The procrastinator

At the end of my last blog, I told you that there are several types of procrastinators, without saying much about these types. Moreover, I didn’t tell you how to stop procrastination, but I referred you to the internet. Maybe, you doesn’t find this very satisfactory, and with right. So let me write here a little bit more about these themes.
Piers Steel mentions in his The procrastination equation three main factors that have a big impact on your motivation to perform a task or to pursue a goal: Expectancy, Value and Impulsiveness. Accordingly, he discerns three main types of procrastinators. However, how do you know which type of procrastinator you are, if you are? To this end, Steel developed two procrastination tests. The first one tells you to what extent you are a procrastinator compared to others. With the help of the second test, you can find your type. The tests are too long for this blog, but you find them resp. in chapter one and chapter two of the book. In case the first test shows that you are not a procrastinator, it is still useful to do the second test, too, for nobody is completely free from procrastination.
Steel gives his types the names of persons, but let me call them Type E (from Expectancy), Type V (from Value) and type I (from Impulsiveness). If you are a type E procrastinator, you tend to postpone tasks that actually needed to be done now, because you think that you cannot do them or that they’ll not give you the result to be expected. Maybe you find them too difficult for you, or you have done them in the past without much result. Steel mentions the case of a sales person in a call centre who has so often received a “no” when trying to sell his products that he is going to spend more time on Facebook and internet games than to give it another try. “Procrastinators of this type are typically less confident, especially about the tasks they are putting off”, so Steel.
However, maybe you are not the type that quickly gives up as such what you have planned to do, but you tend to postpone tasks that have not much value for you, even if they are important. If so, you are a type V procrastinator. Steel mentions here things like starting on your taxes or cleaning out your attic. This looks obvious, but not doing such tasks may have nasty consequences. You can be fined, if you don’t send in your tax form in time.
Maybe the most common type is the type I procrastinator. This type of procrastinator “value[s] rewards that can be realised soon far more highly than rewards that require … to wait”. Such a procrastinator is impulsive. “People who act without thinking, who are unable to keep their feelings under control, who act on impulse, are also people who procrastinate”, so Steel. Playing games or continuously checking your Facebook; searching for all kinds of odd things or videos on the internet; going out when a friend asks you, while you need to study; these are only a few examples of this type of procrastination. A type I procrastinator tends to think: The deadline of what I must do is still far away. With this in mind, this type gives in too fast to immediate impulses. The result is that s/he starts too late on the tasks to be done, with the possible effect, for instance, that they are not well done, or that deadlines are exceeded.
The types just described need not be pure. Most procrastinators are a bit of this and a bit of that. But often one type prevails, especially type I.
Once you know this, the next question is how to stop your procrastination. A little bit procrastinating need not be a problem and can be relaxing and can be fun. But many people procrastinate too much with all negative effects it can have. Steel gives many useful tips what you can do about it, but it is difficult to summarize them in a few lines or main rules. So I surfed a bit on the internet and found here on verywellmind.com a list of measures and tips that are a good summary of Steel’s tips and suggestions. As such it is a good website for you, if you want to know more about procrastination. Here is the list of “procrastination exercises” found there (copied from the website; the layout has been adapted):

Make a to-do list: To help keep you on track, consider placing a due date next to each item.
Take baby steps: Break down the items on your list into small, manageable steps so that your tasks don’t seem so overwhelming.
Recognize the warning signs: Pay attention to any thoughts of procrastination and do your best to resist the urge. If you begin to think about procrastinating, force yourself to spend a few minutes working on your task.
Eliminate distraction: Ask yourself what pulls your attention away the most—whether it’s Instagram, Facebook updates, or the local news—and turn off those sources of distraction.
Pat yourself on the back: When you finish an item on your to-do list on time, congratulate yourself and reward yourself by indulging in something you find fun.

If you want to know more about procrastination and how to stop it, and you find Steel’s book too long to read, search then with the keyword “procrastination” on the internet and you’ll find many useful webpages. Here is my search. And maybe reading my blog was a first step to make an end to your procrastination, if it is a problem for you.

 

Random quote
When people are compared to vermin, you know how things stand.

Ian Buruma (1951-)

Procrastination

Thirteen years ago Piers Steel published The procrastination equation, but it was only three months ago that I bought it. A clear case of procrastination? No, for only recently I heard about the book and then I bought it soon, for I thought that procrastination would be a good subject for a blog. However, it took me two months before I started to read it. Is this then a clear case of procrastination? Again the answer is no: I have always a couple of books, often more than ten, waiting to be read, and my rule is to read them more or less in the order I bought them. You know, once a book stood there fourteen years in the waiting row, and that must not happen again. Therefore I made this rule. But there are exceptions and sometimes a book gets priority, like Steel’s book. So this case is rather one of jumping the queue than a case of procrastination.
What then is procrastination? Procrastination is postponing tasks that should be done or that you like to be done by doing instead things that are less important or less urgent, or by letting distract yourself, from what you should do. You are not procrastinating when you have good reasons for postponing what you had to do or wanted to do. If you postpone writing an article, because you received an e-mail that a book you need for it will arrive later this week, this makes sense. It may save you the need to make corrections, in case the book contains important stuff. When you skip your daily run, because the rain is pouring down, it’s also okay, if you seldom cancel a workout. But when you stay at home, because you first want to check your Facebook and then it has become too dark to go out, you are procrastinating, for you could also have done it after your run.
Why do we procrastinate? In chapter two Steel mentions three main factors, based on an analysis of hundreds of cases of procrastination. They are expectancy, value and time. These factors constitute your motivation to do something (or not). Expectancy is your view whether or not you can bring your planned task to a good end or whether or not you can achieve your goal. Value means whether or not you find your task important or valuable. High scores on both – you think you can do your task and reach your goal and it is important for you – make that you’ll almost certainly do what you must or want to do. Low scores make that you tend to postpone it. So, according to Steel, using the Expected Utility Theory , we can say that

a) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

High scores on expectancy and value give high motivation and low scores give low motivation, as this formula shows.
However, that’s not all. Maybe you are very motivated, but why acting now? The deadline is yet far away, you think. And the later the task needs to be done and your goal needs to be reached, the more you are inclined to postpone working on them. Therefore formula a) must be divided by the “delay”: the time you have till the deadline. So we get:

b) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

                                Delay                 

Formula b says that your motivation will decrease the farther away in future your task or goal is. However, so Steel, there is yet a fourth factor that has a clear impact on motivation: We need also to take account of someone’s character (although Steel doesn’t use this word). Some persons want to get things now instead of later, if they can choose, even if it would be profitable to get them later. For other persons it’s not a problem to wait if it is worth it. People who tend to take what they get now instead of what they get later, tend to postpone working on goals yet far away. “Why not going out with my friends this evening; that exam will be only next month”, a student may think. But if she thinks too often so, in the end she may lack enough time for a good preparation. So the more you tend to be distracted by less important tasks or by (futile) pleasures now, the more you tend to postpone working on the more important task with a deadline still far away. Steel calls this character trait “impulsiveness”. Because it diminishes your motivation, it must be put in the denominator of the formula. Then we get:

b) Motivation = Expectancy x Value

                                Impulsiveness x Delay   

Now we are done and we have got, what Steel calls, the Procrastination Equation (see note below). In his book Steel describes also types of procrastinators. Some procrastinate because their expectancy in the task to do is usually low; others often give a low value to their tasks; again others are impulsive. And, of course, some people are a mixture of these types. Whatever type of procrastinator you are, if you are, the procrastination equation shows what the factors are you can work on in order to “deprocrastinate” yourself, and what the effects of these factors are. How to do that? Steels gives many tips or you can find them on the internet. 

Note
For technical reasons, also a constant +1 must be added in the denominator of the formula. See the Penguin edition of Steel’s book, p. 37, and see here. 

Random quote
Writing is the concrete activity that consists in constructing, on its own, blank space – the page – a text that has power over the exteriority from which it first has been isolated.

Michel de Certeau (1925-1986)

The death of Cicero

The assasination of Cicero
(1819 - Rijksmuseum, Netherlands - Public Domain)

In May last year, I published a blog about the question “Is philosophy dangerous?” I wrote there that it often happened that philosophers were banned or went voluntarily into exile, because they were prosecuted for their ideas. Some were even killed for their ideas. Later I realized that I forgot to mention Cicero, whose death was violent and cruel. I decided to leave it as it was and to ignore this omission. However, recently I was reminded again of Cicero’s death, when I read about it on my history day calendar. Although actually Cicero was not murdered for his philosophical ideas but for his political affiliations, I want to make up for my negligence now, for in the end Cicero was one of the most important Roman philosophers and he is still widely read.
Today Cicero is best known for his letters and for his treatise on rhetoric. And for his speeches, of course, and then we come to the heart of why he was murdered. But let me begin from the start.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (3 January 106 BC - 7 December 43 BC) was born in the town of Arpinum (now Arpino), halfway Naples and Rome, in a rich family. He always wanted to become a politician and was supported in this by his family and his family-in-law. However, he started his career as a lawyer and became very successful and well-known, also because of his rhetorical talents. He won a case against the corrupt governor Verres of Sicily, which brought him in the centre of politics. Moreover, Cicero was very ambitious. All this stimulated his career a lot. He became a member of the Senate and in 63 BC Cicero was the first Roman consul since 30 years who had not a consul among his ancestors (every year two consuls were elected). After his consulate, Cicero got involved in all kinds of political affairs and because he was also a big spender, he got into debt. The debt was paid by the Triumvirate – one of them was Julius Caesar – that tried to overthrow the existing political structure. Caesar asked Cicero to join the Triumvirate, but he refused, since it would undermine the Senate and the existing Republic. In 60 BC Cicero fled Rome, but he returned three years later, when the political situation had changed. Cicero became again a successful lawyer and returned to the Senate, but he became again involved in political and private affairs. After Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC – Cicero was present when it happened but wasn’t involved in it – a new Triumvirate – called the Second Triumvirate – tried to seize control of the state. This Triumvirate existed of Octavianus (the adopted son of Caesar and the later Emperor Augustus), Marcus Antonius and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. Again Cicero took the side of the Senate against the Triumvirate but also advised the Senate to support the still young Octavianus, thinking that the Senate could easily bend Octavianus to their will. He was wrong. One of the agreements between the members of the Triumvirate was that each of them could freely execute their enemies and the others would not interfere. Cicero became on Marcus Antonius’s kill list. He tried to flee but was caught by Antonius’s soldiers. For what happened now, I can best quote Plutarchus, who described Cicero’s death:

