Philosophy between armchair and bullets (and on the saddle)

The expression “armchair philosophy” is proverbial. As I explained in my last blog it refers to a kind of philosophy that wears an air of not needing a factual basis or, more extremely, to an attitude that confronting ideas or opinions with the facts is an unnecessary effort. In short, it refers to simple homespun philosophy. Nevertheless, much philosophy literally takes place in an armchair and seen that way it is armchair philosophy. An example of it in due form was the well-known television programme “The Philosophical Quartet” broadcast by the German TV channel ZDF: two philosophers (Peter Sloterdijk and Rüdiger Safranski) discussing philosophical problems with two guests while sitting on two coaches without any other assistance than the ideas and opinions in their brains. (I admit: actually I should have to call it “coach philosophy”; see for instance http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI7iVPzKb_M) Also Montaigne was an armchair philosopher in this sense. In my last blog I showed a picture of his armchair and desk in the library in the tower of his castle where he wrote his Essays. The difference is that Montaigne often consulted his books or used his personal experiences.

Is this the usual philosophical practice: sitting in an armchair, maybe in your tower, and letting your thoughts wander through a world of abstract and less abstract ideas? Or, if you philosophize with a group, the same process done in several armchairs plus verbal interaction between the thinkers? The wandering of the thoughts through the world of ideas is inherent to philosophy but I discovered that some of the masterpieces of philosophy and brilliant works of the mind were thought up in quite different and sometimes very extreme circumstances.

Maybe the situation where Descartes came to his idea of Cogito ergo sum – I think so I am – is yet close to the kind of armchair philosophy just discussed. Descartes had taken service in the army of Maximilian I of Bavaria. Once he travelled back from the coronation of the emperor to the army and the winter weather forced him to stop somewhere. While he sat there alone in a “stove” (heated room) because he felt cold and he had nothing else to do than thinking, he got the ideas that would determine western philosophy for four centuries. The story doesn’t tell whether Descartes sat in an armchair in his stove, but at least he was not in his familiar surroundings.

Also Erasmus wrote some of his works during his travels, not only during his stays in the inns along the roads but also on the back of his horse. And that is how Erasmus wrote his famous “In Praise of Folly” on his way back from Italy back to England, as he tells in his introductory letter to Thomas More.

Nietzsche, too, laid the foundation of at least some of his works not in his armchair. Because of his health Nietzsche had moved to the Swiss mountains. There he spent a big part of his days by making long walks during which he enjoyed not only the overwhelming nature around him but which he also used for thinking. Nietzsche had always a notebook with him for writing down the thoughts he found valuable. Back home he worked up his notes resulting in what he called his “wander books”.

So, much outstanding philosophy has not been written in an armchair and therefore isn’t literally armchair philosophy. Also Wittgenstein loved philosophizing elsewhere, for instance pacing up and down the lecture-room in front of his students, saying out loud the thoughts that popped up in his mind (which were noted down and later published by his students). But what beats all, I think, is the way he wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: he made the notes for this book between the bullets of the First World War and completed it when he was a prisoner of war in Italy. What would have happened with the Tractatus if Wittgenstein had been killed in action?

Be that as it may, I must admit that I am only a simple armchair philosopher: I wrote all my books and articles in the armchair on the photo above the blog three weeks ago. Nevertheless, not all my philosophical thoughts developed and still develop there, for sometimes I get my ideas while taking a shower or sitting on the saddle of my bike.

Armchair philosophy (3)

Montaigne's armchair

When I criticized “armchair philosophy” in my last two blogs, I meant the kind of philosophizing that looks more like groundless imagination than well-founded reflection. There is nothing against imagination in philosophy, of course, and imagination can be very useful when considering a certain problem or question. What I reject is that assumptions of imagined cases are unrealistic, and this is what often is the case. It can be said that philosophy begins where science ends, and that they are in line with each other. My criticism is then that too many philosophers forget this, which makes philosophy deficient and unprolific in the long run. That’s just why I so often refer to research results in these blogs: In order to give my analyses of who we are and what we do a solid foundation.

One point of view sees armchair philosophy as philosophy by “somebody who is a complete know-it-all, usually a douchebag or self-declared intellectual. They always feel the need to seem intellectually superior to others, by continuously arguing about any subject they see in media, conversations, etc. and quoting themselves as experts on the subject.” They stick to their opinions, even when confronted with contrary facts, and they feel a need to comment on everything, even “where careful analysis is needed”. (www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=armchair%20philosopher&defid=4816655) If this were the only correct view of armchair philosophy, there would be no place for armchair approaches in philosophy. More relevant here is what the Wikipedia says about it, which sees armchair philosophy as “an approach to providing new developments in a field that does not involve the collection of new information but, rather, a careful analysis or synthesis of existent scholarship.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armchair_theorizing) And that’s what academic philosophers often do:  trying to bring progress in the field under discussion by means of intuition, intelligent imagination, theoretical insight, and the like. That’s why, as Timothy Williamson says, “[a] striking feature of the traditional armchair method of philosophy is the use of imaginary examples” (http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/1300/Aristotle.pdf). But just this “armchair thinking” has met opposition and led to a new philosophical movement, called “experimental philosophy” or “X-Phi” for short. According to this approach philosophical reasoning must be based on experimental data, philosophical questions can be answered by experimental data, conceptual analysis can be aided by experimental data. But can experimental data lead to philosophical answers, even to that extent that we could better burn our philosophical armchairs? (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt5Kxv8eCTA for this). I don’t think so. Maybe we can answer some philosophical questions by means of the X-Phi approach, but it doesn’t alter the fact that we need armchair analysis in order to raise the questions that we want to answer in an experimental way, to mention one thing. In a certain sense, it can be defended that actually all philosophy is armchair philosophy. Nevertheless, the X-Phi approach has a point, and as so often, the truth is somewhere in the middle, I think. Albert Einstein, one of the biggest geniuses that ever lived on earth was typically an armchair scientist. But weren’t also Einstein’s conclusions to a large degree founded on the analysis of experimental results? The same must also be expected from armchair philosophers: At least that their analyses and argumentation have a sound factual basis. Otherwise they will result in mere speculation and fantasy. Also an armchair needs a floor to stand on.

Armchair philosophy (2)

Terlassie passing the finish

Some time ago I criticized in a blog that philosophers using thought experiments often don’t realize that the assumptions of such an experiment can push the answer in a certain direction. In my last blog I criticized that in thought experiments the context often is left out, although it can be highly relevant for what we want to show in the experiment. Maybe there are more mistakes in thought experiments that I failed to notice. Who knows, for I have never made a systematic study of the subject. These were just two flaws that caught my eye.

