non-reciprocal sex in prostitution does demean the intrinsic value of sex. Could Ericsson just adapt ‘ideal prostitution’ to include reciprocity?

This, however, would collapse the whole concept of prostitution. If prostitution often services men no one wants to have sex with, how could prostitutes be made to find them arousing?64 This is not ‘ideal’ but ‘fantastical’. P4 of Ericsson’s argument hence falls: reciprocity is a requirement that, when absent, makes sex empty in a morally problematic way.

Could we, however, not oppose the reciprocity requirement by counter-example? Imagine that a lesbian, Lucy, wants a baby and asks her gay friend, Guy, to have sex with her because she cannot afford IVF. Neither Lucy nor Guy arouse each other so Guy uses porn to become erect https://www.bustle.com/articles/140592-casual-sex-can-lead-to-long-term-relationships-thisanthropologist-says-and-heres-how.

61 Finnis applies this logic with marital and extra-marital sex. I do not support distinguishing permissible sex in this way, but simply apply Finnis’ logic to non-reciprocal sex here. Reciprocity becomes a ‘basic good’ of sex. See Finnis, J., ‘Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good, The Monist, 91 (2008; pp. 388-406), specifically pp. 389-90, 397-8.

62 See Kutner, J., ‘A Lot of My Life Has Been Ruined Because of Sex’, Salon (2014). URL: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/16/a_lot_of_my_life_has_been_ruined_because_of_sex_belle_knox_ope ns_up_in_a_gripping_new_documentary/. Knox talks of losing her sexual identity.

63 See Cooper, B., ‘Prostitution: A Feminist Analysis’, Women’s Rights Law Reporter, 11 (1989; pp. 99119), p. 116.

64 For the types of men that use prostitution, see Raymond, G.R., Not A Choice, Not A Job, pp. 40-2

and then has sex with Lucy purely for reproductive purposes. Here, the reciprocity requirement is broken but, contestably, Lucy and Guy do nothing morally wrong. The requirement, then, loses its moral weight here and – by implication – in the prostitution case.

Maybe Guy and Lucy are wrong? But, hypothetically, if everyone lost their desire for sex, they would still need to engage in sexual activity for reproductive purposes. Another response, then, is to adapt the requirement to exclude such cases. But then imagine Lucy is actually bisexual and finds Guy arousing. Lucy then has sex for reproduction and pleasure. Does this make it wrong? The answer here, I suggest, is yes, given how the reciprocity requirement forms within an adapted disjunctive account of permissible sexual action. I shall call this disjunctive reciprocity:

Disjunctive reciprocity: When two agents engage sexually either (a) both must be motivated purely for reproductive purposes or (b) motivated by means other than (a), must adhere to the reciprocity requirement.

Previous philosophers have resisted such an account, preferring all sexual actions to be equally assessed by one sufficient principle, but - given the complexities of human sexual motivations there is no prima facie reason to resist disjunctive accounts. The initial Guy/Lucy (a)-type case, therefore, is immune from the reciprocity requirement and cannot be a counter-example to it.65 The adapted Guy/Lucy case, meanwhile, as well as prostitution, are morally problematic as (b)type cases which do not conform to the reciprocity requirement.

What if Lucy and Guy both instigated sex for purely reproductive reasons, but during intercourse Lucy unexpectedly becomes aroused? Is this a problematic outlier to disjunctive reciprocity?

Lucy, however, was not motivated by non-reproductive intentions. A prostitute could, hypothetically, initially find a client repulsive but during sex, due to the client’s sexual prowess, suddenly become aroused. This does not mean, however, that the requirement was originally met. They were not motivated by reproduction and the reciprocity requirement was not initially conformed to. The sex, then, is still morally problematic. Lucy’s unexpected arousal is not an outlier to this account as its initial motivations do not subject it to the reciprocity requirement.

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Other (a)-type cases would include two asexual partners having sex for reproductive purposes, or a couple desperately trying for a child and thus having sex at the exact times the women is ovulating. In the asexual case, it is possible the disjunctive account could be extended to romantic arousal, though this a topic for another paper.

In conclusion, Ericsson’s defence of prostitution fails, because he falsely assumes that there is nothing wrong with ‘ideal prostitution’. In fact, breaking the reciprocal requirement – even within disjunctive reciprocity – means there is something intrinsically wrong with sex within prostitution which is not the result of societal prejudice or bad working conditions.

Bibliography ‘Arousal’, Online Dictionary. URL: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/arousal [access date: 7th May 2017] Archard, D., ‘The Wrong of Rape’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 57 (2007; pp. 374-93) Caudura, A., ‘Review of the Research Studies on the Demand for Prostitution in the European Union and Beyond’, in Prostitution and Human Trafficking: Focus On Clients, ed. A. Nicole (Springer: 2008; pp. 5-23) Cooper, B., ‘Prostitution: A Feminist Analysis’, Women’s Rights Law Reporter, 11 (1989; pp.

99- 119) Ericsson, L.O., ‘Charges Against Prostitution: An Attempt at a Philosophical Assessment’, Ethics, 90.3 (1980; pp. 335-366) Farley, M., and Butler, E., ‘Prostitution and Trafficking – Quick Facts’, Prostitution Research and Education (2012; pp. 1-15) Farley, M., Prostitution, Trafficking and Traumatic Stress (Haworth Press: 2003) Finnis, J., ‘Marriage: A Basic and Exigent Good, The Monist, 91 (2008; pp. 388-406) Fisher, H., Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray (revised edition; W.W. Norton & Company: 2017) Kutner, J., ‘A Lot of My Life Has Been Ruined Because of Sex’, Salon (2014). URL: http://www.salon.com/2014/09/16/a_lot_of_my_life_has_been_ruined_because_of_sex_belle_ knox_opens_up_in_a_gripping_new_documentary/ [access date: 11th May 2017].

Moran, R., ‘The sex was never, ever, fun: my lessons in prostitution’, Salon (2015). URL: http://www.salon.com/2015/09/30/the_sex_was_never_ever_fun_my_lessons_in_prostitution [access date: 9th May 2017].

Morgan, S., ‘Sex in the Head’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, 20 (2003; pp. 1-16) Nagel, T., ‘Sexual Perversion’, The Journal of Philosophy, 66.1 (1969; pp. 5-17) Persak, N., Reframing Prostitution: From Discourse to Description, From Moralisation to Normalisation? (Maklu: 2014) Primoratz, I., Ethics and Sex (Taylor & Francis: 1999) Raymond, G.R., Not A Choice, Not A Job: Exposing the Myths about Prostitution and the Global Sex Trade (Potomac Books: 2013) Sanoff, R., ‘Casual Sex Can Lead to Long-Term Relationships’, Bustle (2016). URL: https://www.bustle.com/articles/140592-casual-sex-can-lead-to-long-term-relationships-thisanthropologist-says-and-heres-how [access date: 10th May 2017].

Has Nietzsche Misled Us? Fraser Launchbury Every time a beginning that is calculated to mislead: cool, scientific, even ironic, deliberately foreground, deliberately holding off (Ecce Homo, GM)

The above quote is taken from the section of Nietzsche’s autobiography, Ecce Homo, concerned with a discussion of his earlier work On the Genealogy of Morals. Philosophers tend to disagree on how this particular elusive line should be interpreted. In this article, I will be examining how this quote applies to the opening section of Nietzsche’s second essay of the Genealogy, and offering my own views on how this quote ought to be understood. It ought to be noted that merely stating that the openings to his essays in the Genealogy are calculated to mislead, without providing the readership with any evidence to that end, does not warrant us to believe that Nietzsche is in fact being truthful. It seems to me that there is little evidence to suggest that the openings of Nietzsche’s essays demonstrate a calculated deception on his part, and this perhaps is most true of the second essay: ‘Guilt’, ‘Bad Conscience’ and Related Matters. I will now present several instances of possible deceptions propounded in the second essay, and evaluate whether they stand up as ‘calculated’.

Nature Nietzsche begins his second essay with the assertion that nature has charged itself with the task breeding of an animal which is free to make promises66. This task, he says, is both paradoxical and the essential problem of mankind. He then goes on to report that this problem has indeed been solved, at least to significant extent, and that this is made even more surprising when one considers the impact of forgetfulness, which, if not negated by the counter-force of memory, makes promising impossible.

