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The thoughts of creative philosophers form an intellectual property of humanity. They form the basis for any further development of our culture. Therefore, it is our duty to transfer this property to the future.

Carl Gebhardt (1881-1934)

NEW BOOK: Passing and Waiting

Passing and Waiting. An Essay

Henk bij de Weg

Free download
Click here or here

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”.

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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?

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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.

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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-)