----------- HAPPY NEW YEAR !!! -----------

Something to think about
“Based on data on armed conflicts between 2004 and 2007, the Geneva Declaration Secretariat suggests that, ‘a reasonable average estimate would be a ratio of four indirect deaths to one direct death in contemporary conflicts.”

From Saba Bazargan, “Noncombatant immunity and war-profiteering”, in Seth Lazar and Helen Frowe (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ethics of War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018; pp. 358-362. The quotation is from p. 376.

Why should it be different for the present conflicts in the world?

------------ MERRY CHRISTMAS ------------

 

Tommy's Christmas

For this Christmas blog I wanted to do something different and I asked ChatGPT to write a Christmas story about a poor boy. I asked DALL.E 2 to make an image for the story. This is what I got.

Once upon a time in the small town of Evergreen, there lived a young boy named Tommy. Christmas was just around the corner, and the town was adorned with colourful lights, festive decorations, and the joyful laughter of families preparing for the holidays. However, for Tommy and his family, Christmas only brought a sense of longing and sadness.
Tommy's family struggled to make ends meet, and their modest home barely provided enough warmth to shield them from the winter chill. Despite the hardships, Tommy remained optimistic, finding joy in the simple things life offered. He had a heart full of kindness and a spirit that refused to be dampened by the circumstances surrounding him.
One cold and snowy evening, as Tommy walked through the town square, he couldn't help but marvel at the twinkling lights and the giant Christmas tree standing tall in the centre. His eyes sparkled with wonder, and his imagination ran wild with dreams of a Christmas filled with warmth and abundance.
One day, as Tommy strolled through the snow-covered streets, he came across a group of carolers singing festive tunes. Their voices echoed through the air, creating a magical atmosphere that touched Tommy's soul. He couldn't resist joining in, and his pure, heartfelt singing caught the attention of the townspeople.
As the news of Tommy's sweet voice spread, the townspeople decided to organize a special Christmas concert to showcase his talent. The concert would not only bring joy to the community but also help Tommy's family during the difficult times.
The townspeople rallied together, contributing whatever they could to make the concert a reality. They donated food, warm clothing, and even small gifts for Tommy's family. The sense of community and kindness that enveloped Evergreen was a true testament to the spirit of Christmas.
On the night of the concert, the town square was transformed into a winter wonderland. The air was filled with the sweet melodies of carols, and the warmth of compassion melted away the cold. Tommy stood on the makeshift stage, surrounded by twinkling lights and smiling faces.
As he sang with all his heart, a gentle snowfall began, adding a touch of magic to the scene. The townspeople, wrapped in blankets and scarves, watched in awe as Tommy's voice filled the air, bringing tears of joy to many eyes.
After the concert, as the townspeople presented Tommy's family with the donations, a sense of gratitude and relief washed over them. The generosity of the community had not only provided warmth and comfort for the winter but had also filled their hearts with hope and love.
From that day forward, Evergreen became a symbol of the true spirit of Christmas, where kindness, compassion, and the magic of the season transformed the lives of a humble family. And as the years passed, Tommy continued to share his gift of music, reminding everyone that the greatest joy of Christmas is found in the love we share with one another.