Even so, I don’t want to say that thought experiments are useless but only that they bear the seed of misrepresentation within them and that they can be misleading. For there are also a lot of interesting and important philosophical thought experiments. And, to be honest, isn’t it just fun to think up a good one and to tease your mind with it? Isn’t just that one reason why we philosophize? One of the most famous thought experiments has laid even the foundation of modern western philosophy: Descartes’ evil demon (Descartes wondered whether his thoughts weren’t misled by a devil; or, in other words, whether his senses did not give him a complete illusion of the external world. He concluded that anyway his thinking activity could not have been misled). Used with insight, thought experiments can bring us a step forward or make us things clear. So, the British philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe used one for showing that in concrete situations it is not possible to delimit a person’s actions: What an action is is a matter of perspective. When I flip the switch, do I turn on the light in the room or do I warn the thief in my house? (the example is Davidson’s) If the thief left no traces and took nothing with him, I’ll never get the idea to use the latter description but only the former. This thought experiment shows also that actions can have side effects.

I think that in situations where assumptions and context play no fundamental role, thought experiments can be appropriate. That’s also the case when they are used for undermining arguments. This makes Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment so strong and to the point (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room). In this way, once I have used a thought experiment for refuting the idea that the person only goes where the brain goes and that brain and body can be separated, as is implicit or explicit in many theories on personal identity in the analytical philosophy, the so-called psychological identity theories (like the one defended by Parfit). Here I’ll present it in a new version:

Two marathon runners, Haile Gebrselassie and Paul Tergat, have switched bodies, so that the brain of Gebrselassie and the body of Tergat belong together and the other way round (let we call them Gebregat and Terlassie respectively). They take part in the same race, but Gebregat leaves the race injured while Terlassie wins. Then, since the person goes where the brain goes according to psychological identity theorists, it is Paul Tergat who has won the race, although it was Haile Gebrselassie’s body that passed the finish line first and although Paul Tergat’s body could not withstand the strain of the race and even didn’t finish. So, if we may believe the psychological identity theorists it is not the body that runs but the brain. For how else could it have been that Paul Tergat had won?

Armchair philosophy

Philosophers think out all kinds of theoretical situations in order to discuss and answer their philosophical questions. However, it often happens that such a thought experiment starts from assumptions that push the answer looked for already into a certain direction. Thought experiments in which people switch brains are like that: how can we theoretically discuss brain switches and come to acceptable conclusions if we ignore factors that make such brain swaps impossible in practice? (see my “Can a person break a world record?” on http://home.kpn.nl/wegweeda/PersonalIdentity.htm ). An article by Allen Wood (“Humanity as End in Itself” in Derek Parfit, On What Matters, Vol. Two, pp. 58-82) drew my attention to another factor that is often left out, although it is usually relevant for the problem at hand: the context. In what follows I am greatly indebted to this article.

Two much discussed thought experiments in philosophy (also by Wood and Parfit) are “Sidetrack” and “Footbridge”:

Sidetrack: A driverless, runaway trolley on a railway is heading for a tunnel, in which it would kill five people. As a bystander, you could save their lives by turning a switch and redirecting the trolley on to another track. However, there is a man walking on that track that would be killed instead of the five.

Footbridge: A driverless, runaway trolley on a railway is heading for a tunnel, in which it would kill five people. You are standing on a footbridge above the track. You are slim and short but a large man is just crossing the bridge. If you jump on the track, you will be run over by the trolley, which will kill you and the five people as well. If you push the large man on the track, he will be killed but the trolley will stop and the five will be saved.

Most people will say that it is permissible that you turn the switch in Sidetrack but not that you push the man in Footbridge. One explanation for this difference is that it is impermissible to intentionally cause harm as in Footbridge, but permissible to cause harm as a foreseen but unintended consequence of one’s action as in Sidetrack.

Whatever the explanation is, one can wonder how people would react if

- the five people are walkers who want to take a short cut but are not allowed to walk in the tunnel

or

- the five people are copper thieves stealing railway copper

while

- the single person is a railway worker doing his job.

Or

- it’s not you who have to take the decision but a mentally weak person who often takes wrong decisions.

Or

- the large man in Footbridge is an escaped murderer (sentenced to death, if that makes a difference to you).

I can give my thoughts free rein and add more situations or I can combine them. However, I think that one thing is clear: what you’ll do and what you’ll find permissible will depend on the situation. It has no sense to strip off the context and then in the abstract tell what is right, or, in other thought experiments, what we’ll do. It’s the context that makes what is acceptable or right, and this context is often more complicated than we can imagine in our philosophical armchair.

Thinking with your legs

The Greek new it already: “A healthy mind in a healthy body”.
(entrance sign stadium of Sparta, Greece; see text circled in red).

Two years ago I have written a blog titled “Running with my mind”. It was about how we can improve our physical condition by simulating physical exercises in our mind: Simply by thinking that we do exercises our fitness increases. But how about the other way round? Does exercising influence our mental condition? Actually, I knew already that such an inverse relation exists but that was all. The theme sank to the bottom of my mind and I forgot it. But last week, I saw a little article in the science supplement of a newspaper saying that sportsmen have better cognitive functions and thicker cerebral cortices than students. I wanted to know more about it. For if it were true, I should beat them all, for I am a sportsman and a lifelong student, as my regular readers know. So I started to google the theme and what I found was very encouraging and enjoyed my mind and I should have immediately taken my running shoes, if I hadn’t had to write this blog first. It’s too much to summarize here all I found but one thing is clear: The best way to improve and strengthen your brain and your cognitive functions is not thinking, doing mental games or living in a stimulating environment, but it is running, cycling or any other aerobic bodily activity. For instance, in an experiment mice were divided in several groups. Some got special food; another group lived in a stimulating environment; a third group did nothing special; and the fourth group got running wheels (where mice enjoy exercising) and nothing more. Afterward the last group performed best when given cognitive tests. Other experiments showed that mice that were forced to work harder by using a treadmill performed better than mice that got a simple running wheel. And don’t tell me that this concerns only mice. Experiments with human test groups show the same results.

One reason why it works is that aerobic exercise stimulates the blood circulation in the brain. But there is more. Exercise helps also build new brain cells and extend neural networks. But you might reply: mental training will do this as well. That’s true, but there is a difference. Brain cells formed by mental exercise are specialized. They are only good in performing the task they were made for. However, brain cells formed by aerobic exercise are multifunctional. They are not only apt for making you run but are also for other, cognitive tasks.

And all this is not only for young people. The older brain profits also from bodily exercise, and then it doesn’t need to be running, but walking and cycling will do as well. Such aerobic exercises make the older brain younger, and slow or even reverse the decay of the brain and the occurrence of serious mental illnesses like Alzheimer.

