Aletheia: Texas A&M's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy -- Fall 2021 Edition by Aletheia TAMU's Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ...................................................................................... 4 NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR ................................................................................. 5 CONTRIBUTORS ......................................................................................................................... 6 Should We Use Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS)? Andy Yang, University of Rutgers—New Brunswick ................................................................. 13 Ontological Understanding of Truth, Perspective and Morality in Nietzsche the Anti-Relativist Ümit Ege Atakan, Koc University ............................................................................................... 27 Free Will and Making Sense Julian Perilla, New York University ............................................................................................ 39 Husserl, the Lebenswelt, and Science: The Lasting Significance of “The Vienna Lecture” in the Modern World Jan Wozniak, Ryerson University ................................................................................................ 49 Conceptuality of Experience: How Can Experience Confer Knowledge Zihui Ding, Haverford College .................................................................................................... 66

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF On behalf of the editorial team, I thank you, the reader, for taking the time to read this edition of Aletheia. It has been a challenging year for all of us no doubt. When it seems that we have successfully warded off COVID with the incredible ability of vaccines, a new variant spawns and we have to be wary once again. That being the case, I am extremely proud of my team and our resilience to finish the journal this semester. Aletheia had an almost completely new staff for this edition of the journal. It is thanks to those who decided to join Aletheia this year that we were able to release this edition and do so in a timely manner. To each one of you, I say thank you and superb job! I especially want to thank the Executive-Editor for this edition of the journal, Eris Donohue, without whose help this journal would not have been completed in its entirety. I also want to thank Dr. Dwayne Raymond, Dr. Linda Radzik, and Jamie Bosley for their supervision, guidance, resources, timely efficiency, and organization. Without all of you, none of this would have been possible. I would further also want to thank each of the scholars whose work constitutes the rest of this journal. Each of them were extremely cordial and punctual in their correspondence with us. It was a splendid time indeed working with them. Each of their papers were chosen because they displayed an erudition that we, the editorial team, deemed noteworthy and thought deserved publication. The editorial team once again thanks, and congratulates the scholars for their contribution to Aletheia. It was a privilege to serve as Aletheia’s Editor-in-Chief for this Fall Edition of the journal and I look forward to working with my team and staff next semester—Deo volente. I hope the reader finds this edition of Aletheia edifying and may it fructify your mind! Daniel Lightsey B.A. in Philosophy B.S. in Physics Class of 2022 4

NOTE FROM THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR It is with the most nostalgic and yet joyous of feelings that I write this. Having graduated class of 2021 this semester, putting this note to paper is my final responsibility as an undergraduate. But I will not hesitate to say there is no other association though whom I’d rather be saying my goodbye to A&M than Aletheia. In my four semesters of involvement with the journal, first as a published author and then in the unprecedented role as its executive editor, Aletheia has not only provided indispensable enrichment for my philosophical craft but also personal anchorage though one the most uncertain, confusing, and metamorphic periods of my life. I’m not sure if I would still be around without it. Thus, by a principle that desires the strong grow even stronger than they are now, may my successors throughout the years find as much empowerment in this position as I. Now for some acknowledgements: Thank you first of all to the current reader. It is ultimately in you that this text has come together. Next, thank you to all the scholars of the accepted papers. The labor of your craft is Aletheia’s life blood. May this humble platform be a first step toward heights you are yet to dream. Thanks also to all of the other editors on the staff, whose efforts in the process of weeding out have brought works of excellence to publication. Particular thanks are in order for Daniel Lightsey, our editor-in-chief. It is only by your leadership, intellect, and courage in the face assuming new responsibility that Aletheia has carried on another semester. There is no doubt in my mind that you’ll kill it again in 2022. And last, but certainly never least, I give my most special thanks to Jake…

by saying Yes we came to life . Eris Donohue B.A. in Philosophy Class of 2021

CONTRIBUTORS Editors Daniel Lightsey Daniel Lightsey is a Senior philosophy and physics double major from Leander, Texas. His philosophical interests include: philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, free will, philosophy of math/logic, and philosophical questions on the meaning and purpose in and of life. He is currently writing an undergraduate thesis focused on how luck may or may not affect free will and moral responsibility. He is a two-time recipient of the Phillip and Doris Moses Ranch Fund and the Crawford and Hattie Jackson Foundation Scholarship in Science for his academic success in college. Daniel has been a member of Aletheia since Fall 2020 and has enjoyed his time with the journal thoroughly. In his free time, Daniel likes to watch movies and shows with his wife and dog, cook, and read. Once he has graduated from Texas A&M, Daniel plans on going to graduate school in order to pursue a PhD in philosophy. Thereafter, he hopes to influence the lives of his students through philosophy and teaching. Eris Donohue Eris Donohue recently graduated Texas A&M with a major in philosophy and a minor in gender studies. This will have been their third and final semester serving as an executive editor at Aletheia. Poststructuralism, feminist theory, trans theory, philosophy of art, and Nietzsche compose her areas of philosophical interest. His current in-development project investigates the ontological exclusion of the feminine à la Luce Irigaray in the final note Nietzsche’s The Will to Power. Through it all and above it all, we are still our favorite philosopher(s). Alexis Roa Alexis Roa is a senior Society, Ethics, and Law major with minors in Philosophy and Sports Management. His philosophy interests include political philosophy, philosophy of law, and ethics. After graduation he plans on attending law school and pursuing a career in criminal or contract law. In his spare time, he enjoys watching science fiction movies and training in various martial arts. 6

CONTRIBUTORS Editors America Jimenez America Jimenez is a freshman Philosophy major from El Paso, Texas. She is curious about all areas of philosophy but has a particular interest in philosophy of law, philosophy of the mind, ethics, axiology, and human rights. She is a member of the freshman leaders establishing excellence organization as well as the Pre-Law Society. In her free time, she enjoys running, reading, painting, and spending time with friends. After graduating, America plans to attend law school and pursue a career in immigration law. Anella Roy Anella Roy is a junior from Weatherford, TX. She is pursuing a degree in Human Resources Development with a double minor in business and leadership. Her philosophical interests are Boolean Logic, existentialism, and ethics. In addition to serving as an editor in Aletheia, she previously tutored students who struggled in PHIL 240, also known as Logic, and rowed on the Texas A&M Crew Team. This spring, she plans to do Polo, join a Women’s Organization, complete her Real Estate license, and eventually seek a summer internship. After graduation, Anella plans on pursuing a masters in Human Resource Management at Texas A&M, and eventually finding a corporate job in Houston. Austin Tapler Austin Tapler is currently a 3rd-year undergraduate pursuing a BS in Political Science with a minor in Philosophy at Texas A&M. He is currently most interested in the schools of ontology, phenomenology, and political philosophy. Austin is currently studying Slavoj Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology, which deals with psychoanalysis, ideology critique, and applying Hegelian dialectics to ideology in a post-USSR world. Austin seeks to continue within the continental school of thought with writers like Hegel, Kant, and Marx

CONTRIBUTORS Editors Emma Smith Emma Smith is a freshman philosophy and psychology major from Katy, Texas. Her areas of philosophical interest are primarily in epistemology, ethics, and philosophy of mind. She has also done philosophical research with Alternative Epistemologist involving explorations of different cultures and the impact of psychedelics. After graduation, she hopes to expand her research, continue writing and editing, and pursue a career involving therapy or counseling. Jaime Rodriguez Jaime Rodriguez is a senior Society, Ethics, and Law major with a double minor in philosophy and leadership studies, from San Antonio, Texas. Philosophy has always been a part of his life, and above all fields of philosophy enjoys discussions about existentialism the most. Aside from Philosophy, Rodriguez loves the opportunity to travel and has visited a host of countries from Europe to Oceania. Jaime is a member of the Corps of Cadets and is the Career Readiness officer for Squadron 8. After graduating in the Spring of 2022, Rodriguez will pursue a career in international affairs with hopes of working as a foreign service officer abroad. Laura Stoicoviciu Laura Stoicoviciu is a Senior philosophy major from South Austin. Her particular philosophical interests are in social political theory, existentialism and Eastern philosophies. After graduating in May, Laura plans on attending law school in the fall to study intellectual property. While she aspires a career in law, she intends on continuing to study, read, and write philosophy. Her interests include rowing, hiking, and going to concerts. In her spare time, Laura hosts a radio show for KANM which focuses on the intersection between philosophical schools of thought and the messages behind musical albums.

CONTRIBUTORS Editors Kate Girvin Kate Girvin is a junior University and Departmental Honors philosophy pre-law student from El Paso, Texas. Girvin is a second-year editor for Aletheia and will be chairing Aletheia’s International Virtual Conference of Undergraduate Philosophy (IV-CUP) alongside her peer, Emma Smith in Spring 2022. Continental philosophy, decolonial feminist theory, and existentialism are her main philsophical interests. Girvin is currently drafting an Honors undergraduate thesis in decolonial feminist theory with Dr. Omar Rivera. Aside from academics, Girvin’s campus organizational involvement includes serving as a director for Sophomore Leaders Impacting, Developing, and Educating (SLIDE), in which she accompanies sophomores in mental health and sexual assault awareness advocacy in the BryanCollege Station community. She is also a member of the Liberal Arts Student Council’s programs committee and TAMU Legacies, a women’s organization that strives to create a legacy of service and leadership through the empowerment of women. Girvin serves as the undergraduate apprentice at the Glasscock Center, fostering and celebrating humanities research among the community of scholars at Texas A&M University. After graduation, she plans to pursue a law degree and teach philosophy at the university level. Matthew Deane Matthew Deane is a freshman Society, Ethics, and Law major with a double minor in philosophy and business from Cypress, Texas. He is interested in social philosophy, moral philosophy, and theology. Currently, he is doing research on aesthetics in China during the Ming and early Qing dynasties. He enjoys traveling and reading in his free time and plans on attending law school

CONTRIBUTORS Authors Andy Yang My name is Andy W Yang, and I am currently a senior (Class Year of 2022) in a dual degree program studying mechanical engineering and philosophy. My hometown is South Amboy, New Jersey. My philosophical interests include philosophy of mind, political philosophy, ethics of artificial intelligence and robotics, and free will. I am a part of Pi Tau Sigma (Mechanical Engineering Honors Society) as well as several professional engineering societies on campus. After graduation, I plan to work as a technology analyst at Deutsche Bank where I interned this past summer while attending graduate school to study computer science. One day, I hope to address ethical concerns regarding artificial intelligence and disparities in data and limit biases in order to create a more equitable society. Jan Alexander Wozniak Jan Alexander Wozniak (he/him) is a poet, short story writer, and scholar residing in Toronto, Canada, whose practice creatively merges a passion for literature, psychology, and philosophy. Currently completing his fourth year of a BA in Psychology, Jan plans on pursuing graduate studies in the clinical field upon graduating (expected 2022). As a neurodivergent scholar, his research interests primarily focus on ADHD and ASD, as well as the role that phenomenology, existentialism, and Eastern philosophy have in psychotherapy. Jan has been published in The Rush Magazine and Intersect: The Stanford Journal of Science, Technology, and Society, and has forthcoming works in Spectrum and JIRIRI. Zihui Ding Unfortunately, Zihiui Ding was unable to finish correspondence with us due to lockdowns of the COVID pandemic in his hometown in China. Thankfully, his paper did not require any significant edits and we were still able to publish it in the journal. We hope you see this soon Zihui Ding.

CONTRIBUTORS Authors Julian Perilla Julian Perilla is an international student from Bogotá, Colombia, majoring in philosophy and minoring in classics at New York University. His main interests lie in moral and political philosophy, particularly normative ethics. He is a Presidential Honors Scholar at NYU's College of Arts and Science and has been the recipient of several scholarships, such as NYU's Global Pathways Scholarship and the Herman Berkman Undergraduate Research Scholarship. His current research focuses on political obligation and membership, and his previous research has ranged from Plato's epistemology to Nietzsche's metaethics. After graduation, he hopes to attend graduate school in order to continue his path in academic philosophy Ümit Ege My name is Ümit Ege Atakan. I am from Turkey and I live in Istanbul. I am an undergraduate double majoring in sociology and philosophy at Koc University, College of Social Sciences and Humanities. Currently, I am a sophomore (2nd year) first-semester student. I am currently one of the high-council members of Koc University Philosophy Club and a trainee-reviewer at Ergon: An Undergraduate Philosophy Journal at Koc University. Also, I have moderated a philosophical filmdiscussion seminar based on the film Ex Machina. I hope to go on to graduate studies after my graduation. I would like to pursue an academic career.

Should We Use Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS)? Andy Yang, University of Rutgers—New Brunswick Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS) are weapons systems in which there are no human decision-making elements within the function of the weapons system. The paper explores two potential sides to the arguments for and against LAWS, which are utilitarian and deontological respectively. This paper will lay out arguments in support of LAWS, such as the potential reduction in lost human lives as well as the irrational cognitive biases common in warfare. This paper will also lay out arguments against the usage of LAWs, such as the evaluation of such weapons on ethical frameworks such as jus in bello as well as the lack of accountability for LAWS. I will also enter into a discussion about the ability for LAWS to act as independent moral agents and subsequently the difficulty of justice for LAWS. I will then also discuss how the introduction of LAWS may only reduce the sufferings of war in the short-term, as political leaders might become more emboldened to take military action due to the increase of military power. This might then lead to the necessity of other nations to build up forces of LAWS, the abuse of nations which do not have the capacity to develop LAWS, and the increase of international relations. I will then conclude that the usage of LAWS is unethical and myopic, and should thus be internationally banned.

I. Introduction and Definition Warfare has been an integral part of humanity, and it has both fundamentally shaped and eliminated many societies throughout human history. But as the common adage goes, “war is hell,” and as technology advances, deployment of lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) has already taken place in some parts of the world to alleviate the sufferings of war. However, as politicians and lawmakers struggle to fully define ethical and moral frameworks for exponentially advancing technology, our technical ability as a society may outstrip the moral and ethical implications of such technology. In response to the advancement of LAWS, it has become ever more crucial for ethicists, policy makers, and both national and international governing bodies to discuss how LAWS can impact how we wage war, the arguments for and against the usage of LAWS, and the ethicality of LAWS. First, a clear definition of LAWS and existing political and ethical frameworks for conducting just war must be given. Then, arguments for and against the usage of LAWS will be given. The positive arguments for LAWS, which are utilitarian in nature, will include the possible military advantages gained from using such weapons as well as the potential to decrease cognitive biases in war and the number of ethical infractions committed by soldiers. The negative arguments for 13

LAWS, which are deontological in nature, will include an evaluation of the use of LAWS using just war theory, as well as questioning the accountability and moral agency of LAWS. Counterarguments against the positive utilitarian arguments will be outlined as well. Finally, as a conclusion, the potential societal and future implications of such technology will be considered. The first problem that must be addressed to contextualize the argument is this: What exactly is a LAWS? One glaring issue is that there is no concrete definition on the international level on what exactly defines LAWS. However, at least in the United States, according to the Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, as reported by Kelly Sayler, who is an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, a LAWS is “a weapon system that once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.” 1 The main controversy for LAWS is whether it is ethical to have a “human in the loop,” that is, having a human involved in the decision-making process or to have a “human out of the loop,” that is, not having a human involved in the decision-making process. The focus in this paper will be systems that have a “human out of the loop,” that is, artificial intelligence and algorithms that utilize voice recognition and facial detection are the only decision-making systems used. This is a very current issue, as deployment of LAWS have already been implemented or are being heavily funded by nations including the United States, Russia, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and many other large economic and political powerhouses. 2 The focus of this paper will be on the research and development of systems like South Korea’s SGR-A1, which is a fully autonomous weapons system deployed on the demilitarized zone demarcating North Korea and South Korea with full lethality potential. II. Legal and Ethical Framework The next step in this process is to evaluate the ethicality of LAWS on an existing political and international framework. A doctrine known as just war theory is a branch of military ethics that outlines how war can be justifiable under certain circumstances. There are three main criteria where war can be permissible: jus ad bellum, which is having justifiable reasons to go to war, jus in bello, which is waging war in an ethical way, and jus post bellum, which is the ethical way of 1

Kelly Sayler, “Defense Primer: U.S. Policy on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems,” Congressional Research Service, November 17, 2021, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11150. 2 Brian Stauffer, “Killer Robots: Growing Support for a Ban.” Human Rights Watch, August 10, 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/10/killer-robots-growing-support-ban.

ending wars.3 In this essay, the ethicality of LAWS will be evaluated specifically using jus in bello principles as described by a prominent American political theorist Michael Walzer, in his seminal work Just and Unjust Wars. In Walzer’s book, there are three major ways to determine whether the war is being fought in an ethical way. The first principle is discrimination and noncombatant immunity, which recognizes that those who choose not to fight cannot be killed and are not morally permissible targets. 4 The second principle is proportionality, which questions the amount of force permissible in war. The injury caused should be proportional to the objective desired, as violence and suffering should be limited as much as possible.5 The third principle is the rights of soldiers, which states that soldiers do not forfeit their human rights completely. 6 For example, prisoners of war are entitled to some basic human respect, cannot be tortured, and must be adequately fed, clothed, and given medical treatment. One of the goals in this paper is to evaluate LAWS with respect to these principles, and how LAWS may violate these principles. The positive and negative arguments for the usage of LAWS seem to fall in the utilitarian and deontological camps respectively. Utilitarian ethics dictates that we should determine right or wrong depending on the outcome of the situation. Specifically, according to Julia Driver, utilitarian ethics are considered when one is finding “a morally right action is the action that produces the most good.” 7 Deontological ethics, on the other hand, defines the “domain of moral theories that guide and assess our choices of what we ought to do,” according to Larry Alexander and Michael Moore.8 Deontology presupposes a couple of ideas. First, according to deontological ethics, morality can be derived a priori, which means that these moral rules can be deduced from a line of reasoning. Second, each person is subject to these fundamental rules and therefore these moral rules must be universal. Utilitarianism and deontology are usually contrasted with one another as opposite moral and ethical theories, and it is illustrated in this debate for and against the usage of LAWS. 3

Alexander Moseley. “Just War Theory.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed January 4, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/justwar/. 4 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars a Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York, New York State: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2015), 138-144. 5 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 129-133. 6 Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 41-46. 7 Julia Driver, “The History of Utilitarianism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford University, September 22, 2014), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/. 8 Larry Alexander and Michael Moore, “Deontological Ethics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Stanford University, October 30, 2020), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/.

