Ursula von der Leyen and the Toxin Puzzle

The Toxin Paradox, which I discussed in my blog last week, seems to be a silly case without any reality. Where in the world would you find such an eccentric billionaire like Tramp who would give away a million dollars without getting anything back for it? And how about an intention that you don’t need to intend? Who believes that such a thing exists or rather can exist? It’s simply a contradiction. The only real thing seems to be the toxin, but who would drink it voluntarily? Nevertheless the Toxin puzzle is not as imaginary as it looks on the face of it. Even more, the case happens quite often. For example, a sponsor promises to pay your training for the marathon. You know that a marathon will not be easy for you, but you also know that later there can be many reasons to come back on your decision to run the race, and the contract allows this. You also know that the sponsor will not ask his money back. So you sign the contract.

A field of society where Toxin puzzle cases happen very often is politics. An internet website that discusses the Toxin Puzzle explains it this way:

“The most familiar example of the Kavka’s Toxin puzzle in the real world is the Political Manifesto. Before an election, a political party will release a written document outlining their policies and plans should they win office. Many of these promises may be difficult or impossible to implement in practice. Having won, the party is not obligated to follow the manifesto even if they would have lost without it. ... In this example, the Electorate is the equivalent of the Billionaire, The Manifesto Promise the equivalent of the intention to drink the toxin and implementing the policies is equivalent to drinking the toxin.” (see source below, p.31).

When I read this, I had immediately to think of the recent elections for the European Parliament (see also my blogs dated 15 and 17 July 2019). Of course, each participating party had presented its political program with promises and plans, and some of these promises and plans may be difficult or impossible to implement. But that’s not what I am thinking of. What I have in mind here is the idea of “Spitzenkandidaten” or “lead candidates”. In order to make it attractive for the electorate to vote, parties presented their lead candidates and in agreement with the result of the elections one of these candidates would become the president of the new European Commission (the executive board of the EU that runs the daily affairs). There were three such candidates: a christian-democrat, a social democrat and a liberal. It appeared to be an attractive idea, indeed, and many people went to vote. The election result was that the lead candidate of the christian-democrats, the German Manfred Weber, got the most votes, so he should become the president of the new EU Commission. Or otherwise it should have been the social-democrat lead candidate, the Dutchman Frans Timmermans, who was a good second. And as a third possibility it would also have been possible to choose the Danish liberal Magrethe Vestager. But what happened? The French president Emmanuel Macron had taken it in his head that all these candidates were unacceptable to him, and so he proposed his favourite, the German christian-democrat Ursula von der Leyen, who was unknown to most voters. Now it would have been normal that the parliament would have said: “We represent the people of Europe and the ultimate power needs to be in the parliament. So, we the parliament elect Manfred Weber (or one of the other two Spitzenkandidaten) as president.” But the parliament was afraid to display its power against such a mighty man as the French president Macron, and it gave in. In this way it happened that Mrs. Von der Leyen became the president of the new European Commission, since the European parliament refused to keep its promise and to drink the toxin.

Source

Wikipedians (ed.), Paradoxes. Situations which defies intuition. On website https://books.google.nl/books?id=DoG8QjF5q58C&pg=PA29&lpg=PA29&dq=toxin+puzzle&source=bl&ots=5gYBSoF8B1&sig=ACfU3U1DPwz7nOBJsjjmFgDKQe14qlHYsw&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjL5sHkk6zlAhVRLFAKHc45DB84HhDoATAGegQIBhAB#v=onepage&q=toxin%20puzzle&f=false .

The Toxin Puzzle

Philosophers are good in inventing weird cases. Especially action philosophers are. Philosophers are serious people, so, of course, they don’t invent these cases just for the fun of it, although it can be a pleasure to invent them. No, they do it because they think that they have an important problem to solve or at least to raise. This problem is then discussed by other philosophers, and so they fill the pages of their journals and their books. Since I am also a philosopher – even more an action philosopher by origin – I like to read such cases and the discussions they bring with them, and to make my contributions to the debate, sometimes.

