My Favorite People

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My Favorite People

A disadvantage of knowing great people is that you miss them when they are gone. This is a list of people I’ve known, living and dead, that stand out in my mind for one reason or another. I could easily write an essay about each of them detailing our friendship. I will insert a short phrase if something pithy occurs to me. Oliver Sacks, always interested. Jonathan Miller, effortlessly himself. Peter Strawson, kindly acerbic. Richard Wollheim, never ordinary. Freddie Ayer, generously egotistical. Robert Silvers, energetically focused. David Pears, sweetly urbane. Jerry Fodor, ruthlessly jolly (and depressed). Christopher Hitchens, ridiculously clever (and nice). Martin Amis, hilariously steely-eyed. Edward St Aubyn, tragically funny and literate. Bernard Williams, attractively venomous (but delightful). George Stephanopoulos, extremely intelligent, moral, and charming. George Soros, amiable but cut off. Noam Chomsky, scary, sharp, principled. Richard Dawkins, passionately clever, somewhat remote. Malcolm Budd, dear friend and colleague. Tom Nagel, genuinely deep, good sense of humor.

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Life Forms As Synthetic Wholes

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Life Forms as Synthetic Wholes

It is a common idea that animal bodies (also plant bodies) are synthetic wholes consisting of separate organs. There are about a dozen of these in the mammalian body, depending on how you count. Each is different from the others but they work together to compose a functioning body. They each arose by natural selection in a more or less coordinated way and their successful cooperation ensures survival and reproduction. Thus, we get the idea of a harmonious but composite body, and hence a whole organism—a kind of natural synthesis of parts, disparate yet united. The organism is that synthetic unity—many things in one, a unified complex of separable components. It isn’t one of nature’s simples, homogeneous all through, as the atom was once thought to be. It can be analyzed into parts; it is a construction from simpler components, like a building or a motor car. As the OED says, a synthesis is a “combination of components to form a connected whole”, and an organism is precisely such a combination. But that isn’t the only kind of combination an organism is, the only kind of synthetic whole: it is also a combination of multiple genes and a single organism, of the organism’s body and parts of the environment (the extended phenotype), and of the present and past (inherited traits, remnants of earlier ancestors, obsolete adaptations). Genes combine with individual animals and plants, the organism’s body combines with the tools it uses to live (nests, dams, etc.), and the body and mind of the organism contain combinations of presently useful traits and records of past traits. This is all familiar enough from the popular writings of Richard Dawkins: the selfish gene, the extended phenotype, and the genetic book of the dead. I will say nothing to expand on or explain any of this, but simply take it for granted. For I have a different question: Does all this comprise a different sort of synthetic whole adding up to the complete organism? Is it also what animals are made of? Are they also synthetic wholes in that sense?

The question is not so straightforward. It is (we are assuming) perfectly true that animals are composed of the items mentioned. If we think in terms of biological books, we can say that an animal is a library consisting of the following volumes: the book of the genes, the book of the enveloping organism, the book of the organism’s bounded body, the book of its employed environment, the book of its current adaptations, and the book of its past ancestral history. These are all present in the animal’s nature. What is not so clear is whether this combination deserves to be called a synthetic whole—a synthesis in the full sense. Because it is not clear that we have genuine unification, where each component cooperates with the others. Do they all work harmoniously together, like a well-oiled machine? Or is the animal really a congeries (“disorderly collection”: OED)? Is it more of a heap or pile instead of an (as we say) organic unity? Or it is something in between? The animal is certainly not a mere heap of organs, strung haphazardly together; the organs are tightly connected, interwoven. There is no conflict between them—no friction, no disharmony. But the same is not true of the items I listed: here there is a sense of disharmony, division, conflict. In fact, the elements seem to pull in different directions. Granted, natural selection is the reason for all of them, singly and as a totality, but is the result what we might think of as a natural unity? First, are the genes of like mind with the animal that contains them? Notoriously not: the genes are invariably selfish, but the animal is not. The genes operate to secure their own survival, but the individual animal has its own survival plans. The genes would let you die—would indeed kill you—if it served their own purposes. They sometimes make the animal sacrifice itself for the good of the offspring that houses them (“kin selection”). Also, we can, as Dawkins remarks, rebel against our genes in making moral decisions. By no means do our interests and values coincide with the interests of our genes. There is conflict between the two books; they recommend different courses of action. The combination of genes and animal is conflicted, pointing in different directions; this is a congeries not an organic unity. The parts are not always in agreement with each other.