III. Positive, Utilitarian Arguments in Favor of LAWS The first, positive utilitarian argument for the usage of LAWS is that there are many military advantages associated with LAWS. Policy makers and commanding officers argue that LAWS act as force multipliers, which means that fewer warfighters can be used, which then means that less lives are at risk. Thus, if less lives are at risk, the emotional, financial, and human costs of war can be alleviated. In fact, Amitai and Oren Etzioni have estimated “that each US Soldier in Afghanistan costs the Pentagon roughly $850,000 per year, which does not include the long-term costs of providing health care to veterans.” 9 On the other hand, a small armed robot, “can be built for only $230,000 and is relatively cheap to maintain.” 10 This is also not including the emotional and human costs of war, which not only involves the victims, but oftentimes, the victim’s families and communities. Furthermore, on an international level, we can see the justification of force multiplication in use by South Korea. The North Korean military has several times the manpower of South Korea, and thus, using LAWS evens the playing field and acts as a deterrence for any North Korean attack. In the second positive utilitarian argument, many ethicists and policy makers argue that the usage of LAWS could be more ethical than the usage of human soldiers. War is a high-intensity and high-stress situation for humans, which often leads to extreme cognitive biases and emotional turmoil. These cognitive biases and emotions often cloud the judgements of both warfighters and commanding officers, which then leads to tragic mistakes. One major advantage for LAWS is that they do not need to be programmed to have self-preservation instincts, which eliminates “the need for a ‘shoot-first, ask questions later’ attitude.”11 Furthermore, LAWS will not be clouded by human emotions such as hysteria and panic, and the systems will be able to process more sensory and tactical information “without discarding or distorting it to fit preconceived notions.”12 Interestingly, prospect theory serves as a great example on how international relations unfold during wartime and as a result, how commanding officers and government officials could be subject to cognitive biases. Loss aversion and prospect theory predicts that oftentimes, according to Thomas Bauer and Ralph 9

Amitai Etzioni and Oren Etzioni, “Pros and Cons of Autonomous Weapons Systems,” Army University Press, 2017, https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/May-June-2017/Pros-and-Cons-ofAutonomous-Weapons-Systems/. 10 Etzioni and Etzioni, “Pros and Cons of Autonomous Weapons Systems.” 11 Etzioni and Etzioni, “Pros and Cons of Autonomous Weapons Systems.” 12 Etzioni and Etzioni, “Pros and Cons of Autonomous Weapons Systems.”

Rotte, “decision makers do not adjust their expectations and their reference point to the new situation but keep on engaging their nations’ resources in the attempt to just the losses by success.”13 One historical example is the Vietnam War, where many generals and politicians believed that the perceived loss of losing Vietnam to Communism was greater than the actual human and financial burdens of the war. This led decision makers to commit the sunk-cost fallacy, as decision makers believed that too many resources had been sunk into the war after a certain point. This led to the prolongation of the Vietnam War, which, after a certain point, was irrational because the economic costs of the war were too high to justify the war. According to just war theory, the suffering and time spent in war should be mitigated as much as possible, however, this is often counteracted by the cognitive biases of such decision makers. Thus, on a grander scale, LAWS and automated decision-making systems in war could help reduce the number of cognitive biases and subsequent ethical infractions committed by commanding bodies. IV. Negative, Deontological Arguments Against the use of LAWS On the opposing side, the first negative deontological argument uses the principle of jus in bello to question the efficacy and the feasibility of LAWS. In asymmetrical and insurgent warfare, the line between an enemy combatant and civilian is often blurred, which makes it exceedingly difficult for soldiers to correctly identify engageable targets. Thus, in modern warfare, the discrimination principle of jus in bello is often violated. In modern insurgent warfare enemy combatants use civilian clothing, use civilian buildings as cover, and use guerrilla warfare to attack soldiers, which makes it difficult for even the most trained soldiers to correctly identify targets. Since our current criteria for correctly identifying enemy combatants is incomplete, what criteria should LAWS use when identifying enemy combatants? Unless artificial intelligence has a markedly improved rate of identifying enemy combatants than humans, the increased potential of violating the discrimination principle is not morally justifiable. To further this argument, assuming that LAWS were able to correctly identify enemy combatants, how would the LAWS satisfy the proportionality principle? The LAWS will require some mechanism to differentiate between lethal firepower and nonlethal firepower. For example, children throwing rocks at LAWS should not be liable to lethal firepower. There will need to be some rule-based system for 13

Thomas Bauer and Ralph Rotte, “Prospect Theory Goes to War: Loss-Aversion and the Duration of Military Combat,” October 1997, https://doi.org/10.5282/ubm/epub.1489, 7.

the levels of retaliation, however, the situations are so complex that it seems exceedingly difficult to design a system that can account for and categorize all forms of aggressive action. Furthermore, soldiers and commanding officers often need to make snap judgements to save the most people, even if it results in collateral damage. Could we trust LAWS to make the same decisions or be able to solve this trolley problem? If not, then LAWS could also run the risk of proportionality clause of jus in bello. The second negative deontological argument is the chain of accountability. In war, if a commanding officer directs his or her soldiers to commit atrocities, much of the moral blame is put on the commanding officer. While the soldiers who followed the order are not always entirely morally blameless, they are less morally culpable, as retribution or court-martialing may have resulted in disobeying orders. In war there is a clear chain of command and within each chain each member is held accountable for his or her actions. However, in the context of artificial intelligence, it seems more complicated to determine who exactly should be responsible because there is an exponentially higher number who contribute to the deployment of LAWS. For example, if the software on the LAWS malfunctions, who exactly is ethically liable? Is it the engineering team for not being able to identify the bugs or is the quality assurance people for not performing enough testing? Or is it the company executives who authorized the sale of such machines or the commanding officers who authorized the deployment of the machines? The issue is that LAWS may be such a black box that the chains of accountability become convoluted as a result. Following from this argument, does it then make sense to punish these robots themselves? That is, if we allow artificial intelligence to commit the morally onerous task of taking human lives, could we hold these LAWS to the same moral standard in terms of punishment? To answer this, I will propose a simple thought experiment. Imagine a soldier and a robot put on trial for unlawful engagement and murder of civilians. Both are convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Now, would the victims gain the same moral justice sentencing the soldier as sentencing the LAWS? Intuitively, it seems like that we are more inclined to gain more moral satisfaction sentencing the human soldier, because LAWS are “artificial agents...cannot understand the value of human life because they lack the experience of ... sensing their own morality.”14 LAWS are thus unable to act as independent moral agents and fail to understand the morality of its actions. 14

Michael Skerker, Duncan Purves, and Ryan Jenkins, “Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Moral Equality of Combatants,” SpringerLink (Ethics and Information Technology, February 23, 2020), https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09528-0.

However, how can we say that LAWS are unable to act as independent moral agents? To counter this, The Chinese Room Argument proposed by John Searle will be given. The thought experiment is as follows: imagine a room where a person who only speaks English is given a rulebook about how to translate English to Chinese. The rulebook contains all the rules, symbol manipulation, and instruction of translating English in Chinese. Thus, the person “simply behave[s] as a computer,” that is, the person “performs[s] computational operations on formally specified elements” and is “simply an instantiation of the computer program.”15 There are people outside of this translation room who then give the translator questions in Chinese, which the translator, using the rulebook given, answers them correctly. Now, Searle asks the question, does the translator understand Chinese? Is it possible to derive semantic meaning from syntax? If the conclusion is that the translator does not understand Chinese, then understanding and knowing the rules of translation are fundamentally different. In the context of LAWS, failing to meet engagement criteria and being punished is not the same as having a human make those same immoral considerations because LAWS lack the moral understanding of taking human lives that should not have been taken. Coincidentally, this also seems to fail a portion of just war theory. According to Walzer, “...the right of a nation or people not to be invaded derives from the common life its members have made on their piece of land.”16 As mentioned before, enemy combatants are entitled to basic human rights and dignity according to jus in bello. Usage of LAWS however seems to disrespect enemy combatants because it denies the enemy combatants of fighting with moral agents that understand the value of human life. As a result, it seems that on a grander scale, wide-scale deployment of LAWS disrespects the country in which they are deployed. In modern asymmetrical insurgent warfare, it is not the general population that is being targeted, but the certain radical factions. According to United States policy, military operations “require adaptable foreign language and cultural capabilities to be fully successful.”17 Cultivating good political and social relations with the local population is essential for effective military operations. If LAWS fail the criteria of understanding human morality, then the possibility of LAWS understanding the complicated cultural and political nuances that are needed to conduct effective military operations seem improbable, if not impossible. Simply understanding how 15

Searle, John R. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (1980): 417–24. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00005756, 2. 16 Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 55. 17 United States Army Combined Arms Center, “Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy,” December 1, 2009, https://dde.carlisle.army.mil/LLL/DSC/readings/L20_ARMYCULTURESTRATEGY.pdf.

war is fought is not a sufficient substitute for understanding why wars are conducted and what wars have moral justifications, which is exactly what LAWS seem to lack. The third negative deontological argument acts as a counter to the first and second positive utilitarian arguments. According to just war theory, people should bring wars to a speedy conclusion, and thus “it should be allowable, with that view to employ all means save those that are absolutely objectionable.” 18 However, considering the moral asymmetry between LAWS and human soldiers, instead of acting as a deterrence, it instead “might make political leaders more cavalier about engaging in military action.” 19 Using the example of the Vietnam War again, a major part of waging war from the perspective of a democratic society depends heavily on the support of the general populace. The Vietnam War had major political complications because of the anarchy and bloodshed that was happening in Vietnam. If it were not for this opposition against the war in the United States, the Vietnam War would most likely have dragged on for much longer. However, due to protests against the Vietnam War, countless United States soldiers were saved. But if the “lives” of LAWS are not held in the same moral consideration as human lives, would the public have the same reaction against wars in the future? If a political leader wishes to exercise loftier political ambitions, employing LAWS may be the perfect solution to increase the size in the military without sacrificing political support, which might cause opposing governments to also create as many LAWS as possible. This is already in effect, the Pentagon planned to spend $3.7 billion on unmanned systems in fiscal year 2020 to counter possible high-intensity combat with rivals Russia and China.20 Furthermore, since autonomous weapons are cheaper and disposable, unethical military operations such as genocide and assassinations might have a lowered threshold for a commitment to violence. Moreover, this could lead to abuse of LAWS, especially if LAWS are programmed to not have self-preservation instincts as outlined in the positive utilitarian argument. Self-preservation instincts are a major factor why emotions such as fear and confusion exist in warfare. However, according to just war theory, peace is preferable to war, and war should only be seen as a last resort to reduce human suffering and damage. Because war has many emotional, human, and economic costs, this fact forces politicians and policy makers to explore other more peaceful options such as diplomacy instead of resorting to warfare as their primary 18

Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, 47. Skerker, Purves, and Jenkins, “Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Moral Equality of Combatants.” 20 Michael Klare, “Pentagon Asks More for Autonomous Weapons,” Arms Control Association, April 2019, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-04/news/pentagon-asks-more-autonomous-weapons. 19

option. So, while the deployment of LAWS might lead to less human suffering and financial costs in the short term, over the course of decades, the usage of LAWS might lead to more frequent and prolonged conflicts. V. Potential Future International Consequences If LAWS are not held in the same moral regard as human combatants and have the potential to be abused, then there might be potential future international consequences. The issue of LAWS is a particularly pressing issue because it has already been implemented in some countries and has the potential to receive more funding and research in the future. One major theme concerning artificial intelligence and humanity is the consolidation of wealth and power in a few major corporations and governments. LAWS seems to fall in a similar vein to these arguments, because development and implementation of LAWS are usually developed by powerful governments with large military budgets. What this may produce in the future is a large imbalance and concentration of political power in a few countries, similar to what occurred during the Cold War between the West and the East. This large imbalance of power may result in these large governments demanding more from countries that are less politically or economically advanced. Additionally, only large defense companies and organizations will most likely be the only ones capable and authorized of producing LAWS. Thus, because LAWS might be essential to national security, it might lend these large defense companies even more lobbying power in decision-making bodies such as Congress. Thus, the decisions made by government bodies might not be in the best interests of the citizens, especially when the business prospects of the defense industry “are tightly controlled and in many ways entirely decided by official decisions made in Congress and the Pentagon in a way that other industries don’t have to contend with,” according to Auble and Evers-Hillstrom.21 Since many of these companies are focused on producing revenue for their shareholders, we might see an expansion of the military-industrial complex. Furthermore, what might occur because of this is a sort of fragmented cooperation in which large cliques are formed. Cliques, such as the largest defense companies in the United States, may cooperate with one another. Large political alliances and cooperation may form among nations allied to their respective cliques and ideologies. In Peter Turchin’s work Ultra Society, he writes “it is cooperation 21

Dan Auble and Karl Evers-Hillstrom, “Capitalizing on Conflict: How Defense Contractors and Foreign Nations Lobby for Arms Sales,” OpenSecrets, February 21, 2021, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/capitalizing-on-conflict.

that underlies the ability of human groups and whole societies to achieve their shared goals. This is true for all kinds of groups, for economic organizations, firms and corporations, as well as for political organizations, such as states.” 22 In the future, as a byproduct of the production of LAWS, nations that are ideologically similar might band together to accelerate the research and development of LAWS. According to Turchin, “competition between teams creates cooperation...Equality of group members is, therefore, a very important factor in promoting group cohesion and cooperation, which translates into the capacity of the group to win against other groups.”23 So, while there might be more equality amongst nations within the cliques, international relations between these large nation-cliques might become more fragmented in the future, which might hinder true global cooperation and might weaken the efficacy of organizations like the United Nations and international directives requiring full participation from member countries such as the Paris Agreement. VI. Conclusion There seems to be two major reasons in support for the usage of LAWS, both of which follow a utilitarian line of reasoning. The first positive argument outlines how LAWS can relieve the financial, emotional, and human costs of war as well as serving as a deterrence for some nations by acting as a force multiplier. The second positive argument argues that LAWS are not subject to cognitive biases, and thus can be more ethical in combat because of its objective decision-making. On the contrary, there seems to be three major negative arguments against the usage of LAWS. The first negative deontological argument evaluates the feasibility and the challenges that LAWS might have in upholding the discrimination and proportionality clauses of jus in bello. The second negative deontological argument is questioning the chain of accountability when LAWS is deployed. Since LAWS are unable to act as independent moral agents or understand morality according to the Chinese Room Argument outlined by Searle, LAWS are not held in the same regard in terms of punishment and justice as human combatants. Furthermore, because LAWS are unable to act as independent moral agents, it is disrespectful to both enemy combatants as well as the nation being invaded, especially when many wars now fought are asymmetrical, requiring more human elements like cultural 22

Peter Turchin, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth (Chaplin, Connecticut: Beresta Books, 2016), 47. 23 Turchin, Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth, 93.

nuances and political support than ever before. The third negative deontological argument acts as a counter to the first positive utilitarian argument, because while there might be a reduction in the financial and emotional burden in the near future since LAWS are not held in the same moral regard as human combatants, it could easily lead to mass weaponization and abuse of LAWS, leading to more frequent and prolonged conflicts. If LAWS are not held in the same moral regard as human combatants, this potential for mass weaponization might have real international consequences, in which large defense companies and nations with higher military budgets may have disproportionate power on the world stage. LAWS may also strain international relations, as LAWS may create international cliques and hinder progress on international initiatives. Thus, the usage and development of LAWS should be considered unethical in both its usage and continual development. Beginning in 2015, an open letter which has been signed by more than 4000 AI researchers, scientists, and corporate leaders thus far is urging governments and organizations to fully prohibit the development of autonomous weapons.24 As recent as October 14th, 2021, a company by the name of Ghost Robotics created a robot dog with a weapon attached, a creation that sparked controversy as scientists feared that eventual development of these weapon systems can lead to further development within lethal autonomous weapons systems. 25 While artificial intelligence has the potential to benefit humanity in many ways, it is also Pandora’s Box, in which the misuse and abuse of AI can damage humanity in a devastating fashion. Philosophers, engineers, scientists, and government officials ought to deeply examine the moral and international consequences such inventions might have. And as technology becomes more advanced, the moral and ethical boundaries often become blurred, and it will be increasingly more important to discuss and debate our relation with technological advancements.