Recently I came across such a philosophical case, and I thought that it would be interesting to talk about it in my weekly blog. Here it is:

An eccentric billionaire, let’s call him Tramp, has offered you the following deal. He gives you a vial of toxin. If you drink it, it will make you painfully ill for a day, but will not threaten your life or have any lasting effects. Tramp will pay you one million dollars tomorrow morning if, at midnight tonight, you intend to drink the toxin tomorrow afternoon. He emphasizes that you need not drink the toxin to receive the money; in fact, the money will already be in your bank account hours before the time for drinking it arrives. If you succeed you are perfectly free to change your mind after receiving the money and not drink the toxin. (The presence or absence of the intention is to be determined by the latest ‘mind-reading’ brain scanner). You accept the offer. (Adapted from the original case by Gregory S. Kavka, see note)

So far so good, and nothing seems so easy as earning the money and become a millionaire. Is it? In the remaining part of his article Kavka discusses why it is not, for actually it is impossible to intend to drink the toxin. I’ll pass over the details, but the essence is this. A reasonable person can seriously and honestly develop an intention to perform a certain action but s/he cannot develop such an intention if beforehand s/he knows already s/he’ll not perform the action because of its nasty consequences. For it is part and parcel of an intention that you seriously have made up your mind to do what you intended, but before you have developed your intention you had already decided not to perform the action the intention involves. You cannot intend not to do what you intend.

The case just described has become known as the Toxin Puzzle. It’s a puzzle, because you are asked to form a simple intention to perform an action, which is a thing you every day do many times. Nevertheless now you are unable to form the intention. Kavka explains it this way. Intentions are not independent decisions but are related to an action. But the reasons for an action are a different thing, and just these reasons for the action are absent in the intention. Or to put it in a different way: The reason to intend are different from the reason to act in the toxin case. Therefore, so Kavka, “when we have good reasons to intend but not to act, conflicting standards of evaluation come into play and something has to give way: either rational action, rational intention, or aspects of the agent's own rationality (e.g., his correct belief that drinking the toxin is not necessary for winning the million).” (see note) We cannot have double rational standards.

The upshot is: You cannot intend to do what you know beforehand that you’ll not do. Or otherwise, you can only intend to do what you seriously and honestly want to do. If you have to abandon an intended action, this can only happen for reasons that are advanced after the intention has been formed and not if such good (and effective) reasons are already put forward beforehand. You cannot honestly say “I’ll do it”, while you know that you’ll not do it, unless you are irrational. That’s what this case is about.

Note

Gregory S. Kavka, “The Toxin Puzzle”, on https://www.law.upenn.edu/live/files/1298-kavka-g-the-toxin-puzzle-1983

The art people like

Last weekend I participated in the local art route. During an art route, all participating artists in a town keep open house. This involves that everyone interested in art can visit the studios or workshops of the participating artists, like painters, sculptors, etchers, jewellery makers, or what else there are, such as photographers as well. Meet the artist at home and see how she or he works is the idea behind such a weekend. I, as a photographer, participate already many years in the art route in my town, and I love it, for it’s always a pleasure to talk with other people about my work and to explain them the magic of photography. But alas, I don’t have a photo studio. I have only my cameras and my computer with Photoshop, and maybe the computer is even more important than the cameras are, for today there is no photo without a computer. Moreover, I don’t have the space to receive many people at home and to show them my work place (so my computer plus chair) on the first floor of my house. But there has always been a solution to this problem, and this year I was the guest of the local painters’ club, which gathers in the community centre in my town.

But what to present during an art route, when you don’t have a studio where you can show and explain the essentials of your way of working? I can take my laptop with me and tell the visitors how Photoshop works, for today a computer with Photoshop – or another photo editing program – is what the photographer’s darkroom was in the past. The darkroom or, today, the editing program is the place where the photographic idea becomes a real image. But are visitors of the art route really interested in it? I think they are not. So instead I always make a kind of mini-exhibition that presents a kind of overview of my work. I show the best of what I have made since the last art route and I show also some older work, for after a year, art hasn’t become obsolete (most of the time) and there are always people who haven’t seen it yet or don’t remember that they have seen it or who like to see it again. And so I exhibited in my space in the local community centre my “Herd of Elephants” (https://henkbijdeweg.nl/foto/262888529_Olifantenkudde.html#.XZtzrPkaQkI) and my landscape pictures, taken with a pinhole camera or a normal camera. I presented there my Mondrian-like picture of the inner court of a hotel (https://henkbijdeweg.nl/foto/305631891_Galerij.html#.XZt0c_kaQkI). I presented there also my by Rembrandt inspired self-portrait (not on the Internet), and my expression of “Homesickness” (https://henkbijdeweg.nl/foto/224795761_Heimwee.html#.XZt7g_kaQkI), inspired by Magritte. I presented also other art photos inspired by myself. In addition, I did something else. I made a photo series of what some people would rather consider as documentary photography or otherwise as something that is not “real” art. For the occasion of this art weekend I made a series of photos with bikes. Yes, simply bikes. Single bikes as you find them here everywhere apparently lost along the roads. Parked bikes; damaged bikes left behind by the owners; old bikes now used as flower boxes. It was a mini-series of ten photos. Moreover, I added a mini-series of six pictures of refuse. Yes, refuse, as you see it everywhere in the street.