On truth

Actually, I should write now about Harry G. Frankfurt’s book On Truth, which was published a year after the book version of his On Bullshit. As one reviewer says, it “exists largely as a footnote to Harry G. Frankfurt’s earlier work.” However, I haven’t read it. From the reviews I got the impression that it isn’t Frankfurt’s best work, maybe best expressed by the fact that the Wikipedia says no more about it than that “it develops the argument that people should care about truth, regardless of intent to be truthful. It explicitly avoids defining ‘truth’ beyond the concept commonly held, which corresponds to reality.” As I understood the reviews, Frankfurt tells us that truth should be our guide in life.
Whether my summary is correct or not, I don’t want to discuss a book that I haven’t read on the base of reviews, so forget now about Frankfurt for the rest of this blog, but I have always wondered what it means that truth is correspondence to reality. When, as a student, I first heard about this theory, my reaction was: “I don’t understand. How can we know what reality is if we don’t know that it is true what we perceive? For isn’t it so that what we perceive, however, depends on what we consider true? The correspondence theory is founded on a circular reasoning, for reality and truth are mutually dependent.” In other words, what we see is a matter of interpretation and depends on, as Popper and many psychologists have made clear, the theories in our minds about what is real. It has taken me years, before I understood that advocates of the correspondence theory of truth see reality as something independent of the mind. Although this understanding has made much clear to me, and although I see myself as a realist in the sense that there must be “something objective” independent of the subjective views of reality in our minds, nevertheless, I still think that the basic problem has not been solved by this insight, namely that for us reality and truth are mutually dependent. And can there be anything in the world that isn’t “for us” or it would be impossible for us to know it? Just this is why again and again we must develop new theories. If we could perceive reality – the world as it is, so to speak – directly, without intermediation of our eyes and of instruments and of theories in our minds, we didn’t have to develop continuously new theories, test them against reality, improve our theories, test them again, etc. according to the simple scheme described by Popper: P1 > T1 > E > T2 > P2 (see this blog for an explanation). We could simply look at the world, and we would know how it is. Aristotle’s description of the world would have been valid and true for ever, just as, for instance, Ptolemy’s description of the movements of planets. Science would be as simple as that: Look and write down, and you know what is real. Giving explanations of what is happening in the world would be more complicated, but basically it works the same.
Above, I supposed that there may be something real; that possibly an objective reality exists (ignoring the question whether this isn’t a naïve view). I think that for many practical questions it is a workable view. Even though we can perceive the physical reality only via theories in the mind and in our theory books (or on the internet), matters are more complicated if we want to know the social reality. For if there is something in the world that is mind-dependent, then it is how the social reality (in its widest sense) is constituted. Therefore, if there is something in the world humans disagree upon it is the meaning of certain social facts. Once I wrote: “Social facts are literally ‘made’ by us. When we play chess, we don’t simply move wooden objects, but we play a game and we move pawns, rooks and queens etc. When humanity dies out, the wooden objects may still exist and they may be found by a roaming animal, but the idea of game and the idea that these pieces of woods ‘actually’ are pawns, rooks or queens has been lost. Such meanings belong to … ‘our shared conceptual scheme and culture’. Social facts are ways we think about what is around us in the social and in the material world and the ways we react to them, but when we think differently about these ways, they change with our thoughts and get another meaning.” Often, it goes deeper than simply chess pieces. The different interpretations of certain social facts can be the source of intense human conflicts. Take the intentional burning of holy books. For some – usually non-believers – a holy book, like the Bible or the Qur'an, is simply a bundle of paper, but for others it has a deep meaning and it touches their souls if the book is hurt. As we see again and again in the Middle East, especially in the Israelian-Palestinian wars, conflicts about interpretations of social facts can lead to intense conflicts and tens of thousands of deaths. Happily, most differences in interpretations have not such serious consequences, and they are somewhere between the difference in interpretation of pieces of wood as chess pieces and the difference in interpretation of the ownership of a piece of land leading to war. Nevertheless, different interpretations of certain social facts can lead to annoying misunderstandings and negative feelings. For instance, in some Asian cultures, direct eye contact can be seen as disrespectful or confrontational, while in Western cultures you just are supposed to have eye contact with the person you are talking to. Not doing so is impolite. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, we can say that even if all possible scientific questions have been answered by developing true theories, the problems of the interpretation of social facts still have not been touched at all.

Random quote
The one certain fact about every war is that its results will include deaths, wounds, and destruction and that many of these will be inflicted wrongfully in violation of basic rights.

Henry Shue (1940-)

On bullshit

Harry G. Frankfurt’s article “Alternate possibilities and moral responsibility” is still relevant for the freedom of the will debate 54 years after its first publication. Still as relevant outside academic circles is his essay “On bullshit”, first published in a journal in 1986, and as a book in 2005. Then it got much attention in the media and it appeared for 27 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers List. When asked why he had written this essay, Frankfurt answered:“Respect for the truth and a concern for the truth are among the foundations for civilization. I was for a long time disturbed by the lack of respect for the truth that I observed ... Bullshit is one of the deformities of these values”. The phrase “I was for a long time disturbed by the lack of respect for the truth that I observed” might suggest that Frankfurt has changed has view on the presence of bullshit since he first published his essay, but look around: Isn’t bullshit everywhere around us, inside and outside politics?
But what actually is bullshit? You can say that bullshitting is telling nonsense, falsehoods, misrepresentations, especially with pretentious or big words. However, bullshit is not lying as such. In lying the untruth is central: Giving a false interpretation of what is the case as such. I must think here of Kant. According to Kant, lying is absolutely not allowed. Suppose now that you live in a dictatorship. You are hiding a resistance fighter in your house. Then someone rings your doorbell. It’s a policeman who wants to know whether that person is in your house. Ignoring Kant, you say “No”: You are lying. In this case you explicitly say an untruth hoping to save the resistance fighter. You have no personal interest in lying in this case. According to Frankfurt, you are not saying bullshit, for bullshit has two essential remarks: 1) What a person says when saying bullshit is often, if not usually – but not necessarily – not true. However, that his or her words are false or true is not what counts for the bullshitter, for 2) what s/he says is meant to represent him or herself in a certain way. As Frankfurt himself says it: “[B]ulshitting involves a kind of bluff. It is closer to bluffing … than to telling a lie. … Unlike plain lying … [bluffing] is more especially a matter not of falsity but of fakery. This is what counts for its nearness to bullshit. For the essence of bullshit is not that it is false but that it is phony.” (italics HF) Now it is so, so Frankfurt, “that a fake or a phony need not be … inferior to the real thing. … What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.” (pp. 128-9)
Bullshitting is not about the truth of facts and about the truthfulness of what the bullshitter says, but about the bullshitter him or herself. Bullshitting is a way of presenting yourself. It is often seen as more “innocent” than lying, and therefore bullshitters often are not punished when caught telling a lie. Moreover, bullshitting gives more freedom. A bullshitter “does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point”, which can be quite complicated, but “he is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need requires.” (p.130) And this is all done by the bullshitter for the project s/he has in mind. For bullshitting is not done for hiding the facts, for hiding how things stand, but in view of a project: “What [the bullshitter] does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.” What the facts are, what is true and what is false is not important for the bullshitter. “[H]e is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. … He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” (pp. 130-1)
Now it is so that everybody is saying bullshit from time to time, for example, when you want to save your face. Often it is relatively innocent. However, bullshitting can become dangerous when politicians use it, and then not only for saving their faces, when they have made mistakes, but for manipulating the people in view of their own projects. And, look around, how many politicians are not behaving that way? Bullshitting is more dangerous than lying, as Frankfurt makes us clear.