Toby Walsh, “Autonomous Weapons Open Letter: AI & Robotics Researchers,” Future of Life Institute, July 28, 2015, https://futureoflife.org/2016/02/09/open-letter-autonomous-weapons-ai-robotics/. 25 Evan Ackerman, “Q&A: Ghost Robotics CEO on Armed Robots for the U.S. Military,” IEEE Spectrum (IEEE Spectrum, October 25, 2021), https://spectrum.ieee.org/ghost-robotics-armed-military-robots.

Works Cited Ackerman, Evan. “Q&A: Ghost Robotics CEO on Armed Robots for the U.S. Military.” IEEE Spectrum. IEEE Spectrum, October 25, 2021. https://spectrum.ieee.org/ghost-robotics-armed-military-robots. Alexander, Larry, and Michael Moore. “Deontological Ethics.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, October 30, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/. Auble, Dan, and Karl Evers-Hillstrom. “Capitalizing on Conflict: How Defense Contractors and Foreign Nations Lobby for Arms Sales.” OpenSecrets, February 21, 2021. https://www.opensecrets.org/news/reports/capitalizing-on-conflict. Bauer, Thomas, and Ralph Rotte. “Prospect Theory Goes to War: Loss-Aversion and the Duration of Military Combat.” Open Access LMU, October 1997. https://doi.org/10.5282/ubm/epub.1489. Driver, Julia. “The History of Utilitarianism.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University, September 22, 2014. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/utilitarianism-history/. Etzioni, Amitai, and Oren Etzioni. “Pros and Cons of Autonomous Weapons Systems.” Army University Press, 2017. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-EditionArchives/May-June-2017/Pros-and-Cons-of-Autonomous-Weapons-Systems/. Klare, Michael. “Pentagon Asks More for Autonomous Weapons.” Arms Control Association, April 2019. https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-04/news/pentagon-asks-more-autonomous-weapons. Moseley, Alexander. “Just War Theory.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Accessed January 4, 2022. https://iep.utm.edu/justwar/. Sayler, Kelly M. “Defense Primer: U.S. Policy on Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems.” Congressional Research Service, November 17, 2021. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11150. Searle, John R. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3, no. 3 (1980): 417–24. doi:10.1017/S0140525X00005756. Shabtai, Shay. “War, Cognitive Biases and Perception Management: The Time Has Come.” Military Strategy Magazine, 2019. https://www.militarystrategymagazine.com/article/war-cognitive-biasesand-perception-management-the-time-has-come/. Skerker, Michael, Duncan Purves, and Ryan Jenkins. “Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Moral Equality of Combatants.” SpringerLink. Ethics and Information Technology, February 23, 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-020-09528-0. Sparrow, Robert. “Killer Robots.” Journal of Applied Philosophy 24, no. 1 (2007): 62–77. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2007.00346.x. Stauffer, Brian. “Killer Robots: Growing Support for a Ban.” Human Rights Watch, August 10, 2020. https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/08/10/killer-robots-growing-support-ban. Turchin, Peter. Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the Greatest Cooperators on Earth. Chaplin, Connecticut: Beresta Books, 2016. 24

United States Army Combined Arms Center. “Army Culture and Foreign Language Strategy.” December 1, 2009. https://dde.carlisle.army.mil/LLL/DSC/readings/L20_ARMYCULTURESTRATEGY.pdf. Walsh, Toby. “Autonomous Weapons Open Letter: AI & Robotics Researchers.” Future of Life Institute, July 28, 2015. https://futureoflife.org/2016/02/09/open-letter-autonomous-weapons-ai-robotics/.

Walzer, Michael. Just and Unjust Wars a Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. New York, New York State: Basic Books, a member of the Perseus Books Group, 2015.

Ontological Understanding of Truth, Perspective and Morality in Nietzsche the Anti-Relativist Ümit Ege Atakan, Koc University Nietzsche has a word to say in most of the areas of philosophy. In ontology, there is the idea of becoming, in epistemology he talks about perspectivism and truth, and his ethics has the morality of the Overman. However, although enough has been said about Nietzsche’s philosophy in general, not much emphasis has been given to how his views about perspectivism, morality, and truth relate to the ontology of becoming. The aim of this paper is to shed light on this important connection. Accordingly, first, the paper examines his ontology of becoming and contrasts it with the Parmenidean ontology of being. Later, the paper follows Nietzsche’s footsteps in deconstructing the commonsense understanding of Truth and shows how he reconfigures the truths with his perspectivism in connection with the ontology of becoming. Towards the end, it presents Nietzsche’s criticism of morality as being-in-itself that—the paper argues—follows the Parmenidean ontology of being. Finally, by emphasizing the order of value differences in some valuations, meanings, truths, and focusing on Nietzsche’s denial of nihilism, the paper argues against the claim of Nietzsche being a moral relativist.

I. Introduction There have always been controversies about how to categorize Nietzsche’s works and where to set the boundaries of his ideas. What is truth? Can it be explained as the coherence of experience and reality? Is there a single truth, or are there truths? What does “perspective truths” mean? How are morality and truth related? Is perspectivism a relativism? Questions like this can be easily extended. Although they seem complicated at first glance, when one grasps Nietzsche’s ontological vision of the world, everything becomes easier to understand. This paper will examine the ontological principle of Nietzsche, how he constructed his understanding of truth, perspective, morality, and epistemology in connection with the ontology of becoming and why categorizing him as a relativist is incompatible with his philosophy. II. Ontological Principle of Becoming To begin with, we should look at Nietzsche’s ontology of becoming. For Nietzsche, everything is continuously changing; there is nothing that stays the same. Our world is the world of becoming. In The Will to Power Nietzsche perfectly puts this as follows: The world with which we are concerned is false, i.e., is not a fact but a fable and approximation on the basis of a meager sum of observations; it is “in flux,” […] something 27

in a state of becoming, […] always changing but never getting near the truth: for—there is no “truth.”1

As seen, according to Nietzsche, things are in constant becoming. There is no single and stable existing “truth.” To exist is to become. Here, we see a great uprising against the history of philosophy because Western philosophy has long been under the influence of Parmenides. Parmenides was the first philosopher who created the onto-epistemological problem of being. He was the first philosopher who asked what it means “to be,” and how we can be sure that we exist. He had a radical answer. According to Parmenides, if we are able to talk about things, they must exist because one cannot think about what does not exist: [W]hat-is is ungenerated and imperishable, a whole of a single kind, unshaken, and complete. Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since it is now, all together one, holding together: For what birth will you seek out for it? How and from what did it grow? From what-is-not I will allow you neither to say nor to think: For it is not to be said or thought that it is not. What need would have roused it, later or earlier, having begun from nothing, to grow? [emphasis added]2

As seen, here, thinking is associated with what exists. Hence, the existence of things is onto-epistemologically justified by Parmenides. The historical importance of Parmenides’ idea lies just here. He justified the existence of things by rationalizing them. Suddenly, the mind became the determining factor of existence. 3 This rationalization overshadowed the nature of becoming and created a motionless reality with fixed mental truths. Parmenides took the first step towards the establishment of transcendent categories. After him came Socrates and Plato; then came Descartes and, later on, Kant. Nietzsche rejected Parmenides, and not surprisingly, almost all of Western philosophy. He said: [H]ave you ever asked yourselves properly how costly the setting up of every ideal on earth has been? How much reality always had to be vilified and misunderstood in the process, how many lies had to be sanctified, how much conscience had to be troubled, how much ‘god’ had to be sacrificed every time? If a shrine is to be set up, a shrine has to be destroyed: that is the law – show me an example where this does not apply!4

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufman and Reginald John Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1968), 330. 2. Patricia Curd, “Parmenides of Elea,” in A Presocratic Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia, trans. Patricia Curd and Richard D. McKirahan (Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011), 59. 3. See, Richard D. McKirahan, “Presocratic Philosophy,” in The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Christopher Shields (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003), 18,19. 4. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, trans. Carol Diethe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6566.

As it is seen, he was planning to devaluate all Western philosophy that followed the Parmenidean principle; and, step by step was building his own philosophy. For Nietzsche, philosophers so far have built their systems on a very fundamental error, and the building as such, whose foundation was weak, was inevitably doomed to collapse. III. Deconstruction of Truth The process of rebuilding an entire philosophical system brings us to the deconstruction of the truth that we epistemologically take for granted. When a whole existence is perceived as becoming everything called truth is revealed to be a deception. Truth is usually justified as coherence. That is, if a person claims to have seen a cat, and there is indeed a cat at the point where she has shown it, this inference is expressed as truth on the grounds that it indicates a harmony between reality and experience; but is that really the case? According to Nietzsche, even if one claims that her experience was based on an objective fact and therefore reports the truth of her assumption, “cat” could have been called a “rabbit” as well as a cat. In other words, truth is a concept that was linguistically created long before the coherence stage; a common agreement was reached linguistically, and thus, “cat” was called a “cat” and not a “rabbit.” That is, it is the language that associates truth with coherence. In one of his early writings, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” Nietzsche defines truth as follows: What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.5

Truth is a metaphor, an anthropomorphism, a lie that we create to survive. Truth is not something that exists-in-itself; it is a humanly organized lie. It is something created by humans themselves. Again, in the same essay, Nietzsche explains both the technical process of its creation and the role language plays in it:

5. Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,” in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufman (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 46-47.

[Through language] [o]ne designates […] the relations of things to man and to express them […] calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor.6

As seen, truth has nothing to do with the existing things, it only seems as if it represents them because of the role language plays in expressing metaphors. First, metaphors are created—images and sounds. Then—through language—they are represented as if they are the truth of the existing things (cf. coherence stage stated above). Implying that, what we claim to know about the truth of the things themselves do not come from the essence of things. Rather, they are created in flux—in the “state of becoming.” IV. Reconfiguration of Truths After the deconstruction of the Truth, now we have to focus on the reconfiguration of truths. As it is seen, from the subtitles, Nietzsche deconstructs the truth but replaces it with truths, with s. In the previous section, we saw the commonsense understanding of the truth and how Nietzsche deconstructed that truth. Now, we will look at why deconstruction was necessary due to the relationship with the Parmenidean principle of being and the reconfigured truths’ relationship with Nietzsche's ontological principle of becoming. Nietzsche deconstructed the truth because he knew that people took those truths for granted which exist-in-themselves. His aim was to show everybody that ontologically they are not valid. In the world of becoming, they do not exist and we are the ones who created them; humans are the ones who gave meaning to them. We are the ones who value things. There is no reality outside this world. This world is what we have, and one must learn how to appreciate it. In The Will to Power, Nietzsche put this in a very nice way: “Truth” is […] not something there, that might be found or discovered—but something that must be created and that gives a name to a process, or rather to a will to overcome that has in itself no end—introducing truth, as […], an active determining—not a becomingconscious of something that is in itself firm and determined.7

As seen, this is a very different way of seeing the truth. The truth is no longer something that is accepted as “being-in-itself,” as a “world-in-itself” without opposite, contrasting powers. There is no longer a transcendent truth, but rather there 6. Nietzsche, 45-46. 7. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 298.

are “truths,” that try to grasp the things in change. 8 In The Gay Science, Nietzsche continues as follows: We who think and feel at the same time are those who really continually fashion something that had not been there before: the whole eternally growing world of valuations, colors. accents, perspectives, scales, affirmations, and negations. This poem that we have invented is continually studied by the so-called practical human beings (our actors) who learn their roles and translate everything into flesh and actuality, into the everyday. Whatever has value in our world now does not have value in itself, according to its nature—nature is always value-less, but has been given value at some time as a present—and it was we who gave and bestowed it. Only we have created the world that concerns man!9

Conversely, Parmenidean onto-epistemology justifies the existence of things by reasoning, which after centuries, transformed into something transcendent. The Parmenidean principle resulted in praising transcendent truth, which can be achieved only by reasoning (e.g. Socrates and Plato); or in creating mind-body dilemmas (e.g. Descartes). Nietzsche, thus, attacked all a priori judgments, transcendent valuations. There is no universal, absolute, given truth independent from humans themselves. “A priori things-in-themselves” cannot exist transcendently. Everything happens here; our beliefs, values, meanings; all are the products of this world. His strongest counterargument against these transcendent realities can be found in the principle of “LifeAffirmation.” He says: If we affirm one single moment, we thus affirm not only ourselves but all existence. For nothing is self-sufficient, neither in us ourselves nor in things; and if our soul has trembled with happiness and sounded like a harp string just once, all eternity was needed to produce this one event-and in this single moment of affirmation all eternity was called good, redeemed, justified, and affirmed.10

The importance of this principle is that it suggests a new way of approaching life, a new attitude that turns the attention from the transcendent to becoming. “LifeAffirmation” is, thus, linked to the ontological principle of becoming, while the transcendent is to the Parmenidean principle of being. The “Life-Affirmation” principle reminds people that truths are bound to this world; they are the creation of humans. There are no absolute, transcendent facts that are “a priori existing-inthemselves.”

8. İoanna Kuçuradi, Nietzsche ve İnsan (İstanbul: Yankı Yayınları, 1967), 166. 9. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1974), 241242 10. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 532-33.

Now we have to investigate Nietzsche’s perspectivism and its relationship with the reconfiguration process of the truths. Nietzsche's perspective is set up to create value and meaning, so it serves the ontological principle. He calls this reconfiguration process “perspective truths.” Ioanna Kuçuradi has an excellent explanation of this: Nietzsche's perspectivism is against “those who accept existence in-itself”: the limitation in understanding and evaluating the reality, the inevitability of a “certain angle,” the inevitability of a perspective, the “intertwining of knowledge and error,” which is desired to be expressed. This means that human problems can always be reconsidered, and every time they are addressed, something new and right can be understood.11

As it is seen, Nietzsche’s perspectivism has both an epistemological and ontological side. He opposes Parmenidean ontology and its understanding of episteme through deconstruction and glorifies the ontological principle of becoming by reinforcing the reconfiguration of truths with his perspectivism. V. Morality as Being-in-itself Morality is, for Nietzsche, the being-in-itself. It has nothing to do with this world; it betrays the “Life-Affirmation” principle and has justified itself only by claiming to know the truth, the absolute, universal truth. It is based on lies and nothing else. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche says: People are familiar with my call for the philosopher to place himself beyond good and evil—to have the illusion of moral judgement beneath him. This call results from an insight which I was the first to formulate: that there are no moral facts at all. Moral judgement has this in common with religious judgement, that it believes in realities which do not exist. Morality is merely an interpretation of certain phenomena, more precisely a misinterpretation. Moral judgement pertains, like religious judgement, to a level of ignorance on which the very concept of the real, the distinction between the real and the imaginary, is still lacking: so that 'truth', on such a level, designates nothing but what we nowadays call 'illusions'. In this respect moral judgement should never be taken literally: as such it is only ever an absurdity.12

Having these in mind, now, what he had to do was again to deconstruct the whole morality of his age and to construct a new type of morality which fits not to do Parmenidean principle of being but to the ontological principle of becoming; to the principle of “Life-Affirmation.” He needs a kind of morality that strengthens 11. Kuçuradi, Nietzsche ve İnsan, 165. (my translation) 12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Duncan Large (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 33.

people to a degree that they can overcome the deception of the “absolute” in every sense, overcome nihilism and become the masters of their own existence. The morality of his age weakens the individual, especially Christian morality according to Nietzsche, teaches people to hate life, negate becoming, and praise the being-initself, the being-in-absolute. He criticized almost all Western Philosophy—as mentioned before—for relying on the absolute truth which has been given to them by morality itself. For instance, against Plato, he said: “[T]he worst, most durable, and most dangerous of all errors so far was a dogmatist’s error—namely, Plato’s invention of the pure spirit and the good as such [….] To be sure, it [Platonism] meant standing truth on her head and denying perspective”; and continued against Kant: “The equally stiff and decorous Tartuffery of the old Kant as he lures us on the dialectical bypaths that lead to his ‘categorical imperative’—really led astray and seduce”13 When we look at these two examples, we see two strict rules. One of them is absolute, never changing, resting state of “the Good” in Plato, and the other is the “categorical imperative” principle of Kant’s deontology. These examples help us to comprehend how similar they are in the face of transcendent understanding of truth and the “absolute-thing-in-itself.” According to Nietzsche, this was the problem of the age; morality and truth were in collaboration to convince people that they themselves were the essence of reality, and they were accomplishing this by leading people to the transcendent, to the Parmenidean principle of being. VI. Nietzsche as an Anti-Relativist There is an ongoing debate among scholars about Nietzsche being a moral relativist. Generally, there are two criticisms that blame him with moral relativism. Paolo Stellino and Pietro Gori summarize these as follows: “(1) Nietzsche’s moral perspectivism is essentially a moral relativism, and (2) the practical consequence deriving from Nietzsche’s moral perspectivism is that everything is permitted.” 14 Both of these claims are wrong. First of all, in moral relativism, there is no standpoint for any kind of value. Moral relativism asserts that all values and meanings, rights and wrongs, have their particular evaluation criteria; therefore, one cannot standardize any order among them; there is no valid or justified general criteria for judgment. Every valuation has an equal value among other valuations. From this point, they criticize Nietzsche because, according to them, Nietzsche’s perspectivism 13. Friedrich Nietzsche, “Beyond Good and Evil,” in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: The Modern Library, 2000), 193, 203. 14. Paolo Stellino and Pietro Gori, “Moral Relativism and Perspectival Values,” in Essays on Values and Practical Rationality: Ethical and Aesthetical Dimensions, ed. António Marques and João Sàágua (Bern/New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2017), 158.