Cicero had fled to his villa in Astura, when he had heard that he would be executed, and from there he left again in a litter, accompanied by some servants, not knowing where to go. Not long after he had left home “his assassins came to his villa, Herennius a centurion, and Popillius a tribune, who had once been prosecuted for parricide and defended by Cicero; and they had helpers. After they had broken in the door, which they found closed, Cicero was not to be seen, and the inmates said they knew not where he was. Then, we are told, a youth who had been liberally educated by Cicero …, Philologus by name, told the tribune that the litter was being carried through the wooded and shady walks towards the sea. The tribune, accordingly, taking a few helpers with him, ran round towards the exit, but Herennius hastened on the run through the walks, and Cicero, perceiving him, ordered the servants to set the litter down where they were. Then he himself, clasping his chin with his left hand, as was his wont, looked steadfastly at his slayers, his head all squalid and unkempt, and his face wasted with anxiety, so that most of those that stood by covered their faces while Herennius was slaying him. For he stretched his neck forth from the litter and was slain, being then in his sixty-fourth year. Herennius cut off his head, by Antony's command, and his hands — the hands with which he wrote the Philippics. For Cicero himself entitled his speeches against Antony ‘Philippics,’ and to this day the documents are called Philippics.”
Cicero’s remains were brought to Rome. and there Antonius ordered his head and hands to be placed on the rostrum on the Forum in order to scare the Roman population.

That’s how one of the most outstanding philosophers in history came to his end, though not for what he said as a philosopher but for what did as a politician. But does it make any difference, if a death is so cruel? A human is a human, and cruel is cruel.

Source: Information about Cicero’s death can be found in the Wikipedia and on many other websites.

Random quote
Photography provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it. [It] is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb.

Susan Sontag (1933-2004) 

Born today

Maybe it would be interesting to devote my blogs this year to philosophers who have been born on the day that I publish my blogs. It would be an interesting theme, but I think that soon it would become boring, not only for you but also for me. Soon, you would think: Again a biography of a philosopher? And you would stop reading them. For me, soon writing a blog would no longer be challenging. If I wouldn’t know the philosopher I wanted to write about, writing a blog would be not more than copying some biographical stuff from the Wikipedia and other relevant websites. Nevertheless, I think it is a good idea to do so now and then and to draw your attention to known and less known thinkers. So, for this blog, I googled “philosopher 8 January” and this is what I found:
- Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694)
- Taixu (1890-1947)
- Sterling Power Lamprecht (1890-1973)
- Carl Gustav Hempel (1905-1997)
- Jean Hyppolite (1907-1968)
Taixu, a Chinese Buddhist philosopher, and Sterling Power Lamprecht, an American philosopher, were completely unknown to me, and I’ll ignore them here. As for, Pufendorf and Hyppolite, at least I knew their names. Pufendorf was an influential German political thinker and a precursor of the Enlightenment in Germany. The French philosopher Hyppolite was a follower of Hegel and he has also written about Marx. His works have been quite influential in his time. When teaching at the Sorbonne University, Louis Althusser, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault were among his students. However, most interesting for me is Hempel, who had a big influence on my philosophical thinking, but then just because I didn’t agree with him. When I studied sociology at the Utrecht University, Hempel had many followers. Discussing about philosophical, especially methodological, themes most of the time involved for me defending why I did not agree with him. One of the most important views of Hempel was that the basis of explanation of facts in all sciences was the so-called “covering law model”, while I thought (with others) and still think that often this model doesn’t work in the social sciences and the other human sciences. An alternative approach of social facts is the method of understanding (with a German word also called Verstehen). Influenced by the ideas of Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel and especially Georg Henrik von Wright, later, in my PhD thesis, I developed a methodological foundation of this method of understanding, which to my mind had insufficiently been done till then.
But I don’t want to write about myself but about Hempel. Although on many points I don’t agree with his ideas, they are interesting, anyway. Hempel (a German born philosopher who in 1939 moved to the USA and stayed there for the rest of his life) belonged in the early 1930s to the Berlin Circle of logical positivists, a group associated with the famous Vienna Circle, which held that empirical verification and mathematics were the basis of all sciences and that there was there no place for subjectivity (a view that could not be maintained, in the end). Statements that could not be verified in some way were considered meaningless. The most important contribution of Hempel to the debate how to verify facts was the covering law model, also called deductive-nomological model or Hempel-Oppenheim model (since Hempel developed the model in cooperation with Paul Oppenheim). Basically this model says that a given phenomenon is explained by deducing its description from a law or general statement like “All A are B” or “If A is the case then B happens” plus a description of the particular circumstances in which the phenomenon in question occurs. Although actually the covering law model was not new, just Hempel’s clear formulation and his idea that it applied to all sciences, including the social sciences and history, plus his fierce defence of the model made him famous.
Although formulating the covering law model is one of Hempel’s most important contributions to philosophy, it is certainly not his only contribution. Alone and with Oppenheim he wrote books and articles on mathematics and logic. In one of my blogs I paid already attention to his Raven Paradox. All this made that Hempel left a clear mark on the development of philosophy. Although today, many ideas developed by him and by other logical positivists are considered outdated, including the covering law model, nevertheless, the 8th of January is a date to remember in the history of philosophy. 