Sources
- Wikipedia “On Bullshit”.
- For this blog I used the version of “On Bullshit” in , Harry G. Frankfurt, The importance of what we care about; pp. 117-133. Here you can find the essay online.

Random quote
The realms of advertising and public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept.

Harry G. Frankfurt (1929-2023)

Harry Frankfurt

Harry Frankfurt and his alternate possibilities

A few months ago, the American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt died, 94 years old (1929-2023). I think that many of my readers will not know him, although I have mentioned him a few times in my blogs, but he was one of the most influential American philosophers of the last century and the early 21st century. He had especially a big impact on the discussion whether there is a free will. You simply cannot ignore his view when you are interested in the free will debate.

Free will, so many philosophers say, is all about responsibility: Free will and personal responsibility are two sides of the same coin. Is this true? No, Frankfurt said: We can be responsible for what we do without being free. Take this case (and now I use an old blog):
Jones is in a voting booth deliberating whether to vote for the Democratic or for the Republican presidential candidate. Unbeknownst to Jones, a neurosurgeon, Black, has implanted a chip in Jones’s brain that allows Black to monitor Jones’s neural states and alter them if need be. Black is a diehard Democrat, and should Black detect neural activity indicating that a Republican choice is forthcoming, Black will activate the chip to ensure that Jones will vote Democratic. However, Jones chooses on his own to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, so Black never intervenes.
In this case, voting for the Democratic candidate was Jones’s own choice, so we can say that Jones was responsible for this choice. Nevertheless, he was not free to vote for the Democratic candidate, for would Jones have wanted to vote Republican, Black would have intervened. The upshot is that responsibility and free will don’t need to go together. But what then free will is about if it is not about responsibility? This blog is not the place to try to answer this question, but by presenting this, what now is called, Frankfurt case, Harry Frankfurt has left his mark on the free will debate. To my mind it is his most important contribution to philosophy.
Another important contribution of Frankfurt to philosophy is his definition what a person is. A person is, so Frankfurt, someone who wants what he or she wants. In order to understand what this means, Frankfurt distinguished first-order volitions and second-order volitions. First-order volitions are simple wants, desires, wishes etc. I like oranges so I want to eat oranges. I like reading so I want to read a book. I like opera so I desire to go to an opera performance. Etc. But do we really want what we want? Do I really want to want to eat oranges? Yes, for they are healthy and tasty. Do, I really want to want to read books? Yes, for reading books is a pleasure and it is good for my mental development. But, say, that I am a drug addict. Every day I want to take a shot of heroin, if not more often. Do I really want to take heroin every day? No, for it ruins my health and it makes me dependent, for I want to have it now or I’ll become sick. So I want to get clean and I ask for help. However, a friend of mine, also a heroin addict, never asks the question whether he wants to get clean. He simply wants to have his shots. What is the difference between us? According to Frankfurt, those people who ask both first-order and second-order questions – like me – are persons. If I succeed to get clean, I am a free person; if I don’t succeed to get clean, I am a person but not a free person: I have asked first-order and second-order questions, but I don’t succeed to act according to my answers (I stay a drug addict, although I don’t want that). However, since my friend doesn’t ask second-order questions, he cannot be a person. Frankfurt calls him a wanton.
For me, these are Frankfurt’s most important contributions to philosophy, but he did more. Among philosophers he is also known as a Descartes specialist. Among the general public he is especially known by his bestseller On Bullshit. In this booklet he defends the view that worse than simply lying is talking bullshit: Talking nonsense (or maybe even truth) without caring whether what you say is true or false. For the speaker (or writer), the only thing that is important is how s/he appears to others or that s/he gets what she wants and reaches his/her goals. Another influential book written for the general public is Frankfurt’s The Reasons of Love. Harry Frankfurt was an analytic philosopher in the first place, and analytic philosophy is typically a kind of philosophy performed in academic circles. However, according to Frankfurt it is also a good method for explaining general issues that are important for the general public. In the book just mentioned Frankfurt gives an analytical and well-understandable explanation of the idea of love.
It will certainly not be difficult to write more about Harry Frankfurt, but with this blog I hope to have made clear that he was a remarkable and influential philosopher, a clear writer and one of the most important American thinkers of the last hundred years.

Sources
Harry G. Frankfurt, The importance of what we care about.
Maarten Meester, “De analyticus van de vrije wil”, in Filosofie Magazine, 2023/12; pp. 54-58.