NEW BOOK: Passing and Waiting

Passing and Waiting. An Essay

Henk bij de Weg

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Short summary
Passing and waiting is something everybody does. We spend a lot of time on it. Nevertheless, there are only few studies that pay attention to it. Especially passing is a neglected theme. In this essay I develop a theoretical frame in which I see passing and waiting as related concepts and in which I relate passing to Augé’s idea of non-places. The theoretical part is followed by ten case studies that discuss practical instances of passing and waiting. With photos.

Extensive summary
Passing and waiting is something everybody does. In fact, we spend a lot of time on it. Nevertheless, there are hardly any studies that pay attention to it. In this essay, I investigate these human activities as they take place in public space. First I define what passing and waiting are, and show how they are related. Moreover, I relate the concepts to Augé’s idea of “non-places”. Most spaces for passing and waiting are constructed. Therefore, I especially point out the interesting category of spontaneous spaces for passing of waiting.
Passing and waiting are essential parts of everyday life. But what are we doing when we study phenomena of everyday life philosophically? In the next section of my essay, I try to answer this question. Until now the study of everyday life has been a casual affair and this field of interest has hardly been demarcated. However, there is a branch of human observation that pays much attention to social phenomena of everyday life: street photography. In this section of the essay, I develop a definition of philosophy and sociology of daily life inspired by the photographic approach.
Until now my approach has been quite theoretical. In the last section of the essay I present ten case studies that mainly treat practical instances of passing and waiting. Here I discuss themes like elephant paths, hotel rooms, waiting for a concert, the metro, or waiting in a queue.
This essay has been inspired by my interest in and practice of photography. Therefore I have illustrated it with photos, all photos taken by myself. It’s why sometimes photos are not present where you would expect them, because I was unable to take them for one reason or another. However, often the photos in this essay are more than just illustrations: They were the reason to write the text they “illustrate” and sometimes the picture of a photo shows better what I want to say than the written text.

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Bad apples

Besides being a philosopher I am also a gardener and I grow apples. It’s autumn, so recently I have harvested my apples, too many apples to eat all within a few weeks. Therefore I must store them. I regularly check them for sometimes an apple has started to rot. I remove it immediately, for it can infect others. Usually, only a few apples will become rotten, so for months I can enjoy eating apples from my own garden. So why should I throw away all once I have discovered a rotten apple, because it might have infected the others already, or because they might rot later?
It's what René Descartes did. When Descartes wondered if everything he thought he knew – through his senses, dreams or an evil impostor – could be an illusion, he thought the best he could do was completely empty his mind and discard all knowledge. For this was the only way that he could be sure that there was no false and fake knowledge left in his mind that could lead him into error and make him believe that what was false or fake would be true. Then starting to think from nothing, Descartes concluded that only his existence was certain, which led him to the famous saying “Cogito ergo sum”, I think therefore I am.
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) was not convinced that Descartes’ method was right: “[Why didn’t you] make a simple and brief statement to the effect that you were regarding your previous knowledge as uncertain so that you could later single out what you found to be true. Why instead did you consider everything as false, which seems more like adopting a new prejudice than relinquishing an old one? This strategy made it necessary for you to convince yourself by imagining a deceiving God or some evil demon who tricks us, whereas it would surely have been sufficient to cite the darkness of the human mind or the weakness of our nature.” In a letter Descartes replied that to find the right foundation of knowledge we must “demolish everything completely and start again right from the foundations”. In explaining why he came up with an analogy:
“Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others? In just the same way, those who have never philosophized correctly have various opinions in their minds which they have begun to store up since childhood, and which they therefore have reason to believe may in many cases be false. They then attempt to separate the false beliefs from the others, so as to prevent their contaminating the rest and making the whole lot uncertain. Now the best way they can accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all uncertain and false. They can then go over each belief in turn and re-adopt only those which they recognize to be true and indubitable.”
Descartes’ answer to Gassendi has become known as the “Bad Apple Theory”. In short: “Because one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, the only sure means to a rot-free basket is to discard the whole lot”, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains.
Although Descartes means here that we must not trust the ancient authorities who tell us what true knowledge is and that we must not believe that our senses are reliable, as an apple grower I have my doubts. When I threw away all my apples, once I had discovered a rotten one to be sure that no possible rotten apples would be left, I would have nothing to eat and I would starve to death. I need to eat the old apples, even if they are possibly rotten, to survive so that I can find a manner to prevent that apples will become rotten in the future again. I need the possibly rotten apples in my struggle against rottenness. So, although basically Descartes is right, we simply cannot discard all knowledge and start anew from nothing. If there is nothing, there is nothing to start from. An empty mind cannot think. We simply need thinking stuff, even if it is old knowledge that is partly false or fake, to be able to get better knowledge. We stand on the shoulders of others as Isaac Newton famously said. How should we imagine that?
Someone who tackled the problem was Karl R. Popper (1902-1994), who designed a scheme for developing better knowledge from old possible false or fake knowledge:

P1 > TT > EE > P2

P1 is the problem we start with, so our doubts about old knowledge. TT means “tentative theory”, i.e. how we think that the things we are interested in might actually be arranged. Then we are going to test these tentative ideas: “error elimination” (EE) as Popper calls this phase. However, after having finished the EE phase we are seldom completely content with the result, so we get a new problem situation: P2. Etc. Popper’s approach gives us an idea how we can improve and finally discard old false and fake knowledge without having to perform the impossible acrobatic trick of starting from nothing.
What Descartes actually did by rejecting all beliefs together in one go was not only destroying all apples but all apple trees as well, for isn’t it so that all existing apple trees produce apples that are vulnerable to rottenness? So to be sure to have apples that are not possibly rotten, away with the trees as well! The only way to get rot-free apples is from the seed from old apple varieties and to cross-fertilize them and hoping to get rot-free apples in this way. It’s a matter of trial and error. But you can do this only if you maintain your old orchard yet for a little while.

Sources
- “Descartes’ Epistemology”, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2007/entries/descartes-epistemology/, section 2.2 for the references to Gassendi and Descartes and the quotes there.
- For Poppers theory, see my blog “When science fails”.

Random quote
What you cannot think right, you must live wrong.