has no standpoint. It is all about creating meanings and valuations. Nietzsche’s perspectivism indeed is about valuations and the creation of truths, meanings, but it never tells you that there is no order in valuations or meanings, truths. It is precisely the opposite. Even though people create their own meanings, their own values, one cannot say that all of these valuations have the same value. If it were the case, Nietzsche would not have tried to establish a new kind of morality, or he would not have bothered to reconfigure the truths, and he even would not have deconstructed the old Parmenidean principle of the truth, because after all, according to relativism, Parmenidean ontology and Nietzsche’s principle of becoming have the equal value. A relativist would say that both perspectives are valid in themselves. Stellino and Gori have emphasized this very good point: Since there is no one absolute morality, but rather a plurality of (often conflicting) moral perspectives, how can one perspective claim to be better than another? Here, again, relativism seems to cast its shadow and one may be led to believe that there is no plausible alternative to the position according to which every moral interpretation seems to be as true, valid or justified (i.e. permitted) as the others. However, this would be wrong. Indeed, Nietzsche defends the idea that it is possible – in fact, according to him, necessary – to establish a rank order among values, valuations, men, individuals, types, aects, drives, forces, goods, types of life, societies and cultures.15

As it is seen, it is clear that some valuations and truths, meanings are far more valuable than others. Therefore, the first claim about Nietzsche being a relativist has been refuted. Interestingly enough, Nietzsche himself refutes those kinds of claims. He says: The question: what is this or that table of values and ‘morals’ worth? needs to be asked from different angles; in particular, the question ‘value for what?’ cannot be examined too finely [….] The good of the majority and the good of the minority are conflicting moral standpoints [….] All sciences must, from now on, prepare the way for the future work of the philosopher: this work being understood to mean that the philosopher has to solve the problem of values and that he has to decide on the rank order of values.16

Another important claim about Nietzsche being a relativist is the alleged practical consequence of Nietzsche’s perspectivism: everything is permitted. This is also wrong because Nietzsche’s whole philosophy is fundamentally towards avoiding this consequence. The principle of “Life-Affirmation,” for instance, is an idea put forward by Nietzsche to overcome nihilism. Nietzsche’s Overman was also designed on this. He announced the death of God just so that one can personally take account 15. Stellino and Gori, 169. 16. Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality, 34.

of herself and overcome nihilism by overcoming herself. Therefore, everything is not permitted; on the contrary, now one has a responsibility to construct a new way of life, which will make her strongly connected to this world. One needs to build a new morality, new sets of values and meanings; now one must revaluate all values to survive, and this, according to Nietzsche, should be based on power, because he thinks one cannot overcome the difficulties of nihilism and the tragedy of existence without being strong. After the death of God, one must become a God, one must create new truths, values, and this valuation should be based on power; therefore, as mentioned earlier, some valuations are far more valuable. Stellino and Gori put it as follows: The death of God announced by the madman, […] together with the collapse of the Christian-moral interpretation of the world, leave [sic] an axiological and normative void. Far from accepting this void as an inevitable existential condition, Nietzsche aims to face it ‘fearless’ and ‘cheerful’, […] and to fill it through the well-known revaluation of values. It is symptomatic, for instance, that although, on the one hand, Zarathustra […] presents himself as ‘the annihilator of morals’, […] on the other hand he puts strong emphasis on the need of creating new values. In other words, Nietzsche is well aware that a new evaluative interpretation must take the place of the former one, and much of his effort in the late period is focused on elaborating this new interpretation.17

Most probably, Dostoyevsky's famous Ivan (from The Brothers Karamazov) and Raskolnikov (from Crime and Punishment) confused lots of minds, but, in fact, Nietzsche’s and Dostoyevsky’s answers to the result of the death of God are very opposite. Consequently, we can say that Nietzsche’s perspectivism is far from relativism because of the order of value differences in some valuations, truth, and meanings compared to others. Everything is not permitted after the death of God because now people have a great responsibility to reevaluate all values to overcome nihilism and to recreate themselves; of course, again, to point the first part of the criticism, in order one to herself, she must value some valuations more than others, thus, must reject relativism. VII. Conclusion This paper has examined Nietzsche’s understanding of the ontological principle of becoming, how it conflicts with Parmenidean ontology of being, how he deconstructed and reconfigured truth, perspective, morality, and epistemology in connection with his ontology, and also, why categorizing Nietzsche as a relativist is not compatible with his philosophy. 17. Stellino and Gori, “Moral Relativism and Perspectival Values,” 167.

If one, at any time, struggles to understand Nietzsche’s philosophy, she should remember that Nietzsche was a philosopher of thiswordliness, and his starting point has always been this world. It does not matter which particular field one is investigating, whether it be ontology, epistemology, moral philosophy, perception. If one wants to have a better understanding of Nietzsche in general, she should try to see how his works relate to his love towards the earth, nature, and becoming.

Works Cited Curd, Patricia, ed. “Parmenides of Elea.” In A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia, translated by Patricia Curd and Richard D. McKirahan, 55-65. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011. Kuçuradi, İoanna. Nietzsche ve İnsan. Istanbul: Yankı Yayınları, 1967. McKirahan, D. Richard. “Presocratic Philosophy.” In The Blackwell Guide to Ancient Philosophy, edited by Christopher Shields, 5-27. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2003. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “Beyond Good and Evil.” In Basic Writings of Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kaufman, 179-437. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morality. Translated by Carol Diethe. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense.” In The Portable Nietzsche, edited by Walter Kaufman, 42-47. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Translated by Walter Kaufman. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. Translated by Walter Kaufman and Reginald John Hollingdale. New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1968. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Translated by Duncan Large. New York: Oxford University Press., 1998.

Stellino, Paolo and Gori, Pietro. “Moral Relativism and Perspectival Values.” In Essays on Values and Practical Rationality: Ethical and Aesthetical Dimensions, edited by António Marques and João Sàágua, 155-174. Bern/New York: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2017.

Free Will and Making Sense Julian Perilla, New York University This paper is primarily about the relation between free will and moral responsibility. Throughout the following pages, I shall present and discuss one of the most influential views of free will—free will as the ability to do otherwise—followed by Harry Frankfurt’s well-known critique of the view. I then consider Frankfurt’s own positive theory of free will and raise some issues which he seems to have failed to address. Finally, I argue in favor of a different conception of free will, a kind of freedom that I take to be the kernel of moral responsibility and of how we truly think of being free in the morally relevant sense. What really matters is the ability to be true to who we are, in other words, the ability to make sense.

What kind of creatures must we be to be morally responsible? And, what kind of world must we inhabit? These are the broader questions that the problem of free will encompasses. There has been a strain of philosophical thought—so called incompatibilism—that, in response to such questions, asserts the incompatibility of free will and determinism: if determinism is true, then we are no longer (and perhaps never were) free. But free will seems to be a necessary condition for moral responsibility.1 And thus, the incompatibilist concludes, if determinism is true, we are not (and perhaps never have been) morally responsible for our actions. Much of the incompatibilist’s case, however, has heavily relied on the idea that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise. I, like many others before me, take this to be mistaken. Frankfurt’s case against this idea has undoubtedly been one of the most influential, but his resulting theory of free will seems to have been unsuccessful. I have thus set myself to explore what Frankfurt got right and where he might have gone wrong. In the following pages, I offer a brief overview of Frankfurt’s project, followed by my own thoughts on the kind of freedom that ultimately matters for moral responsibility. Now, my position is somewhat difficult to preview, but it shall suffice for me to say that, when it comes to moral responsibility, we seem less concerned with our ability to do otherwise than with our ability to do as we would have done had we been able to do otherwise. In other words, what truly seems to matter is whether we are able to perform an action with which we can identify ourselves, an action that seems coherent to us in light of who we are. Or, as I shall put it later on, the ability to act in a way that makes sense.

I shall understand freedom as a necessary condition for moral responsibility, but I shall not treat the two concepts as equivalent. It seems that in order for an agent to be morally responsible, freedom is just one of various requirements that must be satisfied.

I. Frankfurt’s Alternate Possibilities and Second-Order Volitions2 As mentioned, the incompatibilist argument seems to start from the idea that moral responsibility requires the ability to do otherwise. Let us then begin by considering Frankfurt’s critique of the following principle: The Principle of Alternate Possibilities (PAP): “A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise.”3

At first glance, this principle might seem to get things right. After all, when people are coerced in some way into performing a particular action, we usually think of them as not being morally responsible for their actions. Moreover, we might want to attribute this to the fact that they had no other choice but to do what they did. Frankfurt is right, however, when he claims that this reasoning about coercion and PAP is based on a rather important confusion. For it does not follow that A is not responsible for action X because he could not have done otherwise, from the fact that A was not responsible for action X and that he could not have done otherwise. The relevant question seems to be, why did the agent perform X? Was it because he was coerced?45 Now, Frankfurt takes one step further in showing that PAP is false by offering a case along the following lines: Jones and Black: Black wants Jones to kill Smith. Black can make it so that Jones could not do anything other than kill Smith—say, he can threaten him or hypnotize him. However, Black prefers to avoid showing his hand unnecessarily. Thus, Black awaits until Jones has made up his mind on whether he will kill Smith or not. If it becomes clear that Jones will decide not to kill Smith, Black would interfere such that Jones would have to kill Smith. Nonetheless, Jones decides on his own to kill Smith and, thus, shoots Smith. Jones killed Smith, he could not have done otherwise because of the presence of Black, and yet Black never played a role in Jones’s decision.6

Note that, in the case above, Jones could not have done otherwise because Black would have made him kill Smith either way. But, since Jones decided—all on his own—to kill Smith, Black’s presence seems to have made no difference to Jones’s decision nor to the final outcome of the case. Accordingly, it seems reasonable to conclude that even if Jones could have done otherwise, he would have killed Smith. And we are indeed prone to hold Jones responsible for his action. Frankfurt has, 2

Many of the ideas considered in this section were discussed in my “Presentation: Free Will I” during Meeting 8 of the course Phil-UA 200, Spring 2021. I am grateful for the feedback some of my peers and the seminar professor were able to offer. 3 Frankfurt (1969, p. 829. 4 Ibid., pp. 831-833 5 This point is also discussed in “PHIL UA-200 Advanced Seminar: Meeting 8”, pp. 4-5. 6 Ibid., pp.835-836

therefore, given us good reasons to believe that PAP is false: the ability to do otherwise is not a necessary condition for moral responsibility. In turn, Frankfurt offers the following principle: The Principle of Alternate Possibilities′ (PAP′): “a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise” (ibid. p. 838, emphasis added).

However, it is unclear whether PAP′ does in fact fare any better with our common intuitions about moral responsibility, especially in cases where the agent is worthy of praise.7 Consider, for instance, the following case: Francis: Francis grew up in a very caring environment. Her mom taught her to always be honest and empathetic and to never take advantage of other people’s mistakes. One day, Francis goes to buy an ice cream. The ice cream costs $5.00, and she pays with a ten-dollar bill. The cashier, by mistake, gives her in return a fifty-dollar bill. Francis arrives home and, suddenly, notices the mistaken change she received. But, her mother taught her well: Francis couldn’t even think of keeping the fifty-dollar bill, and the only behavior she could even conceive of is to go back to the ice cream shop and return the money. She does so immediately.8

Francis does in fact seem to be morally responsible for her action—we would want to say she did good and, thus, merits our praise.9 It also seems true that Francis could not have done otherwise. For, how could she if she couldn’t even conceive of any other possible alternative to her action? Moreover, there is a sense in which Francis returns the money only because she could not have done otherwise. In fact, it seems that if we were to ask Francis why she returned the money, we would expect her to respond: “Well, what else could I have done?” Here then lies the first of our tasks: we should be able to provide an explanation for our intuitions in cases like those of Francis. Surely, Frankfurt seems to have attempted to do so with his theory of higherorder desires. According to Frankfurt, we should distinguish between (so-called) first-order desires and second-order desires, where the former have as their object a particular action, while the latter are desires about (first-order) desires. 10 Thus, I 7

A similar point is raised by Lee in “PHIL UA-200 Advanced Seminar: Meeting 8”, p. 6. This case was discussed in my “Presentation: Free Will I” during Meeting 8 of the course Phil-UA 200, Spring 2021. Nonetheless, similar cases are well present in the free will literature. See, for instance, Beebee (2013) pp. 4-5. 9 You might think that, although Francis deserves some kind of praise, she does not deserve full moral praise. After all, we sometimes assign partial—but not full—blame to people who, raised in harsh environments, act wrongly. If so, we would still need to explain the intuition that Francis is partially praiseworthy and, thus, partially responsible. 10 Frankfurt (1971), pp. 8-9 8

might have a first-order desire to sleep through the day but a second-order one to want to spend the day working on a paper. In other words, the distinction is between me wanting to X and me wanting to want to X. Nonetheless, according to Frankfurt, not all first-order desires move us to action: there are effective first-order desires— which he identifies with a person’s will—and there other non-effective, first-order desires. Given that distinction, Frankfurt defines second-order volitions as secondorder desires for effective first-order desires. It is not only that we want to want to X but that we want to be moved by our desire to X.11 Thus, he concludes that a person acts of her own free will if and only if her will conforms to her second-order volitions. Free will is, in Frankfurt’s view, a matter of whether a person is able to identify herself with her effective first-order desires. As intricate and thought-provoking as Frankfurt’s proposal seems to be, many have already raised concerns about its ability to provide us with intuitively acceptable judgements in cases where agents seem to lack moral responsibility, especially when it comes to (so-called) manipulation cases such as the following:12 Francis′: Francis is not a particularly honest person. One day, she goes to buy an ice cream. On her way to the ice cream stand, she is abducted by aliens who brainwash her into having a different set of psychological preferences, such that she will now be an incredibly honest person. The ice cream costs $5.00, and she pays with a ten-dollar bill. The cashier, by mistake, gives her in return a fifty-dollar bill. Francis arrives home and, suddenly, notices the mistaken change she received. But, the aliens did their job well: she now has a firstorder desire to return the money, and she has a corresponding second-order volition for that first-order desire to constitute her will. She then goes back and returns the money.

However unintuitive, Frankfurt seems committed to saying that Francis is morally responsible for her action and that she acted of her own free will. Moreover, he seems committed to treating the two cases of Francis as equal in the relevant sense—something that seems even more troubling. The general problem seems to be that Frankfurt is unable to account for the important differences in how the agent came to have any of her higher-order desires. But this seems unacceptable. Just as we care about how an addict came to be an addict, we care about how Francis came to be a good person. And, we would want to account for these differences when judging whether someone is morally responsible or not. Frankfurt’s project thus seems incomplete at best. An adequate theory of free will should be able to account for our intuitions in the first case of Francis and for the differences between Francis and Francis′. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to move 11

Ibid., p. 10. Many have already raised this worry about (so-called) manipulation cases. See, for instance, Slote (1980), Fischer and Ravizza (1998), and McKenna and Coates (2021). 12

forward without recognizing what Frankfurt managed to accomplish. He has provided us with a solid base for a new theory of freedom, one where the underlying thought ought to be that free will is about the ability to identify oneself with one’s actions. Let us now try to build on this. II. The Ability to Make Sense As persons, we all have a set of projects, values, and desires with which we identify and which make us who we are—what we might call our character. This is an important fact for our discussion since people are usually thought to be (perhaps exclusively) responsible for actions that are theirs, actions to which they committed themselves. We don’t hold people responsible for a mere reflex, nor do we hold people responsible for actions they are coerced into doing. This is because these are either instances of non-actions or of actions that are not—in the relevant sense, anyway—of their agents. So what makes an action mine? What I want to propose here is that an action is mine insofar I had good enough reason to perform that action. It is because I think I have good enough reason to work on this essay, for instance, that I have committed myself to working on it, and, thus, I am prepared to be held responsible for it. A note of caution here might be in order. Some might argue that we may only have good enough reason to perform actions that are morally right.13 However, since I am not here particularly concerned with morality, I shall use this expression in a much broader sense. Brutus might have had good enough reason for killing Caesar or Shylock for demanding his pound of Antonio’s flesh. Moreover, we might indeed have good enough reason to act in many different ways given particular circumstances. A world-renowned cat burglar, for instance, might have good enough reason to steal a Picasso painting and good enough reason to steal a Caravaggio painting. It is a person’s character that determines how that person will go about weighing his reasons for action, and, ultimately, it is how well an action fares with a person’s character that determines whether she has good enough reason to perform it. This is what it is for an action to make sense.14 I have good enough reason to 𝜙 only if 𝜙-ing makes sense in light of my character, in light of the kind of person I 13

My account resembles Susan Wolf’s reason view, but only so much. It is here where I take my account to be importantly different: Wolf’s account of practical reasoning and of moral reasons in particular leads to a conception of the relevant kind of freedom as “the freedom to be good.” The view of practical reasons that figures in my account does not entail the same conclusion. My own view of freedom seems to be better described as the freedom to be good at being who we are. 14 I borrow the notion of ‘making sense’ from David Velleman’s constitutivist project. My proposal is certainly influenced by his but is, in many and obvious ways, quite different. For more on Velleman’s conception of making sense, see his How We Get Along (2015), ch. 1.

take myself to be. It, therefore, makes sense for someone like Brutus to kill Caesar and for someone like Shylock to demand his rightly owed pound of human flesh. With this in place, let us take a step back and review some of our examples. In “Jones and Black,” Jones seems to have had good enough reason for killing Smith, for—ex hypothesi—he makes up his mind and all on his own decides to kill Smith.15 This suggests that it made sense for Jones to kill Smith. And, thus, it would have made sense for him to do so, even if he had been able to do otherwise. Jones, in fact, had no idea he could not do anything but kill Smith as he weighed his reasons for action. We now have a way of explaining in greater detail why we hold Jones responsible. Despite him not having the ability to do otherwise, the only action available to him was the action that ultimately made sense for him to perform. Thus, when determining if an agent is morally responsible, we seem less concerned with how many alternatives the agent had, as long as (at least) one of them was an action that made sense to him. A similar reasoning will account for the behavior of our original, non-abducted Francis. She, although less explicitly, seems to have decided to return the money. She is unable to conceive of any alternative to her action because returning the money is the only action that makes sense for her to do. But, again, Francis’s ability to do otherwise seems less and less relevant to the case as long as the alternative that makes sense remains open to her. And we might now attempt to generalize this thought. When we ask about an agent’s ability to do otherwise, we seem to be (in reality) concerned with whether the agent would have done otherwise had he had the ability to do so. This is, I maintain, because what truly matters is whether the action the agent performed made sense to him—whether the agent was committed to the action being his and, thus, to others holding him responsible for it. Moreover, this seems to fit reasonably well with our intuitions about the relevant kind of freedom for moral responsibility. We act of our own free will if and only if we have the ability to act in a way that makes sense to us in light of who we take ourselves to be. Ultimately, the only alternatives that matter are those that make sense. III. The Importance of Who We Are Let me now address some worries the above proposal might raise. First, it is perhaps unclear whether it can make sense of the differences between the cases of Francis and 15

Note that this is especially explicit in Frankfurt-style cases since it is an essential feature of how these cases are supposed to work— the agent must be able to decide all by himself to perform the action even if he could not have done otherwise.