What about the book of the dead and the book of the living? To be sure, they often see eye to eye in that the present world of the animal overlaps with the past ancestral world described in its book of the dead. But equally there can be conflict, because that old world may no longer exist yet remnants of it persist in the animal’s genes, body, and mind. It still dreams of ancestral environments. This means there is “junk” still hanging around in the animal’s vaults, which may even lead to maladaptive behavior (a craving for sugar, aggressive tendencies no longer needed, appendicitis). The two books tell different stories, make different recommendations. The old book has been superseded but the animal keeps reading it. As a source of advice, it can be worse than useless. There is no synthesis of the two books, just authorial divergence—a mere congeries. What about the extended phenotype—is that all harmony and light? Well, the materials composing it are not the same: the external factor may not even be organic. Body and environment are slapped together, like chalk and cheese. Granted, the environment is useful to the animal, as our technology is useful to us, but it is not of the body, and may even be harmful to it. The physical environment goes its own way, irrespective of the welfare of the animal living in it. Dams may overflow beavers, and tunnels in the ground collapse on the creatures living in them. This is more of an uneasy treaty than a mutually beneficial arrangement. The physical environment isn’t family. It has its coefficient of resistance. Also, you can’t take it with you—the dam, the tunnel, the web, the nest. If you need to move, the extended phenotype will not move with you; it won’t cooperate in the relocation. Isn’t this more like a temporary alliance than a happy marriage? Heaven knows, it is horrendous to move house! This is an adaptation with a sting in the tail, not an ideal set-up. Animals might wish their phenotype had never been extended, given the hassle and stress involved. The extension takes work. Natural selection acts blindly with no concern about the animal’s comfort or convenience. So, this combination (living body, dead implement) is hardly the epitome of a longed-for synthesis; it is a yoking together of the local and the distant, with distinct disadvantages. An intelligent designer might well have thought better of the whole extended phenotype business (it seemed like a good idea at the time). The human extended phenotype (technology, industry) is fraught with hazard and may one day wipe us out. It may bite the hand that created it.

The entire modern picture of the animal reeks of the cobbled-together, the make-do, the okay-for-now. The human back is a notorious case in point: it isn’t a marvelous structural design proof against malfunction but rather a result of the adoption of the bipedal gait. It doesn’t synthesize the quadrupedal back and the bipedal back; it just jams the two together and hopes for the best. The human back is a danger zone not a sleek accommodation. The genes, for their part, combine with the individual animal to produce an entity that is a compromise between the two, not a smooth synthesis into something that serves both equally. In many ways we are at war with our own genes not on the same side as them (consider genetic disease and gene-induced senescence). Animals are, at best, a viable congeries not a splendid synthesis.[1] The God-given view of evolution might suggest the perfect synthesis picture, but once blind natural selection is let loose this agreeable image falls by the wayside. The animal can be analyzed, but it can’t really be synthesized, made whole. It bears all the marks of chance and contingency. It is not an organic unity. It is the sum of its parts, but that sum is not a nice round number. We might better think of it as a conjoined composite.[2]

[1] It is an interesting question which animals are the most unified and which the least. It seems as if the simpler the creature the more unified it tends to be—with bacteria at the most unified end and humans the least unified. This has the look of a biological law: unity is inversely proportional to complexity. We buy our complexity at the cost of increased disunity. We are startlingly advanced, but frightfully divided.