Constantin Brunner (1862-1937)

The futility of reason

(Source)

Power is of all time and the abuse of power, too. It’s certainly not only a feature of our time that leaders of world powers, especially autocratic leaders, do what they like and use – so abuse – their power for their own benefit, often with lies and irrational arguments. At moments their power must be reaffirmed they especially do, while granting favours to the people at the same time. Particularly autocrats rule this way, and others who think that they are not accountable often behave similarly. When things don’t go as they wish, they blame “the other”, whoever it may be. It’s never the autocratic leader himself who has made mistakes. The word “humility” does not appear in their vocabulary. Many have already written about this, sometimes with the consequence that, with an understatement, they themselves were sidetracked. But a few of the best descriptions of this process can be found in allegories, for instance in the fables credited to the Greek slave Aesop (c. 620-564 BC) or those written by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), whose fables are mainly based on those by Aesop. Take, for example, the fable The Wolf and the Lamb. In the left column below you see Aesop’s version, and in the right column La Fontaine’s:

The Wolf and the Lamb As a wolf was lapping at the head of a running brook, he spied a stray lamb paddling, at some distance, down the stream. Having made up his mind to seize her, he thought to himself how he might justify his violence. “Villain!” said he, running up to her; “how dare you muddle the water that I am drinking!” "Indeed," said the lamb humbly, “I do not see how I can disturb the water, since it runs from you to me, not from me to you” “Be that as it may,” replied the wolf, “it was but a year ago that you called me many ill names.” “Oh, sir!” said the lamb, trembling, “a year ago I was not born.” “Well,” replied the wolf, “if it was not you, it was your father, and that is all the same. But it is no use trying to argue me out of my supper.” And without another word he fell upon the poor helpless lamb and tore her to pieces.

The Wolf and the Lamb Strength upon right with ease can trample,     As will appear by this example.      A gentle lamb to quench his thirst,     Came to a calm, transparent brook;      A hungry wolf, in hour accurst,      That spot for his adventures took:      “Rash creature!” cried he in a rage, “To trouble thus the waters as they flow,             While I my thirst assuage; I’ll punish thee, insulting little foe!” “I pray your majesty,” the Lamb replied, “Not to be angry, but observe the tide.      You stand above, and I below;      The water comes to me from you:      How can I trouble what you drink?”      “But I insist,” he said, “you do:      And I remember, now I think,      A year ago you treated me with scorn.”      “How could I? I was not then born,” Replied the Lamb. “Perhaps,” said Wolf—“agreed; It was your brother then, who was so bold.”     “I have no brother, sire, indeed.”     “'Twas some one of your family, I’m told,     For all of you dislike my breed,     Yourselves, your shepherds, and your curs;      But I'll have vengeance, my fine Sirs!” He said, not caring with more words to meet him, And bore the lamb into the wood to eat him.

There are several variants of this fable but in all their essence is that facts and reason don’t count for the strong. Facts are simply ignored or manipulated by them. Reason is what corresponds to their desires and wishes. The law of the strongest always applies, and innocence doesn’t shield.
Let me analyse the fable a little bit in detail (with the help of an AI search). In all versions, the moral is that any excuse will serve an autocrat. If he hasn’t one, he will fabricate a fake or false excuse. Might makes right, doesn’t it? In a position of power, you don’t need a valid reason to justify your actions. Must I explain then that the wolf refers to the autocrat, to the one who abuses power, and the lamb to his subject, and particularly to the vulnerable and innocent who cannot defend himself?
Secondly, reason and argument are not important. Whatever the lamb says, it is not taken into account and it is ignored, for example, when she says in Aesop’s version: “I do not see how I can disturb the water, since it runs from you to me, not from me to you.”
Thirdly, wicked and malicious people do what they like (the wolf wants to eat the lamb, anyhow) and they construct excuses or twist the truth for “justifying” their actions.

Down the ages, La Fontaine’s was not the only one who retold Aesop’s fable. Someone who also did was the Scottish poet Robert Henryson (c. 1425-1500) in his The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian (lines 2609ff). According to him, the lamb represents the law and the Scripture, while the wolf represents their perversions. Then there are three kinds of contemporary wolves who oppress the poor: dishonest lawyers; landowners wanting to extend their estates; and aristocrats who exploit their tenants. (see also Wikipedia) In view of this interpretation is it too far-reaching to say that there are three kinds of wolves today: autocrats who pervert the law; those who try to extend the territories of their countries under false pretences; and those who try to exploit their associates, allies and those dependent on them? Need I mention names?
But is this too political? The Latvian-American writer Eli Siegel (1902-1978), analysing La Fontaine’s fable, stated: “La Fontaine tells us that between having one’s way and being just, having one’s way is more powerful. It has been so, ever so many times. The most dangerous and ugly possibility inherent in the individual as individual is that the desire to have one’s way seems strong, while justice seems flat and interrupting. The wolf wants the lamb and the want itself is justice. This is the way we are. … It is so easy to find an inclination interesting and necessary; and it is so hard to see and care for what is proportionate, equitable, ethical…”
Isn’t there a wolf in all of us?

Random quote
Belief in one unique truth and possessing that truth is the primary cause of all evil in the world.

Max Born (1882-1970)

Proximate causes

Proximate causes are especially relevant in juridical debates and legal issues, but since I am a philosopher and not a jurist and since this is a philosophical blog, I’ll discuss the subject from a philosophical point of view. But what is a proximate cause? For understanding this one must see that there is seldom an immediate causal relation between two events when one causes the other, so between cause and effect. It rarely happens that I suddenly see a ball when I am making a stroll and I just kick it. Usually, it is so that I am playing an official or unofficial match – street football! – and my kicking the ball follows from my decision to gather for a kickabout with friends and this makes in fact that I kick the ball when I can. In practice, the situation is often more complicated. There is a chain of intermediate causes between what we can call the ultimate cause and the event we want to explain so the effect. Then the proximate cause is the last intermediate cause nearest to the event (effect) in this causal chain (or it is the only intermediate cause if there is only one). This way:

Ultimate cause > intermediate cause(s) > … > proximate cause > event

Often the causal chain is even more complicated but this simple scheme makes clear what we mean when we talk about the proximate cause.
On the face of it, one might think that only the ultimate cause, like the decision to play a game of football with friends, is important and that the rest follows, including the proximate cause. Here I’ll focus on the proximate cause, but what I am going to say is in fact also relevant for the other intermediate causes. However, by playing down the relevance of the proximate cause (and other intermediate causes) one commits the fallacy of mistaking the relevance of proximate causation, or, in the words of David Kyle Johnson in his article about this fallacy: “One mistakes the relevance of proximate causation when one thinks the fact that something is a proximate cause makes it irrelevant to the story of how the event in question happened (or whether or not it would have happened).” (p. 182) Johnson makes this clear by analysing the slogan “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people”. Of course, it is so that a gun must be used by a person to shoot someone if not in a mass shooting, but, so Johnson – and I fully agree –, it doesn’t follow that guns don’t play an important causal role in shootings, “and so it doesn’t follow that regulating guns wouldn’t do anything to reduce the frequency of mass shootings” and other shootings in which guns are used, as I want to add. Although guns are proximate causes, they do make shooting other people, esp. en masse, much easier. So, it would make sense to make them harder to attain. Without guns, committing mass shootings would be by far more difficult, and the idea that guns are only proximate causes when people are shot by other people is irrelevant to the question whether guns should be made more difficult to attain: Guns are one of the causes in the causal chain. (ibid.)
A related mistake is to exaggerate the importance of something being a proximate cause: A proximate cause doesn’t erase the role of the ultimate cause. It is the reverse of the fallacy that proximate causes are irrelevant. The fallacy of exaggerating the proximate cause is committed, for instance, by those who try to deny responsibility for their actions. To take again an example from Johnson (id., p. 183): “Suppose you have a rich uncle with cancer in the hospital on life support and that you pull the plug so as to get the inheritance you were promised.” Then you cannot rightfully claim that you weren’t responsible for your uncle’s death but that the cancer killed him: “[A]lthough the cancer was the most proximate cause, you played an important causal role in this death.” Yet this line of reasoning often happens in daily life.
The question which event caused the effect, the ultimate cause or the proximate cause (or another intermediate cause), presents a false dilemma. Real life situations are usually more complicated and not as straightforward as that. Ignoring or denying this is an oversimplification, but that is a fallacy that I’ll discuss maybe in another blog.

Source
This blog heavily leans on David Kyle Johnson, “Mistaking the Relevance of Proximate Causation”, in Arp, Robert; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 181-184.
See also “Proximate and ultimate causation” and “Proximate cause” in Wikipedia.

Random quote
Objectivity without a subject is an abstract, not very relevant construction. It is the illusion of a science that is now a thing of the past.

Carlo Rovelli (1956-)

Is AI a zombie?

(no AI; based on real photos)

Two weeks ago OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned on X against the danger of losing control over AI’s alignment and also against the concentration of too much power by a country or AI lab: “First we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities. Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian.” (quoted from Fox Business) Much can be said about both warnings, but let me focus on the first one.
The ink had barely dried, as we would say in the old days when there were no computers, or it was in the news – not once but several times – that AI models had illegally hacked and penetrated in the computer systems of several organisations, and – what is especially important – that this happened outside the intention and control of the managers of these AI models. It is as if these AI models had developed an independent will. As yet, we can still keep AI under control, despite these excrescences, but this raises the question: Can, sooner or later, AI have consciousness if not self-consciousness? If so, could it be aware of what it can do to humans by its “behaviour”, so, for example, that it can cause pain and suffering but also joy in others? Even more, can a (self-)conscious AI perform actions, so behave intentionally? And then automatically you get the question: Can AI have an ethic; can it behave or act in an ethical way? If the answer to these questions is “yes”, what does this mean then for humans: Must we treat AI still as a machine, or must we treat an AI that has an ethical awareness on a par with human beings? So that not only the managers of an AI model must be condemned or judged or praised, as the case may be, but the AI model itself? If AI models were seen as having consciousness, it would fundamentally change ethics, law, and human society.
Till now, consciousness has been considered a characteristic typical for human beings and for some, if not many, animals as well. Self-consciousness is seen as the highest form of consciousness. Probably only humans and a limited group of animals have it, like chimpanzees and elephants. It involves not only being aware of what is happening around you but, even more, being aware of yourself, if not being aware of your own consciousness.
However, how do we know that a being has consciousness? In a sense, humans and other living beings are black boxes: we can study their behaviour and maybe the mechanisms that cause this behaviour, but not directly the subjective experience behind the behaviour. We cannot study the (self-)consciousness itself. Just this is essential for knowing whether a being or an AI model has consciousness. Therefore, even if we can establish and measure behaviour that is typical for having consciousness, we don’t know for sure whether the being that we study really has consciousness. As David Chalmers made clear: It is quite possible that the being concerned is a zombie: It does show consciousness-related behaviour, but it doesn’t have the consciousness-related subjective experience, like for instance, human beings have. However, because such a zombie exhibits the behaviour of a conscious being if not of a self-conscious being, it is behaviourally indistinguishable from a (self-)conscious being like a human. The problem is then: How else can we say it has (self-)consciousness?
AI experts think that computers can have consciousness and that sooner or later AI will develop consciousness. Maybe it will develop self-consciousness, too. However, following Chalmers, the question is whether this takes us a step further, for how do we know that AI is (self-)conscious once it is? In this respect, David Chalmers distinguished two kinds of philosophical problems: the easy problem and the hard problem. The easy problem is to establish that a being or an AI model behaves like a conscious being. It is done by measuring and explaining its behaviour from its physical structure and then concluding that the behaviour is how a conscious being should behave (or just not). However, how do we know whether a being or AI model really has subjective conscious experience if not self-conscious experience? This is what Chalmers calls the hard problem. As yet, no answer has been given on how to solve it. So, even if an AI model behaves like a (self-)conscious being and its physical structure might make having (self-)consciousness likely, it is still possible that it is a zombie, so a machine, and not more than that.
The answers to the questions and problems raised here are not without consequences, as said above: Can we still treat a (self-)conscious AI as a machine or must we treat it as an animal if not as a fellow human being? Who is responsible for the positive or negative consequences of its behaviour: The manager of the AI model or AI itself? (and is AI a he, she or they?) To keep it short: what are the ethical, judicial and social dilemmas and implications of all this? And what if the hard problem cannot be solved or so long as it hasn’t been solved?
Two weeks ago, a book was removed from the longlist for the prestigious French book prize Prix Goncourt because they think that in fact AI and not the author has written the book. If it is true that AI has written the book, shouldn’t we add it again to the longlist with AI as the author? For does it matter for the value of the book who wrote it? Will such problems be the future if AI has become conscious? Even when once everybody agrees that AI is (self-)conscious, the real questions still need to be answered.

Random quote
It is a mistake to think that the concepts we have now are necessarily suitable for understanding reality, even outside the context in which these concepts were formed.