I could mention many more experiments, but I would like to finish with this one, which I quote from a blog in the New York Times (see below for the link):

“21 students at the University of Illinois were asked to memorize a string of letters and then pick them out from a list flashed at them. Then they were asked to do one of three things for 30 minutes — sit quietly, run on a treadmill or lift weights — before performing the letter test again. After an additional 30-minute cool down, they were tested once more. On subsequent days, the students returned to try the other two options. The students were noticeably quicker and more accurate on the retest after they ran compared with the other two options, and they continued to perform better when tested after the cool down.”

So, when you want to learn something new, as a student or for another reason, want to do a complicated mental task, or are afraid to forget something, and the like, just take your running shoes or your bike, and you’ll become smarter.

***

There are many websites that describe the results that I mentioned here, but this one gives a good overview: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/how-exercise-could-lead-to-a-better-brain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

For the quotation: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/what-sort-of-exercise-can-make-you-smarter/. Look there also for the original source.

The steam of the whistle

Recently I argued that the idea that our meta-thoughts can influence the way we think and by means of that our behaviour can be undermined by the “third factor counterargument”: a piece of behaviour and a conscious thought that seems to trigger it can both be caused by a third factor that makes both the behaviour and the thought happen (see my blog dated Jan. 14). So my thought to go to a bookshop in Utrecht tomorrow and my actually taking the train then in order to go there may both be caused by me watching a book program on TV now. It’s not unlikely that in this instance it’s true, although I think it’s not as simple as that. Anyway, whatever may be the case, it is a practical problem that against any sound scientific argument or theory always another equally sound argument can be brought forward that seems to refute it. Actually it’s the base for scientific progress, but on the other hand how far do we go? If we can fundamentally refute everything, only cynicism remains. So I think that now and then we must show determination and say: This is what I think that is true and this is what I want to defend. Even though we know and accept in our heart that everything can be falsified.

This is what I thought of when I put forward somewhat reluctantly the argument that a piece of behaviour and a related thought can be caused by a third factor. For actually I think that in some way our conscious thoughts do cause – or influence at least – our behaviour. Especially Baumeister and his colleagues have analyzed many studies in this field and defended the view that it is quite likely that such a causal relation exists. I think that their arguments are convincing, keeping in mind, of course, what I just said about possible falsification. Here I don’t want to summarize their analysis or repeat their arguments (see the reference below for that). However, I think that it is interesting to list their “four broad conclusions”, as they call them, about how consciousness influences behaviour. Here they are:

1) Conscious thought integrates behaviour across time. It “is helpful for enabling present or imminent behavior to benefit from past and future events, and for present and recent events to influence future behavior”, as Baumeister et al. put it. Planning is an example of this.

2) Conscious thought relates social and cultural factors and the individual’s behaviour. It mediates sharing information with and understanding other people and dealing with the human world we belong to. Negotiating is a case in point.

3) Conscious thought helps to choose in situations of several alternative possible forms of behaviour. It helps to deviate from the road we would take if we would follow the automatic pilot within us. Again I could mention here negotiations or also when we want to buy something as simple examples.

4) In fact, everything we do is a mixture of conscious and unconscious processes. Therefore, many apparently exclusively unconscious pieces of behaviour have a conscious component. Baumeister et al. mention here giving instructions and focusing attention as instances where the conscious part is overstressed but certainly there are cases where it is the other way round. A division into conscious and unconscious behavior seems to be a false dichotomy.

In view of these four points, the idea that conscious thinking is a mere epiphenomenon is quite unlikely, even though it still remains possible that somebody will come out with factors that might explain both our behaviour and our thinking about it as processes that are not immediately related. Or they argue that our thinking is simply the steam of the whistle of the machine within us (see Thomas Huxley, for instance): It shows that there is activity in our body but it doesn’t causally make it move, anyhow.

Source: Roy F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Do Conscious Thoughts

Cause Behavior?”, http://carlson.umn.edu/assets/165663.pdf.

If everybody deceives …

Reading Parfit’s On What Matters, I came across this passage:

“Turn next to lying. Herman writes that …

‘… Universal deception would be held by Kant to make speech and thus deception impossible.’

Korsgaard similarly writes:

‘lies are usually efficacious in achieving their purposes because they deceive, but if they were universally practiced they would not deceive...’

But no one acts on the maxim ‘Always lie’. Many liars act on the maxim ‘Lie when that would benefit me’.” (Vol. One, p. 278; my italics)

When I read this, I immediately thought: Lance Armstrong could have said it, especially the italicized part (cf. his interview with Oprah Winfrey). And indeed, what would it matter, if everybody would lie? If everybody would deceive everybody, in particular if everybody did it in the same way? Then Armstrong would still have been the best. But it doesn’t work that way. Even if 90% of all pro-cyclists would have used drugs in his days, as some say, then there is still this 10% that has been robbed of their victories or couldn’t renew their contracts because they performed “poorly” (or because they didn’t want to take drugs for obvious reasons). Not to speak of the sponsors, the crowd and others. The morality that an act is allowed if everybody does it …

Ride to the roots

Juniper bushes and grave mound

The bike ride wasn’t to be philosophical but historical, or rather prehistorical. Instead of making the obligatory Sunday afternoon walk to the centre of the town when we were there in that little provincial capital, I proposed my wife to make a bike ride through the fields and woods east of the town. I knew there a few interesting sites and I wanted to take photos.

So a few minutes later we were cycling along the street that leads to the park where once a manor had been. What had been left of the house had been torn down long ago and only a tomb remained.

Arrived in the fields we passed a farmhouse with a striking architecture not typical for the region. We crossed a brook and turned left. The centuries old farmstead had gone. It had become a victim of arson, just after it had been restored. Nobody knows what the reason of this act was. We followed a muddy path, trying to avoid the puddles and pools, and suddenly I saw what I had come for: a grave mound, there in the field. As such it is nothing spectacular but the idea that people had built it millenniums ago for honouring their dead and that it still was there … And then, in the wood behind the field many more: dozens of grave mounds that had withstood the ages.

The toadstool-shaped signpost showed that we had to go left. Again fields, again a little wood and muddy roads. A fence indicated the border of the nature reserve and archeological reserve. It was a place where I loved to come and play as a little child, with my parents. Later, when I was older, sometimes I made there a bike ride after the classes and before I started to make my homework. Nothing had changed since then. Only the fence was new.

We put our bikes against a tree, opened the gate and walked to the heather field. Not just a heather field but one of the few places where you could see juniper bushes. And in front of us the remains of prehistoric farmlands. With some effort you could still see the low embankments that once separated the parcels. Who were the people who had lived there and had struggled to survive on the very poor soil? Where did they come from and where did they go?

When we followed the path to the right again some grave mounds, rather high. The places where these petty farmers had been buried? Or only their leaders? Or maybe they were quite rich then? And what did these people think and think about? But the dead don’t talk anymore so we’ll never know.