Francis′. That is, whether the idea of free will as the ability to make sense can account for our intuitions in manipulating cases. But, note that there are important differences between Francis and Francis′ that do come into play when determining whether the relevant action made sense to any of the two agents. In our regular Francis scenario, she came to be who she is (partly) because of how her mother raised her. As a result, she has come to think of herself as an honest and empathetic person, and she identifies with the actions of someone who is honest and empathetic. For, remember, she had good enough reason to act the way she did. The case of Francis′ is importantly different in this respect. She did not come to be an honest person, nor is she the kind of person that would return the money, up until she is brainwashed. Thus, the part of her character that was tampered with to make her an honest person should feel alien to her and, most importantly, will probably not fit into her overall self-conception. She would not think of herself as someone who would return the money, if she wouldn’t have to. This is part of why relying on the notion of character is important to our project. We do care about how we came to be who we are and about being able to make sense of a particular desire of ours in light of the rest of our character. Thought in this way, the case of Francis′ becomes much more like a case of someone who is hypnotized into performing a particular action. She might have all the corresponding desires to make her act like an honest person, but there will still be a discrepancy between how she thinks about herself—the kind of person she thinks she is—and what she is forced into doing.16 Finally, it will do us good to briefly return to one of the first intuitions we discussed: we commonly think that people who are coerced into doing something are not morally responsible for their doing. Can our new theory of free will account for this intuition? I believe so. In coercion cases, people are threatened into doing something they would not do if it weren’t for the threat at hand. As Frankfurt puts it, they do it only because they are threatened. But this implies that—in the absence of the threat—they would not have had good enough reason to do what they were coerced into doing. In other words, the action they must do is not an action that makes sense for them to do. After all, if that weren’t the case, why threaten the person in the 16

As our story of Francis′ shows, Frankfurt’s proposal struggles to account for simple cases where both an agent’s first-order desire to ϕ and his corresponding second-order volition to be moved by this desire are manipulated. There are, of course, more complex manipulation cases. But note that, for a case to threaten my proposal, an agent’s entire character must be manipulated: he must—after the manipulation takes place—fully identify as the kind of person who would want to ϕ and would want to act on this desire. These cases, however, are beyond the scope of this paper; they raise important questions, not only about free will and moral responsibility but also about personal identity. Is the agent, after such manipulation, even the same person than before? Perhaps not. In any case, I would be inclined to say that, for these scenarios of complete character-manipulation, if the agent can perform an action that makes sense for him to do in light of his new character, then he enjoys the relevant kind of freedom. Another (importantly distinct) question is whether the agent would be morally responsible. Perhaps, we may want to add something related to character- or identity-continuity to the set of necessary conditions for moral responsibility.

first place? If, for instance, I am already going to vote for Candidate A, could anyone coerce me into voting for Candidate A? This seems nonsensical. In real instances of coercion, where the threat truly determines how the agent weighs his reasons for action, the threat forces the agent to perform an action that does not make sense for him to do. That is, in fact, why the coerced agent is no longer responsible for the resulting action; he was not acting of his own free will since the only alternative left to him was an action that did not make sense for him to do. IV. Conclusion I have now offered a schematic account of free will as the ability to make sense. I have reviewed Frankfurt’s contributions to the analysis of free will and built on a general idea I believe he got right: the relevant kind of freedom is primarily about being able to identify oneself with one’s actions. Certainly, this essay has only been a preliminary attempt at articulating the argument for free will as the ability to make sense. But we now have the relevant concepts to move forward. We now have a new way of articulating what we lose when coerced and what we lack when not held responsible: it is the ability to perform an action that is ours, one that we are committed to and is intelligible to us in light of who we take ourselves to be—an action that, in other words, makes sense.

Works Cited Beebee, Helen. Free Will: An Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Fischer, John Martin, and Mark Ravizza. Responsibility and Control: An Essay on Moral Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Frankfurt, Harry G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 66, no. 23, 1969, pp. 829–839. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2023833. Frankfurt, Harry G. “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 68, no. 1, 1971, pp. 5–20. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2024717. Lee, Samuel. “PHIL UA-200 Advanced Seminar: Meeting 8.” 2021. McKenna, Michael and Coates, D. Justin, "Compatibilism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Slote, Michael A. “Understanding Free Will.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 3, 1980, pp. 136– 151. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2025666. Velleman, J. David. How We Get Along. Cambridge University Press, 2009. Wolf, Susan. “Asymmetrical Freedom.” The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 77, no. 3, 1980, pp. 151–166. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2025667. Wolf, Susan. Freedom Within Reason, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 1993. Wolf, Susan. “The Importance of Free Will.” Mind, vol. 90, no. 359, 1981, pp. 386–405. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2253093.

Husserl, the Lebenswelt, and Science: The Lasting Significance of “The Vienna Lecture” in the Modern World Jan Wozniak, Ryerson University This paper explores the lasting significance of Edmund Husserl’s work “The Vienna Lecture.” Engaging with the concept of the Lebenswelt (life-world), I elucidate the concerns Husserl has with the development of the natural sciences and reason inherited from the Enlightenment and modernity. Expressing the limitations of Cartesianism and positivism, this paper postulates the negative consequences of ‘unconstrained reason’ by making connections to major crises during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As Husserl delivered “The Vienna Lecture” only a few years before the outbreak of the Second World War, this paper considers the warnings provided by the author during the 1930s. Drawing on the history of philosophy and science, I supplement Husserl’s perspective with other critical figures, including Friedrich Nietzsche and Charles Taylor. Composed of four sections, this paper begins by introducing the concept of Lebenswelt. Second, it reflects on the role and aim of phenomenology. Third, it traces the history of science back to the pre-scientific and pre-theoretical world. And fourth, it evaluates modern crises, existential threats, and the role that Husserl’s work serves in mitigating ongoing problems associated with progress, reason, science, and technology. Particular emphasis is given to the neglect of teleology, historical reflection, and the Lebenswelt.

I. Introduction The aim of this essay is to analyze “The Vienna Lecture,” focusing specifically on the relationship between the Lebenswelt (life-world) and science. By assessing the Lebenswelt and science, we can come to understand why Husserl believes that “[t]he European nations are sick.” 1 According to Husserl, the Lebenswelt and transcendental phenomenology can help restore a harmonious bond with the prescientific and subjective experience of our ‘surrounding world.’ 2 Problematically, the modern sciences neglect the philosophy of spirit in favour of objectivism and “the technical control of nature.”3They cannot recognize their relation to the pre-scientific and pre-theoretical world.4 For Husserl, the sciences are grounded in and developed by the life-world – not independently of it. To understand the context of Husserl’s “Vienna Lecture,” we must consider the relationship between science, the life-world, and history. In doing so, we can espouse the European sickness proposed by Husserl 1

Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. David Carr (Evanston: North Western University Press, 1970), 270. 2 Husserl, 272. 3 Husserl, 271. 4 Husserl, 283.

and consider the goal of achieving “a new life-inwardness and spiritualization”5. This paper begins by defining and elaborating on Husserl’s conception of the Lebenswelt. Second, it presents the ‘spiritual shape of Europe’ by considering Husserl’s philosophical-historical analysis of scientific development in ancient Greece and modernity. Third, it analyzes the relationship between practical knowledge and scientific knowledge by exploring this pre-theoretical and prescientific world. And finally, it concludes by discussing the lasting significance of “The Vienna Lecture” by exploring its relationship to modernity and the contemporary world. II. The Lebenswelt First, let us begin by considering the concept of the Lebenswelt and its role in “The Vienna Lecture.” As it is noted by Ulrich Majer, the term “Lebsenswelt does not occur literally in the Vienna lecture; but the concept as such is already present.”6 Therefore, to properly discern the nature of the Lebenswelt will require a close reading of the text. For Husserl, we need to begin our assessment of the European sickness by contrasting the natural sciences and the humanistic disciplines. Natural science “teaches us how to investigate suprasubjective (‘objective’) nature itself, by systematic approximations, in terms of its unconditionally universal elements and laws.”7 In this process, the mathematically precise natural science leads us away from an understanding of the richness of the Lebenswelt and the science of spirit. Europe has neglected the spirit and has failed to develop a “scientific medicine . . . in this sphere, a medicine for nations and supranational communities.” 8 Husserl does not deny the success and ascendency of the natural sciences, as they have aspired to further ‘technical control of nature’ in ways that have benefited humanity; however, we should find ourselves concerned with the hubris associated with our overly ‘objective’ knowledge of nature, which holds the scientific method as the dominant standard for attaining truth. 9 As a result, we treat science as objective and independent measures of truth, and in doing so, propel its theoretical legitimacy. Of course, for Husserl, this approach provides a limited knowledge of the surrounding world. In the desire for objective facts and independent truth, the sciences have forgotten their prescientific origins within the Lebenswelt. According 5

Husserl, 299. Ulrich Majer, “The Origin and Significance of Husserl’s Notion of the Lebenswelt,” in Science and the Life-World: Essays on Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, ed. David Hyder and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2010), 53. 7 Husserl, 270. 8 Husserl, 270. 9 Husserl, 270-271. 6

to Majer,” “[t]he crisis broke out (and became public for the first time) when the sciences – in spite of their successes – divorced themselves from philosophy and imposed, in turn, their own canonical standards of ‘objectivity’ and ‘truth’ not only on psychology – and all other disciplines of mind and culture – but also on philosophy.” 10 However, even though the scientist strives for objectivism when ‘abstracting’ scientific facts from the natural world, they do not fully remove themselves from the Lebenswelt and achieve ‘total objectivism.’ Furthermore, given the properties of these sciences, Husserl believes they cannot successfully grasp the ‘totality’ of the natural world, and instead, only reveal abstractions of it. For this reason, Charles Taylor claims that “[m]odern enlightened culture is very theoryoriented. We tend to live in our heads, trusting our disengaged understandings.”11 This is reflected in our modern demarcations between interiority/exteriority, mind/body, and subject/object, which we use to categorize the world around us. 12 However, when taken too far, these attitudes may adversely influence our relationship to the world through the development of reductionistic worldviews and presuppositions. As Husserl identifies, there are aspects of the world that evade our rational faculty, and the very notion of isolating and distancing ourselves only leads to fanciful forms of abstraction. Human beings, despite these attempts at being completely objective, empirical beings, often neglect a more fundamental orientation between self and world – or at the very least, they take it for granted in their interaction with ‘everydayness.’ For Husserl, the natural attitude ushered in through modernity presupposes that the world is ‘just there’ as something that resides outside of the individual. This naïve view holds that the world is composed of easily reducible objects, actions, and effects that can be simply observed and recorded as facts. III. The Role of Phenomenology For Husserl, this type of thinking may ‘label’ or ‘name’ things, but it fails to fundamentally grasp how things appear to us. Rather than adhering to explanation, Husserl believes that phenomenology – based on the Greek word phainomenon or ‘that which appears’ – can provide us with a more accurate and charitable interaction between the viewer and that (not ‘what’) which appears before us. 13 Through phenomenological and eidetic reductions, beginning with the epochē or ‘suspension of judgment’, we train ourselves to overcome the acceptedness of reality and learn to 10

Majer, 50. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 555. 12 Taylor, 555. 13 Nicholas Bunnin and Jiyuan Yu, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (Oxford: Black Publishing, 2004), 517. 11

develop a different attitude toward it – one based on a descriptive approach. 14 This fundamental reorientation is an important step toward regaining our connection with the Lebenswelt, which has been neglected through the self-evident perspectives presupposed by our natural attitude. To use Max Weber’s ‘disenchantment of the world’ (Entzauberung der Welt), with the rise of the modern world, humanity transitioned from supernatural and miraculous explanations of the world to ones based on science and rationality. 15 Although this has brought forth various advancements, modern attitudes have been that “one can in principle, master all things by calculation,”16 wherein the world is interpreted as “a causal mechanism” rather than as something independent and sacrosanct. 17 According to Taylor, this historical shift has meant that individuals “acquire knowledge by exploring impersonal orders with the aid of disengaged reason,” 18 which he views as a fundamental “epistemic predicament.”19 Husserl identifies the culprits who helped to inaugurate this epistemic predicament, citing the Cartesian and positivist distancing between subjects and the world of objects. This perspective fundamentally neglects the role of consciousness, which is always in relation to the world. As such, Husserl claims that the modern world faces a “skeptical deluge”20 and a “painful existential contradiction.”21 Ever since Galileo, the natural world has become something to be studied, measured, and calculated: “[T]hrough Galileo's mathematization of nature, nature itself is idealized under the guidance of the new mathematics, nature itself becomes – to express it in a modern way – a mathematical manifold (Mannigfaltigkeit)”22 This modern attitude is paradigmatically one-dimensional and reductionistic, and therefore, neglects various conscious, preconscious, and subconscious processes that comprise our experience in the world. Husserl further outlines his concern by asserting, “in geometrical and natural-scientific mathematization, in the open infinity of possible experiences, we measure the life-world – the world constantly given to us as actual in our concrete world-life – for a well-fitting garb of ideas, that of the so-called objectively scientific truths.”23 There is a fundamental abstraction and distancing that Husserl finds inherently problematic in the rise of modernity, as the world and its 14

Bunnin and Yu, 516. Max Weber, “Science as Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 139. 16 Weber, 139. 17 Max Weber, “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 350. 18 Taylor, 294. 19 Taylor, 294. 20 Husserl, 14. 21 Husserl, 17. 22 Husserl, 23. 23 Husserl, 51. 15

constitutive parts are reduced to mathematical physics (i.e., nature and ‘the world’ are not synonymous).24 Specifically, humanity sequesters a future that is oriented in the abstract and theoretical rather than in the concrete and practical experiences. The latter are the experiences that root us to one another and the world. Furthermore, despite science’s attempt at objectively distancing itself from life, its “rough predictions . . . are the only ones originally possible with the sphere of what is actually experienced and experienceable in the life-world.” 25 Science, therefore, occurs in our more primordial orientation in the world, not just as something outside or beyond life, but as a part of the Lebenswelt. The observations and assessments we make are always based on externalized forms of life – thematizable, categorical, and explainable. With the continued development of ‘scientific thinking’ in various disciplines, we can further our understanding of Husserl’s concern by turning to the biological and economic sciences. First, within the biological sciences, the human being is ‘reduced’ to its physiology and anatomy. Eventually, human beings became their own ‘objects’ of study. The human being is a physical entity or specimen which can be categorized by the label of homo sapiens. Second, within the economic sciences, the human being is ‘reduced’ to its relationship with goods, transactions, and consumption. Categorically, this being is an economic and rational specimen under the label homo economicus – a figure whom Joseph Persky defines as “rational,” but one that the social sciences believes “works best when it ruthlessly limits its range.” 26 In this regard, the human being is always a representation of life – in that, the hard sciences and social sciences conceptualize the being in terms of ‘biological life’, ‘social life’, or ‘economic life.’ However, the human being or the living self is never just a singular, reducible entity. In this regard, every facet of human existence could be reduced into something scientifically ‘examined’ – biology, physiology, anatomy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, etc. These categories, whether implicitly or explicitly held, strip the individual of their complexity and reduce the life-world to mere abstractions. As Taylor notes of this process, in the modern ascendency of instrumental meanings and objective frameworks, our capacity for meaning and interpretation has been limited by the intellectual circumscription of “disengaged reason.” 27 The precedent of a scientific worldview is held “as the royal road to knowledge, even in 24