[2] Think of so-called Siamese twins—conjoined but not unified. The animal (as now conceived) is a kind of Siamese plurality: several different biological entities jostling together, glued but not of a piece. There is something of the parasitic about them; they live off each other (not symbiosis exactly). The genes parasitize the animal, the book of the dead takes up space with its more relevant counterpart, the extended phenotype grows a wooden leg. Disparate things make unholy alliances. It isn’t division of labor; it’s a motley crew. The animal exists as a conglomerate of rival factions, a kind of wild bunch. If the parts could talk, they would be arguing with each other.

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Scientific Philosophy

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Scientific Philosophy

Is philosophy a scientific subject? I don’t mean barroom bromides (“My philosophy is live and let live”); I mean academic philosophy. Here I intend to include the usual subject areas including ethics and aesthetics. The best way to answer this question is to ask what the word “science” is taken to contrast with. And the answer is surely religion: religion is not scientific, nor is it meant to be. What then are marks of religion as it contrasts with science? These are not difficult to enumerate: religion is (or is taken to be) supernatural, superstitious, faith-based, dogmatic, authority-bound, tradition-oriented, and fantastical (miracles etc.); whereas science is naturalistic, unsuperstitious, evidence-based, tolerant of agnosticism, undogmatic, egalitarian, skeptical of tradition, and resolutely nomological (nothing miraculous). Judged by these criteria, philosophy is scientific, since it rejects those features of religion. It is truth-directed not beauty-directed or goodness-directed. Nor is it anecdotal or idiosyncratic; it needs consensus and generally applicable methods. Philosophy is undertaken in a scientific spirit not a religious or artistic or ethical spirit. Notice that this is not say that philosophy is an empirical science, or should be; we have said nothing about methodology. Mathematics is done in a scientific spirit, but it isn’t an empirical science. History may be done in a scientific spirit (not, say, a political spirit), but it isn’t an empirical science in the mold of physics, biology, etc.  A subject can be scientific without being one of the empirical sciences. Sherlock Holmes works in a scientific spirit, but his work isn’t one of the empirical sciences. If philosophy consists of conceptual analysis, it can still be scientific (not religious or aesthetic); and similarly for ordinary language philosophy, phenomenology, and process philosophy. Philosophy does not need to be, or to mimic, the recognized empirical sciences in order to qualify as scientific. So, it is wrong to castigate it as non-scientific because it isn’t one of these sciences. Philosophy can be scientific in its own way not assimilable to the way other subjects are scientific (like mathematics and logic). I happen to think (and have argued at length) that philosophy already is a science though not beholden to other sciences[1]; the point I am making now is that philosophy, as currently practiced, is also scientific. It would be possible to pursue a science unscientifically, if one were to lapse into the supernatural, anecdotal, or superstitious; my point here is that philosophy is both a science and pursued scientifically (though not by everyone calling himself a philosopher). Being a science and being pursued scientifically are different questions, though obviously related. Philosophy was pursued scientifically from its earliest days in Plato and (especially) Aristotle, long before science and the word “science” were ever invented. The Socratic critical method is itself a scientific method by the standards outlined above, arguably the prototype of all subsequent scientific inquiry—it is all about clear formulation and rigorous falsification. Socrates had a highly scientific attitude (think of the Euthyphro argument). Back when myth and religion were dominant, he blazed the scientific trail in opposition to anti-scientific attitudes (not unlike Galileo). Philosophy (the Western kind anyway) is the original scientific discipline, contrary to the opinion of many contemporary self-proclaimed scientists. These characters are really scientistic scientists, trying to impose their methods on domains to which they are not suited; but this is not scientific, being a kind of quasi-religious dogma founded on faith and ignorance (“Ultimately physics will explain everything!”). Philosophy is a science, pursued scientifically, but it is not a scientistic science (“excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques”: OED). Not all scientific knowledge properly so called can be revealed by the operation of the human senses. But you knew that, right?[2]

[1] See my “The Science of Philosophy”.