Random quote
There is not an instant of time when some living creature is not devoured by another. Above all these numerous animal species is placed man, whose destructive hands spare no living thing; he kills to eat; he kills for clothing, he kills for adornment, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills for instruction, he kills for amusement, he kills for the killing’s sake: a proud and terrible king, he needs everything, and nothing can withstand him.

Carlo Ginzburg (1939-)

Reconciliation

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was an English war poet, writer and soldier. During the First World War (1914-1918), he fought in the British army on the Western Front in Northern France against the Germans, who had invaded France. Sassoon wrote this poem in November 1918, around the time that the Armistice of 11 November ended this war. (click on the photo to single it out)

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

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

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

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

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

 

Tommy's Christmas

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

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

On truth

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

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

Henry Shue (1940-)

On bullshit

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

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

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

Harry G. Frankfurt (1929-2023)

Harry Frankfurt

Harry Frankfurt and his alternate possibilities

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

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

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

Random quote
For most people an irresistible pleasure is associated with obedience, credulity, and a quasi-loving submission to a master they admire.

Gabriel Tarde (1843-1904)

The moral foundations of behaviour

Nelson Mandela

Why do people behave morally? What is the origin of moral behaviour? What does morality actually involve? These are intriguing questions that philosophers and psychologists have been asking almost as long as they are asking questions. In these blogs, I have presented already some answers given by the American developmental and comparative psychologist Michael Tomasello. At least as interesting are the answers given by the American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind. What makes this book interesting is not only the moral theory presented there, but also that he uses his theory to explain why people have such different views in matters of politics and religion. However, the meaning of this moral theory goes far beyond politics and religion. In this blog I want to deal with Haidt’s schema of the foundations of morality, hoping that it will help you understand the political and religious (and other) discussions and differences better.
People often differ in their political and religious views. These differences are not only theoretical, but they make that people act in different ways and support different political parties and religious organisations. This made Haidt, together with others, realize that there is not one foundation of morality, although interpreted by different persons in different ways, but that morality has a modular structure. Morality basically consists of several modules, and each module is a moral challenge of what is important to realize. Different moral views involve then different combinations of such modules, and different ideas about which modules are most important. What then are these modules, or moral challenges, or, as Haidt usually says, foundations of morality? Here they are (from Haidt, pp. 178-179, 215):

1) The care/harm foundation. This makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need of others and makes us despise cruelty. It makes that we want to care for those who are suffering.
2) The fairness/cheating foundation. This makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good or bad partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us also sensitive to proportionality and makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.
3) The loyalty/betrayal foundation. This makes us sensitive to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us trust or reward such people, and it makes us want to hurt, ostracize or even kill those who betray us or our group.
4) The authority/subversion foundation. This makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are or are not behaving properly, given their position.
5) The sanctity/degradation foundation. This makes us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest in objects with extreme and irrational values – both positive and negative – which are important in binding people together. For example, in the religious field, think of “holy” objects and places; or think of the special meaning the national flag has for many people.
6) The liberty/oppression foundation. This makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and tyrants.

This, what Haidt calls, the Moral Foundations Theory describes the elements or modules that in different combinations and stressed in different ways form our moral, religious and political views. When political views clash, we often can understand why this happens by analysing them and then see, for instance, that for political view X modules 1) and 2) are most important, while for political view Y modules 4) and 5) gives the goals that are most important to pursue. Although knowing this may not prevent heavy clashes between advocates of these political views, it may help both sides understand each other better, which can be a first step to depolarization and a common solution of the problems in question. Generally today, we see a growing polarization in all Western countries, be it in the USA, Spain, the Netherlands, or in any country, whichever, and this leads to growing internal tensions and demonization of “the other”. Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory can be a useful instrument in helping to overcome this undesirable situation.

Random quote
Those who are accustomed to judge by feeling do not understand the process of reasoning, for they would understand at first sight, and are not used to seek for principles. And others, on the contrary, who are accustomed to reason from principles, do not at all understand matters of feeling, seeking principles, and being unable to see at a glance.