It is possible to interpret this introduction as being deliberately misleading. The personification of nature as something which may be said to set itself ‘tasks’ seems to be uncharacteristically anti-naturalistic on Nietzsche’s part. It moves us into more teleological territories about conceptions of nature, suggesting that nature is constructed in some deliberate way for the betterment of humanity. This view is loaned further support from the later assertion Nietzsche 66

Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1

makes that our organism is founded upon ‘oligarchic principles’ such as government, foresight etc.67 Again, Nietzsche seems to be advocating a teleological approach to nature and to humanity, one which almost suggests a sort of intelligent design argument. This would certainly seem to be a misleading introduction to the essay, given that this is supposedly a genealogy of morality, which implies a genetic, naturalistic, perhaps Darwinian, explanation of the origins of ethical concepts such as promising, conscience, guilt, and so on.

However, we must ask ourselves how convincing this interpretation really is. After all, Nietzsche is simply using a system metaphors in this section of the essay. I doubt that he intends that we take the claim that nature has set itself a task as literal. One might intelligently ask how else we should interpret this claim instead, and it’s hard to say, but it seems to me that this is simply a poetic stage-setting mechanic by which Nietzsche may introduce the topic of promising in an engaging way before he addresses the genealogical roots of the matter, and not a calculated deception.

Promises Nietzsche endeavours in the following chapters to provide us with an origin of promises, and, in a wider sense, of obligation; the force which compels us to keep our promises. The origin runs as follows. There exists, as a salubrious counter-measure to what Nietzsche calls ‘indigestion’, the power of forgetfulness68. Forgetting, he explains, is a kind of inhibiting factor, which stops the intake of any new information while our minds digest what has already occurred. He calls this a little ‘tabula rasa’ of the consciousness, necessary to make room for the ‘oligarchic principles’ (i.e. government and foresight) upon which we are established69.

While forgetting is necessary for good health on Nietzsche’s picture, it makes promising impossible. Thus, there exists a counter force, which at certain times negates forgetting, i.e. memory. Memory allows for active refusals to forget our promises via a continual willing to keep one’s word70.

Memory, combined with reliability, predictability, is what enables us to promise. In breeding a man who is genuinely free to promise, it is necessary that man become genuinely predictable, genuinely reliable, such that he may knowingly commit to the future, or rather to a future, in which

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Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 69 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 70 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 68

he keeps his word. Nature must first make man consistent (‘regular’71) before man is free to promise. Nietzsche then says that if we imagine ourselves at the end of this process which nature intends for us, then we have a ‘sovereign individual’ – one who is fully free to make promises.

He can rely on his future self, and remembers his oaths72.

It is possible that this explanation of memory and of promises is calculated to mislead. A reader might take the view that it consists of an ironic attack on other genealogists; it is at once ‘cool’ and psychological in a way which is ironically characteristic of the ‘English psychologists’, namely Dr Paul Rée (himself a German but one whose genealogy is, according to Nietzsche, influenced by ‘English speculation’), whom Nietzsche openly criticises for their attempts at moral genealogy throughout his book. Within the Genealogy, Nietzsche continually castigates the ‘psychologists’ for pursuing moral genealogy along un-historic lines73 and yet, Nietzsche’s account of memory and promising so far makes no reference to history, and instead only points inward towards our faculties of ‘psychological ingestion’ and assimilation74. This ironic interpretation is further evidenced by Nietzsche’s use of Locke’s tabula rasa75 in his description of forgetfulness, which comes across as mocking in tone.

However, this interpretation doesn’t stand up. Move to the third section of the second essay and we see that Nietzsche now presents the sinister history of memory. Here we see that memory, being the will’s refusal to relinquish an impression, evolved from cruelty and punishment. Pain was inflicted again and again upon those who could not remember or offered false promises, for ‘only that which never stops hurting will remain in [their] memory’76. Nietzsche cites numerous punishments and brutal tortures previously used to show his readership that it was from an established precedent of pain that we developed the ‘I will nots’77 to which we promise. It is of course possible that the decision to not reveal the dark history until after the positive account of memory and promising is what Nietzsche means when he asserts that he is ‘deliberately foreground, deliberately holding off’; for he presents first the effects of the suffering while ‘holding off’ the morbid history. However, this would not seem enough to justify claiming that what he has achieved is misleading in a calculated way. After all, stylistic choices such as presenting the conclusion before the reasons behind it doesn’t constitute a form of deception.

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Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.2 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.2 73 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.4 74 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 75 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.1 76 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.3 77 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.3 72

Deliberately Holding Off There is one way in which I believe it is possible for one to reasonably argue that Nietzsche has designed his essays to mislead us. The deception lies in the way in which Nietzsche presents us with what he claims is a genealogy of morality as a veil by which he masks the true purpose, or if not the true at least the subtle purpose, of the Genealogy, which is an attack upon the Christian ascetic ideal. Although I will be focusing primarily on the second essay, as before, the discussion of this point applies equally to all three of Nietzsche’s essays in the Genealogy.

Each essay begins with an exposition of the concepts discussed. In the case of the second essay, this includes memory, promising, responsibility and conscience. Each essay then points to history, be it Roman, Egyptian, European or otherwise, for a discussion of the origins of those concepts. The book follows a formula, and it is one which may be expected of an ethical genealogy.

However, given that the Genealogy culminates in its third essay with an attempt at knocking down the ascetic ideal upon which European and Christian morality is built, itself tied closely to themes of castigation and punishment, and given that each essay itself concludes with a note which is highly suggestive of the Zarathustrian idea that we are currently unfettered from our old value system which was driven by faith in a higher power (note that the first essay concludes with an assessment that it is the imminent task of philosophers to soon provide a solution to the problem of value78 – and also that the second essay ends by prophesising the coming of a ‘saviour’ – Zarathustra – who will free reality from the curse of the old (ascetic) ideal79), it seems to me that one might properly say that the calculated misleading which Nietzsche has executed is one of misleading us into believing that the purpose of each essay, and of the book itself, is a genealogical study of morality, but in fact each essay serves as a barb with which Nietzsche may jab at the Christian ascetic ideal.

Now, to call this approach ‘misleading’ is perhaps incorrect. After all, it is perfectly reasonable that the Genealogy should serve as both an attack on Christian ideals at one end and as a genuine ethical history at the other without misleading anyone. But if not misleading, this interpretation would at least explain what Nietzsche means when he says that, in his misleading, he is ‘deliberately holding off’. Nietzsche begins each essay with the history, whilst ‘holding off’ the secondary purpose of dismantling the ascetic ideal until the end. In the second essay this takes the form of a bleak history of responsibility and of conscience which then evolves into a

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Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: I.17 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.24

direct question from Nietzsche as to what the real cost of our ideals are, and the prophesising of a man who will free us from our old ones80.

There are of course difficulties with this view. A consequence of the above is that we must make a substantial assumption, which is that the moral genealogy contained within each essay, the history itself, doesn’t play a part in the attacking of ascetic ideals. For the claim to be true, that Nietzsche misleads by presenting at the start of each essay an apparent genealogy while holding of his other motive of disguising an attack against Christianity, the genealogy itself cannot be a part of the attack on ascetic ideals; for if it was then of course no misleading will have occurred.

It is only misleading if each essay fools us with the disguise of history before attacking Christian ideals. A simple solution to this problem, if it even is a genuine problem, is to concede the assumption that the history is not a part of the attack. However, this is potentially unsatisfactory, for it is surely at least disquieting to asceticism and to Christian metaphysicians world-over to hear that those oh-so-noble notions of the Good and of conscience, promising and justice, each have their ancestry steeped in blood and torture81. But again, ‘misleading’ is perhaps not the correct term, and while the above explains what Nietzsche means by ‘deliberately foreground’ and ‘deliberately holding off’, we cannot just ignore that Nietzsche used the word ‘mislead’ and must have done so for a reason. Therefore, either we must concede that the genealogy of values present is not itself a part of Nietzsche’s attack on Christianity, despite its appearance as such, or we should say that, yet again, it has proved impossible to discern what Nietzsche means when he says that he has crafted the beginnings of his essays to mislead.

Conclusion In conclusion, it seems that a great many ways of interpreting the aforementioned quote are left wanting. It ought not to be a conclusion which we shy from, after all it is possible that we cannot know what Nietzsche truly had in mind when he said that he had crafted his essays to mislead in their openings. Maybe the true meaning has been lost in translation, or perhaps Nietzsche was simply mistaken in what he had achieved. Either way, I believe the closest explanation is that the “misleading” consists in the way that each essay begins by presenting itself as being a genuine genealogy of morals but then evolves into a wider criticism of Christian ideals.