[2] It is really a kind of scandal that I have to enunciate this truism. Just consider first-person introspective knowledge, mathematical knowledge, political knowledge, ethical knowledge, knowledge of literary intention, aesthetic knowledge, knowledge of where you left your keys, etc. Knowledge and science are not coextensive concepts.

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Lies, Lies, and More Lies

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Lies, Lies, and More Lies

I usually avoid commenting on politics, but every rule has its exceptions. I have been watching a lot of politics on TV, especially Abby Philip’s nightly program on CNN. She is an exemplary presenter: deeply intelligent, amazingly well-informed, and invariably polite (also lovely to look at—that quizzical smile). She always has guests from both political wings and invites vigorous debate. It ends up a shouting match. The conclusion I have reached is that the air is so thick with dishonesty, disingenuousness, deception, spin, nonsense, and plain outright lying that there is little hope for democracy in America. It takes two to deceive: the deceiver and the deceived. Both have reached extraordinarily high levels. Of course, deception from the right is by far the worst offender—though evasiveness (itself a form of deception) is flagrantly practiced by both sides. The intellectual level is very low (people have no idea about the ethics of lying—they badly need a philosopher to help them out). Truthfulness is regularly shunned and sinned against. Things are not much better in universities (I include philosophers). It is a disease that has taken hold of the American mind (but not only the American mind). What I have noticed is the close connection between lying and injustice—and hence violence. Lying is the preliminary to these vices. It prepares the ground. It smooths the way. It is a prelude to despicable acts. Lying is what you do if you have violence on your mind. And violence comes in many forms—harm might be a better word. If you want to harm someone, lie about them—you will find ready takers for your lies. That is Trump’s entire modus operandi: lie through your teeth and hope (expect) that you will be believed by people for whom violence is a way of life. Lying is a kind of violation of the truth; violence is a violation of the person. The two go perfectly together. When someone lies, expect violence to follow. Lying has become so commonplace, so routine, so reflexive that it takes a strong mind to withstand it; and not many people have strong minds. The sheer quantity of it is undermining all restraints against persecution, injustice, and actual violence. When truth doesn’t matter, nothing matters and anything goes. You can see the collapse of civilization flashing in people’s eyes—they have an appetite for destruction.

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Digestion, Learning, and Dreams

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Digestion, Learning, and Dreams

The word “digestion” (or “digest”) is apt to suggest to modern ears the process by which food is converted to bodily tissue. But it also has another meaning: the process by which information received by the senses is converted into knowledge—as in “That’s a lot (of information) to digest”. The dictionary duly records both meanings: “break down (food) in the stomach and intestines into substances that can be used by the body”; and “understand or assimilate (information) by reflection” (Concise OED). For the latter we also have: “Settle or arrange methodically in the mind; consider, ponder”, and “comprehend and assimilate mentally; obtain mental nourishment from” (Shorter OED). These linguistic facts prompt a conjecture, namely that the two processes are significantly similar. Information digestion is like food digestion (and vice versa). The stomach digests food and the brain digests information: the brain is the “stomach of the mind” (nice slogan). Lest we suppose that the physical use of the word is primary, we should note that the word “digest” comes from the Latin word digesta meaning “matters methodically arranged”. Thus, the mental use is etymologically primary and very probably precedes the physical use: people knew the mind digests information before they discovered that the body digests food (it was a significant discovery that what goes in at one end comes out at the other). We all know that perceptions become memories, but it isn’t obvious a priori that food produces feces. How should we characterize what is in common between the two processes? Reduction, conversion, and assimilation: the original input is reduced (condensed, concentrated), transformed into something different (a type of metamorphosis), and integrated into the substance of the organism (body or mind). There is a sequence of stages whereby the material taken in is incorporated into the life of the organism, physical or mental. Tissues or memories. It isn’t just a transfer of stuff from one location to another; there is an active process (a procedure) of breaking down, selection, and eventual incorporation. Some of what comes in is discarded as unhelpful, unnecessary, dispensable. Some is nutritious but some isn’t. The input is operated on with a goal “in mind”: to benefit the organism as it makes its way in the world. Junk is eliminated; only the good stuff remains. The organism digests the world in two ways: physically or mentally. The stomach is the brain of the digestive body, while the brain is the stomach of the digestive mind. These are the main organs whose job it is to render usable the various inputs to the organism, whether in the form of food or information. We may thus speak of “somatic digestion” and “cognitive digestion”. Both deserve the label and both fall under the same general conception. Animals are digestive creatures by nature, and have been naturally selected accordingly.[1] Digestion itself is a selective process, sorting the wheat from the chaff—what will help the genes or hinder them (to adopt the genes-eye view of evolution). The typical animal needs both to survive and reproduce—physical nutrition and mental nutrition. Human life, in particular, is digestive life—whether eating or learning, dining or being educated. This principle unifies the functions of the animal in question. To give a salient example: the child needs to digest food in order to grow in size, but she also needs to digest auditory information in order to grow linguistically. The adult body is a result of food digestion; the adult mind is a result of information digestion. Call this biological naturalism if you like, I would not spurn the label.