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Language and manipulation

Soviet propaganda in Moscow in 1983

Language has an influence on the person you are. We have seen it in my last week’s blog. However, the influence of language doesn’t occur only at the individual level but also on the group level and on the level of nations. No wonder that language is often used to manipulate groups if not whole peoples. Some political orators are very skilled in using language for manipulating the will of the people and make them do what they like. Often this has ruined the country. Here I want to discuss two ways of manipulating collectivities such as states with the help of language. Again, I have made use of Viorica Marian’s The Power of Language (esp. chapter 7).
In all countries of the world, words are used for influencing if not manipulating the way people think. I still remember that when the first people from Southern Europe, North Africa and Turkey arrived in the Netherlands in the 1960s, looking for work, they were called guest workers. Soon, however, the authorities thought that it was better to call them immigrants, a word that after a few years already was replaced by allochthones. Now, many years later immigrants officially are called newcomers. Sometimes special words are used for special categories like knowledge immigrants. These word switches were often used in order to avoid the pejorative meanings that the old words had got by replacing them by more neutral if not positive words. This is a good reason, of course, but it is manipulation, anyway.
The person who has best described how, especially in a negative way, language can be used for manipulation is George Orwell (see his 1984). Orwell called this substitution of old words by new words and old word meanings by new meanings “Newspeak”. For instance, take the word “free”. The word is not removed from the vocabulary, but in Newspeak it is used to communicate only the absence of something, for instance “The dog is free from lice”. That it once referred also to “politically free” or “intellectually free” is removed from the vocabulary. Because quite recently yet I wrote several blogs about this kind of manipulation (see for example here and here), I’ll give no further explanation.
Newspeak and language manipulation are often manners for oppressing people and making them obey the will of the leaders. A related phenomenon is discouraging the use of a certain language if not completely forbidding its use in order to promote and shape the national identity of a country. It happens both in dictatorships and in democracies. I don't think it goes too far to say that language is the soul of a people. Therefore, by suppressing the use of a certain minority language one can try to suppress the identity of the group of the speakers of this language. By forcing them to speak the national language, the authorities can try to make this minority accept the national identity, if not immediately then in the long run. As Marian says it (pp. 133-4): “[D]omination through language cuts to the heart of a nation and its people precisely because language and mind are so closely connected. To forbid not only certain words but entire languages is to forbid a certain way of thinking and of being in the world.” An example of the promotion of the majority language for the national unity and identity is the russification of the Soviet Union, when the country yet existed. In Turkey Kurdish, the language of the Kurdish people in the east of the country, had been forbidden till 1991 for use in public, since it was considered an expression of separatism and a provocation of the unity of Turkey. Especially since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (which occurred in fact already in 2014), in Ukraine Ukrainian is promoted as the national language at the cost of Russian, which had been the major language when the country was a part of the Soviet Union and yet long thereafter.
However, when authorities in a country try to suppress a minority language, they often forget that language suppression can lead to resistance and national division. This can be seen in many countries, for instance in Turkey but also in Spain, where the Catalan language had been forbidden from 1939 till 1975. Even books in Catalan were then destroyed. This ban on Catalan has been an important factor contributing to the wish of Catalonia to become independent of Spain. Also in Belgium we see that the restriction of the rights of the Dutch language speakers till the 1960s has led to an independence movement in Flanders (the Dutch speaking part of the country) and, in the end, to the federalization of the state as a provisional (?) solution.

Random quote
Of all the follies of the world, that which is most universally received is the solicitude of reputation and glory.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Person and language

I am Pinocchio

Following Viorica Marian’s The Power of Language. Multilingualism, Self and Society, in my blog last week I explained how knowing several languages has a positive influence on your perception of the world and on your health, and that it affects your emotions as well. However, the influence of knowing more than one language, and of language in general, goes much farther. It’s one of the main factors that make you the person who you are. Take memory. In the discussion on the question whether and to what extent you are the same person that you were many years ago, many philosophers ascribe a decisive role to memory: The idea is that, when as an adult you still remember what you did as a child, you as an adult are still the same person as the child whose deeds you remember (the so-called psychological continuity thesis). Here I don’t want to discuss the thesis as such (see my old blogs and see here), but in the present context it is important that what you remember is not independent of the language you used when you were acting in the past and of the language you use for recalling your past. The language you speak influences in at least three ways what you remember, so Marian (pp. 112 ff.):
1) Through language co-activation at the time of encoding
2) Through language dependent memory
3) Through the labels used in remembering.
1) This is about the same effect that appeared in the association test in my blog two weeks ago. After a certain event a monolingual English speaker will easily remember a fly and a flashlight if they happen together while a bilingual English-Spanish speaker may be more likely than a monolingual English speaker also remember the arrow (“flecha” in Spanish) passing by.
2) More interesting in view of the psychological continuity thesis is language dependent memory. This involves, so Marian (pp. 113-4), that “the likelihood of remembering something increases if you are using the same language that was used when the original event occurred… [Multilinguals] remember different things about their lives and recall information about the world differently in their native versus their second languages because the accessibility of those memories varies. What comes to the forefront changes across languages… In turn, the memories accessed influence how we think about ourselves and our lives and how we interact with others.” However, if this means that we remember different things about our youth dependent on the language we use and, maybe, that in the extreme case we must switch to the language we used when we were young in order to remember what we did then, this raises the intriguing question whether we are different persons dependent on the languages used. Even more, does this mean that when speaking a second language I am not identical with the child I was long ago, while I am still identical with this child if I speak my first language? Here it is not the place to try to answer this question, but I think that a further exploration of the issue would be an important contribution to the discussion on personal identity. It may throw a new light on the answers given so far.
3) A third factor that influences memory is how things are labelled in a language. For instance, Spanish uses two different words to refer to a corner, namely “rincón” (inside corner) and “esquina” (outside corner). Therefore, speakers of Spanish have better memory for where items are placed in a display that involves corners than speakers of English have. (Marian, pp. 115-6) Or, another example, in Dutch there is only one word for “male cousin” and “nephew”, namely “neef” (and one word for “female cousin and niece”: “nicht”). Think how much more difficult it is for a Dutch person to recall what kind of family relationship he or she has with a certain relative than for a Chinese who has already eight different words for “cousin”, depending on the relationship to him or her (on the maternal or paternal side; male or female; younger or older).
Many psychological investigations but also investigations in other fields ignore the languages the test persons speak. In addition, they ignore the question whether test persons are monolinguals or multilinguals and whether they are tested in their first languages or in a second language. As an example, I mentioned the discussion on the psychological identity thesis. Is this disregard of language right? I think that this blog makes clear that it is not. Humans, and certainly test persons, are not “language free”. What they feel, perceive, think, remember etc. depends to a great extent on the languages that they speak and that shaped them; on their mother tongues in the first place, but also on the other languages they learned. Language has a big impact on the person you are. One would almost say: Tell me which language you speak and I’ll say who you are. Or maybe even: Tell me which language you are speaking now and I’ll say who you are, at this moment.

