Random quote
Responsibility in general is going to look a lot more like responsibility for omission. What we are going to blame you for is not that other force that was working in you or on you, but for the fact that you let it do that, that you failed to pick up the reins and take control of your own movements.

Christine Korsgaard (1952-) 

The right age

In the last essay of Book I of his Essays titled “Of Age” Montaigne talks about age and ageing. In this essay he discusses two themes: The right age to die and the right age to do something. As for the first, he tells us about Cato the Younger, who “said … to those who would stay his hand from killing himself, am I now of an age to be reproached that I go out of the world too soon?” And then Montaigne adds: “And yet he was but eight-and-forty years old.” This remark is a bit strange, for when in 1571 Montaigne retired from public life to this castle, he wrote on the wall of his study that he would spend there “what little remains of his life”. However, Montaigne was then only 38 years old, but he did as if he was already an old man. This illustrates that age is a relative idea and that you are as old as you feel. Some are apparently already old at the age of 48, while others are still “young” at the age of 100. I told you once about Robert Marchand, who stayed cycling almost till his death at the age of 109. 105 years old, he still felt fit enough to set up a world record in one-hour track cycling (see here), so at an age that most of us will not reach. Nonetheless, if a person dies “already” at the age of, say, 96 or 87, nobody will call this a premature death, though one would say so nowadays when a person dies at the age of 48, like Cato, or 59, like Montaigne. This raises the question what a “normal” age to die is. I think that such an answer cannot be given. It depends on the time in which you live, the country and the average age of dying in your country and on some other factors.
If there isn’t a normal age to die, is there then something like a “normal” death? I think that most of us will consider a normal death dying in your own bed in your own house, weakened by a high age, weary of life. Is it really normal? No, so Montaigne: Isn’t it “a kind of death of all others the most rare and very seldom seen? We call that only a natural death; as if it were contrary to nature to see a man break his neck with a fall, be drowned in shipwreck, be snatched away with a pleurisy or the plague, and as if our ordinary condition did not expose us to these inconveniences. … [However]; we ought rather, peradventure, to call that natural which is general, common, and universal. To die of old age is a death rare, extraordinary, and singular, and, therefore, so much less natural than the others.” What should I add?
The other theme in “Of Age” is the right age to do something. For instance, what is the legal marriage age? In the Netherlands you must be 18 years old at least. Once your parents had to consent when you were not yet 30 years old; later this age was 21, and now you don’t need your parents’ consent any longer. However, the marriageable age varies according to country, culture and time. Even child marriages happen or happened. Other examples of age limits are the compulsory school age, the age to get a driver’s license, the age that employers must pay an adult wage, or, on the opposite side of life, the retirement age.
Many age limits separate young and adult, and they illustrate that adulthood is a relative affair. Montaigne himself thinks that “our souls are adult at twenty as much as they are ever like to be, and as capable then as ever.” Even more, Montaigne thinks that “a soul that has not by that time given evident earnest of its force and virtue will never after come to proof. The natural qualities and virtues produce what they have of vigorous and fine, within that term or never.” And if it is not when you are 20 years old, “of all the great human actions I ever heard or read of, of what sort soever, I have observed, both in former ages and our own, more were performed before the age of thirty than after”. It’s what many people often thought and maybe still think. True, many scientists did their most important discoveries before the age of 30 (Einstein is a case in point), but generally it is not so, also not for scientists. Many qualities need time to ripen, and many people often become good just at a later age, when the right combination of creativity, knowledge, reflection, social experience and the like has developed.
Anyway, after the age of 30 the physical decay of human beings sets in. And mentally? Many older people say, for example at the age of 60: Physically I have become older. My body cannot do any longer what I could do when I was young. Mentally, however, I am still the same as when I was 20 years old. Is it true? Maybe it feels so, but it’s an illusion. Also your mind gradually decays; or at least it changes. Also in your head you don’t stay the same young girl or guy you once were. As Montaigne says, it can even happen that the mind faster submits to age than the body, but when this happens, people often don’t notice it and then “so much greater is the danger”. It’s an illusion to think that mentally you don’t change through the years. You shouldn't fool yourself.