Before us a marsh with a mere stretched out. Somewhere behind the trees on the other side there was a dolmen. I took my photos. Then we cycled back from prehistory to history. To the left we saw what remained from the low rampart raised for protecting the tent of a military minded bishop who had attacked the region. In vain. Returned to the present the coffee was waiting for us.

What thinking can

Actually it’s an intriguing idea that people can think consciously, or that they can “think” for short. Some scientists believe that thinking is merely an epiphenomenon. From this point of view, it would make no difference, whether we would think or not: we would behave in the same way in both cases. I don’t endorse this viewpoint, but here I’ll not discuss the arguments pro and con. Others scientists take the view that our thinking does cause or at least does influence our behaviour. This idea seems more plausible to me, but here I’ll pass over this viewpoint, too. However, even if the idea that thinking is a mere epiphenomenon is true and man would be a very complicated kind of machine (in the way Descartes thought that animals are), it remains intriguing: For who has ever heard of a man-made machine that thinks? Apparently man is more than just a construction of nuts and bolts that fasten a physical structure.

What I find even more intriguing than the idea that man can think is that man can think about thinking. In my last blog, I have given an example of such “meta-thinking”, when I wondered whether a certain thought of mine was a case of cognitive dissonance reduction or whether I “really meant” what I thought.

Scientists are divided over whether thoughts can influence the behaviour of the thinker. But how about meta-thoughts? Take this example from my last blog: You always wanted to buy a yellow car, but in the end you buy a grey one, because the dealer had only this colour in stock. You think: “Actually a grey car fits me better”. Then you realize that you are reducing a cognitive dissonance and you change your opinion: “A grey car doesn’t fit me better. I wanted a yellow car, but the dealer did not have it in stock. I had no choice, but I still prefer a yellow one”. In this case you had a meta-thought, but it had no influence on your behaviour. If your thinking is epiphenomenal, than your meta-thinking is as well.

Is this always so? I can take the study by Festinger again for showing how meta-thinking might influence behaviour, but actually thinking about thinking in order to influence our behaviour is something we often do. For instance, you have to do an exam on a theoretical subject. Your traditional strategy is to learn all the stuff by heart by repeating the required reading so often that it becomes stored in your brain. Then your teacher tells you that another good method is explaining the subject matter to someone else. You decide to test the method and you ask a friend to be your audience. By doing so your thoughts about how you think have changed your behaviour. In this way our meta-thoughts often change our behaviour.

The case just described seems to substantiate the view that our meta-thoughts can influence the way we think and by means of that our behaviour. If so, it will not be difficult to prove that thinking can directly cause behaviour as well. However, we cannot exclude the possibility that some unconscious process in the brain is triggered by what the teacher told and that it is this unconscious process that both changed the learning behaviour and produced the meta-thoughts about learning. Then meta-thoughts are adaptations to what you actually do, just in the way as reducing a cognitive dissonance is a way to make thoughts and facts fit.

Note: I took the argument at the end from William S. Robinson. See his blog http://yourbrainandyou.com/2011/12/12/do-conscious-thoughts-cause-behavior/

The dust in my eyes

In my last blog I wrote about the theory of cognitive dissonance. Say, we expect that the world will be destructed on December 21, 2012. However, the prophecy does not come true and two weeks later the world still exists. We feel quite ill at ease and we try to understand what went wrong. We think: A supreme being has given the world a second chance. Therefore we try to convince the people around us that the world can be saved. According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, we try then to reduce the dissonance between our expectation and what actually happened.

Suppose now that I am waiting for the train of 10.05 a.m. to Utrecht, where I’ll have an interview for a job. However, the train doesn’t come nor does the next one fifteen minutes later. So, I call the Railway Information Service. The telephonist tells me that there is a power breakdown and that there’ll be no trains for some hours. Next I call the selection committee that I’ll be too late, since I have to take my car.

What’s the difference? When you don´t belief in the prophecy, you’ll probably say: In the first case, the facts are adapted to the belief and in the second case the belief is adapted to the facts. Or something like that.

That’s clear, you might think. Is it? Take these examples:

- Many years ago I took part in a 5K track race (running). One of the other participants was a friend of mine. I finished the race in a good time but my friend left the race already after two laps. “I wasn’t in the mood”, he told me, although it took hem three hours of preparation to start, for the race was in another town. Do you believe him? I think that my friend himself believed what he said, but I didn’t, for he would be the first to stop for such a reason.

- You want to buy a new car. You always said: “When I buy a new car, it must be a yellow one, because not many people have that colour.” However, the salesman tells you that you have to wait two months for it. Because your old car actually needs repair, you don’t want to wait so long and you choose a grey one of the same type. Later you say to yourself: A grey one fits me much better. Everybody would recognize me from far and say: “There’s John with his yellow car.”

- Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith asked a group of students to perform a boring task. The experiment was in fact more complicated, but the essence is this: After having performed the task, the students were asked to explain it to other people and to tell them that it was very interesting. Half of the students got one dollar for this job and the other half got twenty dollars. When interviewed, the latter told the researchers that the original task was boring, while those who got one dollar said they liked it. Apparently, receiving twenty dollars this was a good excuse for telling a lie. However, the students who received only one dollar had a mental problem: The low payment did not compensate the psychological burden lying. So they got the feeling that the original task was interesting.

Without a doubt, I could have chosen better examples, but what I want to say is this: Often we invent reasons that fit the facts after they have taken place. Moreover, there is no fundamental distinction between reducing a cognitive dissonance and giving a “real” explanation. Or rather, the extreme cases are clearly different and in case of a cognitive dissonance the facts are adapted to the belief whereas in case of “real” explanations the reasons are adapted to the facts. But between these extremes, the reasons can be more a bit of this or more a bit of that. There the difference is actually gradual and reducing a cognitive dissonance is something everybody often does to some extent. Something happens that we did not expect or did not want to happen and we have to act or form an opinion. So we rationalize. However, this doesn’t imply that we throw dust in our own eyes. This may happen but often our reasons are good reasons.

***

Since I have heard of the theory of cognitive dissonance I often think: Is this thought of mine a case of cognitive dissonance reduction or do I really mean it?

Note: For the research by Festinger and Carlsmith see http://explorable.com/cognitive-dissonance-experiment.html.

When prophecy fails

Sour grapes: Wasn’t it Aesop who had invented the theory of cognitive dissonance?

Actually I didn’t want to write about the nonsense of the end of the world. It isn’t worth to give it so much attention, and I agree with the Russian president Vladimir Putin (probably the first and the last time that I’ll agree with him): The end of the world will be in about 4.5 billion years’ time. But the event made me think of a study by Leon Festinger and his co-workers I learned about when I studied sociology long ago: When Prophecy Fails (first published in 1956). It was rather new then when I attended my lectures.