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Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.24 Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887: II.6

Bibliography Nietzsche, F â&#x20AC;&#x201C; On the Genealogy of Morals (1887) London, England: Penguin Group, Penguin Classics 2013, 4th edition

A Response to Lichtenberg’s ‘New Harms’: Neglecting ‘Aggregative Helps’ Tegan Easterbrook Positive Duties, Negative Duties and ‘New Harms’ presents an argument which shows that due to globalisation the distinction between positive and negative duties has become blurred. In light of this blurred distinction, Lichtenberg states that we should reject our intuitive primacy toward negative duties because they have become at least equally demanding of an agent as positive duties. I will argue that she is correct to hold a fair share stance but in light of what I will call ‘New Helps’ her idea of a fair share is insufficient and we are able to do, and should be doing, much more with regard to both positive and negative duties to help the global poor.

It is commonly assumed that we have both positive and negative duties. Our negative duties are to refrain from infringing upon the rights of others. It is our duty to ensure that we do not make someone’s life worse than if we had never interfered. Conversely, we also have positive duties. Our positive duties are those which, if engaged with, make another person’s life better than if we had never interfered. It is a typical doctrine of our common-sense view (Scheffler, 1995, p. 40) of morality that ‘duties not to harm are more stringent than duties to aid’ (Lichtenberg, 2010, p. 562). Our duties not to harm others seem far stricter in virtue of being much less demanding, they merely require of us that we do not unjustly intervene in the life of another.

This typical view of positive and negative duties however, is based on, and fits only neatly within the paradigm of, a traditional view of harms. In this traditional harm (TH) view, ‘I understand the ends of my actions because in this traditional view, my actions produce an effect that is near, obvious and immediate’ (Lichtenberg, 2010, p558). This is to say, if I actively harm another, and violate my negative duties toward them, I witness their harm, I see the extent of the harm and I experience the causality of the harm. In the TH view of harms, it seems obvious that all we must do for a moral minimum is not to actively harm others, for example ‘don’t kill people, don’t rape them, don’t attack them, don’t rob them’ (Lichtenberg, 2010, p. 558). This is particularly persuasive on account of the fact that we spend much of our lives not infringing on the freedoms of others, especially in the ways Lichtenberg notes.

This usual ‘phenomenology of agency’ (Scheffler, 2001, p. 39) however, is not a view that is consistent with a globalised world. The distinction between positive and negative duties fits neatly only within the paradigm of the TH view. Lichtenberg claims that globalisation has given

rise to ‘New Harms’(NH), and in light of these NH, our violations of negative duties have much more in common with merely not actively helping (Lichtenberg, 2010, p. 561). It seems that we are merely ‘minding our own business’ but in actuality, we are contributing to the exploitation of children when we buy sweatshop clothes, or to the deforestation of the Amazon when we buy a Bigmac. These acts appear to be omissions because they do not cohere with what we usually think of when we consider our responsibility. When we commit these acts we do not perceive our choices as those with causal powers (Scheffler, 2001, p. 39).

Lichtenberg’s distinction between THs and NHs calls the primacy we give to negative duties into doubt. Negative duties no longer lack demandingness. Any defence of the intuition that negative duties should have primacy over positive duties must appeal to something other than demandingness.

Lichtenberg states that any viable moral theory must take into account the demandingness of the agent (Lichtenberg, 2010, p558) regardless of the duty being positive or negative, assuming that there is indeed this distinction to make anymore. In considering alternatives to the common-sense view of morality she presents the notion of efficacy. In this section, Lichtenberg discusses the idea that we can be far more certain that donating $100 to Oxfam will help an individual that merely refraining from emitting $100 worth of CO2 (Lichtenberg, 2010, p562). It is likely that in this particular case it would be more certain that the positive act of beneficence would be more efficacious than the avoidance of harm. From here however, we might question whether positive acts really are more efficacious in the long term and whether the outcome is the sole matter of importance here (Lichtenberg, 2010, p. 564).

Lichtenberg’s discussion of acts of beneficence is somewhat narrow, it hinges solely on financial donation when there exist equally efficacious commodities that can be donated. One might give up their time, or impart a skill in order to actively relieve the suffering of the global poor. Lichtenberg herself questions the efficaciousness of monetary donations with case studies which suggest that giving a community only financial aid has the potential to make these communities entirely reliant on aid. Imparting a skill however, perhaps even alongside financial aid, seems far more likely to help produce self-sustaining communities. This still is an engagement with a positive duty, but if we widen the scope from Lichtenberg’s sole consideration of financial aid to other forms of aid, then it appears as though these acts of beneficence are more efficacious than merely abstaining from burning $100 worth of fossil fuels.

One might argue that even these acts of positive beneficence are still very costly. I cannot argue with this, but my intention with the previous discussion was that positive acts of

beneficence do not merely have to be financial. There are many ways that one could reasonably incorporate helping the global poor into their lives. We do not need to regard the global poor merely as strangers we are asked to give money to in advertisement breaks or by people with collection buckets. Scheffler discusses a ‘locus of […] responsibility’ (Scheffler, 2001, p. 44), this predominantly includes those who we love, our friends and family but it is easily possible to extend this. My argument in favour of this will focus on the claim that both Lichtenberg and Scheffer have articulated the problems that have arisen due to globalisation, but both have neglected to note the new ways in which we can help people because of a more global world.

I do not deny that it is far more difficult to abstain from harming distant peoples but there is a case to claim that globalisation made it easier, in some respects, to help. Lichtenberg has discussed ‘aggregative harms’ (2010, p. 568), those which are not in themselves immoral, but lead to greater harms if everyone commits these acts. I believe it stands to reason that we can accept a symmetrical view if we consider the idea of ‘aggregative helps’. These ‘aggregative helps’ utilise tools such as the internet to spread social messages through lobbying, raising funds, increasing awareness of wrongs etc. These so-called ‘aggregative helps’ can allow us to engage with both our positive and negative duties. With regard to our positive duties, we can sign petitions that will be reviewed by government, this in itself is not some particularly gracious, intrinsically good act, but can lead to some greater good if everyone engages in it.

Then, regarding negative duties, we can so easily gain a wealth of information about the origins of our food and clothes. We can then boycott exploitative corporations. These are obviously small changes, and as such, we should change our lives in order to accommodate these ‘aggregative helps’.

It would still be possible to argue a demandingness objection regarding these ‘aggregative helps’. It is still a potential encroachment on an agent’s autonomy. This is not a particularly damaging claim because an increased awareness of the sources of our produce to be at all a bad thing. Being aware of where your meals come from, or signing your name to a petition is not a particularly taxing task in a country in which ‘almost all adults aged 16 to 24 years were recent internet users (99.2%)’ (Office for National Statistics, 2016). Of course, it’s possible that someone can actively choose not to help the global poor, but as our choices become more varied and our knowledge regarding such injustices increase, it would be an irrational and largely immoral choice to not do anything at all.

In conclusion, Lichtenberg articulates well the idea that merely abstaining from harms is no longer sufficient because abstinence is equally as demanding as our positive duties. I believe

that she is right to say that we should not consider negative duties to have primacy over positive duties because in instances, positive acts of beneficence can be more efficacious.

With regard to discussion regarding globalisation, Lichtenberg has neglected the idea that in addition to new ways to harm people, it has also produced new ways to help people and we have a duty to utilise these effectively meaning that we should be working much harder to reduce the suffering of the global poor.

Bibliography Lichtenberg, J., Positive Duties, Negative Duties and the â&#x20AC;&#x153;New Harmsâ&#x20AC;?, Ethics, April 2010, Vol. 120, Issue 3, pp. 557-558, The University of Chicago Press.

Scheffler, S., Individual Responsibility in a Global Age, in: Boundaries and Allegiances: Problems of Justice and Responsibility in Liberal Thought, pp.32-48, 2001, Oxford, Oxford University Press Office for National Statistics, Internet users in the UK, 2016, Available at: [https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/itandinternetindustry/bulletins/internetusers/ 2016]

Are there genuine pragmatic reasons for belief?