We should not draw too sharp a line between the two types of digestion (both properly so called). The digestion of information proceeds via physical inputs to the senses and results in tissue rearrangements in the brain (it may even promote size). Energy is taken in and transformed. The digestion of food is a “smart” operation—we may speak of the intelligent stomach. The stomach (and the rest of the gut) has to make “decisions”—what to pass on, what to reject, what kind of secretions to authorize. Not for nothing do gastroenterologists speak of the “second brain” located in the gut.[2] The system is informational not merely “mechanical”. The early stages of food digestion explicitly involve conscious decisions about what to eat (ditto for the output end). The mind is “physical” as the gut is “mental”. Let’s not erect a dualism of digestive apparatus (machines versus soul, etc.). Sense organs and mouths are not that different, abstractly considered. Food may be “raw” as sense data may also be (the “given”). We ingest food and we ingest information—we “internalize” them both. We can find food indigestible, but we can also find that too much information (or the wrong kind) is similarly indigestible (“It’s going to take a while to digest all this”). Reading is a type of grazing (or surfing the Web); eating can be educational. There is junk food but also junk information (sic). There are things we would rather not eat and things we would rather not know. Food may be found disgusting, but so may reported facts. Proust’s madeleine was both gustatory and psychological—food eaten and experience remembered. You are what you eat and also what you learn. Your mind is the result of experiences digested (along with innate mechanisms) and your body is the result of foodstuffs digested (along with innate mechanisms). Memories are the tissues of the self, as tissues are the memories of what has been consumed. We consume the exogenous in order to build the endogenous, thus constructing the whole animal. Ultimately, it’s all energy transfer in the service of life promotion. We have greedy eyes as well as greedy mouths. Absorption is the name of the game. Plants digest light via photosynthesis: this is the prototype of all life, from gut to brain. Food indeed comes from light (via the intermediary of plants), but so does visual information. Animals consume light in two ways. We eat the Sun—with our mouths and eyes. We can imagine creatures that build tissue by absorbing the energy contained in visible light, and also creatures that learn about the world by eating it. There could be light (=photon) eaters and food learners (they derive their science from information conveyed by food). In fact, terrestrial life is already a bit like that. We may be hungry for knowledge, starved of an education, or informationally overstuffed. Then there is the old saw “food for thought”—information received that prompts reflection. If you become a chef, most of the information you digest is about food—that you also digest. Your brain is then full of digested knowledge about what your body has digested. School lessons are school lunches, so they had better be tasty and nutritious. The two concepts run naturally together.

