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If people can choose between butter or cannons, they prefer the butter by far; but a mysterious fate forces us to choose cannons despite ourselves.

Simone Weil (1909-1943)

The Communist Manifesto 175 years

This year marks the 175th anniversary of one of the most influential books ever published: the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895). Actually, the booklet – the first edition had only 23 pages – was titled Manifesto of the Communist Party, but since 1872 it is known under the present title.
1848, the year of publication, was a year of revolution. People revolted in many countries, because they wanted better living conditions and political control. France, Germany, Austria, Sweden …. However, soon the revolutions were crushed, and most reforms of 1848 were reversed. Anyway, the Netherlands – where the people did not revolt but the King found it better to give in before they would – got in 1848 a new and modern constitution, which made it the democracy it still is today.
It was on the eve of these revolutions and rebellions in 1848, on the 21sth of February, that Marx and Engels, then the intellectual leaders of the working-class movement, published their manifesto. They had written it as a political and programmatic statement for the Communist League, a group of German-born revolutionary socialists in London. It contained a materialistic view on history, a history of the development of humankind from feudalism till the 19th century capitalism, and a political program. It stated that the capitalist class would be overthrown by the working class and that the “proletariat” would govern society. The Communist Manifesto became the leading program for the communist movement in the years to come till far in the 20th century.
The book didn’t have only a long-term influence, but, having been published at the right moment, its impact was immediate. Of course, it didn’t cause the revolution in France, the first country that revolted and where one day after its publication revolution broke out over the banning of political meetings held by socialists and other opposition groups. Isolated riots followed, and two days later the French King Louis-Philippe abdicated. After this success, equal revolutions followed everywhere in Europe. As said, the revolutions were crushed and reforms were reversed, but not all reforms were. For instance, Hungary, which had declared its independence from Austria, got a special status within the Empire; I mentioned already the Netherlands; and also in other countries some reforms were permanent. Also the Communist Manifesto, the book that had predicted these revolutions, wasn’t placed in the archive of history, although after the end of the revolutions at first it was almost forgotten. In the 1870s, however, it experienced a revival. In 1872 a new edition was published, with a comment by Marx, saying why the manifesto was still important and which parts had been outdated. Numerous editions have followed since then and the manifesto became influential all over the world. Nowadays, this political pamphlet belongs to the classics of history.
When today you hear of the Communist Manifesto, maybe you think of an influential writing that contained maybe interesting ideas but that in essence was radical and dangerous. Maybe parts are quite extreme and maybe the list of ten measures for the advancement of the position of the proletariat somewhere halfway in the booklet was seen so in 1848, but I think that now in 2023 we judge it differently. Nowadays, many measures proposed are far from radical, and most of them have been realized. To give you an impression, here are some:
- Measure 2 wants to introduce a “heavy progressive or graduated income tax”. When Marx and Engels wrote this, no country had an income tax, but during the First World War (1914-1918) many European countries introduced such a tax and since then it is seen as just and correct. In 1980 in the Netherlands the highest tax bracket was as high as 72%! (now it is 52%, still a figure Marx wouldn’t have dreamed of). And doesn’t the influential French economist Thomas Piketty tell us that the present taxes on high incomes and on capital are too low? Also Bill Gates, one of the richest persons in the world, says that the taxes for the rich are too low.
- Measure 3 says “Abolition of all rights of inheritance”. In my country inheritance rights are undisputed, but inheritances in the second degree and further are heavily taxed.
- Measure 10 wants “Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.”. Also this demand has already been realized to a great extent if not fully in Europe and in many countries elsewhere in the world. However, still much is to be done in this respect.
But in 1848 there was still a long way to go, before such “radical” measures would be accepted.

Sources
- “The Communist Manifesto” in the Wikipedia.
- “The Communist Manifesto” in Britannica.
- “Karl Marx publishes Communist Manifesto” on history.com.
Plus the sources in the text.

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If philosophers are powerless, why are they murdered? Precisely because they are powerless. Ironically, they are targeted not because they are as a threat, but because they don’t count

Costica Bradatan (1971-)