Random quote
The fundamental question that one ought to be asking before launching a war is basically this: would a war be worth it morally? Is what is at stake in this conflict–the evil that war might prevent in this case–worth all the evil that this war can be expected to create?

Henry Shue (1940-)

Otto Dix, The War

 

Otto Dix (1891-1969), The War

In view of the present times, I have uploaded this triptych by Otto Dix instead of my regular weekly blog.
 

Open your world, improve your health: learn a language

When I had finished the Dutch gymnasium, 18 years old, I didn’t know that I had taken there important steps towards a healthy life and a life that made me more open-minded. Then a gymnasium was a school that stressed language learning. Besides subjects like physics, maths, history, etc., I got French, German and English plus the classical languages Latin and Greek. Of course, I knew that the gymnasium was a school that educated for the university and asked intellectually a lot of you. What I didn’t realize then was that knowing several languages has a big positive impact on your mind and your physical health, especially if you keep using at least some of the languages you learned. And so I did. Even more, I learned also some new languages and in the end I had learned twelve languages (see here –in Russian – or see this blog). Although I forgot some, for it’s quite an effort to keep up twelve languages (at least for me), nonetheless almost each day I still use five or six languages.
Knowing several languages makes you mentally and physically stronger and more open to the world compared with monolinguals. This is what the Moldavian-American psycholinguist Viorica Marian argues in her book The Power of Language. Multilingualism, Self and Society. The effect is even stronger, if you are fluent in the languages you have learned, especially when you have learned them already at an early age. The effect is also stronger the more languages you know. In order to understand how it works, you must know that languages are stored in the brain via networks. Such a brain network is like a street net that connects all sites that are relevant from a certain point of view and that need to be connected. Suppose you are a postman. Then you have the street net that connects the post office, where you collect the mail to be delivered plus the district with addresses where you deliver the mail. However, for buying your daily necessities, you have another street net. It contains the streets and shops (supermarket, bakery, greengrocer, etc.) where you buy what you need. If you work in a different district than where you work, these street nets will be different, but if you live in the district where you deliver the mail, the street nets overlap. Then, while delivering the mail, you can stop at the baker’s shop and buy the bread you need; etc. It works in the same way for languages. For each language there is a network in your brain; moreover, the networks for the separate languages always overlap. Of course, these networks are not completely equal; there are “streets” in one language network that do not belong to the network of another language. However, that the networks overlap has important consequences, for when one language network is used (for example, you are speaking English) and you are bilingual (for example you know Spanish as well), your other language (Spanish) network is activated at the same time. This becomes clear in association tests. Say you see a candle, candy, a lock, a fish and a match, and you are a monolingual English speaker. When you are asked to point at the candle, then “candy” is activated as well, because the words “candle” and “candy” are similar (this can be concluded from the eye movements you make). However, if you are also fluent in Spanish, the lock will also be activated, for “lock” in Spanish is “candado” (“fish” and “match” in Spanish are “pez” and “fósforo”). This simple test illustrates that for bilinguals the (possible) range of attention is wider than for monolinguals. This will be the more so, the more languages you know, for multilingualism helps you to be open for more alternatives, for instance when you must solve a problem.
Multilingualism delays also the occurrence of Alzheimer’s disease. It doesn’t stop the development of the disease, but it makes that the effects appear later. Also this is a result of developing a brain network for each language you learn, and it works about in the same manner as the widening of your attention span just described. If you have Alzheimer’s, your brain is gradually demolished, so also your language networks are. For monolinguals, as soon as the language network becomes damaged, the symptoms of the disease appear. If you are bilingual or multilingual, your language networks will be gradually destroyed as well, but although your language networks partially overlap, often it will possible to create diversions via another network, if one becomes defective. It is not that multilinguals cannot develop dementia, but the symptoms will be less severe for them than for monolinguals with the same level of anatomical decay. It is known that multilingualism will delay Alzheimer’s (and other types of dementia) with four to six years on average. Even more, in countries in which the mean number of languages spoken is low the incidence of Alzheimer’s is higher than in countries where it is high. The more languages spoken the lower the incidence of Alzheimer’s disease.
Just short yet a third example of the influence of language on personality: the influence of language on your emotions. It has been shown (and probably you have experienced it yourself if you are multilingual) that your emotions are stronger when expressed in your mother tongue rather than in another language you know. For instance, if you are a native English speaker and someone uses the s-word, the emotional effect on you is much stronger than when you hear a Dutchman saying the Dutch equivalent (which happens to begin also with a s). Generally it is so, that your view on the world and your feelings depend a bit on the language you use, if you are multilingual. As Marian says: “We become somewhat different versions of ourselves when we use one language versus another.” (p. 123). Every language you know extra has a positive impact on you. It widens your world and it improves your health. So, learn a language, and it will change you: For the better.