David Woodruff Smith, “Mind and Body,” in The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, ed. Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 339. 25 Husserl, 51-52. 26 Joseph Persky, “Retrospectives: The Ethology of Homo Economicus,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 2 (1995): 230, accessed January 2, 2022, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138175. 27 Taylor, 746.

human affairs.”28 For Husserl, these ‘paradigms’ do little justice in furthering our understanding of human life or attaining an accurate understanding of our inner being. As reason is the arbiter of truth, the presupposition is that it must be applied to all dimensions of human experience  given that it connotes the “‘absolute,’ ‘eternal,’ ‘supertemporal,’ and ‘unconditionally’ valid ideas and ideals.”29 It is not that Husserl is entirely against rationalism (Rationalismus), but that what is needed, is a significant reform through phenomenology. 30 At the epicenter of European humanity is a fundamentally misguided form of rationalism that has been inherited by figures such as Descartes and Kant – a rationalism that Husserl regards as “naïve” and “narrowminded.”31 In an objective sense, the principles of science and objectivism may define one’s physical properties and ‘functions’; however, they also neglect vital considerations pertaining to existence, which include “the unity of spiritual life, activity, creation, with all its ends, interests, cares, and endeavours, with its products of purposeful activity, institutions, organizations.”32 Husserl warns that we should be wary of this homogenous approach to knowledge that favors objectivism over spirit and the inner world. Given its detachment from the Lebenswelt, scientization and mathematization may ultimately lead to radical skepticism and nihilism, as both self and world become increasingly abstracted and alienated. Even our conception of time, is mechanized, digitized, and organized through dates and calendars, which means that in the process of daily life, we are in fact preoccupied with rapid forms of worldly appraisals via our natural attitudes and cognitive frameworks. Furthermore, modern life is “characterized by the obsessive concern with efficiency and accumulation.”33 Rather than simply accepting our daily assumptions of the world, which becomes increasingly labelled, explained, and bound by expectations and rules that are governed primarily through reason, a vital task of phenomenology is to explore how we constitute the world for ourselves via complex syntheses. Because reason is often the dominant default measure, many of these other forms of interaction and conscious processing receive little attention in the modern world. Accordingly, with the progress of reason, our very life-orientation with the world and the totality of our experiences become prone to an impersonal process of atomization. To elaborate, one merely needs to reflect on the limitless progress of science and technology and the fact that – the more that we exist in such a world that 28

Taylor, 746. Husserl, 9. 30 Husserl, §56. 31 Husserl, 16. 32 Husserl, 273. 33 Peter Sedgwick, Nietzsche: The Key Concepts (New York: Routledge, 2009), 92. 29

becomes increasingly automated, explained, and factually given – the less ‘enchanted,’ ‘spontaneous,’ and ‘astonishing’ our experiences become. The world is reduced to a set of facts that can be given and accepted with little care or reflective concern. Even when we engage in disagreement, the arguments and disagreements are extensions of the modern’s emphasis on rationality. Extrapolated from life, information and data are transferred, collected, and consumed despite their having no basis in the everydayness of our lives, often serving little practical function. Implicitly, these modes of thinking and awareness are held with higher regard, while historical, ancestral, and spiritual ties are often viewed as something inferior. As Taylor notes, divergent forms of thought or knowledge are often viewed as “irrational” or “childish” in the context of the modern world.34 The highest prioritized skills in the contemporary world for example are mathematical and analytical skills, and this only seems to be progressing with the maturation of science and technology. Though many may view Husserl’s late works as hyperbolically catastrophizing humanity’s struggle for meaning, there is some truth to his concerns, especially when we consider our blind faith in science and technology. According to Nietzsche, scientific progress “is cold and dry . . . As long as what is meant by culture is essentially the promotion of science, culture will pass the great suffering human being by with pitiless coldness, because science sees everywhere only problems.” 35 Because of this constant emphasis on progress in the absence of teleological awareness, humanity has prioritized economic and technological growth above all else, expecting that this will somehow lead to a more promising unveiling of time. However, as Husserl warns in “The Vienna Lecture,” we must remember our genealogical roots and the relationship that science has to immanent, everyday existence. In progress, we have for example, lost the connection that our ancestors had to life, where relating ‘practically’ to the world was more vital than simply ‘knowing’ the world. For this reason, humanity finds itself in a precarious scenario – in that, as we continue to advance with science and reason, we are neglecting essential ties, connections, and awareness that leave us feeling more unaware and alien to the world. We have now reached a pinnacle of scientific hubris, having dominated and modified virtually every lifeform, ecosystem, and food source to suit our intended instrumental use. As Taylor claims, in the absence of rootedness in the world, reason may “run on perhaps to destruction, human and ecological . . . actuated by a kind of pride, hubris.”36 These are many of the very warnings presented by Husserl in the early-to-mid twentieth century, as the European sciences and culture were losing the 34

Taylor, 561. Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 5. 36 Taylor, 9. 35

meaning of life.37 Like Nietzsche, who in 1882, referred to European culture as a “sick, sickly, maimed animal,”38 Husserl’s admonitions in 1935 about a ‘crisis’ could not have come at a more dire time. Within a matter of years, the Second World War began, and with it, the consequences of unreflective scientific and technological application. Although science conferred prosperity, most had failed to consider the repercussions of its misuse. To better understand Husserl’s concerns about the modern world, we need to first reflect on the pre-scientific and pre-theoretical world to identify the role that science had within the Lebenswelt. V. The Pre-Scientific and Pre-Theoretical World To draw the distinction between the pre-scientific and pre-theoretical world, Husserl turns to the ‘spiritual birthplace’ of Europe and provides a philosophical-historical analysis of ancient Greece. In doing so, he investigates a period prior to the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, and in doing so, shows the life-world and the ‘deobjectification’ of European sciences.39 According to Husserl, “the telos . . . was inborn in European humanity at the birth of Greek philosophy.”40 In the prescientific and pre-theoretical era, humanity’s primary orientation was praxis rather than epistēmē.41 We developed scientific and theoretical knowledge not just in and of itself, but through a far more practical orientation with the world. Science, for example, enabled us to develop ‘tools’ and ‘items’ to more easily orient ourselves to our environment. Fundamentally, practical knowledge is the grounds by which theoretical cognition came into being. Here, we can think of the actionable forms of technē (craft or making) and praxis (practicing or doing), which were fundamental processes and worldly orientations. 42 However, in the modern world, science has forgotten this genealogy, as it fails to acknowledge that epistēmē developed through praxis. As Husserl states, human activity and science exist within “the life-world,” which “is always already there, existing in advance for us, the ‘ground’ of all praxis whether theoretical or extratheoretical.”43 According to Husserl, it was through our practical orientation that we developed science to develop novel solutions to everyday, life-oriented problems. It is not that science and mathematics are inherently problematic, as Husserl readily 37

Husserl, 5. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, ed. Bernard Williams (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 210. 39 Eva-Maria Engelen, “Husserl, History, and Consciousness,” in Science and the Life-World: Essays on Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, ed. David Hyder and Hang-Jorg Rheinberger (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2010), 136-137. 40 Husserl, 15. 41 Husserl, 276-279. 42 Husserl, §34. 43 Husserl, 142. 38

acknowledges their value. However, through the “sedimentation or traditionalization” of meaning, the very language of mathematics and science remove the fundamental meaning of the ‘thing’ being explained.44 Sedimentation is a term used by Husserl “to express how new experiences settle down and become habitual convictions that inform a person’s cognitive outlook.” 45 Given the proclivity to hold mathematics and science to such high standards in the modern world, means that we totalize things, objects, and phenomena in the world by reducing them to our own categories and structures. As this process continues, again and again, we create deepening layers of sedimentation that distance us from the world around us. Instead of a phenomenal understanding, we are left with an abstraction of reality. When these ‘truths’ or ‘facts’ go unquestioned, we simply subsume the things and beings in the world into a scientific discourse that objectifies and reduces subjectivity and alterity. As Husserl claims, we have neglected the historical role of practical knowledge and put such faith in scientific inquiry and reason that other forms of knowledge, awareness, and modes of consciousness are viewed as unreliable, inaccurate, and irrelevant. 46 Through sedimentation, science and reason have become the default modus operandi of the modern world. By prioritizing European spirit, Husserl moves away from an objective view that divides the continent into categories of “geographical science” such as landmass, borders, and historical facts. 47 As Husserl notes, the Lebenswelt transcends the objective interpretation of geography and history, which often reduces the lived and embodied interactions between individuals, ancestry, culture, and society, and takes into account their underlying beliefs, motivations, and cultural consciousness. In this objective scientism, human beings are amalgamated into facts, information, and data that have been abstracted from life. By removing the threat of subjective obscurity, the scientist views the world from supposed ‘impartiality.’ In considering ancient Greece, Husserl believes that we need to consider the constitutive nature of persons and spirit and how they comprise the identity of that nation that resides beyond the collection and dissemination of scientifically ‘purer’ forms of knowledge. As ancient Greece was comprised of both physical (geography, resources, climates) and spiritual (culture, community, beliefs) elements, it would be foolish to neglect one aspect in favour of another. According to Husserl’s judgement, the sciences, through their methodological objectivism, attempt to remove all dimensions of the life-world in the process. For this reason, Husserl sees it as a naïve form of inquiry that is unable to 44

Husserl, 52. Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen, The Husserl Dictionary (London: Continuum, 2012), 288-289. 46 Husserl, 13-15. 47 Husserl, 273. 45

acknowledge its relation within the life-world. Instead, when we consider the nature of the ‘surrounding world,’ the method of scientific inquiry has developed “by working itself out as a vocation-like life-interest, leading through understandable motivations to vocational communities in which general results are propagated or develop from generation to generation.”48 If we consider the advance of agriculture or medicine, such developments were marked by practical considerations for everyday life. They were, in a sense, directly bound to the life-world and had those who existed within its sphere of existence. The development of such knowledge and tools served a practical role within the community-horizon rather than as something fundamentally distinct. The Egyptians, Babylonians, and ancient Greeks all aptly demonstrated this process of practical wisdom and pragmatic innovation. However, according to Husserl, “only in the Greeks do we have a universal (‘cosmological’) like-interest in the essentially new form of a purely ‘theoretical’ attitude.” 49 In ancient Greece, we find the first break from the praxis-technē orientation within the life-world, as philosophy began developing abstract theoretical concerns that transcended an embedded orientation in daily life. Specifically, in figures like Socrates and Plato, we see the divisional twoworld dichotomy between the world of appearances (phainomenon) and the world of Ideas (eidos).50 Many of the metaphysical and epistemological concerns of Athenian philosophers surpassed the horizons of the lifeworld, while the pre-Socratics “understood the phenomenon of life in the context of their inquiry into nature” and “what type of human/animal relation this ‘physical’ outlook on life decreed.” 51 The pre-Socratic philosophers were still very much oriented in the science-as-praxis model, while later philosophers and scientists became increasingly oriented in epistēmē and theoria. As Husserl states, “[t]he theoretical attitude, though it is again a vocational attitude, is totally unpractical.”52 The consequences of this ‘theoretical attitude’ led to a substantial paradigm shift in how the world was viewed and conceptualized. As we began to utilize knowledge and critical thinking in new ways, the ‘spiritual sphere’ of human existence was forever changed. However, unlike the overreaching efforts of modern scientific inquiry, the ancient Greeks still aimed to find a proper balance between theory and practice. For example, Aristotle always recognized the value of both praxis and theoria, believing that both had a part to play in human flourishing.53 48

Husserl, 280. Husserl, 280. 50 Bunnin and Yu, 532. 51 Claudia Zatta, Interconnectedness: The Living World of the Early Greek Philosophers, rev. ed., (Berlin: Academia Verlag, 2019), 14. 52 Husserl, 282. 53 Bunnin and Yu, 51. 49

A fundamental point that Husserl addresses about this transition is the fact that “[p]rior to philosophy no one poses questions critical of knowledge” and “questions of evidence.”54 For Husserl, we did not reach a ‘spiritual crisis’ with the Greeks, but through the process of subsequent developments of later scientists and philosophers. With the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, figures like Galileo and Newton began the mathematization of the natural world and even the celestial systems beyond our empirical capacities. 55 This resulted in radical technological innovations that began to dramatically increase our knowledge and control of nature. Such figures developed new ways of quantitatively and objectively measuring the universe at large. As a consequence, nature became a more mechanistic entity that could only be fully understood through the languages of mathematics and physics. A fundamental fear for Husserl stems from the radical acceptance of scientific and technological discoveries, which have been unreflectively habituated into our lives throughout history. In this regard, Husserl’s major concern is not science and technology themselves, but the fundamental attitudes and worldviews that we have developed in their proliferation. When detached from historical and teleological goals, these instruments pose significant existential threats, as exemplified by the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. VI. The Lasting Significance of “The Vienna Lecture” Let us now consider the lasting significance of Edmund Husserl’s “The Vienna Lecture.” First, it is important to note that the lecture was given in 1935, which means that the timing of its message showed incredible foresight. Within the lecture, Husserl addresses many concerns about the state of Europe and the rise of National Socialism, and the ensuing threat of scientific, technological, and militaristic capacities. As a precursor to Husserl, Nietzsche worried about the future of secular society, scientific progress, and the loss of spirit, claiming that “there will be tremors, a ripple of earthquakes, an upheaval of mountains and valleys such as no one has ever imagined. The concept of politics will have then merged entirely into a war of spirits . . . there will be wars such as the earth has never seen.” 56 Nietzsche saw Europe’s existentialspiritual vacuum emerging with the rise of science and the decline of Christianity in Western Europe, which would be fertile terrain in which new ideologues and secular

Husserl, 289. Husserl, §16. 56 Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in Friedrich Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, ed. Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. Judith Norman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 143. 55

philosophies would emerge. 57 Although the Death of God could be potentially liberating, it also brought with it a perturbing sense of groundlessness in a world becoming increasingly unrecognizable.58 In Husserlian terms, the fundamental shift in the Lebenswelt at the turn of the twentieth century, meant that humanity would try to fill its holistic needs with something that was fundamentally unidimensional. Unable to acknowledge the limits of science and reason, individuals put faith in the promise of secularization and the utopianism promised by various socio-political ideologies. However, as Nietzsche understood, misdirected scientific and Enlightenment rationality would only lead to further isolation and desperation, as it fails to fulfill our need for vitality, passion, and meaning. For Husserl, though humanity could attempt to grasp the natural world ‘objectively,’ it had gained little ground in the ‘spiritual realm.’ Control over the natural world may have provided more answers, but it also led to more questions. According to Husserl, “the European crisis has its roots in a misguided rationalism.” 59 The inherited model of the Enlightenment viewed reason as the central faculty capable of leading humans to self-rule, moral progress, and beyond what Kant referred to as humanity’s “self-incurred immaturity.” 60 However, the impersonal nature of rational and scientific frameworks were not effective substitutes for humanity’s complex moral, social, political, and cosmic needs. 61 The impersonal order and nonbelief in religious, spiritual, supernatural, enchanted, and embodied sentiments of the Enlightenment pushed a stifling worldview that was met by reactionary thoughts, ideas, and movements. Consequently, a crisis emerged as humanity found itself divided between reason and passion and science and spiritualism. But within this crisis, dramatical movements of shifting worldviews proliferated. As Nietzsche identifies, this has led to an incredible restlessness in modern individuals: “From lack of repose our civilization is turning into a new barbarism. At no time have the active, that is to say the restless, counted for more. That is why one of the most necessary corrections to the character of mankind that have to be taken in hand is a considerable strengthening of the contemplative.” 62 For Husserl, the shifts in culture marked a self-circumscription of our conscious experience in the world. The desperate need of the modern individual for certainty propagated an adherence to reason and science, which is “the servant of strategic 57

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, ed. Walter Kaufman, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 77-78. 58 Nietzsche, The Gay Science, §109. 59 Husserl, 290. 60 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, ed. James Schmidt (Oakland: University of California Press, 1996), 58. 61 Taylor, 288. 62 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 133.

thinking, and only serves to embroil us more fully in the power of calculations,” which “make us more and more dependent on them.” 63 However, as Husserl acknowledges, the goal of humanity should be to “master the true and full sense of philosophy, the totality of its horizons of infinity.”64 For Husserl, this would consist of a combination of a historical-teleology and phenomenology that would provide a necessary historical and future-oriented weltanschauung (worldview) and provide us with qualitative and descriptive tools to reacquaint ourselves with the Lebenswelt. Directionless and susceptible to the rhetoric and promises of idealogues, Husserl believes that a life-oriented phenomenology can help reorient our natural attitude and uncritical devotion to science in a more spiritually considerate direction. With the Second World War, the rise in National Socialism and Stalinism, the Holocaust, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the deaths of tens of millions, the concerns presented by both Nietzsche and Husserl about our misdirected desire to achieve greater ‘ascendency over nature’ through science and technology were hauntingly accurate. Humanity demonstrated the capacity to destroy both itself and the natural world. As Nietzsche anticipated near the end of his life: “For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving as toward a catastrophe, with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect.”65 The projection of science led to the groundless basis for racial superiority that completely detached itself from the Lebenswelt. Moving hand in hand with science, reason was the tool employed to rationalize the deaths of millions for national goals and pseudo-scientific ideologies about racial superiority. This mode of thinking was employed by the war-mongers and perpetrators of crimes against humanity, as it was used to dehumanize and negate the subjectivity and lived experiences of others. Despite the advancements made in the twentieth century, the Second World War was an example of the devastating consequences of what happens when science goes unchecked and unmonitored. In his conclusion to “The Vienna Lecture,” Husserl warns that “the downfall of Europe in its estrangement from its own rational sense of life, its fall into hostility toward the spirit into barbarity . . . Europe’s greatest danger is weariness.”66 Husserl is adamant about the need for critical self-reflection about humanity’s teleology and our orientedness towards supposed goals, which are fundamentally lacking in spiritual and conscious awareness of life. 63

Taylor, 216. Husserl, 291. 65 Nietzsche, The Will to Power, 1. 66 Husserl, 299. 64

Building on Husserl’s concern, Jung wrote during the nineteen-fifties that “[c]oming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science.” 67 Reduced to a set of theories and explanations, the modern world is less felt, revered, and sacrosanct, and the very dimensions of the Lebenswelt are unnoticed and discounted. Technology is a crutch that supports humanity, but the life-world, according to Husserl, is the foundation. Even today, we find Husserl’s warning significant for understanding our continued crisis of spirit, which has resulted in an increasingly scientific and explicable world. As Husserl would claim, science in its isolating and reductionistic methodologies still fails to grasp the totality, complexity, and multifacetedness of life. With the radical acceleration of secularization, mathematization, and science, we have experienced an overreaching effect – wherein, we have grown too detached and distant from worldly and embodied existence. If we fail to acknowledge Husserl’s warning, the human race may continue to the point of no return, which Nick Bostrom aptly defines as “anthropogenic existential risks.” 68 Existential risks according to Bostrom, “are those that threaten the entire future of humanity.” 69 And the ones that are the most significant and imminent threat to our future are those produced by ‘human activity.’ With that said, our own existence now poses the single greatest threat to all future life on this planet, but humanity still lacks the awareness to change its overestimated epistemic foundations. With mounting evidence of irreparable environmental damage, observable changes in climate and weather, inhospitable factory farming and cruelty to animals, and increasing rates of adverse global mental health statistics, the human race continues to walk a tightrope in terms of existential risk. Consequently, as the natural and physical sciences still fail to acknowledge the complexity of the Lebenswelt and our goals on this planet, the lasting significance of Husserl’s warning still serves an important function in the contemporary world. If we do not heed the warning and continue to divide further from underlying spiritual and life-oriented forms of consciousness, then humanity may inevitably head towards its own self-created destruction and mass extinction.