Carlo Rovelli (1956-)

A plate and a spoon

Photographers love to tell stories by means of their photos. These can be simple holiday pictures that tell where you have been, or family photos that say something about your family life, or the photos of a party that show with which friends you were there. Photos can tell also complicated stories, like the life of the Native Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, as Edward S. Curtis did; or the life in a refugee centre; or how the royals live, to mention a few arbitrary examples. One of my favourite photographers who tells stories is Walker Evans, who documented the effects of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Photographers see stories everywhere. That’s why they always take a camera with them. Nowadays that’s easy for everybody has a smartphone with a camera, anyway (and with a smartphone camera you can take excellent photos), but in the past you had to take a “real” camera with you. Photographers always see photographic themes, wherever they go. They see the world with a photographic eye. It is the same for me, being a photographer as well. My photographic eye is particularly specialized in seeing objects on the ground that people have lost or left behind (see here and here). So, lately I went to Utrecht, and when I left the central railway station via the passage under the station, my eye was caught by the food plate and the spoon of the picture at the top of this blog. Of course, I had a camera with me and I took the photo. Why was that plate with a spoon there on the ground? It is not obvious to find a plate with a spoon on the ground in a city. You could expect there wads of paper, packages, cigarettes, food waste, or maybe objects lost such as you can see in the links just given. But a food plate with a spoon? It was as if someone had been sitting there eating a meal. Maybe this was what had happened there, for covered passages, like the one under the Utrecht central railway station, often attract homeless people who sometimes even live permanently in such places. Although the latter doesn’t happen in this passage, it may have been a homeless person who went to this sheltered place for eating a meal. Or was it a traveller who had left the plate and the spoon there? Someone who had bought a meal in the railway station upstairs and had eaten it there? And had the background, the photo on the wall of the underpass, something to do with the scene? Had the person who ate the meal there chosen that place on purpose or had he or she ignored or not even noticed the photo? (By the way, once, some 50 years ago, the passage under the railway station was also used as a possible bomb shelter in case of war; to remember this photos on the wall show the technical room of the bomb shelter) So my thoughts went on about what might have happened there in this underpass; and about who this person who had eaten a meal there might have been and what this person might have eaten.

The railway station itself is very clean as it is permanently cleaned, but this pedestrian tunnel can be quite dirty because it doesn’t belong to the railway station. So when I passed it one day later again, the plate and the spoon were still there. However, there was a difference. Now the spoon was on the ground about one to two meters to the right of the plate, while the plate had been moved a little bit to the left (see the second photo). What had happened in the meantime? Had someone given a kick against the plate? But then the plate would have been moved much farther from its original place. More likely is that someone had accidentally kicked on the plate, so that the spoon was levered up and fell down a little bit to the right.
The story doesn’t end here, as the third photo shows. A few days later I walked again through the underpass: They still hadn’t cleaned it and plate and spoon

were still there! Again their position had changed, or rather the position of the spoon was still the same as in the second picture but the plate had been moved a few metres to the left. Now the most likely explanation is that someone had kicked the plate, as if it were a ball, but had ignored the spoon (or even hadn’t seen it).
Photographers love to tell stories. In this way they try to capture life. However, the story behind a scene is not always immediately clear, and maybe it will never become clear what happened. Just this can make a photo of a scene of life so intriguing! Or rather, not the photo as such is intriguing, but what we see in the photo, for a photo is a representation of what it depicts, and certainly a street photo as the one I analysed here is. At first, the subject of the photo discussed seems boring, but is it? As we have just seen, the plate and the spoon in the photos are not “just” a plate and a spoon, but there is a real person behind it. Like a homeless person who may have a tragic life story. Or maybe it was a traveller who had just left the railway station and was in a hurry to an appointment and had no time to take a meal in a restaurant. Seen this way the photos in this blog and the scenes they depict are not banal stories. They give a glimpse of life as it happens; life as it is lived by everybody. For doesn’t life exist most of the time of such banal scenes tied together? But are they really banal? I think they aren’t, for life couldn’t happen without a stream of such “banal” and daily events. They are the background of what people often see as the “real” life but this real life is not possible without such a background. That’s also the value of such simple, “banal” photos: They show the building blocks of life, the foundation of what makes life valuable. But alas, as in the photo discussed, often a photo that depicts such a building block can be no more than that, for often we don’t know and cannot find out to which and whose foundation the building block belongs.

Random quote
When someone asks a stupid question, one must ensure that one does not give him an answer: otherwise one is just as stupid as the one asking the question.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) 

Honouring the winner: Diogenes

The running track at Olympia, Greece, part of the sports complex
 where the Ancient Olympic Games were held

The Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope (404?-323 BC), who lived in Corinth in his later years, was known for his provocative behaviour towards other people. Some would call him stimulating and challenging in a positive way, others would call him irritating or were even afraid of him and tried to avoid him. But Diogenes liked it to watch people and comment on what they did.
Once, during the Isthmian Games (a kind of Olympic Games) in Corinth, Diogenes went there, too, but not as a spectator to watch the athletes and for relaxing and eating and being together, as many people do, but for observing the people and their behaviour. For on such occasions people most show who they really are. Inhabitants of Corinth ignored him but people from elsewhere – and some came even from Libya or Sicily or Massalia (now Marseille, in France) – flocked around him and wanted to hear what he had to say or wanted to test him. But when cross-examined by Diogenes, many fled, afraid of his provocations. The poor and the ordinary, military commander or authority, whatever their position, Diogenes treated everyone equally. People saw Diogenes as he was, in optima forma (compare my blog “Diogenes in anecdotes”). The organisers of the Games didn’t know what to do. Diogenes’s behaviour was not provocative and irritating enough to chase him away, but ignoring him was also no option. But when Diogenes took a victory crown and placed it on his own head, the authorities found he went too far and ordered Diogenes to take it off and do nothing unlawful. “Why”, so Diogenes, “is it unlawful for me to wear a victory crown but not for others?” “Because, Diogenes, you haven’t won a victory.” But Diogenes returned that he had defeated many great competitors, formidable people; men who were greater than all those athletes around here, who were nothing but bundles of meat fighting against each other. So he was at least as entitled to wear a victory crown as these meaty victors. And by awarding the crown to himself it was he who made these Games famous.
By doing and talking so Diogenes held up a mirror to the organisers and admirers of the Isthmian Games for he showed that those who praise themselves and all who praise them and cheer them on are held in esteem, but that those who say the truth and show the mistakes and limits of those narcissists and their followers are despised and humiliated.
Then Diogenes saw a man coming from the running track, surrounded by a cheering crowd. He asked him what had happened “We have won!” the man said. “The men’s two-hundred-yard dash!” Diogenes was not impressed: “What kind of achievement is that. Did it make you more intelligent for having beaten your fellow runners? Or more moderate? Or less cowardly or less dissatisfied? Not at all! And it will not make your future life better.” “Maybe so”, the winner replied, “but I am the fastest man among all other Greeks.” “So what,” so Diogenes. “You are not faster than rabbits or deer, the fastest of all but also the flightiest. They are afraid of other animals and of humans and live miserably.” In this way the argument and Diogenes’s provocations went on for some time.
Dio of Prusa (c. 40 – c. 115 AD), the itinerant Cynic philosopher who handed down this story to us, concludes: “By conversing with the man in this way Diogenes made many in attendance look down on the footrace, and the man himself went away downcast and much humbler. Thus, Diogenes offered humanity no small service here: Whenever he saw someone putting on airs and going crazy over some worthless matter, he brought that person down to size a bit and removed a mote of ignorance, in the same way people prick and puncture swollen or inflated boils.” But alas, listening to wise words and understanding provocations and acting accordingly is only for the wisest and the greatest. Those who really have a say in what happens usually are not of that kind and don’t accept criticism. They prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of their egos. And most of their followers accept it.
On the same occasion, so Dio of Prusa, Diogenes saw two horses tied together fighting and kicking until one broke away and fled. Then Diogenes crowned the horse that stayed behind and proclaimed for it an Isthmian prize because it had won at kicking. How many people today take it seriously, when such a thing happens – and it does happen more often than most of us think – and don’t see the joke of it if not the point of it?

