Determination and Control

We are all manipulated by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest and searching engines like Google. Everybody knows or can know. Much has been said about it already and as a result these media etc. promise to better their lives. Maybe they’ll do, or maybe they only say that they’ll do, but do we really care about it? Perhaps we should think like Burrhus Skinner, who asked in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity why we should worry about being covertly controlled and manipulated if it makes us happy. Your first reaction may be that he is right and it is my first thought, too. However, on second thoughts, I don’t feel at ease with the idea of being manipulated, even if I don’t know it and even if I shall never know that it happens and shall not have the slightest suspicion that it happens. Why?

Actually there is nothing special about being limited by external causes and influences in what we do. You have broken a leg and cannot walk for a long time. You have even to stay in hospital at first. A bridge has collapsed and we must make a detour. There is a power failure and the fridge, the Internet and a lot more don’t work for hours. So, why shouldn’t we adapt to the manipulation by the social media just as we must in these cases? It sounds reasonable. Life is that way. Is it?

Take the case of the bridge, but the same could be said about the other cases. The bridge has been built according to the newest insights and has been well maintained, but it has been destroyed by an earthquake. It’s a mere natural disaster. We are sad that it happened, but it happened. But what if the bridge would have been blown up by terrorists? Then we are not sad but angry. Apparently there is a difference between natural limitations and human limitations. Even more, we may find the latter objectionable, while we’ll never use such a word for natural causes.

Once we see this, we are close to the solution of our problem. For “objectionable” has everything to do with objectives, so with purposes. We cannot find what nature does objectionable. Nature doesn’t have purposes but in nature everything just happens, and that’s it. The word “objectionable” can be applied only to human agents, namely to what they do and to the effects of what they do. As Robert Kane says in his book The Significance of Free Will: “Objectionable control is exercised by purposeful agents, not natural forces.” And, referring to Daniel Dennett, he continues: “For, while nature may determine us, nature (‘not being an agent’) does not control us.” (p.69). So, while both nature and the purposeful agent constraint us and limit us in what we can do, nature has no interests in doing so and doesn’t act intentionally. The purposeful agent, however, does have interests, like earning money in the case of the owners of the social media. In view of these interests the purposeful agent sets his aims and tries to manipulate and so constraint our behaviour intentionally. By doing so this agent impedes the wills of the persons who are his objects. That’s why we don’t simply say that the agent determines what we do but that he controls what we do. In this way he limits our freedom, even in case we don’t know he does. But why should we follow the will of the other? Freedom is “the power to be the ultimate source or origin of one’s own ends or purposes rather than have that source be in something other than you.” (id., p.70) In short, freedom is being yourself. That’s what you give up, if you allow yourself being controlled by social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and searching engines like Google, and so on. But maybe you are happy with it.

Source

Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; pp.67-71.

Playing the man

Playing the man or playing the ball?

Not so long ago the mayor of my town organised a meeting with the inhabitants because a serious incident had taken place here. Also some other authorities that were responsible for the incident were present. At the beginning of the meeting the rules were established. One rule was “Don’t say ‘you are stupid but it is stupid that ...’ ” Actually this rule referred to one of the most important fallacies in discussions: The argumentum ad hominem. Someone who uses it attacks his or her opponent as such and not what s/he says. In sports terms we say that you play the man instead of the ball, and – like in sports – in the meeting in my town the rule was set in order to keep the meeting decent and fair and especially in order to avoid verbal aggression. For a public meeting this is important, but it’s not the real reason that you must avoid the argumentum ad hominem. The real reason is that it is a fallacy and that an argument is only good or bad because of its content and not because it is uttered by a person with such and such qualities. Bullying a person does not disqualify the truth of his or her claims.

Playing-the-man arguments often go this way:

- “You say so because you are a socialist” (Ignoring that the person concerned presents figures that show that the measured proposed is bad for poor people; you should attack the figures, not the membership of the socialist party).

- He is not a Christian, so it is not surprising that he committed the murder (As if non-Christians or non-religious persons in general do not have morals).

- He looks like a tramp so he cannot be trusted (As if a suit and a black tie or a neat dress makes you more reliable; but alas, many people think so. In a discussion it can mean that you believe a dressed up person sooner rather than a “tramp”; or just the other way round, depending on your psychological make-up).

- “How can you think so, you are only an ordinary wo/man.”

The essence of the argumentum ad hominem is that we don’t judge a person on the arguments produced in the discussion but – actually or openly – on his or her character, morals, appearance, reputation or anything else that is the supposed reason behind the argument; so actually the person is judged on our prejudices. It can happen, of course, that someone produces a socialist argument, because s/he wants to follow the party line in order to make career within the party; or the tramp lies because it is the only way to survive; etc. But this can only be a sound argument if it has been proved to be the real reasons of the socialist, tramp etc. Otherwise it has nothing to do with the arguments produced.

A fallacy related to the argumentum ad hominem is “guilt by association”. For example, you make a certain claim and another person, who happens to be a crook, makes the same claim; so your claim must be false just because of that. Two weeks ago I discussed in my blog already a special example of this fallacy, the reductio ad Hitlerum, like that you are a vegetarian and Hitler was a vegetarian as well, so it is bad to be a vegetarian. Or another example of the “guilt by association”: John cannot be trusted because he has criminal friends (does just this makes him untrustworthy?). The logical inverse of the guilt by association exists as well: the honour by association fallacy. For instance, she must be a feminist, for she comes from Sweden (supposing, as I do, that feminism is a positive value). Another related fallacy is the tu quoque argument, or the you-also fallacy, but I suppose that now you are smart enough to find out what it involves. As such I hope that these blogs about fallacies have made you smarter and that I have drawn your attention to the way you can be tricked in discussions. And you’ll certainly be smarter after having read Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations.

False reasoning

Fallacies are flaws in reasoning that are not easily noticed, or anyway aren’t noticed at first sight. However, some are easier to discover than others. Some are even quite silly, so Aristotle, and some are even clear “to the man in the street”, especially those that play with the double meanings of words. Many jokes are like that, “e.g. ‘Where are you bound?’ ‘To the yard arm’; and ‘Which cow will calve afore?’ ‘Neither, but both behind’ ”. (182 b 15)

Here is a type of reasoning that seems to have been used often by Sophists (travelling teachers). It has been constructed by me:

1) Carl wrote a history of American capital

2) Washington (D.C.) is the American capital

3) So Carl wrote a history of Washington (D.C.)

Or one that Aristotle ascribes to the Sophists:

1) John has ten

2) John gives one to Pete

3) John no longer has ten, so he has nothing.

I admit that the last one is a bit difficult to understand, because it is based on a weird twist of the mind, but it seems that the Sophists often reasoned that way. Since many people fell into such traps or didn’t understand what was wrong with them, Aristotle decided to write his Sophistical Refutations.