Carl Jung, The Undiscovered Self (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1958), 110. Nick Bostrom, “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority,” Global Policy 4, no. 1 (2013): 16, accessed October 3, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12002. 69 Bostrom, 16. 68

Works Cited Bostrom, Nick. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy 4, no. 1 (2013): 15-31. Accessed October 3, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12002. Bunnin, Nicholas and Jiyuan Yu. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Black Publishing, 2004. Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. 3rd ed. Translated by Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993. Engelen, Eva-Maria. “Husserl, History, and Consciousness. In Science and the Life-World: Essays on Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, 136-149. Edited by David Hyder and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2010. Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy. Translated by David Karr. Evanston: North Western University Press, 1970. Jung, Carl. The Undiscovered Self. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1958. Kant, Immanuel. “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” In What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, 58-64. Edited by James Schmidt. Oakland: University of California Press, 1996. Majer, Ulrich. “The Origin and Significance of Husserl’s Notion of the Lebenswelt.” In Science and the LifeWorld: Essays on Husserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, 46-63. Edited by David Hyder and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2010. Persky, Joseph. “Retrospectives: The Ethology of Homo Economicus Author(s).” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 2 (1995): 221-231. Accessed January 2, 2022. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2138175. Moran, Dermot and Joseph Cohen. The Husserl Dictionary. London: Continuum, 2012. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. In Friedrich Nietzsche: The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, 69-152. Edited by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman. Translated by Judith Norman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ———. Human, All Too Human. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Cambridge

University Press, 2005. ———. The Gay Science. Edited by Bernard Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press,

2001. ———. Untimely Meditations. Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. Cambridge University Press,

1983. ———. The Will to Power, edited by Walter Kaufmann. Translated by Walter Kaufmann and R.

J. Hollingdale. Vintage Books, 1968.

Sedgwick, Peter. Nietzsche: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2009. Smith, David Woodruff. “Mind and Body.” In The Cambridge Companion to Husserl, 323-393. Edited by Barry Smith and David Woodruff Smith. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Weber, Max. “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 323-359. Edited and translated by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946. ———.

“Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, 129-56. Edited and translated by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.

Zatta, Claudia. Interconnectedness: The Living World of the Early Greek Philosopers. Rev. ed. Berlin: Academia Verlag, 2019.

Conceptuality of Experience: How Can Experience Confer Knowledge Zihui Ding, Haverford College In Lecture One of Mind and World, John McDowell makes a Kantian thesis that sensibility and understanding are inextricably combined. He further explicates this thesis by suggesting that the conceptual capacities that belong to spontaneity are passively drawn into operation in the workings of receptivity. Criticizing the idea of passive involvement, I propose a better way to make sense of the original thesis on inextricable combinedness. I think Kant has already equipped us with the conceptual tools to think of this issue. Based on a reading of the Transcendental Deduction, I argue that it is constitutive of pure concepts to be operative in experience. Intuitions and concepts, despite the logical distinction between them, are for each other, insofar as pure concepts have no other use than to be applied to intuitions so that the latter can give objects for thought. I then discuss some implications of the proposed account, which invites us to refashion our conceptions of both objectivity and knowledge.

I. Introduction What are the conditions of the possibility of knowledge? John McDowell takes this classic epistemological problem to boil down to the question of the possibility that experience can take up the role of a justification. The crux, as we will see, is to account for the conceptuality of the workings of receptivity. Before McDowell makes this turn, philosophers tend to interpret the notion of spontaneity by contrasting it with receptivity, taken as a straightforward faculty by which our senses are affected by things in the world. In Mind and World, however, McDowell perceptively points out that the right way to understand spontaneity – thus to understand the contrast between spontaneity and receptivity – is precisely to understand its role in the working of receptivity, not on it. This brings out his thesis that receptivity “does not make an even notionally separable contribution” to the Kantian cooperation between receptivity and spontaneity.1 In this paper, fully supporting McDowell’s thesis, I dispute with him, however, on the specific way in which the workings of receptivity are to be conceived conceptually. I criticize him on the view that experience is conceptual only because of the passive involvement of capacities that belong to the spontaneity of understanding, which suggests that concepts’ involvement in experience is not constitutive of what they are. I think this notion of passive involvement fails to 1

John McDowell, Mind and World with a New Introduction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 9.

completely capture the force of McDowell’s thesis, that receptivity and spontaneity are inextricably combined. Alternatively, I think this thesis could be spelled out in a stronger manner. To this end, I turn to Kant and argue that Kant already supplies us with the tools to think of this issue. I propose a reading of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason, according to which an intuition realizes itself through being brought under concepts, and, conversely, concepts have no other use than to apply to objects. This shows that, unlike the passive involvement account, it is constitutive of concepts to be operative in experience; without concepts, an intuition cannot be what it is (i.e., that which gives us objects). II. Exposition on and Criticism of McDowell McDowell frames the difficulty of knowledge in terms of an oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. According to the Myth of the Given, empirical thinking must be constrained by things in the world, conceived as outside the realm of thinking and hence merely given to us. By contrast, coherentism denies that external constraints from outside thinking can genuinely be rational constraints and thus it is forced to accept that we only have a coherent system of beliefs. Either view appears to have a solid argument against the other, and yet precisely for this reason, neither could be right. McDowell recommends a way out of the oscillation, a third possibility, in which he acknowledges the motivation of both positions yet avoids their conclusions. On one hand, the Myth of the Given rightly urges that empirical thinking must be answerable to how things are in the world. For, otherwise, “we cannot make it intelligible to ourselves how exercises of spontaneity can represent the world at all.”2 In order for a thought to be truly contentful, there must be an external constraint on empirical thinking so that the ground of justification of thoughts must eventually be reality itself, that which is outside the realm of thoughts. On the other hand, coherentism is correctly premised on the fact that anything outside the conceptual sphere cannot serve as a justification. If a constraint is to be a tribunal of thinking, then it must bear rational relations on thoughts. Yet a piece of Given is outside the conceptual sphere because what is merely given is not subject to change upon reflection, that is, not thinkable. As such, the Given cannot be a constraint on thinking at all, for a piece that is not thinkable cannot bear rational relations on what is inside the conceptual realm. Coercing oneself to be comfortable with the Given is tantamount to a betrayal of the freedom of the mind. 2

Ibid. 17.

The key is to identify a problematic assumption implicitly endorsed by both positions, that an external constraint of how things are has to be outside the conceptual sphere, namely, a picture in which there is a boundary around the conceptual sphere, outside which is reality. McDowell's central thesis against this assumption is that receptivity and spontaneity are not even “notionally separable” in experience.3 The conceptual sphere “extends all the way out” so that the content of experience is already conceptually articulated.4 We need to conceive experience as conceptual without infringing on its passivity, which McDowell argues is made possible by the unboundedness of spontaneity. I second the above thesis; however, I take issue with McDowell’s following specification of his thesis. The conceptuality of experience, he thinks, is a result of actualizations of conceptual capacities that, though belonging essentially to spontaneity, are only “passively drawn into play in experience.” 5 This claim of passive spontaneity is far from an ideal solution if one really thinks about how it can work. If the conceptual capacities are only passively involved, i.e., if their work in receptivity does not manifest what they essentially are – the active exercises of concepts in judgment – then it is doubtful whether their involvement can justify at all the conceptual content that McDowell would like to attribute to experience. For, as McDowell himself realizes, without their active exercises in thinking, their status as conceptual capacities are unintelligible. Then, arguably, merely passive involvement of these capacities in experience does not entitle us to conclude that experience is thus in the conceptual realm as McDowell would like to. The possibility of passive spontaneity can appear not only unintelligible but even self- contradictory. A more significant objection that I will focus on is this: how could receptivity place proper external constraints on spontaneity if the structure of its workings is already a result of conceptual capacities that belong to spontaneity in the first place? These skeptics hence opt for the Myth of the Given. Let's call champions of this view–of the Myth of the Given–“constraintists.” Their worry is that the kind of freedom that can be associated with the exercises of spontaneity, the freedom of active thinking, must be conditioned by external constraints that are given to us in experience. However, it is questionable whether experience can give any constraint at all once we accept that it is an actualization of capacities of thinking. What renders the problem difficult is the apparent 3

Ibid. 9. Ibid. 11. 5 Ibid. 12. Hereafter, I will refer to this view, with which I dispute, as "the passive spontaneity theory", or simply "passive spontaneity". However, it should be kept in mind that this is only shorthand for sake of reference. What McDowell actually argues for is not a passive kind of spontaneity, which would indeed be mythical, if not directly contradicting with what the faculty of understanding is. 4

incompatibility between spontaneity being permeating into the receptivity and spontaneity being necessarily constrained from the outside. The disconnection in McDowell's passive spontaneity argument appears to be that the scope of spontaneity extends all the way out, and yet the proper exercises of spontaneity do not. McDowell is not unaware of the potential criticisms of his view. He offers the insightful argument from the Aristotelian idea of “second nature,” one that is meant to dispel the difficulties in grasping the notion of passive spontaneity by attacking the disenchanted conception of nature, equated with the realm of scientific law. If we unquestionably identify nature with the realm of law, we are then forced to think that the sui generis spontaneity resists its being put into nature. That is, there is a (false) dichotomy between the space of nature and the space of reasons. Then it becomes unintelligible how the workings of sensibility, "the operations of a bit of mere nature" could be structured by spontaneity at all. 6 And this leads us to the problematic assumption that discloses the oscillation as the only two choices, the assumption that the scope of spontaneity is bounded, outside which is reality, understood as part of nature. In response, McDowell criticizes the above notion of nature. Spontaneity can indeed be naturalized while remaining sui generis, for “exercises of spontaneity belong to our way of actualizing ourselves as animals.” 7 To see how it is possible, McDowell reminds us of the notion of second nature in Aristotle's ethics. Much as an ethical person is initiated into a specific ethical outlook through being well brought up, so rational animals are initiated into the space of reasons through acculturation including learning a language. Much as an ethical outlook allows the person to realize that her conception of courage, say, is wrong and fix it, so the space of reasons is a space of autonomy in which we are able and obliged to self- reflect and correct our conceptions. Much as from within an ethical outlook, the person sees various virtues and vices as existing in the world, so to the eyes of rational beings, the world appears as already saddled with meaning. Our nature is largely second nature, and thus the conceptual capacities acquired when we enter into the space of reasons genuinely belong to our natural way of living as rational beings.

Ibid. 70. Ibid. 78. In detail, McDowell contends that there need be no dichotomy between nature and the space of reasons. Although there is a contrast between the intelligibility of that in the realm of law and the intelligibility of that in the space of reasons, yet we can reject the equation of the realm of law with nature. The mistake is to think that what is true about nature must be explicable in terms of scientific law as opposed to rational reasoning. Were that the case, human beings would be, strangely, partially natural insofar as we have sensory capacities, and partially supernatural insofar as we have conceptual capacities, which leads to what McDowell calls a rampant platonism.

However, I submit that this second nature argument does not effectively address the constraintists' doubt on the passive spontaneity theory. Granted a whole-hearted appreciation of the second nature argument, the possibility of passive spontaneity remains unintelligible because there is a mismatch between passive spontaneity and the second nature argument. I think the second nature argument is the real insight that we need to hold on to, which is compatible with, or even necessitates, a rejection of McDowell's view on spontaneity's passive permeation into receptivity. Once we see the radicalness of the second nature argument, it should be clear that passive spontaneity marks a partial retrogression to the dualistic way of thinking that traps us in the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. The fact that McDowell feels impelled to insist on the passive spontaneity argument only shows that he does not properly appreciate what his own insight of second nature, the idea of the unboundedness of the conceptual sphere, requires. McDowell identifies the common ground underlying the Myth of the Given and coherentism as the dualistic divide between the causal and the rational. Taking this divide for granted, coherentism denies that any causal givenness can function as a rational constraint, whereas the Myth of the Given insists that such causal givenness can somehow mythically constrain thinking. McDowell thinks he avoids this mistaken divide that launches one into the oscillation, but I doubt he succeeds. According to McDowell, a causal relation – the mind being sensibly affected by the world – can also be a rational one only insofar as spontaneity permeates into receptivity. This means that it is unacceptable for what is merely causal to be rational, which betrays his fear that the merely causal – the working of receptivity if left alone – threatens to be a harmful Given outside the rational realm. It is precisely this fact that McDowell thinks leaving receptivity on its own will be a problem that is the problem. It shows that he still feels the pull to keep a minimal dualistic distinction between the merely causal and the rational. With such a divide already set up, the argument of passive spontaneity comes only too late as a remedy. It is at best disingenuous to think that the workings of receptivity are in the order of justification only because of the assistance from the additional conceptual capacities drawn into operation, which essentially belong to the territory of spontaneity, not receptivity. The point is that this is quite weak an argument for the rationality of experience. McDowell's interpretation of the notion of cooperation can sound like no more than a cheap gluing together of two desiderata. While conceptual capacities are responsible for bringing experience into the rational sphere so that thinking can refer to it, the receptive faculty is responsible for keeping experience passive so that we are in 70

direct contact with the objective reality.8 The former acknowledges the motivation of coherentism that anything thinkable must be rationally articulated; the latter acknowledges the motivation of the Myth of the Given that, as the provider of real constraints on thinking, experience must be passive. And yet the passive spontaneity theory does not make clear how on earth the two apparently opposite features that McDowell wants to attribute to experience – rationality and passivity – not only coexist but are unified in experience. I suggest that we need to interpret the inextricable combinedness thesis as uprooting even the divide between the merely causal and the rational. Experience isn't merely causal, not because spontaneity finds its way to secretly sneak into the workings of receptivity as McDowell proposes. Rather, experience is conceptual because the workings of receptivity are themselves proper actualizations of pure concepts. An intuition is not that in which there is passive involvement of concepts as an adjunct, but rather an intuition, being what it is, is constitutively dependent on the application of the pure concepts of understanding. The difference here can seem subtle but I think it is a difference of great importance in that the latter articulation takes a step further towards McDowell's – and my – generic goal of achieving a picture in which sensibility and understanding are inextricably combined, and thus knowledge is indifferently objective and subjective. III. An Alternative Account of the Inextricable Combinedness of Sensibility and Understanding The line of thought that spontaneity must be unbounded – in particular, permeating into experience – can be spelled out without taking the route of passive spontaneity. To do so, I will rely mostly on Kant. What McDowell characterizes as the problem of the justificatory role of experience is in fact already in Kant but framed in another way. In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant's goal is to explain how pure concepts can be applied to given objects, and, therefore, to vindicate the objective validity of pure concepts. I argue that the conceptuality of experience and the objectivity of thoughts are, in fact, two faces to the same problem. Kant is aware of the exact same difficulty of the possibility of knowledge that McDowell pictures as the oscillation between the Myth of the Given and coherentism. Spontaneity must be unbounded, Kant sees, for thinking cannot be 8

We will see that we can and ought to fix this notion of objectivity as we get to a more sophisticated understanding of the cooperation between receptivity and spontaneity.