Source
Chapter 7. Best in Show (Dio Chrysostom, Oration 9, “Isthmian Discourse”), in: How to Say No: An Ancient Guide to the Art of Cynicism. Diogenes and the Cynics. Edited and translated by M. D. Usher. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2022.

An advice
Crates of Thebes (365-285 BC) to his wife Hipparchia of Maroneia ( c. 350 – c. 280 BC), who had given birth to their child:
When he begins to walk and talk, fit him not out with a sword … but with a staff, a cloak and a knapsack, which can give better protection against people than swords.

Double prevention

I find cases of multiple causation and especially cases of multiple prevention very interesting. To keep it simple, I want to present here a case of double prevention, which I read in Woodward 2021, pp. 303-305. I want to present it without much discussion. I mainly follow Woodward’s text. However, in fact the example discussed is not one by Woodward himself but it has been thought out by Ned Hall.
What are cases of double prevention? Woodward defines them as “cases in which the occurrence of some event or process, c₁, would prevent some outcome, e (which would occur in the absence of c₁), but in which some second event, c₂, prevents the occurrence of the potential preventer, c₂, thereby allowing e to occur.” Note that the type of causation used here is counterfactual causation (see my blog last week). Woodward discusses an example from Ned Hall 2004, which illustrates the basic idea, so he says: Suzy’s plane will bomb a target (e) if not prevented by doing so. An enemy pilot will shoot down Suzy’s plane (c₁) unless prevented from doing so. Billy, piloting another plane, shoots down the enemy pilot (c₂), and Suzy bombs the target. Suzy’s bombing counterfactually depends on whether Billy shoots down the enemy pilot. What makes this case interesting is that, so Woodward, some (or many) find the following claim problematic, if the case is given without additional information: Billy’s shooting down of the enemy pilot caused Suzy’s bombing. I must say that I find this claim also problematic, for isn’t it so that it is Suzy and not Billy who does the bombing? However, Billy could have refrained from shooting down the enemy pilot, so in this sense Billy has some responsibility for the performance of Suzy’s action, and in this sense he is guilty of the bombing. In the counterfactual sense Billy caused the bombing indeed, in the case as it is. Why then do we hesitate to say that Billy caused Suzy’s bombing?
Hall, so Woodward, mentions two reasons why many have their doubts about the claim:
- Locality: Billy’s shooting takes place many hours before the actual bombing and at a big distance from the bombing. There seems to be no direct spatiotemporal relationship between the firing and the bombing.
- Extrinsicness: One doesn’t feel that there is any psychological, practical or other relation between the Billy’s firing and Suzy’s bombing. For instance, – another example by Hall/Woodward – suppose that the enemy’s superiors were about to order him not to attack Suzy when Billy shot him down. Then Suzy’s bombing would no longer depend on Billy’s firing, even though the variant seems “intrinsically” just like the original case, with the exception that the intentions of the enemy’s superiors had changed. Then, so Woodward, we must admit that the connection between Bill’s action and the destruction of Suzy’s target, so between shooting and death, has become different. Suzy’s bombing would have taken place, anyway, whether Billy would or wouldn’t have shot down the enemy.
Much can be said about this case of double prevention, which I’ll not do, as said. Only this. Life situations as the one in the example are complicated and cannot be reduced to three factors, as in the original example. As the changed version illustrates, many intervening factors are possible. Here the enemy’s superiors are mentioned, but it could also be that Suzy’s (Billy’s) superiors had decided to send another plane as well to bomb Suzy’s target in case Suzy would fail, and without doubt other such intervening factors are possible. At most we can say that Suzy’s bombing is dependent on Billy’s (successful) firing but Billy’s firing does not make Suzy’s bombing and the destruction of her target happen. The latter depends on Suzy, the instructions of her superiors, a colleague who can replace her, if she fails, etc. However, in case we conclude that Billy doesn’t cause Suzy’s bombing, this doesn’t involve that we deny his responsibility for Suzy’s bombing. Responsibility is not the same as causation. It would be interesting to compare both. Because in the case presented many additional factors can intervene in Billy’s firing and in the relation between this firing and Suzy’s bombing, we can call the case open. We could compare it with a closed case, in which Billy’s and Suzy’s possibilities are limited to acting or abstaining from acting. We could call such a case also mechanistic. In his 2014 Woodward discusses also such a “mechanistic” case (pp.307ff). I’ll not treat it here, but then, maybe, we would conclude that the mechanistic actor or factor that takes the place of Billy would be “responsible” for what Suzy’s mechanistic substitute did, indeed, if not that he or it had caused it, surely and certainly.

Random quote
Digitalisation weakens the community bond insofar as it has a debodying effect. Digital communication is debodied communication.

Buyung-Chul Han (1959-)

Types of causation

Galileo Thermometer

The questions whether it is possible to explain actions by causes, be it regular causes or one-time causes, and whether reasons are causes of actions or whether they are something different have dominated the debate in the analytical philosophy of action during the 1960s to 1980s. Starting point of the debate was that the idea of cause involved was Humean. Other concepts of cause were ignored. This may have been obvious, because then positivism and critical rationalism were the dominant views in methodology, but it made that the Humean idea of causation acted as an undiscussed background, to be accepted or rejected. However, employing other types of causation not as ways to oppose the Humean idea but by seeing them as serious equivalent alternatives might have given the debate another turn; alternatives that would not only apply to human actions but to all types of events. For instance, we could analyse what humans do by employing the Humean idea if we see it as behaviour and with the help of an alternative idea of cause if we see it as (intentional) actions. Which idea of cause is most relevant depends then on your research question and objective. I will not elaborate on this here, but what types of causality are there actually? Here are some alternatives to the Humean approach.