Are you getting the hang of the digestive theory of learning? Have you digested its motivations and point? I hope no dyspepsia has resulted (as opposed to euphoric eupepsia). Because we are now going to go rogue—we are going to the outer limits of advanced digestive science (“digestology”). First, we will consider cooking and teaching; then we will turn to the doozy of dreams. Cooking is a preliminary to mastication—what you do to food before you get your teeth into it. It is really extended digestion: doing with the hands and fire what your mouth does with teeth and saliva and your stomach with bile. Food preparation is extra-bodily digestion. You might as well be spitting into the food before you put it in your mouth (that’s what gravy is all about). Now the point I want to make is that teaching is much the same: it processes information into a form that is easier for the student to digest. Preparing a lecture is like preparing a meal—acting on the material so as to make it more palatable. Lecturing is putting the stuff into the student’s mental mouth and hoping he or she will swallow it, even enjoy it. You cut the material into bite-sized pieces, trying not to give the students more than they can chew on; perhaps you garnish it with humor; you don’t make them consume junk. An assertion is a morsel of food, lovingly prepared: the speech act is a culinary act. You can be a good intellectual cook or a lousy one. A good lesson is like a well-balanced meal (I myself like to cook and teach). Both are facilitations of consumption. I like to eat while watching Jeopardy, as I fortify body and mind (the latter is light eating). Teaching consists of assertions prepared for mental consumption; it takes skill and judgment. You have to know your audience—their culinary and pedagogical preferences. Don’t overegg the pudding; don’t undercook the chicken. Leave them satisfied but wanting more. Be a good intellectual chef. Feed their brains nutritious cognitive food. Introduce them to new tastes. There is no need to let them see your kitchen (that can be a mess), but remember that the lecture hall is a restaurant—of the mind. The teacher is part of the student’s extended digestive process of learning about the world.

I promised you dreams. Then dreams you shall have. It has often been wondered what the function of dreams is, biologically speaking. They seem pointless, unhelpful, yet people suffer when they are disrupted (animals too). Can the digestive theory of learning shed any light on the matter? Dreams often reflect past experience, sometimes with a delay built in; they contain remnants of waking life. They have also been supposed to play some role in information processing—perhaps leading to problem-solving and creativity. Yet they seem to be junk for the most part, just random noise, and not even very pleasant. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That’s right: dreams are the feces of the mind! They are by-products of cognitive (and affective) digestion—what is left over when the digestive mental process has done its work. That process is selective, retaining and discarding; it takes in more than is required, because useful knowledge doesn’t come pre-packaged. It is a complex process, carried out unconsciously, and shrouded in mystery. Surely it will leave some stuff behind—similar to what came in initially and similar to the final end-state (knowledge, memory, emotional equilibrium), but also significantly different. Feces are like that—recognizable yet transformed. They bear the marks of their history (books, in effect). Likewise, cognitive digestion will have its waste products. Well, dreams are like that: they are natural by-products of the selective and reducing process that converts raw information into settled useful knowledge. People sometimes speak of “brain farts”, meaning random products of rational brain activity; dreams are like that—mental flatulence produced by the arduous process of information digestion. You might reply that feces and dreams differ in an important respect, namely that feces are just (as it were) crap while dreams at least have some point or meaning—they aren’t just pure shit. But we must not disrespect the excremental: it too isn’t pure crap. Feces serve to remove not just food waste (like industrial waste); they also convey dead cells and dead bacteria. They aid the health of the body, especially the intestines. They do some good; they aren’t just useless gunge. Shit isn’t just shit, oh no. It may not be manna from heaven, but it isn’t utterly devoid of meaning and purpose. So, it is closer to dreams than a more disrespectful attitude would suggest. Neither dreams nor feces are the animal at its most sublime and practical, but they are not as worthless as might be supposed. How and why dreams get to be as they are is hard to say, but it doesn’t sound wide of the mark to think of them as inevitable by-products of the cognitive digestive process (possibly not only that). The brain dreams of what it discards as it goes about its work of knowledge absorption. Feces consist of pulverized food, infused with this and that; dreams consist of pulverized experience, infused with this and that (sexual desire, according to Freud, primordial myths according to Jung). Dreams are pretty mysterious content-wise, but functionally they seem like bits of mental debris left behind by a more vital function. Given the digestive theory of learning, it is not implausible to see them as at least analogous to feces and farts. They are generally disagreeable like them, though they have their pleasurable aspects (as Freud insisted, exaggerating tremendously).