Random quote
The costs of losing are rarely mentioned by politicians promoting war, who tend to talk as if one is going to win.

Henry Shue (1940-)

Philosophical humour

Humour bij DALL.E when I asked it to make a picture
of putting Descartes before the horse

In these times that the world seems to explode, since two major wars and many small ones are going on, I should have a lot to comment on, to explain and to criticize. Nevertheless, maybe it is better, just now, to pay attention to the funny side of philosophy and to present again some instances of philosophical humour. In the end, philosophy is not only a serious affair! Philosophers are not inherently serious people. They are as human as humans are and they, too, make jokes: philosophical jokes; jokes in which they ridicule philosophical theories. It’s a way to criticize their opponents and themselves but also to make fun. Actually, philosophical jokes are minor philosophical theories in a fun package. Didn’t Wittgenstein say “A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”? But oops, I forget now what I wanted to do this time: giving you cases of philosophical humour instead of a philosophical theory of philosophy jokes; not more than that. So let me start. Enjoy it (and, it’s true, I can’t help to write some philosophical comments on the jokes here and there).

My most popular blog is one that I wrote already fifteen years ago. It criticizes Descartes’ idea “I think so I am” (see here). So let me start with a joke about Descartes and this idea. It exists in many versions. Here you find some, like this one:
* Descartes walks into a bar. He orders a beer, drinks it, the bartender asks if he would like another, he says “I think not” and disappears.
I assume that I don’t need to explain this joke to you. Nonetheless, I feel a need to comment on it, even if then it might not be funny any longer. To my mind, there are at least two flaws in this joke:
- Descartes’ idea “I think so I am” does not imply “I think not, so I am not”. From the implication if A then B, you cannot conclude that if not-A then not-B. So, the joke is based on a fallacy.
- In my blog on “I act, so I am” I rejected Descartes’ idea and defend the view that it should be “I act so I am”. So, if Descartes says “I think not”, nothing will happen, for his existence doesn’t depend on his thinking. A joke about Descartes should be then something like this:
* Far after midnight, a police officer sees a man sitting on a bench in a park. It’s Descartes, which he doesn’t know. The officer asks: “Sir, what are you doing here?”. “I am thinking, I do nothing”, Descartes replies. He had hardly finished his last word and, poof, he disappears.
But I am afraid that now the joke is not funny any longer. So, let me give some philosophical jokes and humour without comments:

* Wittgenstein is sitting with another philosopher in the garden; the latter says again and again “I know that that’s a tree,” pointing to a tree that is near them. Someone else arrives and hears this, and Wittgenstein tells him: “This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy.”
* Jeremy Bentham goes up to the counter at a coffee house, holding a $50 bill. “What’s the cheapest drink you have?” he asks. “That would be our decaf roast, for only $1.99,” says the barista. “Good,” says Bentham and hands her the $50. “I’ll buy those for the next twenty-five people who show up.” (source and explication)
* As I sometimes have explained in my blogs and as many philosophers hold true, sense data, like what you see with your eyes, are not reliable. Once you know this, the following joke may be funny:
Morty comes home to see his wife and his best friend, Lou, naked together in bed. Just as Morty is about to open his mouth, Lou jumps out of bed and says, “Before you say anything, old pal, what are you going to believe, me or your eyes?” (source)
* Dean, to the physics department. “Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper.” (source)
* What is a kiss? (source)
- a Sartrean one: a kiss that you worry yourself to death about even though it really doesn't matter anyway.
- a Wittgensteinian one: The important thing about this type of kiss is that it refers only to the symbol (our internal mental representation we associate with the experience of the kiss–which must necessarily also be differentiated from the act itself for obvious reasons and which need not be by any means the same or even similar for the different people experiencing the act) rather than the act itself and, as such, one must be careful not to make unwarranted generalizations about the act itself or the experience thereof based merely on our manipulation of the symbology therefor.
- a Zenoian one: your lips approach, closer and closer, but never actually touch.
To end this blog, again one on Descartes:
* A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks the horse if it’s an alcoholic considering all the bars he frequents, to which the horse replies “I don’t think I am. I think not!” Poof! The horse disappears. On hearing this, the philosophy students in the audience begin to giggle, as they are familiar with the philosophical proposition “I think, therefore, I am”. But to explain the concept aforehand would be putting Descartes before the horse. (source) 