As I see it, the book has two main themes. One theme is an analysis of fallacies. The other theme is how to debate and how to defend yourself against fallacies. The themes are mixed together in the book, though. I think that for a current reader the analysis of fallacies is more interesting than what Aristotle tells us about the technique of debating. The reason is that Aristotle supposes a type of discussion that is currently seldom performed. Aristotle supposes that there is a questioner (the Sophist) and someone who defends a thesis. The former holds then the opposite thesis and tries to refute the thesis upheld by the latter by asking all kinds of questions and producing all kinds of reasons why the defender is wrong. Of course, the defender tries to make clear why s/he is right. Sophists often used fallacies to win the debate. However, nowadays discussions are usually of another kind. They are often debates between two or more advocates of different points of views that are not necessarily the opposite of what the other participants in the debate say (political debates are a case in point). A participant tries to convince the other participant(s) that his or her views are the best. And if s/he cannot convince the other participant(s), s/he hopes at least to convince the public that her or his view is preferable. Discussions as supposed by Aristotle do occur but not so often, but if you are interested in debating techniques, anyhow, you should certainly read Aristotle’s treatise.

In the Sophistical Refutations Aristotle analyzes thirteen fallacies. I’ll not give a description of the fallacies, let alone an analysis, but the main flaws are double meanings, weak or incorrect conclusions and circular arguments. Above I gave already examples of the double meanings of words. Also questions can be confusing in this way. For example, a question like “Did you stop smoking every day?”, can mean to ask whether you stopped smoking, or whether you smoke now less than before, for example one cigarette every other day, or one once a week. An example of a false conclusion is: “Plato is different from Aristotle. Aristotle is a man. So Plato is not a man.” Maybe you’ll not fall into this trap, but one that often happens is the so-called “post hoc - propter hoc” fallacy: “If p is the case then q is the case. q is the case, so p is the case.” An example: If it has rained, the street is wet. Now the street is wet, so it has rained. Of course this need not be true, for it’s possible that a leaking tank lorry has just passed. This fallacy happens more often that you think, for instance in political discussions! The last main flaw I mentioned, the circular argument, is also called petitio principi or begging the question. A circular argument is often hidden in a long chain of reasoning, in which the conclusion is the same as the point of departure of the reasoning. This makes it difficult to give an example here. I know that it is weak to say so, but my excuse is that also Aristotle doesn’t give an example but simply says that the flaw often happens (see 181 a 15).

All this can give only an impression of Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations. The book is a rather detailed treatise of argumentative reasoning and the first one ever written. Aristotle was aware of this and thought that without a doubt the book would need improvement. Nevertheless, the book was used as a guide to argumentative reasoning till far in the 20th century. Can there be a better proof of the quality of the Sophistical Refutations?

Note on the sources of this blog

The numbers in the text refer to the standard system for referring to passages in the Sophistical Refutations. The quotes are from the online edition mentioned in my blog last week. For writing this blog I have used the introduction to the Dutch edition: Aristoteles, Over drogredenen. Translated and annotated by Pieter Sjoerd Haspers and Eric C.W. Krabbe. Historische Uitgeverij, Groningen; 2018.

Sound reasoning

Aristotle with the Dutch translation of 
De Sophisticis Elenchis, in English Sophistical Refutations

When Aristotle wrote his book on fallacies (De Sophisticis Elenchis, in English Sophistical Refutations) he will not have realized that it would last 1500 years before it would become a standard work of argumentation. This book, which belongs to his Organon (a collection of six methodological works), is the first systematical treatise on reasoning ever written. It analyzes a range of fallacies often used by people in their argumentations and it describes also how to perform a discussion. The book was especially directed against the Sophists. These were, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica tells me, “lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, most of whom traveled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return for fees.” Basically what the Sophists did was okay, but some – or too many – applied intentionally false arguments in order to win their debates and so to earn money. It made that the Sophists got a bad reputation. For Aristotle it was a reason to write his book.

After some time the Sophistical Refutations and most other works written by Aristotle became forgotten. At least this was so in Europe for in the Arab world they remained influential. Only from the 12th century on they became known again in Europe, especially thanks to the Arab philosopher Averroes and Jewish scholars in Andalusia. Also the Sophistical Refutations was rediscovered and it became even the standard work for argumentation till far in the twentieth century, although it didn’t remain without criticism. We saw already in my blog two weeks ago that Descartes was not satisfied with Aristotle’s argumentation theory, because it was only useful for arranging knowledge but not for acquiring new knowledge. The authoritative status of the Sophistical Refutations was only undermined when Charles Hamblin published in 1970 his book Fallacies. Since then it is still seen as an important book on sound reasoning, but it is recognized that there is more to say about argumentation and that Aristotle’s theory must be adapted and supplemented in view of later developments.

I just started reading Aristotle’s book, so I don’t know whether he treats the fallacy under another name, but one that Aristotle certainly doesn’t discuss is the Reductio ad Hitlerum, the “Reduction to Hitler”, a term coined by professor Leo Strauss in 1951. Sometimes the fallacy is also called the Argumentum ad Hitlerum (Argument to Hitler) or “Playing the Nazi-card”. It’s a version of the association fallacy, which says: A has property p and B has also has property p, so A and B are the same (at least in some relevant aspects). In the case of the Reductio ad Hitlerum the reasoning is that someone has a certain view and, since this view was also held by Hitler, this person is wrong. For instance, it’s not good to be a vegetarian, because Hitler was also a vegetarian.

Forty years later the American attorney and author Mike Godwin developed the Argumentum ad Hitlerum into what became known as Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1”. So, if an Internet discussion lasts long enough, sooner or later a statement by one of the participants will get the reply “Hitler (or the Nazis) said the same”. But, as my example just given made clear, a view hold by Hitler is not automatically wrong. Even so, such an argument can pollute a debate, which makes that some moderators of Internet discussions have decided to finish a thread, as soon as the Argumentum ad Hitlerum is put forward. Of course, someone can use the Hitler-argument with the intention to end a discussion, but often people use incorrect arguments like this one without knowing that they are fallacies. They sincerely belief that their factual fallacies are sound arguments. In view of the latter, although it is true that the time has come to improve and supplement Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations, even after more than 2300 years it still keeps its value.

You can find an Internet version of Sophistical Refutations on https://web.archive.org/web/20061004164921/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/a/aristotle/sophistical/

Entartete Kunst - Degenerate Art

“Entartete Kunst” or “degenerate art” was the name given by the Nazis in Germany to modern art that wasn’t according to their norms of what art should be. The term was especially in use during the years 1933-1945, when the Nazis were in power. Degenerate art was removed from state-owned museums. Generally it was banned in Germany, as it didn’t fit the Nazi idea of Germanhood, meaning that it allegedly was un-German, Jewish, Communist, and the like. “Degenerate” artists, so artists that made such art, were boycotted, forbidden to exhibit or sell such art, or sometimes even forbidden to produce it. Their art was often abstract. Also music could be degenerate, like “negro music”, as the Nazis called it, so jazz.