When the art route began, people gradually dropped in. They watched with interest the work of the painters and they talked with them. And they watched my photos in my space in the community centre. Some talked with me and gave their comments. I was a bit nervous, of course, what they would say. I always try not to provoke comments, for people must say spontaneously what they think. Only then they’ll say the truth and say something more than “I like it”.

From other occasions I had expected that the visitors would praise my “Elephants” or my “Double landscape” (https://henkbijdeweg.nl/foto/136983510_Dubbel+landschap.html#.XZt42fkaQkI); or my Rembrandt, my Magritte or my Mondrian. And indeed, these photos belonged to the best of my work, judging by their remarks. Nonetheless, these photos were not what the visitors liked most. What they liked most were the bikes and the refuse. For bikes and refuse is what everybody sees but nobody watches. And that’s what I as a photographer had done: Watch and photograph what everybody sees but doesn’t take notice of. Just this made these bike and refuse pictures striking and made that they drew the attention of the visitors. Art is not only in beauty, but it can also put forward what everybody ignores. That’s where the art comes in. 

Trying

In my blog last week I said that usually we don’t say that an action is an attempt. We just do. But under which conditions is it then that we call an action an attempt? I think that a good starting point for making this clear is Stuart Hampshire’s description of trying, which I came across once when I was preparing an article. We speak of attempting or trying, so Hampshire, when “there is some difficulty and a possibility of failure”: We call an action a try “whenever difficulty or the chance of failure is stressed”. But this is only so, if the agent knows what to do and has decided to act: The agent “should have some idea of how the required result might be achieved and that he should make up his mind now” (Hampshire 1965:107). And I want to add: The agent has not only decided to act, but s/he has started the action as well and maybe already fully performed. Only then there is a try. This addition is perhaps implied by Hampshire but not explicitly said.

But what does it mean that a try involves “some difficulty or a possibility of failure”? As we have seen in my blog last week, an action can fail for two reasons. This implies that there are also two kinds of attempts. First, an agent may choose a certain action and perform it. Moreover, s/he knows that normally s/he is able to perform the action till the end, but s/he is not sure whether the action will result into the effect desired. For example, a runner wants to qualify for the championship. She knows that she can do it, but maybe the strong wind will prevent that she’ll succeed. We call such an action a try, because it’s not sure whether the desired result will be attained, although the agent feels sure that the action itself can be performed.

However, it’s another kind of trying, if the agent doesn’t know whether s/he can fully perform the action as such. Then the try is in performing the action, not in attaining the result. For example, the runner just mentioned knows that her shape is good enough to qualify for the championship. Also the weather is perfect. However, she has got an injury and doesn’t know whether she’ll be able to finish the race. She just tries.

I’ll ignore the possibility that both kinds of tries apply at the same time (the injured runner doesn’t know whether she can qualify, anyhow), but we have seen here two different kinds of tries or attempts. In the first case, the try is in the intended effect of the action; in the second case the try is the action itself. Putting it differently, in the first case the question is whether the action is the right means (the runner might try to qualify one week later, when the weather will be better), while in the second case the question is whether the agent is able to perform the action itself.

How long does an attempt last? When do we no longer talk of a try? In case an action is stopped before it has been completely performed, the answer is clear: The try ends as soon as the action stops. This is also so if the try is of the first kind: If the action has been fully performed but we don’t know yet it’s result, nevertheless the try has ended then. This is the case, for instance, when we have finished the race, but some other runners not yet; or the official results of the race haven’t yet been published. There still can be many reasons then that we haven’t qualified, but our action has ended and the try is over, although we don’t know yet the result. Try and action on the one hand and knowing the result (so succeeding and failing) on the other hand have a different time span. It can even be so that a try has a shorter time span than the action that belongs to it. This is so, for instance, when halfway the race the runner sees that she’ll not qualify. She can stop running then but she doesn’t, for she wants to finish anyway.

Can we try and we don’t know? Sometimes a person succeeds in spite of herself, but unless she herself decided to make an effort to succeed, we cannot say that she tried. She just did.

Source

Hampshire, Stuart, Thought and action. London: Chatto and Windus, 1965.