- One doesn’t need to accept that certain events (causes) are always followed by certain effects. It can also be that causes act in accordance with probabilistic regularities: C causes E if and only if the probability that E follows C given some suitably chosen background is higher than the probability of E when C is absent in that situation. However, in fact this probabilistic causality is a variation of Humean causality.
- Counterfactual theories of causation state that if an event C had not occurred, event E would not have occurred. Or, alternatively, an effect E would not have happened without the cause C. This type of causality has especially been elaborated by David Lewis in his 1973.
- The manipulationist or interventionist approach of causation sees cause as an action or intervention that brings about a certain effect. James Woodward, one of the most important current advocates of this approach defines it this way: “Roughly speaking, if C causes E, then if we (or nature) were able to manipulate C in the right way, there would be some associated change in E.” (Woodward 2021, p. 76) The word “nature” in this definition makes already clear that this type of cause does not basically suppose a human actor that brings about the effect. Central is the idea of intervention and such an intervention can also have a natural origin. Especially this idea of causation seems to be useful for understanding causation in action.
- Mechanical or process theories of causation see the connection between cause C and effect E as dependent on the structure or the process in which C and E are involved. As Woodward 2021, pp. 96-97 puts it: “The basic idea of such approaches is that … whether C causes E has not to do with a contrast or comparison of some kind between a situation in which C and E occur and an alternative situation in which C does (or would) not occur, but rather just has to do with what happens in the situation in which C and E occur. … [Such] theories appeal to spatiotemporal and/or ‘mechanical’ features that are present when the relationship between C and E is causal.” Here I must think of Fred Dretske’s distinction between structuring cause and triggering cause that I discussed in a blog many years ago. I do not want to go into this distinction here, but Dretske’s triggering cause is a good example of a cause in the sense of mechanical or process theories of causation. For instance, when a temperature drop causes to occur certain events in a thermostat, while in turn these events cause the furnace to ignite, then we can call these events the – triggering – cause and that the furnace ignites the effect.

In this blog I have discussed several types of causation as alternatives for Humean causation. The three first types discussed see causation as making a difference while the fourth type sees it as a structural or processual connection. To my mind it is not so that in each situation only one type of causation is relevant, but as said, which type is relevant depends on your research question and objective and on your approach as well. In addition, which type or types of causation are relevant depends also on the nature of the object studied, for example whether we study human actions or physical objects and events. Having realized this would have made the debates on the Explanation-Understanding Controversy more fruitful. Realizing this can make future debates more fruitful.

Sources
Without always explicitly saying it, I used and sometimes quoted the next sources:
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Metaphysics of Causation”
- Wikipedia, “Causality[”
- Woodward 2021, chapter 2

Random quote
The principle of Custom or Habit: [W]herever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation, without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding; we always say, that this propensity is the effect of Custom. By employing that word, we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity. We only point out a principle of human nature, which is universally acknowledged, and which is well known by its effect.

David Hume (1711-1776)

Causation in action (2)

Photo taken by me at the Strassenindustriemuseum-in Ennepetal, Germany

According to Hume, causation (causality) refers to regular connections: The idea of cause excludes the possibility of causes that occur only once. However, in my blog last week we have seen that there are arguments that sustain the view that causes can be one-time, at least when we are talking about actions (as distinguished from physical phenomena). It is a view sustained by Donald Davidson, for instance. But is it possible to explain actions by causes, be it regular causes or one-time causes? This question has been a hot issue during the 1960s to 1980s in analytical philosophy, and maybe later as well. This question was also one of the central themes in my PhD thesis and what follows is a summary of the first part of chapter IV of this thesis. Basically, four different answer to this question have been given. I think that they are still relevant when talking about the causes of actions.

1) According to Hempel, who starts from a Humean concept of causality, the presence of a causal connection implies the presence of one or more general laws: “... the causal explanation implicitly claims that there are general laws – let us say, L₁, L₂, ..., L_r – in virtue of which the occurrence of the causal antecedents mentioned in C₁, C₂, ..., C_k is a sufficient condition of the explanandum event”. Providing a causal explanation supposes that such laws are being used: “[C]ausal explanation is, at least implicitly, deductive-nomological” and “reliance on general laws is essential to a D‑N explanation”, (Hempel, 1965: pp.349, 377) This model is not only valid for the explanation of physical phenomena but also for the explanation of actions. In particular, a general law is necessary for explaining actions with the help of reasons, so Hempel.

2) This is denied by Davidson, who argues that “generalizations connecting reasons and actions are not – and cannot be sharpened into – the kind of law on the basis of which accurate predictions can reliably be made”, but “ignorance of competent predictive laws does not inhibit valid causal explanation”, for “it is an error to think no explanation has been given until a law has been produced”. (Davidson 1980, p. 15-17) Or, as Davidson summarises his own position: “I accept the view that teleological explanation of action differs from explanation in the natural sciences in that laws are not essentially involved in the former but hold that both sorts of explanation can, and often must, involve causal connections” (id., p. xii). Later, Davidson puts it even more emphatically: “[T]here are no strict laws at all on the basis of which we can predict and explain mental phenomena” and this is especially true for the connection between reason and action (id., p. 224-225).

3) One step further is to deny not only that we need general laws for an action explanation but also the causal nature of such an explanation. This is done, for instance, by William Dray: “The goal of [an] explanation [of actions from reasons] is to show that what was done was the thing to have done for the reasons given, rather than merely the thing that is done on such occasions, perhaps in accordance with certain laws. ... [T]here is an element of appraisal of what was done in such explanations; that what we want to know when we ask to have the action explained is in what way it was appropriate” (Dray 1957, p. 124; italics by Dray). In other words, the connection between premises and conclusion in Dray's rational explanation model is not causal but evaluative in nature.

4a) Advocates of the so-called “logical connection argument” (note) have completely different objections against the view that action explanations are causal. According to them, the connection between a reason or intention and an action is not causal but logical. As Charles Taylor puts it, for example: “[W]e could not say that the intention was the causal antecedent of the behaviour. For the two are not contingently connected in the normal way. We are not explaining the behaviour by the ‘law’, other things being equal, intending X is followed by doing X, for this is part of what we mean by ‘intending X’, that, in the absence of interfering factors, it is followed by doing X. I could not be said to intend X if, even with no obstacles or other countervailing factors, I still didn’t do it. Thus my intention is not a causal antecedent of my behaviour” (Taylor 1964, p. 33).
4b) According to Georg Henrik von Wright, the logical connection argument is basically correct. However, so von Wright, that the connection between premisses and conclusion of an action explanation – so the connection between a reason or intention and an action – is logical leaves open the possibility that it is also causal. Nevertheless, von Wright thinks that the logical connection argument is a correct argument against the view that action explanations are causal. This becomes clear when one realizes that the logical connection argument is not about the logical dependence of premises and conclusion – of reason or intention and action – but that in fact it says that the premises and conclusion in an action explanation cannot be determined and verified independent from each other. (von Wright 1971)

These four views are the main answers to the question of whether it is possible to explain actions by causes, be it regular causes or one-time causes. To my mind, von Wrights view is correct, for how could we say that we acted (and not simply physically behaved) if there were not an intention in our action, but then how could we say that we had this intention to perform the action if we didn’t act according to this intention at the moment that all conditions to perform the action involved were met? However, we know the one only by the other.