In 1937 some 5,000 works of degenerate art was confiscated from museums and art collections, including work by Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and many German painters. A selection of 639 works was exhibited in a special exhibition called “Degenerate Art”. The exhibition was shown in many towns in Germany. It’s intention was to horrify the visitors. Now that from then on artists who made degenerate art were seen as official national enemies, many fled abroad or went into “internal exile” by stopping to make the kind of art that had been forbidden.

It’s striking that one of the artists who was branded as degenerate was Emil Nolde. Nolde was an expressionist artist but he was also a committed member of the Nazi party. However, after a bitter ideological dispute, also expressionist art was seen as un-German, and in 1936 Nolde was ordered to stop his artistic activities. Among the 5,000 works confiscated in 1937 about 1,000 had been made by Nolde. The artist was upset for he didn’t understand what the problem was, but of course it was no help. After the Second World War Nolde became world-famous. He was known as an artist who had been classified as degenerate by the Nazis and whose work had been boycotted by them. That Nolde was a fanatical Nazi and an ardent anti-Semite even till 1945 had been more or less forgotten. After the war he did as if he had been persecuted by the Nazis. And so it happened that two of his paintings were on the wall of the office of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

A few weeks ago an exhibition dedicated to Emil Nolde has been opened in Berlin, titled Emil Nolde. A German legend. The artist during the Nazi regime. The makers of the exhibition had made a thorough inquiry into the life and political views of the artist and had disclosed the truth: That Nolde was rather a dedicated contributor to Nazism than a victim. The intention of the exhibition is to show this. It was a shock to many.

And Merkel? She decided to remove the two paintings by Nolde from her office and to replace them by two “innocent” works. I fully understand, and I certainly would have done the same. Nevertheless there is something problematical about doing so. The removed paintings are beautiful, at least in the eyes of the highest political authority of Germany – I assume – and of others. From an “objective” point of view they are outstanding works of art. That’s the artistic side. But politically? From that point of view the paintings were not allowed to be beautiful and outstanding in a sense, not by the Nazis and not by many people today, including Angela Merkel. However, there is a difference: The Nazis banned Nolde’s paintings because of their content; now they are banned because the artist himself is considered “degenerate”, so to speak. But whatever the reason may be, apparently art is always political, anyhow. Even “innocent” art fundamentally is, for society changes and what is “innocent” today may be “unacceptable” tomorrow, both because of what or how a work of art represents and because of the ideas the artist stands for. Does innocent art really exist? I am afraid it doesn’t.

Actually, the matter is more complicated than only the political aspect just discussed. A work of art represents something, namely what you see in it (or what you think to see). By doing so, it excludes what the work of art doesn’t present, incidentally or on purpose. Take by way of example my photos. Most of them don’t have an explicit political content. However, the image in the photo takes the place of everything that is not in the image, not only because it has been incidentally left out – for I can’t capture the whole world in one shot – but also because I intentionally didn’t want to photograph it. This can happen – and usually happens – because what’s outside the image didn’t fit my feelings but also because I didn’t want to include in the picture what’s not in the image because I consider it ethically and/or politically not acceptable. Everything has a meaning, also when it hasn’t. Nobody is innocent and nothing is innocent. Which does not need to mean that everybody is also responsible, though.

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You can find my photos on https://www.flickr.com/photos/photographybytheway

Discourse on Method. Descartes

Descartes stressed that we must talk and write in a clear and distinct way. We have seen this in my blog last week. However, for him it was not only a manner how to say things but it was essential for his whole scientific approach. According to Descartes science in his time was an unsystematic gathering of facts. Moreover he was not satisfied with the syllogistic logic that had been developed by Aristotle and the logic of the scholastics, which were the accepted methods of learned thinking in those days. As such these were valuable methods, so Descartes, but they were only useful for arranging knowledge but not for acquiring new knowledge. New facts were fitted into the existing dogmatically accepted systems with the help of these systems of logic, but if this wasn’t possible, so the worse for the facts. Galileo’s problems with the roman-catholic church are a case in point. Descartes saw that the old ways led to stagnation in the development of science and that the old ways of thinking had become obsolete. Methodical thinking should have to replace the old dogmatism. For him “method” became the essence of investigating and discovering new knowledge. This made him the founder of modern science.

Trying to systematize the acquirement of knowledge, Descartes first asked what we know anyway, as an unquestionable starting point for knowledge, a so-called Archimedean point (named after the Greek scientist Archimedes, who was looking for a solid point in space in order to move the earth with a lever). This led him to his famous idea “I think so I exist”: The fact that I think shows that it is unquestionable that I exist. For Descartes this was the “first principle of philosophy”. But why is it so sure that I know this? According to Descartes this can be only so, because I see it in a clear way. By reasoning this way he got his main rule of thinking: “The things that we receive in a very clear and distinct way are all true”.

Descartes made this rule the foundation of his method. Essentially this method says that in order to get knowledge, we must either reduce existing or newly acquired insights or sense impressions to clear and distinct views or deduce them in a clear and distinct manner from other clear and distinct views. Although observations are important for getting new insights, they are not central. Most important are reason and doubt as means to determine whether the acquired knowledge is really so certain as assumed.

For Descartes “clear” and “distinct” are not vague concepts. He gives them a well defined meaning. He tells us also how to get clear and distinct knowledge and how to order our data. His method consists of two phases: First comes analysis and then synthesis. Here I cannot specify them in detail, but by analysis a phenomenon is unravelled into its most elementary parts, until one knows each element in detail and knows what makes it different from the other elements and what the relations with the other elements are. If possible one must try to grasp not more elements in one thinking than one can handle. In the phase of synthesis a theory is built up. It’s just the opposite of analysis. All the elements are fitted together into a deductive system in such a manner that one gets insight into the way the elements cohere. In a sense, the situation that existed before the analysis begun is restored but there is an important difference: Before the analysis took place the coherence of the elements was confused, after the synthesis it has become visible how the elements cohere. In short (my words) confusion has been transformed into knowledge.

Descartes’s systematization of knowledge acquirement led to a methodological turn in science. No longer the fixed and usually traditional ideas became the measure of new knowledge, but the question whether we got our knowledge in the right way. Knowledge was no longer true because it fitted our till then justified ideas but because we could justify the way we got it. Doubt became central to science but not the sceptic doubt that says that in the end there is no truth, but the methodological doubt that asks whether the method used is right; the doubt that says “better is not good enough”. This kind of doubt doesn’t bring the idea of truth into discredit but it brings truth nearer, step by step just by questioning it.