Random quote
Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a flea, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Pericles on democracy and war

When I read some parts of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, I was surprised to see how topical this book still is, 2400 years after it has been written. The facts in the book are a history of the time that the historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) lived. Nevertheless, if one abstracts from the concrete facts, and take the parties in the war as abstract agents, then it is as if not much has changed. The Peloponnesian War was a war between the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta. Although this war lasted from 431-404 BC, in fact both towns were for a big part of the 5th century BC each other’s competitors if not enemies. Politically and economically both states were very different. Athens was a democracy and a sea power, while Sparta was an authoritarian state and a land power. Both had built their empires by making alliances with other Greek states or by outright subjecting them by force and forcing them to return to their alliances if they wanted to quit. Already this is, I think, enough to make pop up in your mind the conflict between the USA and the Western countries on the one hand and the Soviet Union and now Russia and their allies on the other hand. Once I saw this, it was not difficult for me to apply what happened in Greece 2400-2500 years ago to the present Ukrainian War, in which Ukraine fights a proxy war for the western countries against Russia, after having been invaded by this country without having given any reason for that. This conflict of a democracy state v. an authoritarian state and a sea power v. a land power is especially apparent in the so-called “Funeral Oration” of the Athenian general Pericles (c. 495-429 BC) on occasion of the funeral of a number of fallen Athenian soldiers. Actually, you should read the whole speech.
Usually in my blogs, I comment on texts and I explain their relevance to the present situation, but in this case, I think it is better to quote a long passage of Pericles’ speech, which contains, to my mind, the essence of what he wants to say, and which would lose persuasion, when I would summarize it. It’s up to you to apply the text to the Ukrainian war or any other war since 1945, or maybe also before that date.
Before you are going to read this fragment, a few warnings. The text (which I have copied from the Gutenberg project website) does not give the words originally spoken by Pericles but the words as Thucydides thinks (with good reason) that Pericles has spoken them. Moreover, there is much ideology in the words of Pericles; just as there is much ideology in the way western leaders defend western democracy (and as there is much ideology in the words of their adversaries). The speech is meant to motivate the Athenians to participate in the war against Sparta and to praise the deeds of the soldiers fallen. In democratic Athens, women had no say in politics; only men had. Moreover, Athens was a slave society, as all Greek states in those days. Democracy in Athens existed only for the free male Athenians. Moreover, the speech represents only the Athenian point of view. It would be worthwhile to have the Spartan point of view as well (I have no idea whether Spartan writings that explain that view still exist). It’s the same as presenting the western point of view and ignoring how people in Russia think about the situation at the same time. Here then is the fragment I have chosen:

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Excerpt from Pericles’ “Funeral Oration”
Our constitution does not copy the laws of neighbouring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favours the many instead of the few; this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences; if no social standing, advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit; nor again does poverty bar the way, if a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace.
Further, we provide plenty of means for the mind to refresh itself from business. We celebrate games and sacrifices all the year round, and the elegance of our private establishments forms a daily source of pleasure and helps to banish the spleen; while the magnitude of our city draws the produce of the world into our harbour, so that to the Athenian the fruits of other countries are as familiar a luxury as those of his own.
If we turn to our military policy, there also we differ from our antagonists. We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, although the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality; trusting less in system and policy than to the native spirit of our citizens; while in education, where our rivals from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, at Athens we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger. … Our united force was never yet encountered by any enemy, because we have at once to attend to our marine and to dispatch our citizens by land upon a hundred different services; so that, wherever they engage with some such fraction of our strength, a success against a detachment is magnified into a victory over the nation, and a defeat into a reverse suffered at the hands of our entire people. And yet if with habits not of labour but of ease, and courage not of art but of nature, we are still willing to encounter danger, we have the double advantage of escaping the experience of hardships in anticipation and of facing them in the hour of need as fearlessly as those who are never free from them.
Nor are these the only points in which our city is worthy of admiration. We cultivate refinement without extravagance and knowledge without effeminacy; wealth we employ more for use than for show, and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it. Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as unambitious but as useless, we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all. Again, in our enterprises we present the singular spectacle of daring and deliberation, each carried to its highest point, and both united in the same persons; although usually decision is the fruit of ignorance, hesitation of reflection. But the palm of courage will surely be adjudged most justly to those, who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger. In generosity we are equally singular, acquiring our friends by conferring, not by receiving, favours. Yet, of course, the doer of the favour is the firmer friend of the two, in order by continued kindness to keep the recipient in his debt; while the debtor feels less keenly from the very consciousness that the return he makes will be a payment, not a free gift. And it is only the Athenians, who, fearless of consequences, confer their benefits not from calculations of expediency, but in the confidence of liberality.

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Source
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7142/pg7142-images.html
Recommended
Johanna Anink (ed., translation), How to think about war. Thucydides. An ancient guide to foreign policy. Speeches from The History of the Peloponnesian War. Princeton/Oxford: Prince University Press, 2019.