Simran Matharu The view that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for belief—pragmatism—is defended by Rinard against evidentialism (particularly Shah's new evidentialism)—an opposing view which denies that it is ever permissible to form or hold beliefs for purely practical reasons. She first provides examples which she claims support pragmatism, then outlines Shah's strategy of disregarding the existence of pragmatic operative reasons, which leads to evidentialism based on the idea that a normative reason must be possibly operative. Rinard deems this a 'central flaw'82 in the evidentialist project, based on the existence of genuine pragmatic reasons outside the doxastic realm, accepted by some evidentialists, implying this be extended to the doxastic realm. Shah would evidently dispute her challenge of his claim that operative reasons cannot be pragmatic, but Rinard's view is further challenged by extreme forms of evidentialism such as Thomson's.83 I aim to conclude that Rinard's examples do not intuitively support pragmatism as she claims they do and that her defence of pragmatic possibly operative reasons is mistaken, either in method or in defining pragmatic reasons. I favour an extreme evidentialist view and consider belief to be such that it tends only to evidentialism.

Rinard's defence of pragmatism and objections to evidentialism Rinard provides examples she thinks demonstrate why it might seem intuitive that there are pragmatic reasons for belief. She claims these pragmatic reasons do act as operative (motivating) reasons, referring to: 1. the fact that the potential survival rate of fatal illness improves significantly with belief in one’s survival, 2. the improved athletic performance of an athlete if they believe they will perform well, 3. Marusic's argument that 'one cannot sincerely promise to (do something) unless one believes that one will do so'84, claiming that each 'constitute(s) a good reason for' belief.85 She then outlines and challenges the 'basic strategy'86 of the new evidentialist argument. It states that something is a good reason to form a belief only if it is a possibly operative reason to form

82

(Rinard, 2015, p.212) (Thomson, 2010) 84 (Rinard, 2015, p.210) 85 (Rinard, 2015, p.210) 86 (Rinard, 2015, p.209) 83

that belief; that is, if it is able to be a person’s own reason for that belief. From this, the argument forms that such reasons cannot be pragmatic reasons, with an example given that is often some form of suggesting a large monetary reward offered (a pragmatic reason) for holding or forming a belief, showing that it alone cannot cause that belief to come about—evidence is needed.

Pascal's wager is able to illustrate this effectively—the high probability of reward potential for belief in God measured against the high punishment potential for atheism cannot motivate one to belief.87 However, as Rinard argues, it can motivate one to taking steps to form beliefs— brainwashing or indoctrinating oneself to theism—due to the desire for the positive consequences. Pascal recommended immersion amongst and engagement with theists, simulating belief until it is achieved, implying that this course of action would allow exposure to facilitate the belief indirectly.88 The evidentialist disregards this reason, assuming that a consideration can only be a genuine reason to do something if it motivates directly. Thus, such pragmatic reasons—not intrinsically instrumental in forming the belief—are ruled out by the evidentialist.

Rinard is primarily interested in showing that this is not a reasonable constraint on operative reasons, since it excludes pragmatic reasons for anything, including those outside of the doxastic realm (that is, regarding belief, disbelief and suspension of judgement) which she claims would otherwise be accepted by evidentialists such as Shah.89 She claims his argument fails because the directness criterion it prescribes cannot be preserved, and therefore that Shah overgeneralises and 'prove(s) too much’.90 She argues these situations of context 'outside the doxastic realm' have pragmatic reasons which serve as motivating factors and are genuine reasons for doing things.91 She gives the example of the desired temperature comfort motivating whether one wears wool (warmer) socks over cotton. She claims that this pragmatic motivation does not seem to directly cause the wearing or not of wool socks, or the ceasing of wearing when the reason (temperature comfort) disappears, but that it is accepted as a genuine, motivating reason nonetheless. This reason does not lead directly to wearing wool socks, failing Shah's requirement to be a genuine reason. Therefore, if these such reasons are acceptable (despite lacking directness), pragmatic reasons for belief should also be.

She hypothesises the evidentialist response to accommodate this—to deny that there are genuine pragmatic reasons for wearing wool socks, but claim that there are genuine pragmatic 87

(Hájek, 2012) Ibid.

89 (Rinard, 2015, p.215) 90 (Rinard, 2015, p.212) 91 (Rinard, 2015, p.217) 88

reasons for getting oneself to wear wool socks. This is supposed to comply with the evidentialist directness criterion; you can directly move from a pragmatic reason to getting oneself to wear wool socks. However, she breaks this response down to reveal that it moves indirectly through the intention to do so. Furthermore, if the pragmatic reason motivating the wearing of wool socks suddenly ceases to be (Kelly's test92), for example with weather changes, this does not immediately, directly cause the wearer to stop wearing wool socks. Yet, the temperature comfort was indeed the motivating reason. So it seems directness cannot be a requirement, because in this regard a genuine reason does not cause 'directly'.93

Rinard considers a second evidentialist response, which claims that a genuine reason need only be capable of directly leading to an intention and indirectly to carrying out that intention.

However, reveals that this rules out evidence as a genuine reason for belief because it does not lead directly to an intention to form a belief, but directly to the belief; the argument fails the specific revised directness criterion it prescribes. Due to these complications, she claims the evidentialists should stick with the original principle. Therefore, she claims that the evidentialists are mistaken in their presupposition about operative reasons and directness, without which their argument fails.

Objections to Rinard's examples defending pragmatism

I disagree that Rinard's early examples do consist of successful pragmatic reasons. In example 1, she fails to recognise the popular scenario whereby a pragmatic reason to believe—despite seeming to—cannot fully implement belief, but only the semblance of it. Belief in survival in these circumstances is simply hope and desire to survive disguised as belief, in an attempt to trick the body or circumstances into survival, based on the statistic. This reason, therefore, breaks down to a partial evidence-based motivation—the statistic provided—and does not constitute true, informed belief. It is just the desire to survive. It cannot truly cause belief in one's survival because if this type of belief could be induced like this, the person concerned would not require benefitting from the consequential higher survival rate of having that belief, and therefore would not engage in this hopeful belief in the first place. This provides an insight into the nature of belief and the suggestion that it inherently must be informed by evidence (an idea developed later in this paper).

92 93

(Rinard, 2015, p.212) (Rinard, 2015, p.213)

This conflation can be compared to Pascal's wager, which confuses true belief with wishful thinking, leading to brainwashing.94 It is paramount that there is a distinction between reasons to believe (evidence of God and the rewards and punishments of the afterlife) and reasons to make one's self believe (the desire to respectively reap and avoid potential rewards and punishment in the afterlife). Rinard fails to provide a distinction between belief in the sense required for knowing and belief in the sense of faith, desire, hope or wishful thinking. She also bases example 2 on the latter type. This reasoning is almost circular; it is not a 'good reason to believe' so much as something that would help if believed. It cannot motivate to true belief even if believing it would be useful, helpful or beneficial.95 Indeed, this type of belief will always constitute wishful thinking, because the person involved has an interest in the outcome (another observation about the unique, evidence-based nature of belief and the doxastic).

Rinard misinterprets the word 'belief' and benefits from its two readings, using the one meaning—faith—in her premise (her examples), then claiming the examples to suggest a different meaning—actual belief—in her conclusion (using these to support pragmatism in the debate against evidentialism).

While it could be argued (as in example 3) that promising to do something rests on the firm foundation of complete intention—and therefore sincere belief, this can in fact also be reduced to hope, faith or strong desire, rather than genuine belief. Arguably, only these can be formed from intention, while belief can only be ascertained if the promise-er possesses some transcendent evidence that makes it certain they will keep that promise. Otherwise, they cannot truly believe they will, being subconsciously aware that anything can happen—they could literally be unable to fulfil their promise, rendering the promise a contract of binding or even legal intent, but not a metaphysical bind to that course of actions. It seems that intent for future actions cannot contain firm belief or knowledge, only hopeful belief.

Ultimately, belief cannot be founded on something other than a true reason that ignites holding that belief. The knowledge that holding that belief would improve performance (or even, perhaps, that it would provide magical powers that improve performance) is not sufficient, because the belief itself cannot physically implement that. Effects like improved stability, or even minimised negative effects (minimised nerves and therefore more determination) can improve performance, and perhaps it is the correlation of these with belief in oneself that makes it seem like that belief can improve performance, but the correlation is not a cause.