In this book the theory of cognitive dissonance is described for the first time. The details of the study and the theory can easily be found elsewhere on the Internet, but the essence is this: Members of a small sect somewhere in the USA think that the world will be destructed by a Flood but that only they will be saved (by a UFO). On December 21 the believers meet at a pre-determined time and place but nothing happens. Although before the presumed date of the end of the world they avoided publicity, now the believers think that the world has got a second chance and they dramatically increase their activities of spreading their message to the world.

What did happen then from a psychological point of view according to Festinger and his co-workers? Before the final date the members of the sect have a certain belief about what will occur. However, the belief doesn’t come true, for the world hasn’t been destructed as prophesied. Therefore there is a discrepancy between the original belief and the facts. Festinger et al. call this a “cognitive dissonance”. Such a dissonance is considered an unpleasant experience by most people, so they want to get rid of it. In the words of Festinger et al.: The cognitive dissonance has to be reduced. Therefore the believers of the destruction of the world think that there is a reason that the world has been saved (“the world gets a second chance”) and they adapt their behaviour to it (in this case: they try to make converts). The result of the new interpretation of the belief and the adaptation of behaviour is that the gap between belief and fact (so the cognitive dissonance) is psychologically reduced.

According to the original theory the reduction process is unconscious. Moreover, it is not limited to sectarian believes and behaviour. Actually the reduction of cognitive dissonance is something everybody often does if there is a discrepancy between a belief, attitude, values, norms etc. and the facts. It is a common psychological mechanism. Later the theory has been changed in the sense that reduction can also happen consciously.

These were some of my thoughts when I heard all the fuss about the supposed end of the world because the Maya calendar ended on December 21st last (It’s interesting that the Mayas themselves had a different interpretation of what this meant). This case is unlike the one analysed by Festinger et al. in so far as then the believers avoided publicity before the predicted end of the world, while now the predicted fact received already much attention before it should take place. Anyhow, I have some questions. What will the real believers do now that Doomsday did not take place? Will they flood the world with a new interpretation of their sectarian belief and with a new Doomsday prophecy? Moreover, what progress will the study of this failed prophecy bring to the social sciences and especially to psychology? I am waiting for what will happen.

Photography as a way of seeing

Lith, the Netherlands: Photo with pinhole camera

There is no good philosophy but only philosophy that is not bad. This was the conclusion of my last blog. But how about photography, for instance? It is often said: With these modern digital cameras everybody can make a good picture. And although we know that it is an advertising slogan, many people belief it’s true. For isn’t it so that by simply pressing a button, nowadays we can make pictures that are sharp, well exposed, and thanks to the newest techniques, taken just at the moment that everybody is smiling? What more do we want in a good photo? Okay, you need to keep your camera straight, but Photoshop or another good program can solve it, in case you forgot it. So why do we still need photographers? As a result it has become increasingly difficult to make a decent living of photography. Another consequence is that the quality of photos in newspapers and magazines is often low. But it’s strange: on the one hand there is no accounting for taste, so seen that way, you can’t say: This photo is good, that photo is bad. All criteria for quality in art are subjective, aren’t they? On the other hand, people say: This photo is better than that one. How can they say that, if there are no objective quality criteria? Apparently, there are bad photos and photos that are not bad, just as there is bad philosophy and philosophy that is not bad. However, good and bad can have two different meanings here: It can mean technically good or bad, or it can mean good or bad with respect to its contents (and maybe we can apply this distinction to philosophy as well). The former refers to aspects like sharpness, exposure, and other “technical” aspects. The latter is what the image on the photo represents and how it is composed. A good photo tells a story, for instance, or we call the image beautiful, intriguing, or having a good likeness.

A photo that is good in the first (technical) sense need not be so in the second sense (concerning its contents), and that’s what we often see. But the other way round? Needs a photo with a “good” content also be technically good? In the past it was generally thought that a technically bad photo could not be good, anyway, but why should it be so? I always say: A photo is good if it represents what it is supposed to represent. A feeling need not be sharp but can also be blurred, by way of speaking, and that must be in the image. If we wanted to make a picture of John and it shows John, in fact it is a good photo; other aspects are secondary. This is striking when I present photos on an art market or in an exhibition. When I show sharp and otherwise technically good photos next to photos taken with a pinhole camera, which are a bit blurred, because such a camera has no lens, then the pinhole pictures draw the attention of the visitors, and less so the technically goods ones, even when both types of photos have basically the same contents. Obviously there is more than just good or bad in photography. Let’s call it expression or feeling, the way we look at it. Indeed, there is quality in photography – I’ll certainly not say there isn’t – but I think it is not about good and bad but it is rather a matter of seeing and perspective.

Good philosophy is not bad

Plato: A not bad philosopher?

What is good philosophy? What is bad philosophy? These questions occurred to me after having disproved the Lottery Paradox. For how can it happen that a thesis like the Lottery Paradox persists so long, while in my opinion it is so easy to refute? Is it really such a bad kind of philosophy as I think it is, or does it have strong points as well? Since I do not have a thorough formal philosophical training, because it was another route that led me to philosophy (which is not unusual for philosophers), I cannot fall back on theoretical insights or procedures that I had learned during my education, nor do I have such books. What I did therefore is what most people do today, I think: I googled my questions. However, it didn’t help me for I found a lot on the philosophy of the good and the bad but nothing about what good or bad philosophy might be. The only thing I found was that philosophy must not be inconsistent, but that’s obvious, I should say. Moreover, inconsistency may be a criterion for bad philosophical reasoning but consistent reasoning is not good just for that. It would be bad philosophy to contend the latter, since there are other factors that can make an argumentation wrong even if it is consistent. This thought is in line with Karl Popper’s brilliant idea that fundamentally it is possible to refute a theory, but that it is never possible to prove it. If this idea is applied to my questions, it means that one cannot say what good philosophy is, although one can say “that is bad philosophy”. Or rather, one can say “that is a bad philosophical argumentation”. Then one comes into the fields of argumentation theory and methodology and their rules. Or even more, then applies what Paul Feyerabend says: “Anything goes”, namely that any argumentation, also non-standard, that undermines another argumentation makes the latter a bad one (basically, for the thesis is founded on certain suppositions, like that the former reasoning is correct).

Does this mean that we can say nothing about what good philosophy is, but that we can say only that a case of philosophy is “not bad”? By chance, recently I received a contents alert from a philosophical journal that drew my attention to the article “Bad Analytical Philosophy” by Pascal Engel. The first sentences read: “Most analytic philosophers agree that good philosophy ought to satisfy certain minimal requirements: it should be clear, precise, well argued, putting forward an explicit thesis and exemplify the principle that truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. Everyone agrees that it should be also interesting, relevant, reasonably original, rigorous, and that it should advance theoretical or critical proposals on the problems and puzzles which have shaped the analytic tradition or which are the object of current concern. Many philosophers are confident that when these basic desiderata are met, analytic philosophy cannot be bad. Nevertheless we all know that there is bad analytic philosophy.” And I want to add here: what is valid for analytical philosophy is valid for philosophy in general as well. However, in the light of Popper’s idea that we cannot positively prove a theory, that good philosophy cannot be guaranteed when we follow the requirements listed by Engel. These requirements can be guide lines at most. They’ll never reach the status of criteria that make philosophy good when strictly applied, although it will be possible to lay down criteria that make philosophy bad (even if these will not be exhaustive).