Random quote
It is one of the demerits of the traditional theory of causality that it has created an artificial opposition between determinism and the freedom of which we are introspectively conscious.

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

What do I know?

Montaigne’s Essays remain interesting, also more than 400 years after its first publication. I cannot stop taking them in my hands now and then and read one or another essay. I have underlined many passages and I have marked those essays that I find most interesting. One of them is essay 27 (or 26 in some editions like the Gutenberg translation; but this time I’ll quote from the translation by Charles Cotton). This essay is very relevant to the present situation in which the world is amid a pandemic and in which a war in Europe undermines the social and economic order. In this situation there is much confusion about what is true and what is false; what is fact and what is fake. Scientific facts are being opposed to alternative ideas about the origin of the pandemic. It is not always clear what is happening on the European battlefield or what the real reasons behind the war are. In this confusing situation, Montaigne gives us useful advices that help us finding our way.
Essay 27 (26) is titled “It is folly to refer truth and error to our own capacity”. Montaigne says here that we tend to believe what we already think to know and to reject what seems unlikely to us. However, he wonders whether this is right. At first sight it is, for we believe what we believe not without reason. However, when we take a closer look at the reasons for our beliefs, it is often so that our beliefs are only a matter of custom. When we try to find out why we believe something that someone else may consider weird “assuredly we shall find that it is rather custom than knowledge that takes away their strangeness”. We tend to think that people who hold different views are less reasonable than we are. But even if this would be true, “tis a foolish presumption to slight and condemn all things for false that do not appear to us probable; which is the ordinary vice of such as fancy themselves wiser than their neighbors.”
Of course, we must not automatically accept anything that is told to us, but on the other hand, we must not reject it in advance, just because it seems unlikely. According to Montaigne we must try to find a middle course between credulity and scepticism. It is arrogant to consider impossible everything that seems unlikely to us. “If we give the names of monster and miracle to everything our reason cannot comprehend, how many are continually presented before our eyes?” Much of what we consider unlikely seems unlikely to us because of our prejudices is what Montaigne apparently wants to tell us here.
Now it often happens that otherwise reliable people tell us unbelievable things. If we don’t want to believe them, even then let us not reject as impossible what they told us. Who knows what evidence we’ll get later for it? Better is, so Montaigne, to suspend the judgment. “[T]o condemn [something] as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption to pretend to know the utmost bounds of possibility.” For there is a “difference betwixt the impossible and the unusual, and betwixt that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men”. On the one hand, one must not believe rashly and on the other hand not be too incredulous. What now seems unlikely, can later turn out to be true. “Tis a presumption of great danger and consequence, besides the absurd temerity it draws after it, to contemn what we do not comprehend.” We, too, continuously change our minds. What we once considered true, may later be proved to be false, and the other way round. Moreover, what we think is full of contradictions. “Why do we not consider what contradictions we find in our own judgments; how many things were yesterday articles of our faith, that to-day appear no other than fables? Glory and curiosity are the scourges of the soul; the last prompts us to thrust our noses into everything, the other forbids us to leave anything doubtful and undecided.”
So far Montaigne in essay 27 (26). Montaigne lived in a time when science began to develop. Eternal truths were overthrown. What once were facts was uncovered as fake. Or fake was shown to be fact. People of both sides denounced each other. That’s also what we see in the present world; a world full of confusion and contradiction. I think that I don’t need to explain this here. We hear many half-truths and half-lies; facts that later had to be changed into other facts; conspiracy theories; and who knows what more. But Montaigne tells us that we must be open to all views. He does not say that we must believe everything, but we must lend an ear to other views, and often we’ll see that it’s better to suspend a definitive judgment than just state that the truth is on our side. How often isn’t it so that a fact becomes fake (or vice versa)? Not without reason Montaigne’s motto was “Que sais je?”. What do I know?