constrained by anything except itself, which is no external constraint at all. And yet it cannot be the case, for thinking must be answerable to – thus constrained by – how things are in the world, in order for thoughts to not be empty. Further, in Kant, the source of this difficulty can be traced all the way back to the logical and metaphysical distinction between concepts and intuitions. The idea of a necessary external constraint on thinking is grounded on the nature of finite rational beings for whom objects must be given in intuitions because our understanding is not intuitive. Our understanding cannot afford to think of objects directly through concepts. As Kant points out in Jäsche Logic, there is “no lowest concept.” 9 Logical determination through concepts can never be considered complete. One could always add more details to one’s concept to specify it, and only an object can determine whether or not the new concept applies to it. Hence, individual objects are “all-sided determinations.” 10 Correspondingly, it would require a concept with infinite representations to capture in thought precisely one object. But this infinity cannot be grasped by us finite rational beings. Therefore, for Kant, there is a necessary distinction – and thus necessary cooperation – between intuitions in which objects are given to us and concepts through which they are thought. Now objectivity of thoughts is conceived in relation to objects. There is no other way objectivity can be grounded except in relation to objects. Considering that objects can only be given in intuitions, understanding the objective validity of thoughts requires understanding how the workings of sensibility can amount to experience of an object, to which thinking is rationally answerable. As we will see, it is precisely in virtue of the application of pure concepts that experience can be so construed. As far as it is concerned here, McDowell’s concern about the justificatory role of experience and Kant’s concern about the objective validity of thinking are indeed two aspects of the same deep problem of the possibility of knowledge. And now we can start to sketch an alternative picture of the inextricable combinedness of sensibility and understanding by chasing after the notion of objectivity. To see how the objective validity of thoughts can be grounded at all, we first need to clarify why the faculty of understanding is identified by Kant as the faculty of spontaneity. Kant thinks that the synthetic unity of apperception is just understanding itself, the condition of the possibility of all knowledge.11 First, this means that the synthetic unity of apperception requires intuitions to be given. 9

Immanuel Kant, Logic (New York: Dover, 1990), 103. Ibid. 105. 11 See, Robert B. Pippin, “Kant on the Spontaneity of Mind,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17, no. 2 (1987): 449-475, which gives a reading of the spontaneity of understanding from the perspective of the apperceptive unity. 10

Through the “I” no manifold is given; our understanding is not intuitive. Second, what the unity of apperception does is that it enables me to recognize representations – including intuitions – to be my representations. Namely, it enables me to unite the representations in a self-consciousness in which I am aware of myself as the subject. This, I submit, is what Kant means by saying “the I think must be able to accompany all my representations.”12 There is something special about standing under this apperceptive selfconsciousness, and this specialty can be laid out by contrasting with one's empirical self-awareness through the inner sense. For Kant, this distinction between consciousness of oneself as a subject of acts of representation by doing those acts of synthesis, and consciousness of oneself as an object in which particular representations passively undergo, is of fundamental importance. When one is conscious of oneself and one’s states by doing cognitive and perceptual acts, one is conscious of oneself as spontaneous, rational, and self-legislating – as the doer of acts, not just as a passive receiver of the representations. On this identity of spontaneity with the apperceptive unifying function, we are ready to spell out the alternative account to interpret McDowell's terminology of the "inextricable combinedness" of sensibility and understanding, according to which experience thus is essentially conceptual. The central claim is that the inextricable combinedness of intuitions and concepts are constitutive of their being what they are, equally respectively. In the B-Deduction, Kant indicates that the unity of intuitions depends on the categories. As McDowell often quotes him, insofar as intuitions are representations, Kant thinks that intuitions stand under the synthesis of apperception: “the same function which gives unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in an intuition; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding.” 13 Although an intuition is a logically singular representation that gives objects to us, it is not merely sensory input, but an already unified representation of manifolds. This implies that only under the synthesis of apperception can the matter given by the sensations be intelligible as providing objects for thoughts. I take this idea of the unity of intuitions to declare the constitutive conceptuality of intuitions. The categories have no use other than to relate judging to objects given in the intuitions. Intuitions provide objects but objects are not thus given. It is in virtue of the power of the synthetic unity of apperception that an 12

Immanuel Kant, Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood. The Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), B131. 13 Ibid. A79/B104-5

intuition is fully revealed to the mind as object-giving. The understanding needs to actualize its unifying power to make the object in an intuition manifest to itself. As Hegel puts it, “spontaneity … is conceived as the principle of the very sensibility that was previously characterized only as receptivity.”14 The finite rational being has to do this synthetic step because of its finiteness, because its sensibility is not intellectual and understanding not intuitive. A judgment in which one applies a concept to a given representation is not an act of free will to transform the intuition to something else, but it realizes the intuition as immediately of an object. The category is not shaping what we thus experience as if it were some version of idealism. Rather, through the self-activity of the understanding, it unfolds and actualizes what has been contained in intuitions already. The self- activity of the faculty of apperception is an expression of our being, not a mode of determinate thinking (which is, in spirit, consistent with McDowell’s second nature argument, that spontaneity belongs to our nature in the end; thus, as I mentioned earlier, I fully support the insight of second nature).15 Therefore, we can say that pure concepts complete the role of intuitions, making it possible for intuitions to be what they are, that which give objects. This is, I think, as much as we can and ought to take Kant's famous quote "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions with concepts are blind" to entitle us to say.16 Not only does sensibility not give cognition by itself, but it is not even a self-standing cognitive faculty. Intuitions and concepts are always for each other – intuitions give objects and concepts bring them under thoughts. It is constitutive of the categories to be applied to intuitions; pure concepts have "no other use for cognition than … its application to empirical intuitions,” viz., than to realize the object-giving nature of intuitions.17 On one hand, it is through the pure concepts that intuitions can put us in relation to objects, thus making experience conceptually articulated. On the other hand, in the self-activity of spontaneity, concepts actualize themselves as concepts of objects, thus acquiring objective purports. Indeed, we see that both conceptuality of experience and objectivity of thoughts are attained at once, in virtue of the fact that, as McDowell puts it, “concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world.”18 That is, thoughts make gap-free contact with the

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel: Faith and Knowledge: An English Translation of GWF Hegel's Glauben Und Wissen, (New York: SUNY Press, 1977), 70. 15 In Danielle Macbeth, Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and Knowing, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 192-193, Macbeth characterizes Kant's spontaneity as what she terms expressive freedom as opposed to productive freedom, which is the kind of freedom in play when we exercise our agency through construction and production. 16 Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, A51/B75 17 Ibid. B148. 18 McDowell, Mind and World with a New Introduction, i.

world through letting things reveal themselves to us in the cooperation between sensibility and understanding, and thereby we can have cognition of objects. IV. A New Conception of Objectivity An objection to the thesis of unbounded spontaneity has lingered behind for long. Isn't relying on spontaneity as the condition of the possibility of experience merely falling into a form of idealism? In other words, how could the picture that I've sketched above guarantee the real objectivity of empirical thoughts? This issue can be contextualized in another oscillation between two versions of idealism, both of which attempt to avoid the Myth of the Given. On one side, it can be tempting to think that the completely mind-independent existence of the objects is merely causal givenness and is not the kind of objectivity we want to attribute to the content of thoughts, for anything outside consciousness lacks justificatory power to affect thinking. This requirement of conceptuality, however, can easily be reduced to the idealist view that we ought to ask for nothing more than what is already conceptually articulated and to find a way to be satisfied with that. On the other side, we can give full respect to the existence of the world as it is and preserve its independence. Additionally, if we still want sensibility to be conditioned by conceptual capacities that essentially belong to a cognitive subject, then we are forced to accept that this subjectivity as the condition for cognition does not infringe the existence of objects themselves as mind- independent. In other words, we have to distinguish between the conditions of possibility of our knowledge of things from the conditions of the possibility of things themselves, which distinction characterizes transcendental idealism. Despite positing the existence as real, we are not in the position to know it. Both these idealist views assume, unwittingly perhaps, that objectivity is in conflict with conceptuality. It is presupposed that the only way in which thoughts can have genuine objective purports is by acknowledging the absolute existence of objects themselves in the world, which consequently must be held irreconcilable with an intuition's conforming to the condition of conceptuality. The difference between the two views is whether it actually grants thoughts with that kind of objectivity. The first view does not, whereas the second view does only insofar as it feels impelled to distinguish between the conditions of existence and the conditions of knowledge so that objectivity and conceptuality are guaranteed to remain in separate domains. Now it's clear that there is a third possibility – to reject the assumption altogether, the heart of which is to fix our conception of what 75

objectivity is. This is exactly what the insistence on the “inextricable combinedness” thesis urges us to do. Of course, there is no doubt about the existence of the world independent of the mind. For instance, the world had been existing before humans emerged, and will be existing after humans disappear. But the task at stake is how we ought to interpret this indubitability. There is a natural scientific tendency to presuppose the existence of the world and then to investigate – and be perplexed by – how it can be established in our cognition. However, the kind of objectivity that we should adopt is beyond and above this scientific objectivity of the world that leads to a metaphysical realism. It is not this external existence of the world that constitutes the ground of the objective validity of thoughts. Rather, the objectivity of the world cannot be intelligibly appreciated without referring to its relation to a cognitive subject. It is always through being related to a cognitive subject, standing under its self-consciousness, that the merely given existence of objects gains its cognitive significance both as objects of possible experience and as the warrant of thoughts. That objects are given to us from outside has no cognitive import before being brought to the faculty of apperception so that they become objects for thoughts. Or using Kant's words, the given manifolds of intuitive representations need to get "united [into] a concept of an object" owing to the spontaneity of understanding.19 Indeed, the objective validity of judgment requires a "necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects", as Kant indicates. 20 Objectivity does rely on the relation to an object, but an object is not just so for me, unless given manifolds are brought to mind to give an object of knowledge through the unity of apperception. Application of pure concepts alone "constitutes the relation of representations to an object" of possible experience, and, reversely, through apperception, the mind presents to itself what is given in the manifold of an intuition as thinkable.21 The externality of reality to which a judgment is answerable is thus not, properly speaking, a constraint on spontaneity, but rather is attained through the constitutive involvement of the latter in making explicit to the mind the intuitive representations by way of uniting them into one consciousness.

Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, B139. McDowell substitutes "into" for "in" in the Cambridge translated edition of the first Critique. For more details, see John McDowell, “The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self: Towards a Heterodox Reading of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in Hegel's Phenomenology,” In Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars, 147–65. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 148n3. 20 Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, B11. 21 Ibid. B137.

V. Knowledge as the Self-Corrective Course of Inquiry With the new notion of objectivity, we are ultimately invited to reconsider our conception of knowledge. Knowledge whose content is understood with naturalistic objectivity is problematic, on the view I defend following McDowell, for it flouts the authority of reason to call anything into question. The mistake is a foundational conception of judgment's answerability, according to which a brute external reality completely settles the truth value of a judgment, just like how an object completely settles whether any predicate applies to it correctly or incorrectly, as if the last step in the order of justification gets to something outside the rational sphere altogether. However, once we take objectivity to be grounded in given intuitions only insofar as they are realized through the cooperation between sensibility and understanding, it can come into view that the answerability of judging to reality takes on the form of a non- foundational normativity. This will give a more dynamic picture of truth as characterized by the self-corrective course of inquiry. The idea of self-correction associated with judgment is already available to us in the reading of the cooperation between sensibility and understanding that I pursue. Judgment is, as Kant would like to think, which I agree with, “the way to bring given representations to the objective unity of apperception.” 22 For Kant, concepts are of objects – they are to be applied to objects – but concepts are not object-involving themselves; rather, judgments are. 23 And only with judgment's answerability to reality can we be said to have knowledge, whose ground I've argued lies in the self-activity of apperception. It is thus crucial of the notion of knowledge that it belongs only to finite rational beings. God does not have knowledge. Since God's understanding is intuitive, indeed, productive – objects need not be given to him but he produces objects for himself – God cannot be wrong with anything. Yet what is knowable must be something that is truly independent of one's own making; one can know it or fail to know it, be right or be wrong. This means that the human power of judgment, which is supposed to reveal to the subject how things are in the world, is a fallible capacity, as any. It immediately follows the issue of misjudging. A stick looks bent in water and we might well judge it to 22

Ibid. B141. From the perspective of logic, in Aristotle's term logic, the smallest unit of cognition is a term. A sentence of the form “P belongs to S” is essentially a predication in which one ascribes properties to things. This contrasts with Kant's general logic. He separates the two integrated logical functions of Aristotelian terms into intuitions, which solely refer, and concepts, which solely describe. Concepts are not themselves referring, thus not object-involving. In a categorical judgment “All S is P”, however, one first posits a relation between the two concepts in thought, and then the copula is makes the connection to objects, by means of a quantifier. The relation of copula is is intended to “distinguish the objective unity of given representations from the subjective” (Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, B141). Thus, a categorical judgment is answerable to how things are in the world, and it is the smallest unit of cognition for Kant.

be so, in which case we misjudge. Illusions deserve a place in any theory of empirical knowledge. Consequently, in order to cohere with the autonomy of rational thinking, the exercise of the power of judgment must be subject to critical reflection. I must be able to reassess my judgment and make corrections as reason sees fit, which allows me to conclude that the stick is in fact not bent even though it appears so. In judgment one makes up one's mind, not in some determinate mode of thinking, but rather as an act of self-activity in which knowledge of what is the case is attained through the self-conscious process of reflective inquiry, which uproots the misleading conception of answerability as a foundational constraint on judgment. In this way, knowledge is conceived as one’s internal relation to reality, realized through the cooperation of sensibility and understanding. The possibility of second thought is, further, grounded in the pure concepts of understanding. In Jäsche Logic, Kant points out in particular that, in addition to categorical relation, there is also hypothetical relation that is irreducible to the former. The metaphysical importance of this logical distinction is that hypothetical judgments can function as rules to correct our mistaken categorical judgments. There can be categorical judgment of how things are only if there is hypothetical judgment. 24 The upshot is that concepts are not only related to objects, as a consequence of the unity of apperception, but concepts are related to each other in such a way that inference can play the role of a corrective force in the course of an inquiry. Concepts must be inferentially related so that self-correction is possible. VII. Conclusion In this paper, I have championed McDowell’s thesis on the inextricable combinedness of sensibility and understanding. Nonetheless, I protest against his view that this thesis is explicable in terms of the passive involvement of conceptual capacities. I propose an alternative way so as to adhere to the force of the thesis. Drawing on the Transcendental Deduction, I have argued that the intuitions and concepts are strictly for each other. The inextricable combinedness of intuitions and concepts are constitutive of their being what they are, equally respectively. Now it's manifest that McDowell's emphasis on the passive involvement of conceptual capacities is meant to accommodate the distinction between experience, 24

This interpretation of the categories of the relations entails a particular view on what the study of logic is. In Alexandra Mary Newton, Kant on Logical Form, PhD diss., (University of Pittsburgh, 2011), has defended the Kantian view according to which the subject matter of logic is not primarily truths, but rather our exercises of cognitive capacities. On this view, logic concerns not the law of truths, but the understanding's own laws. This view fits with my picture of knowledge as a dynamic process in that it characterizes judgment, the exercise of our cognitive capacity in accordance with laws of logic, as fallible.

which is passive, and judgment, which is active. Concepts are only passively involved in experience because experience itself is passive. I have proposed an alternative account that explains the conceptuality of experience, and yet it does not do so in a way that explicitly accommodates the passivity of experience. I have tried to vindicate the objectivity of judgment through the inextricable combinedness of sensibility and understanding, so that answerability to reality is no longer understood as a constraint on judging. However, the passivity, or receptivity in Kant's terms, of the sensibility is still a constraint on the spontaneity of the understanding, which, I aim to show in this paper, is unbounded.25 So the oscillation can appear to remain in the background between the claim that spontaneity must be unbounded and that it cannot be so because the understanding always requires something to be given to it, something that we only receive passively in sensibility. This tension between the must and the cannot gets deep and it amounts to calling into question the very absolutely basic distinction between intuitions and concepts. It is too ambitious to address this challenge in this paper more than acknowledging here that, if we wish to extend the scope of the cooperation between sensibility and understanding beyond their inextricable combinedness in cognition, then it threatens to fall into transcendental idealism, if we insist on sensibility having its own forms, or again into coherentism, if we give up the passivity of sensibility altogether.

For example, the passivity of sensibility shows up clearly in the fact that, in the first Critique, there is no deduction in the Aesthetics but only in the Transcendental Logic, because, as Kant sees it, although we apply concepts, we do not apply sensibility to get intuitions; they are simply given to us in ways that are, in some respect, independent of our control.

Works Cited Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel: Faith and Knowledge: An English Translation of GWF Hegel's Glauben Und Wissen. SUNY Press, 1977. Kant, Immanuel. Logic. New York: Dover, 1990. Kant, Immanuel, Paul Guyer, and Allen W. Wood. The Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Macbeth, Danielle. Realizing Reason: A Narrative of Truth and Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. McDowell, John. Mind and World with a New Introduction. Cambridge, Mass. u.a: Harvard University Press, 1996. McDowell, John. “The Apperceptive I and the Empirical Self: Towards a Heterodox Reading of ‘Lordship and Bondage’ in Hegel's Phenomenology.” Essay. In Having the World in View: Essays on Kant, Hegel, and Sellars, 147–65. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Newton, Alexandra Mary. "Kant on Logical Form." PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2011. Pippin, Robert B. "Kant on the Spontaneity of Mind." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 17, no. 2 (1987): 449-475.