94 95

(Hájek, 2012) (Rinard, 2015, p.210)

There are two primary ways to dispute the argument against evidentialism presented by Rinard: 1. to agree that the reason she illustrates with the wool socks example is a pragmatic reason, but that her method of using it to challenge the evidentialists is flawed, or 2. to accept her method but disagree that the example she cites provides a truly pragmatic reason (and by extension consider if these exist).

I detail both and how they conclude to evidentialism.

1. Objections to Rinard's method

There are in fact only these (seemingly) pragmatic reasons for intending to wear wool socks, not actually wearing wool socks, but this revision does not break the directness criterion as Rinard claims it does. She compares the very physical action of wearing wool socks with the doxastic action of believing, however, I would argue that Rinard is wrong in paralleling wearing wool socks with belief, and considering intention to be a mediator that blocks the directness criterion. Comparing inside and outside the doxastic realm, intention and belief should be treated in the same way because they are both on the same levelâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;mental, not physical functions. In each case, the reason is directly moving to that mental function. Comparing belief to putting on socks is nonsensicalâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;one would obviously be moved to directly by reason and the other would not. No reason can directly move to a physical action; the nature of reason is that it happens within the mind. Therefore she is mistaken in describing these pragmatic reasons outside the doxastic realm as genuine yet not operative; her first challenge and hypothetical response fail; pragmatic reasons in favour wearing wool socks cannot be paralleled against pragmatic reasons for belief in Rinard's analogy, because in fact they should be compared with intention. Therefore we are able to preserve Shah's directness criterion.

Indeed, when the reason for a belief disappears, the belief itself will usually disappear, but the same does not happen for wearing wool socks. However the same does happen for the intention to wear wool socks. So if we alter Rinard's version of Kelly's test, stating that once the reason for the intention to wear wool socks disappears, so does that intention (and not the sock-wearing itself), we are able to consider outside the doxastic realm in a similar way to belief. The reason wool socks are put on is because of the intention to put on wool socks, resultant of practical reason of the cold. Rinard cannot base a disproving argument on that and claim evidentialists must accept pragmatism, because she compares incorrectly. This illustrates that the second revised directness criterion need not exclude evidence and can be

permitted to move directly to beliefs and intentions, depending on their contextual place concerning the doxastic realm.

Moreover, perhaps Rinard is mistaken in her analogy and assumption of comparability at all between that outside and inside the doxastic realm. It could be argued in that we cannot and should not fluidly move and compare across the line between the doxastic and the nondoxastic due to the unique, evidence-dependent nature of the doxastic. While there may be pragmatic reasons outside of it, this nature does not permit it being led to through pragmatic reasons, and so these similar situations outside and inside it cannot be compared. To put on or wear wool socks is a real action and not a brain function which can happen immediately and directly, while it is the very nature of the doxastic realm that this can happen (and indeed is the only way to cause belief). This argument could also suggest her comparison fails because it is an entirely unrealisable thought experiment.

Therefore, in challenging Rinard's method, it can be disputed that the pragmatic reasons outside the doxastic realm break down the directness criterion required for the evidentialist argument. In accepting this, to preserve evidentialism, it must be accepted that this, however, is not a phenomenon that can occur within the doxastic realm, where reasons must be evidential, the nature of belief being such that it necessarily must be informed by evidence.

2. Objections to pragmatic reasons and Thomson's evidentialism

That the reasons presented for wearing wool socks are truly pragmatic can be challenged; I would argue that all reasons and reasoning can be reduced to evidence. Without the previous knowledge and evidence to support and inform a decision, the motivation, for example, for wearing wool socks, would simply not exist. It could be argued in response that indeed this may be the case, but we should imagine experiencing cold for the first time and presently deciding, based on the cold, practically—to put on wool socks. Could this be considered a truly pragmatic reason? Arguably not, because it is based again on evidence—empirical evidence.

This is what much of science is developed on, described as evidence and not practical motivation to forming beliefs about things like the cold. This connotes an extreme and strict form of evidentialism, posing the idea that there are no viable pragmatic reasons at all, in or out of the doxastic realm due to the nature of reason and belief.

I pose Thomson's argument—an example of such evidentialism—as a successful opposition to that of Rinard, tackling not only her initial examples but the way she lays out her discovery of

the 'flaw'in the evidentialist project.96 It could be claimed that the cold is not what encourages the wearing of wool socks, but rather the detrimental effect you know or experience the cold to have on your feetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this is evidence. Practical reasons can simply be described as evidence for a particular kind of proposition about whether a certain course of actions would be beneficial.

Thomson claims that evidence is the only thing that can directly rationalise and everything else is indirectly rationalised; all reasons reduce to evidence, thus intuitively pragmatic reasons can be reductively explained in terms of evidence.97 Reasons are mediated by evidence and practical reasons are evidently indirect motivators because they are, in the first instance, evidence. According to Thomson, reasons for action and intention do not conflict with Rinard's account but simply explain it.98 This once again links closely with my description of the nature of reason and belief as dependent on evidence, explaining that pragmatic reasons outside the doxastic realm are reducible to evidence. Therefore, evidentialists can escape the dilemma Rinard poses by denying that there are any pragmatic reasons at all, accepting extreme evidentialism by disregarding the existence of pragmatic reasons even outside the doxastic realm. Rinard's argument's examples can be broken down to reveal evidentialist motivations (such as the statistics or facts informing them).

Conclusion

In conclusion, I find Rinard's examples suggesting the intuitive tendency towards pragmatic reasons for belief to be unsuccessful because they do not motivate belief in the sense it is referred to in the debate between evidentialism and pragmatism. Her claims that the directness criterion fails are erroneous because the analogy she sets up is itself flawed. When corrected, the directness criterion does not fail. I would argue that the doxastic realm is unique in nature and necessarily affected by evidence alone, therefore permitting pragmatic reasons outside of it does not require permitting those within it. Thus, the evidentialist can reject her revelation of a 'central flaw'99 in their argument. Alternatively, they can adopt a view such as Thomson's extreme evidentialism, rejecting the existence of pragmatic reasons for belief, claiming that the reasons Rinard exemplifies are not genuine pragmatic reasons but evidential reasons, and that all such reasons can be reduced to evidence.

96

(Thomson, 2010) ; (Rinard, 2015, p.212) (Rinard, 2015, p.212) 98 (Thomson, 2010) 99 (Rinard, 2015, p.212) 97

Bibliography Hรกjek, A. (2012). Pascal's Wager. [online] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Available at: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/pascal-wager/ [Accessed 24 Apr. 2017].

Rinard, S. (2015). Against the New Evidentialists. Philosophical Issues, 25(1), pp.208-223.

Shah, N. (2006). A New Argument for Evidentialism. The Philosophical Quarterly, 56(225), pp.481-498.

Thomson, J. (2010). Normativity. 1st ed. Chicago, lll: Open Court.

Matter as the Substratum Supporting Extension: Locke and Hume Revisited Shaun Moore The idea that matter is the substratum supporting extension is that extension is a property of other objects. This is a view primarily attributed to Locke, the core idea of this view is that reality consists of objects and properties (Locke, 1690, 2.23.1) and that the objects hold all of their properties to them. The object or substratum is distinct from its properties however we only experience the properties of objects. In this essay I will discuss merits of this theory as well as addressing problems such as the confusion as to how we can be sure that something has a particular substratum. I will then go on to discuss an alternative viewpoint called bundle theory and will assess its plausibility in comparison to substratum theory. I will argue, upon examining the intricacies of both theories, that bundle theory seems more plausible due to the logical inconsistencies of substratum theory.

One of the main advantages of substratum theory is that it is based on how we naturally perceive and understand the world. When we have sensory experience of something, we experience the properties of the thing and not the thing itself. To sense a chair is to experience the physical properties of it, its hardness, shape, colour etc. Then you connect these things together and acknowledge that these properties are a part of the object called 'chair'. Because we connect properties to objects and understand objects in this way, the natural assumption is to say that it is because this is the way things are. Otherwise the question of 'why are we interpreting the world in this way?' would remain.

The previous argument is based on the assumption that the way we interpret the world is the correct way to interpret the world. It is plausible that our natural interpretation could just simply be wrong. Furthermore it is debatable whether or not we do naturally see the world like the substratum theorist would say we do. The reason for this is that empirically, all we can infer from the world is that there is something giving us perceptions. Even if you take it for granted that it is the properties which give us these perceptions, we can still only say that it is the properties which exist as that is what we are naturally perceiving. Arguably it is too much of a jump to say that 'because properties exist, substrata which hold them together must also exist' due to the fact that we have no empirical way of verifying that this is true. Berkeley argued that because we cannot experience substrata, we are essentially talking about something nonsensical as no advocate of substratum theory really knows in practice what substrata actually are (Berkeley, 1710, ยง16).