What we don’t know we don’t know

Thinking is a difficult affair. Nobody is free from making mistakes when using arguments. Nobody is free from committing fallacies. Also professionals commit them, although they are supposed to argue correctly, since it may be a matter of death or life, or acquittal or conviction, if they don’t. But also judges commit fallacies, with sometimes disastrous consequences. Innocent people are sometimes sentenced to death. Or take some cases that now pop up in my mind: Nurses got long sentences as if they were mass murderers, because they were too often present when patients died. But isn’t it one of their tasks to help dying people and isn’t it obvious then that a nurse is more often present at the death of a patient than an average person? Nevertheless, it has happened several times that nurses were accused of murder (and sentenced) on grounds of a badly understood – so false – statistical analysis.
Also in politics fallacies abound. Politicians often don’t understand what they say; they don’t understand their own arguments. Nor do their followers. Even worse are the cases that politicians intentionally use fallacies and try to manipulate the people.
Also in less dramatic cases, it is important to know what is a correct argument and what is a fallacy. It can make life more pleasant, since it can help you avoid making mistakes, which are maybe not dramatic, but annoying anyway. Therefore, now and then I pay attention to fallacies, for everybody can commit them.
This time I want to discuss the fallacy that is called “Appeal to Ignorance”, or in Latin “Argumentum ad Ignorantiam”. As often, my description of the fallacy is based on a chapter from Robert Arp et al. 2019 (see source below) and also a bit on the Wikipedia.
The term “Appeal to Ignorance” was coined by the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). You commit this fallacy, if you think that a statement must be true because it has not yet proven false, or the other way round. In logical symbols:

~[proof that ~p] → p
~[proof that p] → ~p

Especially the version in logical symbols makes clear that “the fallacy uses lack of evidence as the grounds for accepting some claim” (McCraw, p. 106). It is a confusion between the categories “lack of evidence” and “presence of disconfirming evidence”. (106-7) That this fallacy is really an appeal to ignorance is illustrated by an example mentioned by McCraw (106). It’s a statement by the American senator Joe McCarthy from the early 1950s, when many people were falsely accused of being communist (implying that such a person is an enemy of the state): “I do not have much information on this except the general statement of the agency that there is nothing in the files to disapprove his Communist connections.” (106) Paraphrased: “I do not know that he is not X, so he must be X.” In fact, if I do not know that someone is not X, all options are open, besides being X, so also that he could be A or B or …or W or Y or Z or AA … etc.
The form of the Appeal to Ignorance just discussed is the basic form of this fallacy. However, it can have different forms that can all, in one way or another, be reduced to its basic form. I mention some:

May it not be that ~p? → p

In this “interrogative form” of the fallacy the ignorance in the argument is implied in the question. (107) For instance: “Isn’t it likely that John is a thief?” [although I actually have no proof that he is], implying that John is a thief.
Or take this case, which, I think, everyone will have encountered once:

  A: p
            B: Why?
            A: Why not?

Here the burden of proof is shifted by A to his opponent, while actually the burden of proof should be with A. (108) And if, as often happens, B doesn’t know how to answer the question “Why not?” (or doesn’t want to answer it), this is falsely seen by A as proof that p is the case (or A says so for manipulative reasons).
The upshot is that we only know that something is the case or not the case if we have evidence for it. Ignorance can never proof facts.

Source
- McCraw, Benjamin W., “Appeal to Ignorance”, 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. 106-111.

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A philosopher who wants to make himself into a politician usually only manages to make a fool of himself

Costica Bradatan (1971-)

Must fake news be forbidden?

Recent research by the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, the national Dutch “Think Tank” on social and cultural affairs, shows that a majority of the Dutch wants that the national or EU authorities take measures against fake news on the internet. There should come rules stating what is not allowed and if necessary the freedom of expression should be limited. I’ll spare you the details, but in short this is what the majority of the people here in the Netherlands thinks and I assume that not only in the Netherlands but also in other countries that theoretically stand for the freedom of expression most people think so. Is it a good idea?
I think that there are good reasons to be worried about the fake news and disinformation on the internet. They can really cause much damage and be really threatening for some persons. Indeed, some so-called fake news is clearly false. Last week yet there was an internet message that the French schools would start the new year on the 18th of September to come, while in fact it started last week, the 4th of September. Or persons are threatened because false information has been spread about them. In other cases, people are offended by disinformation about them on the internet. These are clear cases that, moreover (the second and third case), hit persons directly. I think that nobody will be against stopping such clearly false information and protecting people against threats and insults in the way as always has been done. Nevertheless, generally I think that it is not a good idea to prevent and stop information on the internet that is considered fake or false, for generally it is not as clear as that. How often doesn’t it happen that what first is seen as fake later is judged to be true. For example, in the 13th century saying that the earth revolves around the sun was considered fake “news”. You could even be sentenced to the stake for saying so. At least in Europe this could happen. In the 17th century, however, there were already many people who believed the statement to be true, although in some countries it was still dangerous to say so (see what happened to Galileo). Now in the 21st century the statement is common sense. Nevertheless, people in the 13th century had good reasons to think that it’s not the earth that revolves around the sun, but that’s the other way round, for the Bible, then the highest authority in Europe, said so. This shows that what fake news is, is not only an objective fact but also a social affair and depends on what is known at a certain moment. As for the latter, in the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic the Dutch National Health Institute said that wearing a face mask was not necessary (unlike what was said in many other countries or what the World Health Organization said), but later it changed its mind. It shows again that it is not easy to say what is true and right.
Establishing what is really true and right doesn’t come by itself. And as we have seen so often, if not too often, we can better not leave it to the authorities to tell us what to believe. If we would have done so, maybe we still would have to think that the sun revolves around the earth, or that the earth is flat. In case authorities establish what is right and true, it will happen too often that what is said to be fact in reality is fake. Moreover, too often such “false facts” are used for manipulation, if not they are constructed to that end. Then the defenders of the “facts” are not different from the producers of fake news and disinformation today. To prevent such an undesirable situation there is only one effective measure: freedom of information and expression. Only crystal-clear cases like those mentioned above should be stopped (but rather afterwards than beforehand; in fact, stopping them beforehand without censorship will hardly be possible). However, we must be careful to do so. Only if persons are explicitly in danger or are hurt, it should be done. Yes, it will make that there’ll remain much fake news and disinformation on the internet. But isn’t a growing repression of free information and of the freedom of expression worse, since this will be done more and more in the name of combatting fake news and disinformation?