Sources

Descartes’s ideas on method can be found in his Discourse on Method and his Principles of Philosophy. 

Rules for the mind

If I say “Descartes”, many people will say “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think so I am”, and that’s it. Even if they can explain what was meant with this sentence and why it was important, I think that most who are not philosophers, and maybe also many who are, don’t know that Descartes contributed to many different fields of philosophy and science. So, if it wouldn’t have been William Harvey who discovered the blood circulation, it might have been Descartes who had already made much progress in his research. He invented also analytic geometry.

Some of Descartes’s ideas are weird from the current point of view, and I assume that also already in his days they were. For instance, he thought that animals have no feelings, since they have no souls. They are not different from machines. So if you give a dog a kick and it screams, this screaming is merely a sound and not an expression of pain. Therefore vivisection was not a problem for Descartes.

If you think that philosophy is obscure, maybe you have read Hegel and Kant, but you haven’t read Descartes. Descartes is one of the most clearly writing philosophers who ever lived. His maxim was: Everything can be said in a clear and distinct way, say in plain words that everybody can understand. Otherwise it’s nonsense. He didn’t use this only as a rule of thumb but he wrote even a book with methodological rules for clear and distinct philosophical and scientific reasoning: The Rules for the Direction of the Mind. It contains 21 rules with extensive explanations. It’s a pity that he didn’t finish the book, but nevertheless it is worth reading. His explanations are as interesting as the rules themselves are and they contain also a criticism on the way many people reason. The rules are not only useful for philosophers, scholars and scientists, but for everybody who is arguing. So keep these rules also in your mind when you listen to a politician. (If enough British had done so, maybe they would never have voted for the Brexit). Take for example this quote from the explanation to Rule IX:

“It is a common human weakness to consider most beautiful what is difficult. Most people think that they know nothing when they see a very transparent and simple cause of something. Yet they admire grandiloquent and far-fetched argumentations by philosophers, even though they are usually based on foundations that nobody ever fully has understood. ... [I want to stress that] knowledge, how hidden it is, must not be deduced from important and obscure things but only from what is easy and general.”

Descartes is right, but how often does what is difficult seems more important to us than what is simple? And not only words can mislead us, but also the pose of the speaker often does, as Descartes explains in his comment on Rule XII:

“The self-confident allow themselves to put forward their conjectures as true proves; in cases they absolutely know nothing about they think to see obscure truths, as through a fog. They are also not afraid to present them and to connect their concepts then with certain terms. With the help of these terms they are in the habit to talk and to reason about many things that in fact neither they nor their listeners understand.” The modest, so Descartes continues, keep silent and let finding the truth to others, because they think that they themselves are not competent enough and they belief what the self-confident say.

Have I to add anything? Isn’t this what we everywhere see around us? But even if we have the right attitude and are honest and open, language can block mutual understanding and prevent to express what we mean. For for one a word means this and for another that and as Descartes says in his explanation to Rule XIII (a bit adapted and generalized by me) : “Questions about words happen so often that almost all controversies between philosophers would disappear, if they always agreed about the meaning of the words.”

There is a joke that says that there are two philosophical main laws:

The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.

The Second Law of Philosophy: They are both wrong.

Alas, often this seems true, for most philosophers didn’t read Descartes’s Rules and don’t use it as a guide. If they would, they would know that they “ought to give the whole of [their] attention to the most insignificant and most easily mastered facts, and remain a long time in contemplation of them until [they] are accustomed to behold the truth clearly and distinctly.” (Descartes’s Rule IX)

I don’t think so I am not?

I start with a joke:

René Descartes is in a tavern. He is drunk. The bartender cautions: “Monsieur, I think that you have had enough.” Descartes slurs back “I think not” and vanishes.

I hope that you understood and that you laughed, but now I become serious, for the reasoning implied is fallacious: Descartes’s famous statement “I think so I exist” may be true, but it does not imply that I don’t exist if I don’t think. And it is not so that if I exist this implies that I think. For would it be so then that I don’t exist when I am sleeping? And how about a tree? But okay, as for the latter you can object that a tree hasn’t an “I” (which is something to discuss about in another blog).

In philosophy we call this fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc, literally “after this so because of this”. In this case the fallacy is the reasoning that I exist because I think. However, thinking is only an aspect of human existence, but the cause of my existence must be found elsewhere.

I don’t know whether Descartes would have laughed about the joke, but actually he worried about the question whether he would exist, if he didn’t think. Although the “I think so I exist” doesn’t imply that I exist because I think, nevertheless it is quite well possible that I don’t exist if I don’t think. Descartes worded his worry this way in the “Second Meditation” of his Meditations on First Philosophy:

“I am; I exist – this is certain. But for how long? For as long as I am thinking; for perhaps it could also come to pass that if I were to cease all thinking I would then utterly cease to exist. At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true.”

On purpose I have quoted Descartes from Sorenson’s A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities where he gives an explanation of this passage. For immediately after it Sorenson continues:

“Compare Descartes’s principle connecting thinking and human existence with another Cartesian principle connecting being extended in three dimensions with physical existence: Necessarily if a body exists, it is extended in space. If a physical thing ceases to be extended, then it ceases to exist. Similarly, if a mind exists, it thinks. And if the mind ceases to think, then it ceases to exist.”

So, after all must we conclude that if we don’t think then we don’t exist, albeit on other grounds than the false post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning? Not so, for here we have the fallacy of false analogy. Above I raised the question whether one still exists if one sleeps (and so doesn’t think). The answer is, of course, “yes”. Why? Because thinking is not a property that a mind simply has and manifests itself but it is a disposition: a property an object has even if this property is not active at a certain moment. This makes thinking different from the property “being extended”, which points to the way an object appears (in this case by having the three dimensions width, height and depth). If the disposition “thinking” isn’t active, it still doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist as a disposition. A glass remains brittle, even if it will never fall from the table on the floor and break, although it is always possible that this will happen. But if we can’t pour water in it, because it is not extended, it is not a glass. It is similarly with thinking. Even if a mind doesn’t think, the property “thinking” is still there and the mind can start to think when it needs to, for example when one wakes up in the morning. When a man is absent-minded, it doesn’t imply that s/he hasn’t a brain.

Sources

- Roy Sorensen, A Cabinet of Philosophical Curiosities. A Collection of Puzzles, Oddities, Riddles and Dilemmas. London: Profile Books, 2017. The quotes are from pp. 42-43.

- There are several versions of the joke on the Internet. You can find it also in Sorensen’s book on p. 42.