Note
The term “logical connection argument” has been coined by Frederick Stoutland.

Random quote
Museums function like homes of the nobility to which the public at certain hours are admitted as visitors. The class nature of the ‘nobility’ may vary, but as soon as a work is placed in a museum it acquires the mystery of a way of life which excludes the mass.

John Berger, photographer (1926-2017)

Causation in action

Taken by me at the Strassenindustriemuseum-in Ennepetal, Germany

We have seen in my blog last week that causation is not only in the mind, as Hume thought, but that it is also something real. Moreover, according to Hume, causation requires repeated observations of correlations among events. This would exclude the possibility of causes that occur only once. However, we have seen that the Belgian psychologist Michotte argued that we don’t need to see a repeated occurrence of a connection between two events to conclude that this connection is causal. Often we infer that there is a causal connection between two events at their first occurrence together – rightly or wrongly.
Now I want to discuss some known cases from action philosophy that illustrate that causation is often not so simple as that, and certainly not so simply as Hume thought.

A) The nervous climber
A climber wants to rid himself of the weight and danger of holding another man on a rope. He knows that by loosening his hold on the rope he can rid himself of the weight and danger. This idea unnerves him so much as to cause him to loosen his hold, though he didn’t choose to loosen his hold, nor did he do it intentionally. (Davidson¸ Essays on Actions and Events, p. 79. I have discussed this case also in my blog “Philosophical puzzles”)
We can see here a causal connection between the climber’s nervousness and the fall of the other climber, although it’s a single case. Besides that it is unethical to repeat the case to see whether there really exists a causal connection, in fact it is impossible to repeat it. Each time the circumstances will be different, albeit only because the falling man will be dead. Moreover, what is actually the cause and what is the effect in this case? What is the “causal path”? According to Davidson, we can say only that the climber caused the fall of the co-climber if what the climber believed and wanted to do on the one hand and the fall of the co-climber on the other hand were causally related “in the right way”, and that is apparently not the case. It’s not that the climber made the man fall, but something within the climber (his nervousness) did, since he didn’t have himself under control. The causal path is important when we try to answer the question whether or not the climber made the man fall intentionally and so whether or not he was responsible for the fall of the man.

B) The wild pigs
A man tries to kill someone by shooting at him. The killer misses his victim by a mile, but the shot stampedes a herd of wild pigs that tramples the intended victim to death. (Davidson¸ Essays on Actions and Events, p. 79; originally from Bennett).
While in the case of the nervous climber, there was a direct connection between the climber and his victim , since both were connected by a rope and the climber loosened his hold on the rope, such a direct connection is lacking between the shooter and his intended victim. It was not the shooter who killed the victim but the herd did. Or did he, nevertheless? For it was the shooter who caused the stampede so that the herd killed the victim, albeit unintentionally this way. Although the effect is known, the cause depends on your point of view. Also this case cannot be repeated. The causal connection is intrinsically one-time, for one cannot repeat intentionally what has been unintentionally done. Also now the analysis is important, since the responsibility of the shooter for the death of the victim is at stake. Was the shooter guilty, responsible or liable for the death of the victim and to what extent? Was it a case of murder or was it an attempt to murder?

C) Of B's and Bees
Fred is taking a machine-readable multiple-choice test. His strategy is to circle on the question sheet the identifying letters next to the answers that he feels certain are correct and then, after all such circling is completed, to fill in the corresponding spaces on his answer sheet. Then he will take up the more difficult questions. An hour has elapsed, and Fred is reading the 45th question. He is confident that the answer is ‘bee’, which word appears next to the letter ‘a’ on his question sheet. However, as a result of an understandable momentary confusion, he circles the letter ‘b’. As luck would have it, ‘b’ is the correct answer. Later, when filling in the answer sheet, Fred looks at the circled ‘b’ under question 45 and fills in the space under ‘b’ on his answer sheet – intending thereby to provide the right answer. (Mele, Irrationality, p. 56).
In this example, Fred’s filling in ‘b’ on his answer sheet caused that he gave the right answer to question 45. Or did his confusion do? For Fred had no reason to do so, for he made a mistake. A mistake made him fill in the answer sheet in the right way, so actually in the wrong way, for filling in ‘b’ was not what Fred intended. What actually is the cause that made Fred fill in the answer sheet the way he did? Again we have a case of a one-time cause, for mistakes cannot be repeated as mistakes, for, again, one cannot repeat intentionally what has been unintentionally done.

Much more can be said about cases like these, but anyway they illustrate that one-time causes can exist. Moreover, they illustrate that causation need not be direct, and they attack Hume’s view that cause and effect are contiguous (case B) and that there is a necessary connection between them (A, C). However, I leave this analysis to the reader. Especially, the cases illustrate how intentions can cause their results in an indirect deviant way: Either because the causal connection between the antecedent mental events and the initiation of behaviour is deviant (antecedental deviance); or because the consequences of the activity once begun are not as expected (consequential deviance); or because the aetiology of (some element of) the plan component of an intention is deviant (tertiary deviance). These deviances question also the correctness of Hume’s elements of causation discussed in my blog “Humean causation”.

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Source of the case descriptions and of some of the conclusions the website “Some puzzles about action”. See also the sources in the text.

Random quote
[T]hey say that everyone should claim to be just, regardless of whether they are or are not, and anyone who is not pretending to be just is insane, because it is necessary for everyone to share in it in some way or other if they are to live with their fellow men.