I cannot resist mentioning another provocative (repellent) application of the digestive theory of the learning mind. It seems that consciousness plays a role in the learning process, obscure though that role may be: some types of learning require it, or at least proceed better with it (e.g., book learning). Is there any analogue in the bodily digestive realm? Consciousness is supplied by the organism not by the external world—it comes from internal physiology not from the environment. What does that remind you of? Saliva, of course. Saliva mixes with food and makes it easier to swallow and digest; it’s hard to eat without it. Consciousness mixes with sensory data (nerve stimulations and whatnot) and makes cognitive digestion easier; it’s hard to learn without it (though not impossible). So, consciousness plays a role like that of saliva. Again, let us not disrespect the salivatory—it plays a vital role in eating, which we normally take for granted (if it dries up you are in big trouble). Nor is saliva simple—its evolution would make a great story. I do not wish to downgrade consciousness by comparing it to saliva; on the contrary, the comparison makes us acknowledge the necessity of consciousness even more. There is nothing epiphenomenal about saliva! Once consciousness has done its early work, the ingested information makes its way unconsciously through the digestive system, eventually becoming an item of settled knowledge. Saliva presents food to the gustatory digestive system, if I may put it so, and consciousness presents sensory stimuli to the cognitive digestive system. These are precursors to the further work of rendering the data suitable for cognitive storage or food suitable for tissue augmentation. Consciousness is the saliva of the mind, so to speak. It makes cognitive digestion possible (or greatly facilitates it). If we think of the mind as (partly) a device for internalizing the external world[3], with consciousness as a component of this device, then it is natural to view it as essentially digestive, in the same sense (but not the same way) in which the stomach and bowels form components of a digestive system. Not a telephone exchange or a computer but a belly (with suitable appendages): that is the image to take away from this leaping discussion.[4]

[1] It would be wonderful if we could argue that cognitive digestion descended from somatic digestion, as a deployment of the basic digestive plan. A mutation of a preexisting gene complex for somatic digestion led to genes for cognitive digestion. But it is hard to see how such an evolutionary story would go. To be sure, the digestive system is an adaptation that has been around for a very long time, so there has been time enough to give rise to a cognitive counterpart: but what kind of modification could lead from the former to the latter? Perhaps the abstract structure of somatic digestion could be repurposed for cognitive digestion by some amazing genetic fluke. Anyway, the idea is worth exploring.

[2] See Michael Gershon, The Second Brain (1998).

[3] See my “What the Mind Does: Internalization and Externalization”.

[4] I am tempted to comment on the content and tone of this discussion—I am well aware of its peculiarity and perlocutionary effect. But on second thoughts I don’t think I will. I leave that to the intelligence of my reader.