Terrorism

Oslo: Flowers for the victims of a terrorist attack in Norway on 22 July 2011

In his study of evil, Roy F. Baumeister tells the story of a North Korean young woman who had been chosen to become a special agent for the foreign intelligence service and then to carry out a bomb attack on a South Korean airplane. She was “explained that the airplane’s destruction would create a broad sense of chaos and uncertainty that would prevent South Korea from hosting the upcoming 1988 Olympic Games as scheduled. This in turn would lead to the reunification of Korea ...”. Later she wrote that she didn’t understand how this could happen, but she saw herself as politically naïve and she wanted to be a good patriot. Also any feeling of moral responsibility that more than hundred people would die did not come to her mind. The bomb attack was purely a technical operation, she thought. The woman successfully performed the action, but, as we know, the 1988 Olympic Games took place as planned and Korea was never reunified. The woman was captured, sentenced to death but pardoned by the South Korean government. Gradually she also begun “to feel terrible guilt much of the time” because of the innocent passengers killed, and she got nightmares.

In this case, so Baumeister, we see three characteristics typical of a terrorist act. First, the actor is not troubled by guilty thoughts that many innocent people will be killed, although such thoughts often come after the deed. Second, vicious terrorism is motivated by the highest ideals and principles, not by personal hate towards the victims or by personal gain. Third, the action doesn’t lead to the desired goal; neither a possibly short-term goal is reached, nor a long-term goal is. Even more, I want to add: What the goal is, is often vague and unrealistic. It is usually only stated afterwards, so that there is nothing to negotiate about in order to prevent it. An act of terrorism happens. (pp. 27-30)

Terrorism is a rather new phenomenon that could only develop since the end of the 18th century. There are at least two reasons for this. The media must have been developed to such an extent that the news about a terrorist act can get around on a rather wide scale and relatively fast. Otherwise it has no sense to perform it. Moreover, a human life must be seen as valuable. Before the Enlightenment life expectancy was short; not much more than 30 years. People could be sentenced to death for all kinds of crimes, including petty theft. Many people were murdered. This gradually changed since the end of the 18th century.

Although the motives for a terrorist act can be complicated and, for instance, can involve also revenge and punishment, actually such an act is a deed meant to create an atmosphere of fear: the intention is that people fear that they might be killed and that because of this they take all kinds of preventive measures that disturb their lives, if not society as a whole; or that then people or governments give in to the demands of the terrorist or his/her group. Therefore terrorism needs not be aimed directly at persons but it can also exist in, for example, poisoning water supplies. However, as said, a problem is that the demands are often vague, if the possible victim would be prepared to negotiate at all (which is often not the case). In the past revenge or punishment of a certain person was more important than it is today. Usually victims were carefully chosen and it was not the intention to kill people arbitrarily or to kill innocent passers-by. The murder of archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, which led to the outbreak of the First World War, is a case in point. Also the Red Army Faction in Germany in the 1970s and later chose its victims precisely. Today terrorists just want to kill innocent victims – as many people as possible –, although the killing of the editorial board of Charly Hebdo in Paris in 2015 shows that sometimes the victims still are purposefully chosen.

This shows another characteristic of terrorism: Man is seen as a mere instrument, as Camus makes us clear. This does not conflict with the point that for terrorism being possible man must be valuable. Just because people are valuable in the view of others, terrorists see them as instruments to draw attention to their causes. For the terrorist the ideal is higher than man, which makes man instrumental. That’s also why ultimately the terrorist is prepared to kill him or herself in the act, or that, in case of state terrorism, the people may be oppressed, for their oppression is seen as a step on the road to the ideal state. As Camus quotes Nechayev, a Russian communist revolutionary and nihilist from the 19th century: “It’s not about justice but about our duty to eliminate everything that can harm our cause.” Everything is allowed.

And this is what we see in all kinds of terrorist acts today, whether performed by representatives of organised groups or by lone wolves. Locked up in their brains they see only abstract ideals and instruments but no people, like in the recent terrorist acts in Churchland, New Zealand, or in Utrecht, here in the Netherlands. In fact, man is absent in the ideals of the terrorist. Terrorists only care for ... yes, for what?

Sources

- Baumeister, Roy F., Evil. Inside human violence and cruelty. New York: Henry Holt and Cy, 1999.

- Camus, Albert, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt. New York: Vintage Books, 1956.

Are beliefs brain states?

In 1998 Andy Clark and David Chalmers published their article “The Extended Mind” in which they defended the view that the mind is not only in the brain, but also in the world around. This so-called extended mind thesis was the start of a discussion that lasts until today. A more radical version of this view is the enactivist approach, which I discussed two weeks ago. An important advocate of this theory is Shaun Gallagher. Although the actual discussion started only after Clark and Chalmers had presented their paper, they had forerunners. One of them was Lynne Rudder Baker. She called her account “practical realism” and she gave a comprehensive explanation of her view in her book Explaining Attitudes.

Baker’s practical realism is an attack on the – then – standard view that states that someone’s beliefs are literally somewhere in the brain. How this can be is explained by different theories in different ways, but, so Baker, “[w]hat Standard View theories have in common is the thesis that each instance of each belief is identical with, or is constituted by, an instance of a particular brain state.” In short: “Beliefs are brain states” (p. 12). Although without a doubt, so Baker, it is true that “[h]aving certain neural states is, presumably, necessary for people to have beliefs ... it does not follow that for a person to have a particular belief there is a neural state that constitutes that belief.” “[A] belief is a global state of a whole person, not of any proper part of a person, such as the brain”. (pp. 153-4) So, “[h]orses win races; legs have states. Having certain leg states is, presumably, necessary for horses to win races; but it doesn’t follow that for a horse to win a particular race, there is a leg state that constitutes the winning of the race.” (p. 154)

An attitude such as a belief, so Baker continues, can be compared with a state of financial health or a state of physical fitness. To take the first example, only in marginal cases your financial health has to do with the state of your bank account. It’s a relational concept: If the amount on your bank account is above a certain minimum, your financial state is more a matter of your pattern of spending, your financial wishes and the state of the economy (inflation, national income) than the sum of money you possess. In the same manner, a belief is not to be identified with any particular internal state of the believer. (ibid.) In enactivist terms, having a belief supposes not only a brain, but also a body and a world in which the brain and body exist. Seen this way, Baker has paved the way for undermining the “standard view”.