Where does this get us? The upshot is that there is no good philosophy, or rather: logically we cannot say that a piece of philosophy is good but only that it is not bad at most. But maybe this is a case of bad philosophy.

Source: Pascal Engel, “Bad Analytical Philosophy”, in Dialectica Vol. 66, N° 1 (2012), pp. 1–4: p. 1

Don’t define your concepts and you can get any conclusion

Two blogs ago I wrote about the Lottery Paradox. I showed that it was false. However, it stayed straying through my mind, not because I had my doubts whether it was really false, for it simply is. But I wondered what went wrong with the paradox and why it is still seen as valid by some. Well, I cannot give an answer to the latter, but I can say something about the former. This time I shall be less abstract and formal, so that those readers who got stuck halfway two weeks ago, will now keep hanging on my lips.

The Lottery Paradox says that we can argue that no ticket will win in a lottery, although certainly one ticket will do, if the lottery is fair. What went wrong in this reasoning besides that the statistical argument isn’t correct? I think that the essence of the failure is in the first basic principle. It runs, as you’ll remember: “If it is highly probable that p, then it is rational to believe that p.”

The central concepts in this principle are “probable” and “rational”. But what do these concepts mean? In the argument that is supposed to substantiate the Lottery Paradox they are not explained. I think that this is the real reason that the argument goes wrong. Let’s look first at “probable”. In the context of the paradox it has a double meaning. First it is treated as a psychological concept but next as a concept from the probability theory (or from statistics). The first principle of the Lottery Paradox says something like this: If it is very likely that p will happen, you can suppose that it really will, even though sometimes it doesn’t. For instance: The timetable says that the next train will leave within 15 minutes, and since the timetable is usually correct, I can better go to the station now (even though it may be possible that the rain will be too late this time). But then, in order to “prove” the Lottery Paradox, “probable” gets suddenly a statistical meaning, and then the argument is false, as I explained in my blog two weeks ago. This doesn’t alter the fact, though, that the psychological interpretation makes sense in our daily life.

There is also something wrong with the way the concept of “rational” is used in the “demonstration” of the paradox. What is rational depends largely on the situation where we have to act. Take the train example again. Suppose that I want to do some shopping in a town nearby. So, I think: “I must leave home now, although it might happen that the train doesn’t leave within 15 minutes, because it will be late or because the timetable has changed”. Then it’s rational to go now and not to check possible changes on the Internet in case there is a train every 15 minutes. If I am wrong, the consequences are negligible.

Take now this example from my blog two weeks ago: I work as a security officer on an airport where I check the passengers at the gate. Say every year ten million passengers pass this airport and only once in five years someone is caught who might have the intention to put a bomb in a plane. Therefore, it is highly likely that the next passenger is a decent person and not a terrorist. Must I say then: Well, it is very, very likely that the next person is not a terrorist. I am a rational person and I don’t check her? Of course not, for in view of the consequences in case she is, it is better to check her, and the next passenger, and the next … Here it is rational not to believe that p, even if it is extremely probable that p.

Don’t define your concepts and you can get any conclusion you like.

Big Brother is watching … George Orwell

Today we are being spied on most of the time. For instance, when I am on line, many web pages I visit have advertisements urging me to follow Dutch language courses. Why do they think that I might be interested in it? Because they have sent “cookies” to my computer in order to find out who I am and what my interests are. In this case it is quite an unintelligent way of spying, for why should a native speaker of Dutch want to learn Dutch? But it is an illustration that espionage or rather being spied on has become an intrinsic part of our lives.

The best known way of such espionage is the use of surveillance cameras, also called, CCTV cameras (CCTV = Closed Circuit TV). You find them everywhere. For instance, when I am going to make a run in the wood behind my house, the first steps after I have left my street are on the grounds of a psychiatric institute and the first thing I see is a CCTV camera. In the past sometimes I met a security guard on his round. Then he greeted me, but the camera says nothing.

Obviously, cameras are not employed without reason. People want to keep an eye on their properties. Authorities want to watch the public space hoping that it will become safer and more secure. And there are many other good (and also bad) reasons for installing cameras. Does it work? Studies show it hardly does.

The first CCTV system was installed seventy years ago. Before there were other ways to spy on, of course. However, these systems were personal in some way, for the watching agent was a person of flesh and blood. In a certain sense it is still so: Behind a surveillance camera there is someone who looks on a screen seeing what is happening. But more and more the systems are automated and systems of automatic face recognition exist already.

The science fiction novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (first published in 1924) was a source of inspiration for George Orwell. People there lived in a kind of see-through houses where everybody could observe what everybody else was doing. If you wanted to have a few private hours for yourself, for instance for passing an evening with your sweetheart, you had to apply for an official permit to close your curtains. George Orwell has replaced this quite primitive system by telescreens in each house and on all public places with hidden microphones and cameras. The leader of the state where all this happens is called Big Brother, and everywhere there are posters of him with the caption “Big Brother is watching you”.

Today gradually Orwell’s novel seems to become reality, and, how cynical, in Orwell’s country Britain in the first place. An article on the Internet from the London Evening Standard from 2007 tells me that there were already 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain in that year, or one for every 14 people in the country and 20 per cent of cameras globally. “It has been calculated”, so the article, “that each person is caught on camera an average of 300 times daily.” And where do we find these spy cameras? Around Orwell’s former home in North London, for instance. Within less than 200 metres from this flat, where Orwell lived until his death in 1950, there are 32 CCTV cameras, “scanning every move”, so the article. And it continues: “Orwell's view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights. The flat's rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre ... In a lane, just off the square, close to Orwell's favourite pub ... a camera at the rear of a car dealership records every person entering or leaving the pub. Within a 200-yard radius of the flat, there are another 28 CCTV cameras, together with hundreds of private, remote-controlled security cameras used to scrutinise visitors to homes, shops and offices.”

If George Orwell would still have been alive, he would have been continuously within the vision fields of our modern big and little brothers and sisters, with all advantages and risks that it involves (and I am afraid that the risks are bigger than the advantages, as I have tried to explain in previous blogs). Big Brother is watching you, also, or maybe just, when you are George Orwell.