Random quote
There are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific text-book, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

Can AI have consciousness?

One of the intriguing questions in the debate about the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) is whether AI systems can have consciousness. Consciousness is a characteristic that is seen as typical for human beings, although some – if not many – animals have it to a certain extent as well. Self-consciousness is seen as the highest form of consciousness. Probably only human beings and a limited group of animals have it, like chimpanzees and elephants. It can be established only in an indirect way. For instance, if an animal recognizes itself in a mirror, it is assumed that it has self-consciousness. Once we know that a being has consciousness, maybe it is relatively easy to establish whether it has self-consciousness (for example with the mirror test), but what does it mean that a being has consciousness tout court? This depends not only on the facts, namely on the way a being behaves, but also on how we define “consciousness”. As for this, scientists and philosophers disagree. Moreover, once we know how to define consciousness, the next problem is how to know that a being has consciousness. In a sense, human beings and other beings are black boxes: we can study their behaviour and maybe the mechanisms that cause this behaviour, but not directly the feelings and other qualia etc., so the subjective experience, behind the behaviour, and just the possibility to have subjective experience is essential for having consciousness. Therefore, even if we can measure behaviour that is typical for having consciousness, we don’t know for sure whether the being that we study really has consciousness. It is possible that the being concerned is a zombie, as David Chalmers called it: It does show consciousness-related behaviour, but it doesn’t have the consciousness-related subjective experience, like for instance, human beings have. Therefore, such a zombie is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human being. The problem is then: How else can we distinguish it from a human?
Recently, a group of AI experts has published a report in which they try to answer the question whether AI systems can have consciousness. Now I must say that I do not have read the report but I have read only about it. Nevertheless, I think that I can write some reasonable words about it in this blog. In their report, the experts come to the conclusion that computers can have consciousness, although the present AI systems are not yet developed to that extent that we can call them conscious. Far from that. Nevertheless, the experts think that sooner or later conscious AI systems will exist and they discuss also several possibilities how such systems would be structured. This is very interesting and intriguing, of course, especially because people (so you and I) tend to think that such conscious AI systems are a kind of humanlike beings, like apes are, for instance, and then maybe even yet more developed; even yet more human than apes already are. But even if we do not personify such AI systems and keep seeing them as machines, we do ascribe to them a typical human characteristic, namely consciousness. And we do so in view of the behaviour of the AI system plus the structure of the AI system (the “machine”), so in view of what we know about its software and hardware. However, being consciousness is not only a matter of showing a certain type of behaviour and of having a certain structure (mechanism); it is also a matter of having the related subjective experiences. And how do we know that AI systems do have subjective experiences, when they show the related behaviour? 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 system behaves like a conscious being. It is done by measuring and explaining its behaviour from its physical structure and then conclude that the behaviour is how a conscious being should behave (or just not). However, how do we know whether a being or AI system really has subjective experience? This is what Chalmers calls the hard problem. As yet, no answer has been given how to solve it. So, even if an AI system behaves like a conscious being and its physical structure might make having consciousness possible, it is still very well possible that it is a zombie.

Some interesting links:
- https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/ai-wetenschappers-en-filosofen-computers-kunnen-bewustzijn-hebben~b2a213b7/
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02684-5