Nevertheless, one case discussed by her seems not to agree with the extended mind thesis and the enactivist approach. Peter asks Paul for Mary’s telephone number. Paul consults a directory, as always, and produces the correct number: 06-54321. Since Paul always has to consult a directory, “[i]ntuitively”, so Baker, Paul does not have the belief that Mary’s number is [06-54321] but only a belief how to find the number” (p. 161) and she explains that this is in keeping with practical realism. However, does the fact that Paul never remembers Mary’s telephone number makes that he does not have the belief that it is 06-54321 but only the belief how to get it? Let me take the main example from Clark’s and Chalmers’ article. Otto suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. Therefore he carries always a notebook with him and every time he learns some new information, he writes it down. When he needs some old information, he looks it up. The notebook contains also Mary’s telephone number, so when Peter asks for it, Otto looks in his notebook and says “06-54321”. However, Fred knows Mary’s number by heart, so when Peter asks Fred for Mary’s telephone number, Fred produces it by heart without any hesitation and faultless. This made Clark and Chalmers conclude, that there is no fundamental difference between what Otto does and what Fred does, but there is only the practical difference that Otto consults the extended part of his brain, and that Fred consults the internal part of his brain: In both cases we can say that the telephone number is in the brain. But if this is true, and if we apply this reasoning to Baker’s example of Peter and Paul, we can say that Paul has not only the belief how to find Mary’s telephone number but also the belief that her number is 06-54321, just as Fred has this belief. This is this fully in line with Baker’s view that a belief is not simply a state of the brain but that it is a global state of a whole person related to the world around and especially to that part of the world that is within his or her reach. So, if we correct Baker’s view this way, it is only one step more to a fully developed theory that the mind is extended if not enactivist and this makes that Baker is a forerunner of these views.

Sources

- Andy Clark and David Chalmers,  “The Extended Mind”, in Analysis, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1998), pp. 7-19. Ook op website http://www.alice.id.tue.nl/references/clark-chalmers-1998.pdf

- Lynne Rudder Baker, Explaining attitudes. A practical approach to the mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

The Constitution View. A homage to Lynne Rudder Baker

Lynne Rudder Baker

Who am I? Since Descartes asked this in his Meditations, it has been a leading question in philosophy and in these blogs as well. It has also been one of the leading questions in the philosophy of Lynne Rudder Baker. Her answer was that I am the thinking being that I am, so I am a human person. However, you can object that I am also a body, and in a sense we are body and mind at the same time. How is this possible and what then is the relation between my being a person and my being a body? Baker had a clear answer to these questions: the Constitution View. In short, it involves that, in her words, “a human person is constituted by a human body. But a human person is not identical to the body that constitutes her.” (p. 3) For most of my readers – as for me when I read about the constitution view for the first time – it will not be clear what constitution here means, so let me explain.

Actually the constitution view of what a human person is consists of two parts. First, we must know what makes a person as a person different from the body she is as well. Second, what makes a person a human person? To answer these questions, let’s start to look at Michelangelo’s famous statue of David. Actually it is not more than a piece of marble. Following Baker, let me call this Piece. Now you’ll protest. For you this object is not simply a lump of stone but it is a work of art, representing the Jewish King David. However, so Baker, Piece and David are not identical. In a world without art, for instance in a dog world, Piece would exist as a piece of marble but not as David. In such a world Piece would exist but David wouldn’t. On the other hand, David couldn’t exist without Piece. If Michelangelo would have died after he had bought Piece but before he had made David, Piece would have existed but David hadn’t. But once David exists he has properties that Piece has not. David, so Baker, “could not exist without being a statue. So, David has a property ... that Piece lacks” (p. 30), and the other way round as well, I want to add. It’s David (the person we see in the marble) not Piece that represents the Jewish king. And it’s not David that has the property “stony” but Piece has. So David and Piece are not identical, but because David cannot exist without Piece, we say that Piece constitutes David. In the same way we must think the relationship between my body and me as a person. I cannot exist without my body, but my body and I are not identical: My body constitutes the person I am.

So far so good. But if a person is not identical with her body, what then “distinguishes a person from the body that constitutes her”, Baker asks. (p. 59) For answering this question we must return to the beginning of this blog. We saw there that Baker assumed that I am a thinking being. This implies that I have an inner life. But it’s not my body as such that has an inner life, but I have. According to the constitution view, so Baker, something with an inner life is different from something that hasn’t. Having an inner life is characteristic of a person, but it is not just characteristic as such but in a certain way: it involves that a person can reflect on herself. A person can think “oneself as an individual facing a world, as a subject distinct from everything else.” (p. 60). In other words, a person has what philosophers call a first-person perspective. All this brings Baker to her definition of a human person: “[W]hat makes a human person a person is the capacity to have a first-person perspective. What makes a human person a human is being constituted by a human organism.” (p. 91)

I must leave it at this and I think that this abstract of the constitution view of identity will raise more questions than it answers, but be sure that Baker discusses many objections that you might raise against this view.

To my mind, the constitution view looks like the dual aspect theory view on man, which says that man can be considered in different ways: as a biological body or as a conscious and thinking mind, although in the end man is both together. It’s the view I adhere to. I think that LRB would not agree. Anyway, the constitution view is a well-founded and coherent theory. It helps us to fill in the idea of a person and to say what personal identity is. Much work by Baker tried to answer questions in this field and were important contributions to current discussions in the philosophy of mind. Therefore it’s a bit strange that I hardly paid attention to Baker in my writings, although I valued her work very much and although I have read much of it. That’s why by way of homage to her I have written this blog, for a few days ago I heard that Lynne Rudder Baker has died about a year ago, on 24 December 2017, 73 years old. She wrote five books and many articles and book chapters, not only on personal identity, but also in the field of action theory and ethics. Without a doubt her work will keep to rag the brains of other philosophers yet for a long time.

Source

The page numbers in the text refer to Lynne Rudder Baker, Persons and Bodies. A Constitution View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Do we think only with the brain?

Your mind is not only in your brain, but also in your body if not in the world around you or at least in some parts of it. I have sustained this view several times in my blogs. It is the main thesis of the so-called extended mind theory and also of the enactivist approach, which goes even a little bit farther. The first theory – defended for instance by Andy Clark and David Chalmers – leaves yet a rather important place for the brain as the centre where the mind processes come together, albeit so that according to this theory also much you know exists outside your brain, such as in your notebooks and your computer. The enactivist approach states that the brain has a rather decentralized function and that many cognitive processes take place outside the brain. This view is defended for instance by Shaun Gallagher. In short, the enactivist thesis says (p. 6; see “Source”) that “[c]ognition is not simply a brain event. It emerges from processes distributed across brain-body-environment.” What we see in this description of enactivism is that the brain is not the central processing unit that constitutes cognition (say “knowledge”, in order to keep it simple) but that it is only one such a unit, besides the body (and then especially understood as action, or intended behaviour) and the world around us, which comprises material objects but especially the people we interact with (significant groups and society in general). Now I could continue to give an abstract summary of the enactivist view, but instead I want to give a few examples in order to make the idea clear.