The article from the London Evening Standard:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/george-orwell-big-brother-is-watching-your-house-7086271.html

An interesting report on the risks and other issues related to camera surveillance:

http://www.raeng.org.uk/news/publications/list/reports/dilemmas_of_privacy_and_surveillance_report.pdf

The Lottery Paradox

Trying to find an answer to the question when we can say that we have knowledge I found an article by Baron Reed titled “Fallibilism” (Philosophy Compass 7/9 (2012): 585–596). In a section of this article Reed discusses the Lottery Paradox and its relevance for knowledge as justified true belief. The paradox has been described first by Henry E. Kyburg, Jr, in 1961. I must say that, like the Gettier cases debate, I didn’t follow the discussion that developed since then, so maybe my arguments against it are not new (but I didn’t get the impression when I read Reeds article), but it is interesting to treat the paradox here because of its significance for our concept of knowledge.

I start with Reed’s description of the Lottery Paradox (id, pp. 588-589):

“[The lottery paradox] depends on the following two principles:

1. If it is highly probable that p, then it is rational to believe that p.

2. If it is rational to believe that p and it is rational to believe that q, then it is rational to believe that p & q.”

These two principles are quite plausible, so Reed, and if the “two propositions are each rational to believe, then surely it is rational to believe their conjunction. … Nevertheless, the two principles together yield a counterintuitive result. Suppose there is a fair lottery in which 1000 tickets are sold and in which only one ticket will win. For each ticket, there is thus a .999 probability that it will lose. Principle (1) tells us that it is rational to believe of each ticket that it will lose. So, where proposition p_i is the proposition that ticket t_i will lose, it is rational to believe that p₁, that p₂, …, that p₁₀₀₀. Principle (2) tells us that it is rational to believe the conjunction of all these propositions: that p₁ & p₂ & … & p₁₀₀₀. But, because we know it is a fair lottery, it is also rational for us to believe that some one of the tickets will win – i.e., it is rational for us to believe that either not-p₁, or not-p₂, …, or not-p₁₀₀₀. We know (and rationally believe) that this is equivalent to the proposition that not-(p₁ & p₂ & … & p₁₀₀₀). Using principle (2) again, it is rational to believe that p₁ & p₂ & … & p₁₀₀₀ & not-(p₁ & p₂ & … & p₁₀₀₀). But that proposition, of course, is a contradiction.”

At first glance, the Lottery Paradox may seem plausible, indeed, but at second glance? Premise (1) says that it is rational to believe that p if p is highly probable. But why should it? For example, I work as a security officer on an airport where I check the passengers at the gate. It is highly probable that the next passenger is a decent person and not a terrorist. Nevertheless, for me it is rational to believe that he might be an exception. The only thing that is rational to believe is that p is highly probable and not that it certainly will happen, as premisse (1) seems to state. Otherwise we add information without any argument.

Take now premise (2). What Reed doesn’t make clear is what “&” means. Say I throw the dice. Then there is a probability of .83 that 1-5 will come up. If I throw several times, that doesn’t change for each independent (separate) throw. If we interpret the & for separate throws, the probability for each throw remains .83. However, now we interpret & in the way that the first throw p is 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 and the next throw q is and the next throw r is etc.. Then after four throws the probability is 0.83x0.83x0.83x0.83=0.48 that this will happen, which is already less than a half! In other words, if p, q etc. are dependent on each other in some way and they have probabilities of less than 1 it is not rational to believe that p & q & etc. (i.e. in my example that each time 1-5 will come up).

This brings me to another flaw in the lottery paradox. Even if the premises are true, the world is wider and it contains also other knowledge, for instance what statisticians say about probabilities. Our rational believe is not based on single isolated facts but it is interwoven with other knowledge, like statistical knowledge. And statisticians can tell us that it is simply not true that we have to analyse the probabilities of the 1000 tickets in the lottery as independent from each other: If we know that one lottery ticket will not win, then the probabilities that the other tickets will win increase. Knowing the probabilities of the separate lottery tickets as such tells us nothing about the probabilities when we put some (or all) tickets together, unless we do the relevant statistical computations. I think that more can be said against the Lottery Paradox, but it is clear that neither premise (1) nor premise (2) is correct. The upshot is that there is no Lottery Paradox.

Gettier cases and knowing-how

Knowing how (foto B.bij de Weg)

The Gettier problem calls into question that knowledge is justified true belief. We have seen it in my last blog. The theme has been intensively discussed since Gettier published his article in 1963 and for me it is impossible to follow back the whole debate, but when I look up on the Internet the argumentations put forward there is one thing that strikes me: Although the Gettier problem and its consequences for what knowledge is have been examined in many ways, nonetheless the discussion has been one-sided. Or have I missed something? For when we take a closer look at the discussion we see that the concept of knowledge involved is basically propositional knowledge or knowledge-that. But didn’t already Gilbert Ryle defend in his The Concept of Mind (1949) that there are two kinds of knowledge: knowledge-that and knowledge-how? When we apply this distinction to the Gettier problem, I think we have to reject the conclusion that Gettier cases undermine the idea that in general knowledge is not justified true belief.

Once (in my blog dated June 9, 2008) I have dedicated a blog to Ryle’s distinction, but it’s already more than four years ago, so let me repeat the essence. When we talk about knowledge-that, we mean intellectual knowledge or rationally knowing. Basically, knowing-that is about facts or theories that can be true or false. Betsy, my cow, is in the field or she isn’t. E=mc² or E≠ mc². However, knowing-that is not all knowledge there is. Much of what we know is knowing-how, which does not refer to what we intellectually contain in our minds but to what we can practically do with our bodies (steered by our mind, it’s true, but not only). It refers to the way we do things and are able to do them. How we ride a bike, for instance. Maybe I cannot explain verbally what I do when I am cycling, but nevertheless I can do it and I can teach others how to do it. Also most professional knowledge, skill and craftsmanship fall in this category. A carpenter can excel in his trade, even when he cannot explain in words the details of what he is doing.

I think that it has no sense to talk about the Gettier problem when we talk about knowing-how. For instance, when I know how to ride a bike, something like a Gettier problem cannot happen. Maybe I belief that I can cycle because in the past I could, but if it is no longer so, because I have become too old for it and I would fall over, it is simply a false belief. I don’t see how a kind of Gettier problem can bear on cases like this one or on other cases of knowing-how. It should have to be something like that I have the true knowledge that I can ride a bike, but when I am going to check it, I do something else although I still have the belief that I am cycling. I cannot imagine how that is possible, but maybe you can. If I am right, it can still happen that knowing-how is not a kind of justified true belief but it is not because of Gettier-like objections.