One objection to this view is that we can have knowledge that substrata exist without knowing exactly what they are. If we take the assumption that our empirical experience of properties reflects that there are such a thing as properties in what we understand to be reality, then it would seem bizarre to think that there is just properties existing. Properties have to be properties of something otherwise they essentially wouldn't be properties by definition. The things of which they are properties of would have to be capable of independent existence, otherwise they too would be properties themselves (Locke, 1690, 2.23.2). Furthermore if reality was purely reducible to just properties, we would struggle to make intelligent sense of our world as we would lack the rationale for interpreting objects. Therefore there has to be some form of substratum holding properties together.

Despite this, the whole concept of a substratum holding properties together might just be completely incoherent. Substrata must have independent existence in order to accommodate for their properties changing and the overall substratum persisting, for example painting a table green when it was originally a different colour would not change the substratum of the table.

However if the substratum is itself something which does not change or depend on its properties, why would the substratum of a table have to remotely reflect what a table is? You could simply change all the properties of a table and craft the wood into a different object entirely, as substrata are not dependent on their properties we might arguably have to say that this entirely new object has the substratum of a table. There is no exact way for us to understand what properties make something a particular substratum or even what it requires for something to be a substratum. Therefore, it seems nonsensical to assume their existence when substratum theory advocates do not even know what they are assuming.

Aristotle argued that we have an understanding of substrata deeper than the previous sceptical argument might allow. The reason for this is that we can know the essence of substrata, some properties of particular substrata are essential to the substratum whereas others aren't (Aristotle, 350 B.C.E, 23). Every object has something about it which makes it what it is as well as having other non-essential properties. It does not matter whether a table is green or blue as regardless it is still a table due to something underpinning its essence. Arguably this makes substratum theory more plausible as it is the needed explanation as to how objects can have their own existence.

However, Aristotle's explanation has some problems. One issue is the fact that too much emphasis is placed on essential properties. What I mean by this is that, under Aristotle's idea, substrata are essentially determined by their essential properties as that is what makes the object what it is. If you are going to make the claim that properties determine the object then

you might as well just subscribe to bundle theory which states that objects are nothing more than the collection of their properties. Arguably it is an inconsistent position to state that properties make up the object whilst claiming the object is still distinct from the properties. The reason being that if it is only the properties going into the fabrication of an object, then it is by definition true that the object is just its properties.

Bundle theory has its own set of issues which need to be addressed, for if it is true that all that there is to objects is just a bundle of properties, it remains a confusion as to how when we observe the properties of objects, we internalise the idea of the object itself and not just the properties. Furthermore, if we are only sensing properties, how are we making any intelligent sense of what we observe? Surely under bundle theory we would not be able to make any sense of objects as all we ever experience is a blur of properties. If bundle theory has more problems than substratum theory, then it might be true that substratum theory is more plausible due to the fact that it provides more of an explanation.

In response to the previous objection to bundle theory, when we observe objects, what is really there is just a bundle of properties. We give bundles of properties identity by naming them and calling them a particular object but when broken down, the object is just a collection of its properties and nothing more. We are able to make intelligent sense of property bundles because property bundles are distinct from each other. Even if on occasion individual property bundles share similar properties, the bundles will always occupy different areas in space.

Evidence for the idea that we do interpret objects in terms of their properties is the idea that if there were two distinct objects taking up the same space, we would most likely have a difficult time of understanding what is going on. We would struggle to identify them as different objects as they are in the same place and so are one with each other. Therefore perhaps bundle theory can hold against criticisms as, on the face of it, it seems when you break your understanding of objects down, objects are nothing more than a collection of properties.

Despite this argument, it might be the case that space cannot actually be a distinguishable property of something. This is an implication of the thought experiment created by Max Black wherein he asks the reader to consider the possibility of two completely identical spheres in a universe where nothing else exists (Black, 1952, 156). The two spheres have the same relational space properties to each other as space can only be measured in relational terms.

Under bundle theory, we would not be able to explain how the two spheres can be distinct as both spheres are a collection of the exact same properties. As bundle theory has this gap in explanation, substratum theory might be more plausible as it gives us an answer to this type of situation.

It is possible for a bundle theorist to maintain that the two spheres would be distinct under bundle theory regardless of the fact that they have the same relational space properties.

Arguably the two spheres can't ever be bundles of the exact same properties because their individual extensions in space are different. In other words, even through the spheres share the same relational distance from each other, they are still extended at different points in space.

The only way to assert that the spheres are completely identical in all property aspects is to say that they share the exact same extension, meaning they would be inside each other. If this was true, substratum theory wouldn't even be able to distinguish the spheres because being a part of the same thing would surely make them 1 object and not 2 distinct objects inside each other.

Otherwise, substratum theorists would be forced to say that there can be substrata inside other substrata. This explanation distances ourselves even further from how we intuitively understand objects. Therefore we might actually be better equipped to understand objects under bundle theory, as all you need to commit to is saying that the objects are just the collection of their properties. So, understanding the properties gives us all the explanation we need.

I have discussed how bundle theory is able to provide an explanation as to how we can understand and interpret objects, this is something which is traditionally seen as the benefit of substratum theory as it too is able to provide an explanation. I will now discuss a logical flaw in substratum theory in order to demonstrate that the explanation given by bundle theory is more plausible. In the first of the 'Three Dialogues', Berkeley raises the issue of regress for substratum theory (Berkeley, 1713, 1). Substratum theorists advocate the idea that substrata must have distinct existence from their properties and in order to have an existence substrata must be extended (Berkeley, 1713, 1). However extension is a property of something and so any substratum would have to have an extension distinct from itself, as the extension is distinct the substratum would not exist due to the fact that the object needs some extension to exist in reality. Furthermore the property of extension could not exist as just a property as, according to the substratum theorist, properties need a substratum to exist. Therefore a further substratum would have to be generated which would require a separate and distinct extension which thereafter would have another substratum attached and so forth creating an infinite regress of substrata (Berkeley, 1713, 1).

In conclusion it is not plausible that substrata supports properties. As I have shown throughout this essay, there are many issues relating to substratum theory which make it less plausible.

The fact that we can't have experience of substrata means that any discussion around the issue will be in some abstract sense whereby we have no way of verifying if particular suggestions are correct or not. Essentially those who advocate for substratum theory don't

even understand what they are advocating for because they talk in the abstract without any decisive way to pin down what they mean. Everything that substratum theory is supposed to explain, bundle theory has a more plausible solution to due to the fact that it aims to understand the world through what we can actually interact with, rather than appealing to unverifiable concepts. Furthermore even if you allow improvable concepts to carry the same weight as verifiable statements, substratum theory still falls short of a solid explanation as it leads to logical incoherencies such as the issue of regress.

Bibliography Aristotle (350 B.C.E) 'Metaphysics', Books VII-X, Montgomery Furth (trans), Hackett Publishing Company, 1985.

Berkeley, G (1710) 'A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge', edited by Jonathan Dancy, Oxford: University Press, 1998.

Berkeley, G (1713) 'Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous', edited by James Fieser, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , 1996.

Black, M (1952) 'The Identity of Indiscernibles', Mind Association, Vol. 61, No. 242, Oxford: University Press.

Locke, J (1690) 'An Essay Concerning Human Understanding', edited by Pauline Phemeister, Oxford: University Press, 2008.

‘Uphill and Downhill Lives’: Can the Shape of A Life Determine its Value?

Brunna Pimentel

In this essay I will argue for Velleman’s claim that the shape of a life matters in determining its value, more specifically, I will argue that a life that has an uphill trajectory is better than one that takes a downhill trajectory precisely because of its shape. I will argue for this by defending Velleman’s view against Feldman’s objection that says that an uphill life being better not because of its shape but because of the hidden pleasures and pains contained in it, meaning we still assess the value of a life in terms of its overall sum of momentary pleasure and pain.

Firstly, I will outline Velleman’s argument for the shape of a life being important in assessing its value. Velleman argues that intuitively it is better to live a life that gets progressively better, or ‘an uphill life’ than a life that gets progressively worse, or a ‘downhill life’ [Velleman 2000: 58].