The first case that comes to my mind is not from Gallagher (whose view I want to discuss here) but it’s one discussed in an older blog (dated 20 July 2009): Holding a warm cup of coffee makes you have more positive attitudes towards a stranger than when you hold a cup of ice coffee. In other words, how we are going to act towards others – friendly, rejecting – is not only a decision taken by the brain but it is also “taken” by the temperature of the coffee we drink. This is in line with an example used by Gallagher (p. 152): A study by Danziger et al. showed that the favourable rulings by judges generally went down during the morning from about 65% to 0. After the lunch it returned abruptly to 65%. So, the fact that the judges gradually became hungry influenced their decisions! Actually it’s a phenomenon that everybody knows: Hunger affects your decisions and what you perceive. The hungrier you are, the more you see food in everything you see, and finally it forces your behaviour. It’s a phenomenon already noticed by William James, so Gallagher, who “noted that an apple appears larger and more inviting red when one is hungry than when one is satiated.” (pp. 151-2) Even the phase of your heart beat – and who is able to perceive the phase of his or her heart beat? – has an impact on what you feel, for “[w]hen the heart contracts in its systole phase, fearful stimuli are more easily recognized, and they tend to be more fearful than when presented during its diastole phase”, so Gallagher (p. 152, referring to an investigation by Garfinkel et al.). A phenomenon that many people know is the connection between the breathing and feeling excited; and that you can become more quiet by slowing down your breathing.

Yet a few other examples from Gallagher (pp. 152-5; for a part my interpretations). After a day of trekking in the mountains the next slope may look steeper than it really is, because you are hungry and tired. The next morning, when you are fresh again, it’s no problem to go up, not because the slope has become less steep, but because your affective state has changed. Intentionality can influence your perception as well. After a day of climbing and trekking you are very tired and you feel that it had been better to stop an hour ago. Or, same situation, you are sitting with your friends around a campfire at the end of the day and you feel satisfied how much you have done this day. Or – my example – after a day of trekking you may feel that the next slope is too steep, because you are tired and that’s better to pitch a camp. But what if you know that a bear is following you or that your love is waiting for you .... ?

My cases are a bit limited, but they exemplify that cognition is not simply a product of the brain. What we perceive and know is to a large extent also determined by our affects, our intentions, the state of the world, and the like. Despite challenges of the idea by some, which I’ll ignore here, I think what stands anyway is that “judgment and perhaps perceptual experience is informed by one’s present affective state” (p. 155). I would rather delete the word “perhaps”, for I think that the affective state does have an impact on perceptual experience, anyway. In more technical terms, we can speak of the “embodied-affective nature of perception” (p. 156), and I would like to add “and of cognition in general”. Cognition is not only in the brain but in the brain, body and natural and social environment together and in their relations. In order to know how we know it’s not enough to know how the brain functions, but we must understand this whole aggregate and its internal dynamic connections.

Source

The page numbers in the text refer to Shaun Gallagher, Enactivist Interventions. Rethinking the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Happiness as the stream of life

Money makes you happy by having it, not by trying to have it. We have seen this last week. However, what is happiness? Many authors have tried to answer this question, but for a basic understanding one falls back on Aristotle, as so often.

Following others, happiness is the highest good in life, so Aristotle. His reasoning is simple. We choose happiness as a goal only for itself and never for reaching another goal. It’s true that there are also other goals that are often set for itself, like honour, enjoyment or intellect, but even if we don’t choose them in order to become happy, we always assume that attaining these other goals goes together with being happy. Therefore we can say that happiness is the highest goal in life. However, saying so looks like a platitude, if we don’t define what happiness is. For otherwise we run the risk that we say, for instance, that I am not happy because I am depressed and I am depressed, because I don’t feel happy. Therefore we must define happiness that way that it can be taken independently of other feelings. Aristotle gives such a definition. Nonetheless, I’ll not quote it here. Instead I’ll give my interpretation of Aristotle’s approach of the idea of happiness, in order to avoid becoming entangled in a discussion what Aristotle actually means.

If we look at the example just given about the vicious relationship between being depressed and being happy, we see that this relationship is static: the state of being happy is related to another state such as being depressed in my case. It’s not the way Aristotle looks at the idea of happiness. Although he gives the impression that happiness can be seen as a state (especially when he discusses the question, whether or not we can judge whether a person was happy only after his or her death), in fact Aristotle’s approach is dynamic: For him happiness is in the activity of the soul that makes that this soul functions in an optimal way in view of its goals. It’s true that Aristotle adds yet the phrase “in a full human life”, and just this makes Aristotle’s dynamism again static in the end. But I think that I as a living person can ignore this phrase, since I cannot judge my whole life: At the moment that I judge, I have at least yet a while to go, and who knows what will happen yet that might completely reverse my judgment, as Montaigne says somewhere? The final judgment is up to others. I can judge only as I live right now and while I am still alive, giving my judgment from my own first person point of view. Seen that way, a person’s happiness is in his or her doing, in the acting, not in the achievements.

How then about the goals? Aren’t they important? Yes, as everybody knows they are. We set goals and once we have achieved them, we feel happy, even happier than before. But as everybody knows as well, soon this extra happiness will fade away. Happiness lasts three months as psychological investigations show. And then? Then we set new goals and we begin to focus on these new goals. And that’s the function of goals: they structure a person’s life. They make that a person’s life can stream, so to speak, and it’s just this streaming that makes us happy. How then about the money you have? Don’t keep it in your pocket but spend it, on experiences, for example. It will make you even happier than you are.

Source

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book I, 4-12

Will money make you happy?

Money doesn’t make happy. Everybody knows. Okay, when you have hardly any money, it can make you unhappy and then money can help, but at a certain level it doesn’t make happier anymore. A website that I came across when looking for inspiration for this theme gives ten reasons why:

1) Money gives instant gratification but once you are accustomed to it this fades away.

2) It doesn’t fix relationships.

3) It’s the root of all evil. Most problems are about money, some way

4) It can’t solve mental problems.

5) Money and friendship don’t mix, as 6) don’t money and family.

8) Things bought with money give only a feeling of happiness for a little while.

9) You’ll have never enough.

10) Money can’t bring peace.

(https://thriveglobal.com/stories/10-reasons-why-money-will-never-make-you-happy/)

I omitted reason 7, so actually nine reasons remain. At the end you’ll see why I did. Anyway, on the face of it these reasons seem true, and not only on the face of it, although it can be, for instance, that money is sometimes a precondition for peace or, another example, it can help you get a good psychiatrist when you have mental problems. Then the money itself doesn’t make you happier, but nevertheless because of your money you become happier.

Some years ago the Dutch psychologist Ap Dijksterhuis may have agreed with these points, but he wanted to sort out how the relationship between money and happiness really was and he begun to study it. Indeed, what he found was that wanting to have more money doesn’t make happy. This is not only so when you are rich but also when you are poor. Are you surprised that bankers belong to the unhappiest people in the world? For they have already much money and still want more. And who are the happiest people in the world when we look at the way they earn their income? Here they are: Florists; then hairdressers and beauticians; and then plumbers. They don’t earn heaps of money, but they help other people and receive a lot of thankyous.