On forgetting

In these blogs I write on subjects that I find interesting and I use this writing for developing my mind. Because I publish my blogs on the Internet, I hope that my readers will profit by it as well. This week’s blog has a different purpose, though, for I have a problem. I read a lot on philosophy and then it’s normal that I often come across the same theories, arguments and cases. Therefore I have developed not only my ideas through the years but also I have acquired also a good knowledge of what is going on in philosophy, at least in the fields I am reading and writing on. Nevertheless, there are some subjects that, how often I have read on them, I always forget what they are about. For instance, I always forgot what Frankfurt cases are. However, since I have written a few blogs on them, they have been printed in my memory. Another example is the so-called Gettier problem. I have read on it several times. Often I have looked up what it is. But what happened today: I stumbled on it in a book on knowledge and despite all my efforts in the past, it had again slipped my memory what it involves. So I got the idea to write a blog on the Gettier problem, for what has helped me to remember what Frankfurt cases are will without a doubt help me keep the Gettier problem in my mind, as well. But I want to make excuses to my readers, if they find this blog boring, for what I actually do is merely repeating some stuff that I have found on the Internet.

A standard definition of knowledge says that knowledge is justified true belief: We belief that something is the case; we have good reasons for this belief; and what is believed is also true. So far, so good, but take this example, which I have adapted from the Wikipedia:

I am a bit worried whether my best cow Betsy hasn’t been stolen from the field where she is supposed to be at pasture. I walk from my farm to the field, where I see a cow in the middle of the herd that exactly looks like Betsy, although I don't find it necessary to walk so near to her that I am 100% sure that she really is Betsy. Back home, I tell my wife that I know that Betsy is safe. My wife wants to check it, too, and goes also to the field. There she sees Betsy somewhere in the back and Jane in the middle of the herd. Because Betsy is often confused with Jane, if you look at her from a distance, she makes herself 100% sure that it is really Betsy there in the back of the field. Betsy hasn’t been stolen, just as I thought.

Now the question is: Did I know that Betsy hadn’t been stolen? For (1) I believed that Betsy was safe; (2) my belief was justified for I had checked it; (3) it was true that Betsy hadn’t been stolen.

In a famous paper published in 1963 Edmund Gettier discussed cases like this one where we seemed to have justified true belief, but where most of us would not say that we “know”; cases that cast doubt upon the definition of knowledge as justified true belief.

What this example and other more refined “Gettier cases” show is that it is possible to have justified true belief without having knowledge. The theory of knowledge that holds that knowledge is justified true belief is therefore false. We need more for being able to say to have knowledge. But what?

But isn’t this exactly what we do in scientific research: looking for something that we belief to be true on good (i.e. methodologically justified) grounds? And yet often it happens that our theories, once believed to be true and justified by experiments and argumentations, are later rejected or revised on the base of new data, experiments and argumentations. But weren’t then the old revised ideas no knowledge it all? And how about the new ideas that replace the old ones and that are the best we have at the moment: Are they knowledge? Seen this way, we can doubt whether we have any knowledge at all; whether knowledge in science can exist anyhow. We simply have justified true belief. And isn’t that also so for most we think to know outside science? It seems better never to say “I know” but “I think I know” at most. A lot more can be said about this, but I only wanted to write on the Gettier problem in order to know it forever.

Some websites on the Gettier problem

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem

http://www.theoryofknowledge.info/what-is-knowledge/the-tripartite-theory-of-knowledge/gettier-cases/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/gettier/

Feeling happy

Sometimes I think that I should take more time for writing my blogs than the afternoon I allot for it now. Then I could write thorough essays without the mistakes or rudimentary thoughts that are so typical for my present scribbles. But would it make sense? Wouldn’t I get simply another type of blogs? Blogs that are articles rather than the present small pieces of writing that – I hope – make the reader think? Anyway, now and then I come across thoughts or phrases that would certainly have given some blogs another turn had I known them before.

Today I happened to reread Montaigne’s essay titled “That Men are Not to Judge of Our Happiness Till After Death” (Book I, 18). It remembered me of what I recently had written about happiness and especially of what I had written about Wittgenstein’s two opinions on his life and my idea that there are two views on happiness: the view of the moment that something happens which makes me happy or unhappy and the view backwards on my life and my thinking how it was. Had I recalled Montaigne’s essay, I would certainly have referred to it in my blogs on happiness, and I would have come to other conclusions.

In this essay Montaigne comments on the statement by the Greek poet and statesman Solon (630 BC - 558 BC) “ ‘That men, however fortune may smile upon them, could never be said to be happy till they had been seen to pass over the last day of their lives,’ by reason of the uncertainty and mutability of human things, which, upon very light and trivial occasions, are subject to be totally changed into a quite contrary condition”. After some discussion, Montaigne concludes that what Solon wanted to say is that because of the precariousness of life “the very felicity of life itself, which depends upon the tranquillity and contentment of a well-descended spirit, and the resolution and assurance of a well-ordered soul, ought never to be attributed to any man till he has first been seen to play the last, and, doubtless, the hardest act of his part.” And that is “Wherefore, at this last, all the other actions of our life ought to be tried and sifted: ’tis the master-day, ’tis the day that is judge of all the rest, ‘’tis the day,’ says one of the ancients, ‘that must be judge of all my foregoing years’.”

When writing down these quotations, I saw that in the last one the Dutch translator of the Essays uses the word “happiness” (geluk) – in agreement with the 1595 French edition, which uses the word “bonheur” – whereas the English edition quoted speaks of “felicity”. Be this as it may, it doesn’t change what I was wondering already when I wrote my blogs on happiness but what I did not wrote down, namely: Do we really mean the same with “happy” when we say “I am happy now”, and when we say “looking backward I am happy” or rather “looking backward I am happy with it”? For instance, did Wittgenstein refer to the same thing when he wrote in his diary “There is no happiness for me; no joy ever” and when he muttered at the end of his life “Tell them I’ve had a wonderful life”? A few weeks ago I thought so, following Groeger, but now I think that what I wrote just after the quotes but what I ignored contains an important truth: “a wonderful life needs not also be a happy life”. It’s just the essay by Montaigne that defends the idea that whether we really were happy can only be judged at the end of our lives that made it clear to me that our happiness now and our feeling happy with our life as a whole are different things. For for the latter Montaigne uses also the word “reputation” and he speaks here of a “judgment” on a life. Although Montaigne talks of the lives of other people in the first place, I think that it is the same for Wittgenstein or for you or me: When I look back on my own life and say that I am happy with it, what in fact I am doing is judging my life, although it may be so, of course, that the judgment leads to a feeling of happiness in me who judges myself. But such a feeling and a judgment are basically two different things. Unlike the latter, a feeling is neither an opinion nor a kind of view. And it is just a feeling that I am referring to when I say “I am happy now” or “basically I feel happy (in the long run)”. This cannot be changed by a dramatic act at the end of my life (as Montaigne thinks), for such an act can change my reputation and the judgment on my life as a whole but not what I felt some time ago, even not for myself.

Quotations are from the online edition of the Essays English version) on

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/montaigne/michel/m76e/book1.18.html