Velleman thinks that intuitively, we do not attribute this value of an uphill life because it contains a larger sum of momentary wellbeing than a downhill life does. He uses momentary wellbeing to mean short episodes of pleasure present in a life. In order to make his case that the sum of momentary wellbeing is not all that is important in order to assess the value of a life, Velleman constructs a case where both an uphill life and a downhill life contain the same aggregate wellbeing so that they may not be distinguished between the overall sum of pleasure and pain present in each life [Velleman 2000: 58]. Furthermore, he says that nonetheless an uphill life is still preferable because it is a story of a better life, one of improvement, rather than one of deterioration and in virtue of this it has more value [Velleman 2000: 59].

Essentially, his claim is that an uphill life is better in virtue of its actual shape, that is to say, he believes that temporal considerations are relevant for assessing how good a life actually is.

Moreover, Velleman adds that events later in life help give meaning to those in earlier life because earlier events are more susceptible to being bestowed meaning in virtue of their temporal placement in a life [Velleman 2000: 68]. This fact may help give further justification for our intuition that an uphill life is better, because positive experiences later in life may help give meaning to the negative ones earlier in life, meaning the person does not think that they have suffered in vain. To illustrate, suppose Jerry goes to university and has a very tough time, feeling intimidated to engage with others socially and suffering from mental illnesses through the years.

Furthermore, since he does not attend many social events, in his spare time Jerry develops a software in his spare time and later sells it and ends up becoming a millionaire. The example may yield the intuition that subsequent events in Jerry’s life helped create value to his existence

and helped to give meaning to his earlier struggle. This intuition arguably gives one further reason to believe that an uphill life is better in virtue of its shape and that temporal order is relevant in determining the value of a life.

I have described Velleman’s argument for an uphill life being better in virtue of its shape and I will now outline one of Feldman’s objection to it. Feldman believes that Velleman is wrong as to why the uphill life is better than the downhill life. He argues that an uphill life is better in virtue of it containing hidden pleasure and pain. Feldman’s argument is two-fold. Firstly, he considers the scenario where one is aware of one’s life shape and cares about its shape. He considers that in this case, this knowledge will create hidden pleasure or pain and this will be the explanation as to why one’s life has more or less value. He constructs a case to help illustrate his point. He considers an individual who has an uphill life and one who has a downhill life. He says that the one that has an uphill life derives pleasure from her life’s uphill shape, meaning her life will contain extra hidden pleasure.

Alternatively, he argues that the one that has a downhill life will derive a sense of dissatisfaction from her life’s downhill trajectory, meaning that her life will have extra hidden pain [Feldman 2004: 131]. Moreover, this extra pleasure in uphill’s life and the added sense of dissatisfaction and pain in downhill’s life will account for the added value in Uphill’s life and the decreased value in Downhill’s life. Meaning that the reason why uphill’s life is intuitionally preferable to downhill’s life is because it has a larger sum of pleasure than downhill’s life. Essentially, Feldman agrees with Velleman that in a scenario where one knows and cares about one’s life shape, an uphill life will be better. However, he attributes this intuition to the different aggregative value of both lives instead of the shape of either life [Feldman 2004: 133]. Secondly, Feldman considers a scenario where one does not care about the shape of one’s life. He argues that in this case, the uphill life is not better because the individual gets nothing from knowing about the trend of his life [Feldman 2004: 134]. Furthermore, regardless of one caring about the shape of one’s life, Feldman argues that Velleman is wrong in claiming that temporal considerations have any importance in assessing the value of a life.

I have outlined Feldman’s objection to Velleman and I will now consider one way in which Velleman might reply. Feldman’s main point seems to be that when we judge an uphill life to be better, this is only because it is a case where the individual derives a sense of pleasure from the shape of her life, meaning that aggregative pleasure is the only thing factor in assessing a life’s value. However, it seems as if we can adjust Feldman’s picture of both lives so that the individual’s feelings toward each of their lives’ shapes are the same, meaning any extra hidden value is cancelled out. To illustrate, imagine that uphill enjoys the uphill trajectory of her life,

however, she also feels a sense of mild anxiety at the prospect of having everything she has gained being taken away from her. It is not uncommon that people who have suffered extensively to feel this way, never truly feeling comfortable with newfound success. However, we can also suppose that this anxiety is not debilitating and although it is always present, she learns how to deal with it. We may also add that she still derives some pleasure from knowing the shape of her life so that her anxiety and this extra pleasure cancel each other out. Furthermore, we can imagine that downhill has a resilient spirit and a positive attitude so that even if she knows about the downward turn that her life is taking, her positive attitude means that some pleasure is added to her life. We may suppose that this extra value is not excessive enough to offset her misery at knowing the downhill trajectory of her life, it is merely sufficient to cancel any extra sense of displeasure.

Moreover, these scenarios may be used as a counterexample to Feldman’s argument since both individuals know and care about the shape of their lives in these cases. However, the mixed responses they have to each of their lives’ shapes means that any added sense of pleasure and pain cancel each other out, meaning that both lives have equal aggregative value. Nevertheless, it still would appear as if the uphill life is preferable to the downhill life.

I have considered one way which Velleman might defend his argument and I will now consider a possible reply by Feldman. In response to the example I have outlined above, Feldman may just deny that in such a case uphill’s life is better than downhill’s life. If uphill feels a sort of constant anxiety from thinking about the shape of her life, then Feldman may argue that uphill’s life is not actually any better than downhill’s. Feldman may insist that the only way that an uphill life may be considered better than a downhill life is if the individual gets something from it, in other words, if the individual derives a great sense of pleasure by thinking about the uphill trajectory of their life. He may argue that in cases where this is true, the uphill life is better in virtue of this added value, which greatly contrasts with the sense of dissatisfaction that downhill gets from her downhill life.

However, Velleman could point out that regardless of how the individual feels about their life, an uphill life is better to a downhill life because it is the story of a better life. This is what arguably justifies the intuition that an uphill life is better, because it is the life story which is most appealing to most people, one of progression rather than degradation100.

I can anticipate Feldman’s response to this. He may wish to say at this point that the people contemplating living each life and choosing uphill’s life on the basis of its shape are merely 100

I thank Alex Gregory for helping me to improve this argument.

confused. Feldman could point out that the observer is failing to see that when they perceive an uphill life as being a preferable life narrative, they are imagining that life to be more pleasurable to be lived. In other words, the observer is failing to see that that life has hidden pleasures in the form of the happiness one would derive from knowing one was living a story of progression and not one of degradation. Once again, aggregative considerations are what is important in determining the value of a life and not the actual shape of a life [Feldman 2004: 135].

However, this response is arguably unsatisfactory because we could tell the observer that he would have to live a life of progression at the cost of feeling a constant sense of anxiety by living that life. It would appear as if even if we add this condition, the uphill life is still preferable to a life of degradation, even if it comes with the cost of feeling a sense of anxiety. One may attribute this intuition to an uphill life being preferable because of its shape, because it is a life where things keep improving for the individual and not getting worse. It does not seem to matter if there would be no extra hidden value in it, we would arguably still prefer it to a downhill life.

Furthermore, it seems that Feldman cannot explain this intuition by appeal to the aggregative value of either life, meaning that we should arguably attribute explain our intuition by allowing that temporal considerations have an important role to play in determining how good a life is.

In conclusion, in this essay I have argued for Vellemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s claim that the shape of a life matters in determining its value and for the claim that an uphill life is better because of the shape it has. I have done this by showing that Vellemanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s argument survives Feldmanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s objection that the uphill life is better not because of temporal considerations but because it has more aggregative value.

References Velleman, J. 2000. The Possibility of Practical Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press Inc. Feldman, F. 2004. Pleasure and the good life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

‘Hume’s Descriptive Solution: Solving the Aesthetic Problem of Taste?’