However, you had bought a ticket in the national lottery and you win the jackpot. You feel so happy! But soon your feeling of happiness will be as before. Two years later your washing machine breaks down. Two years ago it would have been a big problem to have it repaired or to buy a new washer. But didn’t you win the jackpot? Now you don’t need to worry about the money and within a few days you have a new one. Even more, studies show that, after a few months, people who have won much money in a lottery are not happier than before but after two years they are. And so it is also with salary increases. Whether you are rich or poor, after you have received it, you are happier, also in the long run, albeit so that in poor people the feeling of happiness grows more than in rich people. Money can make you happy.

So there may be a relationship between your individual income and your feeling of happiness. Even more, studies have shown that on the average people who have more money are happier than those with less money. Note that I say “on the average”, for as we have seen, bankers, who strive to have more money and usually have very much money, are rather unhappy. Now it is so that you find this relationship between money and happiness not only on an individual level but also on an international level. Which are the happiest countries? In order (in 2018) they are Finland, Norway and Denmark. My country, the Netherlands, is sixth. These countries belong to the richest countries in the world. And the unhappiest countries? These are Burundi, the Central African Republic and South Sudan, countries with the lowest national incomes. Also on this level it is so that there is a clear positive relationship between the wealth of a country and the general happiness of its population: A high national income makes a happy nation. Nevertheless there are exceptions, like the USA. This country is less happy than you would expect in view of its national income. Why? Well, on the average the Americans are rich, but the income is badly divided: There are a few very, very rich people, and many people are below average: Seeing big differences in welfare around you makes you feel unhappy.

Much more can be said about the relationship between money and happiness, but let me return to point 7) that I left out from the list why money doesn’t make happy. It says that studies show that money doesn’t make happy. Older studies said so, indeed, but more recent research makes clear that these studies are too simple and that the relationship between money and happiness must be differentiated. As we saw above, wanting to have more money doesn’t make happy. But if you have money and if your country has, you can better care for your health (you can pay or get better doctors); you feel less uncertain and safer; it gives you more respect; it gives you more autonomy; etc. All these things make you happier and all these things can be better realized if you have money. So, the upshot is: Trying to get money does not make you happy, but having money does. And the more money you have, the happier you are, even if you are already very rich. Your problem then is getting money without wanting to get it.

To end this blog, I want to make one person happy: Ap Dijksterhuis. Most information and conclusions in this blog are from his book Maakt geld gelukkig? [“Does Money Make Happy?”] (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2018). Buy this book and it will make him happy, for he’ll earn an unexpected extra income.

Selfies in the age of selfies

Montaigne’s Essays were the start of a new age: the Age of Man. We could also call it the Age of the Self. This age appears to continue till today. Look around: Nearly everybody today makes photographic self-portraits or “selfies” as we call them, and many people share them in Facebook, Instagram and other social media. Isn’t this symbolic for the era we live in? One thing that strikes me is that many people do not upload selfies showing themselves in different activities and situations but that their selfies are almost all the same: taken from almost the same position with almost the same facial expression. Why? Do these people love to have themselves seen so much that they don’t have the imagination to show at least different pictures of themselves? A kind of narcissism? The Age of the Self.

One can say – and with right, I think – that it is not Montaigne who is the father of the modern selfie, but that its forerunners are to be found among painters and not among writers. Although making self-portraits may be as old as the art of painting, it’s not before the Early Renaissance that it begins to develop as a special genre. Jan van Eyck’s painting “Portrait of a Man in a Turban” (1433) is perhaps the earliest Renaissance self-portrait. Two centuries later Rembrandt made even more than hundred self-portraits, as a kind of modern selfie taker. However, I am not here to talk about the art of painting, but I want to talk about philosophy.

Montaigne was not the first who wrote about himself. Already thousand years before him Aurelius Augustine (354-430; bishop of Hippo) had written autobiographically. However, there is one important difference: Augustine actually wrote about God while Montaigne wrote really about himself. Therefore we can say that it was Montaigne, and not Augustine, who started a new era. We might also say that the Renaissance self-portraitists – say Jan van Eyck – started the new era, but the difference between what these painters did and what Montaigne did is that the self-portraitists showed the new era while Montaigne put it into words. In the end images need a lot of interpretation: Were these self-portraits really a way of showing oneself or were they something else? The meaning of the Essays is clear: Yes, it is me and only me whom you see here. I have no other intention, so Montaigne. Maybe after having read Montaigne’s “To the reader” you would expect a kind of autobiography or perhaps a systematic treatise of his thoughts, as a modern author would write it. It’s not what Montaigne did. The Essays discuss many different themes and often the coherence seems to be missing, even within the individual essays! Where is the self? Where is the I? One often tends to ask this question. That’s one reason why these essays are often so intriguing and force you to continue reading; not only the clear statements and clearly autobiographic passages do. But Montaigne was a master in connecting personal experiences with lessons of life. Already during his life the essays had become popular and they still are, four centuries later.

Many philosophers after Montaigne have written about themselves. Descartes, Pascal, Weil, Wittgenstein, Nussbaum are cases in point. Nevertheless for most of them writing autobiographically was not a way of writing about themselves but a means to write about something else. Descartes used autobiographic elements for laying the foundation of philosophy. Pascal, who also wrote about himself, even called Montaigne’s Essays foolish! But, like Augustine, Pascal actually wrote about God. Etc.

Till not so long ago only few people had the time and means to make their self-portraits, written or in pictures; to be a “selfist”, so to speak. The arrival of the computer and the Internet changed this. Via the Internet or via the printing-on-demand system everybody can publish about him or herself. By the development of digital cameras everybody can take and publish selfies. Especially the latter has become popular. Just a click and you have a picture of yourself. Just a few clicks more and everybody can see it. Even more, today the slogan seems to be: Be yourself, take a selfie, so be a selfist. And so, in this age of individualism and ego-expressivism, the most of us do. For in an era in which appearance has become so important, you have no choice (or so you think). And isn’t it so that your picture is who you are? So show it! But as said in my last blog, each person – how honest s/he may be – always gives a self-subjective description and leaves things out that s/he considers not really important; that s/he feels ashamed of. And so it is with selfies. Selfies are selected (we upload only those we like); selfies are edited in order to improve our appearance; etc. But when everybody has become a selfist, what do we see then? Can we still see the individual? Can we still see the separate trees or do we see only the wood? Or do we now just belong to a category and is the individual self no longer important, as it was since the Renaissance, since Montaigne? If so, how contradictory it seems, but then the selfie stands for the end of an era.

I should upload a selfie to this blog, but instead I’ll put here a shadow of myself.