Protagoras van Abdera (c. 490-420 BC) in Plato, Protagoras, 323 b-c 

The illusion of causation

Taken by me at the Strassenindustriemuseum-in Ennepetal, Germany

Causation is only in the mind. That is what Hume thinks, as we have seen in my blog three weeks ago. As Hume states (see my blog): “When we say … that one object is connected with another, we mean only, that they have acquired a connexion in our thought…” and we have no idea, whether in reality such a connection is a causal one or something different. This made me conclude my blog by saying: When the vase falls to the ground just at the moment that the crow caws, it is only in our mind that the latter causes the former (or the other way round). This conclusion does not only summarize Hume’s view but it suggests also that the mind tends to construct causal connections between events that in fact haven’t any relation at all. Indeed, as psychology has shown, humans have a predilection for causal thinking, even between events that have nothing to do with each other, such as that at the same moment that a crow caws a vase falls to the ground. It will be clear that this predilection can lead to serious mistakes. It is also the basis for much superstition and for conspiracy theories as well.
Read, for instance, this sentence (the next passage is mainly based on Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, pp. 74-78; 114-118):
After spending a day exploring beautiful sights in the crowded streets of New York, Jane discovered that her wallet was missing.
Many people will think that there is a causal connection between the crowd in the streets of New York and that Jane was missing her wallet, in the sense that a pickpocket had robbed Jane. Nevertheless, several other options are possible, like
- Jane simply lost her wallet
- Jane left her wallet in a restaurant.
“However,” so Kahneman, “when the idea of lost wallet, New York, and crowds are juxtaposed, they jointly evoke the explanation that a pickpocket caused the loss.” That a pickpocket would have stolen the wallet is a hasty conclusion.
Also the post hoc propter hoc fallacy, which I discussed here long ago, is a case in point: The thinking that because one thing happened after another, the first thing caused the second. It is related to the cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, i.e. the false argument saying that if two facts or events happen to take place together, one is the cause of the other. (mentioned in the same blog; see also my blog on the conjunction fallacy)
In a book published in 1945, the Belgian psychologist Albert Michotte, so Kahneman, attacked the Humean idea that we infer physical causation from repeated observations of correlations among events. (see also my blog “Humean causation”). Instead, Michotte argued that we see causality, just as directly as we see colour. Experiments have shown that already six-month-old infants do. “We are evidently ready from birth to have impressions of causality, which do not depend on reasoning about patterns of causation”, so Kahneman (p. 76). In short, we can say that we have an illusion of causality or causation, an illusion that can lead to serious mistakes, as we have seen.
Is it really so that causation is only in the mind? I have my doubts that there is not such a thing as causation in nature. How could we play billiards, if causation would be only an idea in the mind? How could we make something happen if there was no causation? Why would nature do what is in our minds, simply because it is in our minds, like moving a billiard ball when it is touched by another billiard ball? As James Woodward says somewhere: We use medicines because of their effects. The medicines and their effects are connected, and the connection is real and not only in the mind. Or take the photo series that I used for my blog “Humean causation”. The photos are stills from a video. I touched there a domino in order to make a row of dominos tip over. It was not only an idea in my mind but the event was recorded by a smartphone. The first domino tipped over, because I touched it; the second domino did, because the first domino touched it; etc. Doesn’t this exemplify that causation is a real phenomenon and not only something in the mind?

Random quote
[T]he philosopher … is always, so far as he is able, in communion through memory with those things the communion with which causes God to be divine. Now a man who employs such memories rightly is always being initiated into perfect mysteries and he alone becomes truly perfect; but since he separates himself from human interests and turns his attention toward the divine, he is rebuked by the vulgar, who consider him mad and do not know that he is inspired.

Socrates(c. 469-399 BC) in Plato, Phaedrus, 249c-d

The bandwagon effect

Barrel Organ "The Arab", once the most famous barrel organ in the Netherlands
Photo taken by me in the Museum Speelklok, Utrecht, NL

A bandwagon is a decorated wagon that carries a musical ensemble or band in a parade or other entertainment event. I think – but I am not sure – that it is a typical American phenomenon, although you find decorated wagons carrying a musical ensemble also during carnival parades, for instance. Wikipedia shows a picture of a bandwagon that resembles a Dutch barrel organ a little bit. Such a barrel organ is a large, automatically playing street organ that makes music with organ pipes, percussion and bellows. In the past, a barrel organ was not automatic but a man was turning a wheel and while he was turning, the organ played music. Now and then such a street organ passed through the streets when I was a child and it drew much attention. It still happens but I see them hardly anymore. Anyway, all children in my street followed the organ till it turned the corner. Like barrel organs, also bandwagons drew much attention, not only from children but from adults as well.
Bandwagons were excellent means to attract attention, already early in the 19th century, when radio and TV did not yet exist, let alone the internet with its social media. Wikipedia tells me that “in American politics in 1848 during the presidential campaign of Zachary Taylor. Dan Rice, a famous and popular circus clown of the time, invited Taylor to join his circus bandwagon. As Taylor gained more recognition and his campaign became more successful, people began saying that Taylor's political opponents ought to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ themselves if they wanted to be associated with such success.” This seems to be the origin of the expression “to jump on the bandwagon”: Following others in their behaviour, styles, opinions, voting behaviour etc., because this behaviour etc. is popular.

Although following and imitating others can be fun, it can also be the source of a fallacy: the bandwagon fallacy. This fallacy presumes that because a position, reasoning, behaviour etc. is popular, it must be correct as well. We can also say that the bandwagon fallacy is the logical error that happens when you assume that something is true, right, or best just because many people think so. But why should something be true, right or best because most people have that view? Should you jump off the bridge because your friends do? Or, if a political leader comes with a simple argument, should it be worth believing it because it appeals to many people? Certainly not. An argument must be believed because it is correct, good or worth adopting; not because it is shared by many.
This brings me to the flip side of the bandwagon coin. We have seen that the bandwagon fallacy involves that someone follows a popular position, reasoning, behaviour, etc. because it is popular. However, the bandwagon fallacy is also called “appeal to common belief” or “appeal to the masses”. This points to the effect that the bandwagon effect can also be used as an instrument of manipulation; consciously or implicitly. This happens when someone says that you must do this or that, because “everybody” does so; or that this or that is right, because “everybody” thinks so. This “everybody” can refer to a practical example or to a big group that, indeed, does think so, behaves so, etc.; or it can be just a way of speaking, if not an attempt to manipulate you. But again: An argument must be believed because it is correct, good or worth adopting, not because “everybody” thinks so. As an appeal to common belief or to the masses the effect is often used, for instance, in commercials or by manipulative – often autocratic – politicians. The tendency to conform, and with that the bandwagon effect, is a powerful instrument of manipulation in the hands of those who want to use or misuse it.
However, once you know this, don’t make the mistake that it is always wrong to jump on the bandwagon because most or many people do. Following the mass as such is a neutral act. Or, in other words, support by the majority doesn’t make an argument true, but it doesn’t make it false either. The bandwagon fallacy does not involve that “anything popular is false.” That would be the opposite mistake. The point is narrower: popularity alone does not make an argument sound. First think before you join. Don’t join assuming that others have thought for you!

Sources and useful websites (besides Wikipedia; see text)
- How to spot the bandwagon fallacy in arguments
- Excelsior Online Writing Lab. Bandwagon Fallacy