Random quote
There is a difference between the impossible and the unusual, and between that which is contrary to the order and course of nature and contrary to the common opinion of men.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

The Pinocchio Sensation

Most of us tell the truth most of the time. Nevertheless, sometimes we lie, for good reasons or for bad reasons. For some people lying belongs to their profession. Or they tell half-truths, which is the same as telling half-lies. I think that politicians belong to this category, and I think that politicians tell half-truths and so also half-lies more often than the average person does. Also they can have good or bad reasons for doing so. They can lie in the interest of the state, but often they lie in the interest of themselves. For politicians strive for power; otherwise they wouldn’t be politicians. It can be that they want to promote a certain idea and they think that they can best do so in politics, or they can strive for power simply because they want to have power. Often it’s a mixture of both. But then it would be interesting to know what the real motives and plans of politicians are, especially in a state where we elect our representatives. Then we would like to know whether our representatives tell the truth or try to mislead us by telling lies, so that, once in function, they can execute their own agendas. Therefore, it would be nice to have a kind of lie detector. For example, did the Russian president Putin really want to chase away the Nazis from Ukraine in the present war or is it a pretext for his strive for power or for something else? Or, to give an example from my own country, the Dutch prime minister Rutte often says “I don’t remember; I haven’t an active memory of it.” Then, we would like to know, whether he really had forgotten the case concerned, or whether he doesn’t he want to tell the truth. Since we cannot force a politician to do a test with a lie detector, it would be nice if there were a kind of innate lie detector. The Italian writer Carlo Collodi tells us the story of Pinocchio, whose nose became longer, when he lied. But alas, it’s a fairy tale, not something that really happened. In this sense it’s a lie that Collodi told us, although for most people it’s an acceptable lie, since they like fairy tales. There are no noses that grow when lies are told. So, politicians and human beings in general can go on lying and we must simply believe them, unless we can prove that they lie.
Is it really so that noses cannot enlarge in this way? Yes and no. Noses don’t grow when people lie, but there is a psychological phenomenon that gives you the illusion that your nose grows, although not because you are lying, but because your nose is stimulated in a special way. The phenomenon is called the Pinocchio Illusion or Phantom Nose Illusion. There are several ways to evoke the sensation that your nose grows. Here is one way that you can practice yourself (quoted from this website, where you can also find other ways to evoke the Pinocchio Illusion):
Ask a friend to help you. “Since you will be the one experiencing the illusion, you will sit in a chair behind your friend. You should cover your eyes by either using a blindfold, or simply closing them. Next, you will reach out with whatever hand and simply find the nose of your friend, while using your other hand to touch your nose. At the same time stroke your nose as well as your friends using the same movement. In roughly thirty seconds to one minute, you may get a weird sensation that your nose is displaced from your body, or that your nose has grown super long. It is also possible that you might experience both of these outcomes!” (here you find another description with an illustration)
Did you try it and succeeded to enlarge your nose? Then you have enlarged your nose without telling a lie. In fact, it’s a way to become Pinocchio without lying. But, alas, it’s an illusion; your nose didn’t change and stayed as short or long as it was before you applied the trick. You simply confused your brain. The trick made your brain think that your nose became longer, while in fact nothing changed. Your nose doesn’t grow when you tell lies and it doesn’t grow when you apply psychological tricks. Nevertheless, you had the sensation that it did, and if you hadn’t known that you were applying a trick, you really would have thought that your nose had become longer.
There are many interpretations of the Pinocchio Illusion, but in the context of my blogs I think that this one is important. Besides the Pinocchio Illusion there are many other illusions that can mislead you, but I chose this one because it is clear and funny. In this case you know that you are deceiving yourself, but for many illusions you are not aware that they happen, if you are not told so, like the Muller-Lyer Illusion. Then you’ll probably think that the illusion is reality, and then fake has become fact for you. Things are no longer what they seem to be. If you then say that such and such is the case, this is not true, and so you are not telling the truth and so you are lying in a sense. You “lie” then, seriously thinking that you tell the truth. This can happen to everyone, including to politicians. If you mistakenly think that something is the case, but it doesn’t guide your actions, the consequences of this false belief are presumably limited. However, politicians like it to act and actions based on false beliefs can be fatal. Therefore, beware of politicians, for also when they don’t intentionally lie, their beliefs may be illusions. 

Random quote
There is not a great deal of difference between a financier who puts big sounding concerns on the market which come to grief in a few years, and the politician who promises an infinity of reforms to the citizens which he does not know how to bring about, and which resolve themselves simply into an accumulation of Parliamentary papers.

Georges Sorel (1847-1922)