Simeon Carter

In this paper, I argue that the descriptive problem to which Hume moves the problem of taste is unanswerable due to there being no way to distinguish equally valuable co-existing uniformities of taste. I will first outline the Problem of Taste and Hume’s solution to it. In response, I will ask whether we can know which qualities are required by the critics in Hume’s answer. I will consider whether we can find these by looking to established masterpieces but shall suggest that this appeals to universal sentiment to solve a problem created by lack of universal sentiment. I will explore a clarification of Hume’s stance, that we only require the universal appreciation of critics, but shall reveal this to be circular. I will examine the possibility that it is not viciously circular and shall suggest that if this is the case we are left with equally justified and valuable uniformities of taste. I will note that if there is no way of distinguishing them, we are left unable to answer the descriptive problem. This will lead me to conclude that Hume’s solution fails.101 The Problem of Taste comes about because we wish to maintain two states of affairs. Firstly, that beauty exists in our sentiments, that is, our feelings. (Hume 2008: 104) If we imagine a case where Ben thinks the Mona Lisa is beautiful and Polly thinks it is ugly, we are not troubled. Their two views are not claims about the world so do not hold true or false values. Whilst they are reflections of different tastes, they are not in conflict.

But we also make judgements about art which, in contrast, do try and depict the world. (Hume 2008: 105) We would say the Mona Lisa just is a better painting than the stick men I drew as a child. Whilst we were happy for Polly to think the Mona Lisa ugly, we would surely question her if she claimed my stick men superior. Yet if all taste is equal, we cannot contest her claim. Thus, comes the need for Hume’s ‘Standard of Taste: a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled.’ (Hume 2008: 104) Hume accepts the existence of differing sentiments, but not that they are equally credible. He draws a comparison to a case with two men, one with good sight and one with jaundice. (Hume 2008: 106) If we want to know the colour of something, who would we ask? Even if you reply, “You cannot know real colour as colour only exists in our minds”, you would still choose the man

101

Thanks to David Woods for suggesting amendments throughout this piece, notably raising the final concern about whether writing off a culture is indeed problematic

with good sight. Even if not true, his account will be more credible as he at least possesses the relevant senses.

Similarly, we must turn to art critics who possess the right qualities to know whether something is good art. This moves us from the evaluative question of “what is a good artwork?” to the descriptive “what are the qualities?” And this question Hume believes he can answer, suggesting ‘Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.’ (Hume 2008: 109) Hume suggests this solves the Problem of Taste.

This solution, however, only functions if Hume can justify how he chose these qualities.

(Levinson 2002: 230) I am not questioning these qualities in particular (even Hume is unlikely to claim this list definitive) but I am arguing there is no hypothetical way of determining an accurate list. If we cannot find these qualities, we cannot answer the descriptive problem and so this move seems futile.

Hume states we do not have direct access to the idea of good artworks. (Hume 2008: 105) How then can we know what qualities are needed to appreciate them? To know that would be like knowing whether to pick up a hammer or a spanner when you cannot identify the piece of metal in front of you as a nail or a bolt. We must know the subject of our enquiry before we can determine what qualities we need to identify it. As we cannot know the subject, Hume must provide an alternative.

Perhaps instead of the concept of good artwork, we just need examples of it. Artworks that are ‘universally found to please in all countries and ages’ (Hume 2008: 105), that is masterpieces, must be good works. (Levinson 2002: 235) We can identify the qualities needed to appreciate these examples and then extrapolate those to apply more generally. In this way, we could determine the required qualities and so answer the descriptive problem.

One might wish to challenge the claim that there are artworks which universally please (Shusterman: 1989 216) but there is a stronger attack. It seems Hume is appealing to uniformity in sentiment to resolve the Problem of Taste, a problem caused by a lack of uniformity in sentiment. If this is the case, surely it would have been easier and logical to just deny the Problem of Taste to begin with. (Shusterman 1989: 219-220) Our initial concern that no artworks could have satisfied every person who ever lived was probably clear to Hume, so we can assume he is not suggesting this. It is more likely we are looking for artworks that universally please qualified critics in all countries and ages. This clarification manages to incorporate the variety of sentiments we can observe but maintains that existing uniformity is derived from something in the artwork itself.

This clarification means we can identify which artworks are masterpieces allowing us to discover the required qualities and therefore solve the descriptive problem. But this new clause seems to come with the price of circularity. (Kivy 1967: 60) This can be formulated as so: P1: to identify qualities we must identify masterpieces universally approved by critics P2: to identify masterpieces we must identify qualified critics P3: to identify qualified critics we must identify the qualities they possess So, C: to identify qualities we must identify qualities To answer the question â&#x20AC;&#x153;What qualities does a good critic need?â&#x20AC;? we must already possess the answer to that question.

A defender of Hume may reply that just because the solution is circular it does not mean it is viciously so. Hume, they may say, is not trying to establish what the real masterpieces are in the same way earlier we were not trying to determine the real colours. He is trying to explain the occurrence of consensus when usually tastes vary significantly.

Ability to Identify Colour

Qualities

Masterpieces

Critics

Figure 1

Examples of Specific Colours

Well Sighted Person

Figure 1

The colour parallel can be drawn out further. Figure 1 demonstrates the established circularity required to answer the descriptive problem. Figure 2 shows the same shape. To know what is needed to identify colour we need to look at examples of colours (without them it would again be like reaching blind for the hammer or spanner). To know what specific colours are we need to ask a qualified person, that is one who is well sighted. And we deem a person well sighted if they possess the ability to identify colour. This circularity does not seem to challenge us because we are not talking about real colour (if such a thing exists) but our own construct of colour.

Therefore, we should similarly accept Figure 1 because we are equally only trying to explain how our own construct often features consensus If I am part of the circle of Figure 1, all is well. I listen to critics who have the qualities and point to masterpieces that exhibit those qualities. It is circular but internally consistent.

But now let us add Figure 1* to run alongside it (see below). It is made up of the same pieces but differing in each count. Figure 1* represents a culture where a less delicate sentiment is one of the qualities, thus leading us to find different critics who in turn would choose different masterpieces. (Levinson 2002: 230) For a person in each of these circles their own model appears internally consistent. But if they were to try and consider the alternative they would â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;pronounce without scruple the sentiment of these pretended critics to be absurd and ridiculous.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Unable to explain an equally valuable consensus each party results in writing the otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture off.

One may respond questioning whether this is a problem. Whilst it might be the case that to write off a culture is uncomfortable, that is not our concern. If one culture contains critics possessing the correct qualities for identifying masterpieces and another does not, then it would be okay to abandon that latter culture. For if we did we could then know the correct qualities and therefore successfully answer the descriptive problem.

However, this requires that we can distinguish which of these two equally internally consistent models contains the real qualities. Hume does not provide an answer. His way of identifying the correct qualities is as outlined above but both these models satisfy those requirements. I agree with the challenge that, despite it being unappealing, to dismiss a whole culture is not necessarily a problem, but note that the real problem is that we are unable to determine which culture we

Qualities 1

Masterpieces 1

Qualities 2

Critics 1

Figure 1

Masterpieces 2

Critics 2

Figure 1*

are to rid. If we cannot do that, then we cannot in principle know how to answer the descriptive problem to which Hume has moved the discussion.

By allowing this circularity, we are left having made no progress at all. We now have two cultures that contain different qualities. As Hume, on this reading, has permitted circularity as a way of these constructs establishing themselves, they are equally valuable. No way of deciding which qualities are the true ones is provided. Hume’s solution might explain why there are some cases of uniformity but it fails to account for the co-existence of differing, but equally valuable uniformities and doesn’t provide a way to distinguish them.

Hume presents the descriptive problem as a solution to the Problem of Taste. Through a series of challenges, we discovered that to answer the descriptive problem we look to masterpieces which have gained their status through circular reasoning. Permitting such reasoning leaves us unable to differentiate between two equally valuable consensuses. This in turn leads to the need to write off a culture in order to provide a single answer to the descriptive question. As there is no way of determining which culture possesses the correct qualities, we are left unable to answer the descriptive problem to which Hume has moved the discussion. It is on this ground that I argue Hume has failed to solve the Problem of Taste.

Bibliography Hume, David (2008), 'Of the Standard of Taste', in S. M. Cahn and A. Meskin (eds.) Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 103-112.

Kivy, Peter (1967), ‘Hume’s Standard of Taste: Breaking the Circle’, British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 7, no. 1. pp. 57-66.

Levinson, Jerrold (2002), ‘Hume’s Standard of Taste: The Real Problem’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 60, no. 3. pp. 227-238.

Shusterman, Richard (1989), ‘Of the Scandal of Taste: Social Privilege as Nature in the Aesthetic Theories of Hume and Kant’, The Philosophical Forum, vol. 20, no. 3. pp. 211-229.