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Defining Time

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Defining Time

Can time be defined? Einstein and Bergson had an argument about this: Einstein claimed to define time by clocks (“time pieces”), i.e., by physical objects of a certain type; Bergson preferred to define time by means of consciousness of time (“subjective duration”). Time exists by virtue of clocks, natural and artificial, for Einstein; or it exists by virtue of human experience, for Bergson. Who is right? Neither, in my view. Both are wrong, and for the same basic reason: they both try to define time in terms of human knowledge. Einstein uses our means of measuring time—periodic processes like the earth’s rotation or oscillations in a quartz crystal[1]; Bergson uses our “lived experience” of the passage of time. One method is physical, the other phenomenological. Both are epistemological, either external or internal. There is an obvious problem with this method: clocks and consciousness are both in time. They are subject to time, existing in time, temporal phenomena. How then can they define time—any such definition is circular. It’s like trying to define the time of Australia by the time of Denmark: both are instances of time. You might as well define the time of clocks or experiences in terms of the time of what they measure or are experiences of. How long does it take for the clock hand to go all the way round once? How long does it take to see the sun set? These are events in time, like the sun traversing the sky or an eclipse. And how do we define the time of these events—clock movements and experience durations? Not by means of further clocks or conscious experiences—that way infinite regress lies. Moreover, it is clearly wrong to suppose that time depends on clocks or experiences: time would exist even if no clocks or experiences did. In fact, clocks and experiences presuppose time—they could not exist without it. The dependence goes the other way. There had to be time before clocks and experiences or else these things could not exist. Human knowledge of time presupposes that time already exists, because knowledge is a temporal matter—observing clocks, listening to a symphony. It is thus impossible to reduce time to knowledge of time, since knowledge is a temporal affair. It’s like trying to reduce space to measuring rods or awareness of space: measuring rods exist in space, as do awareness-producing brains. This is tantamount to trying to reduce space to one instance of it, as if the space of a football field can be defined by the space of a foot ruler. Circular! Also, very implausible, since football fields can exist in space in the absence of foot rulers (or other measuring devices) and perceptual experiences. This is just crass verificationism, leading inevitably to idealism. That’s why I say Einstein and Bergson are both wrong.

You reply: but how else are we to define time? How indeed. The fact is no other method suggests itself. Our conception of time is ineluctably anthropocentric. But that doesn’t show that time itself is anthropocentric, intrinsically, constitutively. Clocks and consciousness reveal time only partially, if at all; and its appearance to us may not tell us much about what it is in itself. We cannot picture it, imagine it, compare it to anything else. Efforts to reduce it to space are obviously futile. Empiricism is defeated by time. Rationalism can only take us so far—the mathematics of time not its concrete (sic) being. Let’s face it: we are pretty effing blank about the nature of time. We have some idea of its structure but not of its substance (and the notion of substance seems singularly inappropriate). Time flies too low for us to see it; or too high—way out of sight. It is everywhere but nowhere, a condition of perception but imperceptible. By all means employ a notion of time appropriate to the purpose at hand (physics, phenomenology), but don’t think you have got hold of the thing in itself. Time isn’t even a mystery in the usual sense, because we have so little handle on it to begin with—unlike consciousness or matter. Precisely what is mysterious? Time, you say—but what is that? We can’t even properly specify the thing that is so inscrutable—we can only gesture, waffle, then fall silent. Time reduces us to inarticulacy. It isn’t something that we know very well but can’t explain; it is hardly known at all, save abstractly. We are not acquainted with it—like redness or pain or shape. Nor is our ignorance of it like our ignorance of anything else; even the word “ignorance” fails to catch its degree of elusiveness (we know much more about God or black holes or dark matter or the universe before the big bang). True, I know what time it is and how long it takes to boil an egg, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what these words really mean—what I am referring to with them. Do I ever really refer to time as I refer to people and places—or is this an overgeneralization of the concept of reference? Perhaps I just obliquely allude to time, or attempt to intimate it, or vaguely hint at it. The philosophy of time is a philosophy of something I can’t even specify. Hence all the truly pathetic attempts to pin it down: rivers, arrows, fathers, sands, valleys, waterfalls, storms (okay, I made up the last three). We don’t even have any good metaphors! We just have irksome bafflement, visceral vacuity, intellectual scotoma. We can only bear to think about it every now and then; or else madness threatens. The topic is infuriating, excruciating, and ultimately empty. It’s a problem about nothing, or nothing we can put our finger on. That is why it invites the kind of treatment proposed by Einstein and Bergson—at least we know what clocks and consciousness are. We are not stranded in an intellectual desert, featureless, arid. We can lean into the mirages that time produces in us. Time isn’t just indefinable; it is incognizable.[2]

[1] Do we ever really measure time? It is tempting to see our clocks as analogous to measuring rods, but there is an important difference: we lay measuring rods next to the things we measure with them, but we don’t lay our clocks next to time. We suppose there is a correlation between clock movements and temporal intervals, but we never observe this correlation; it is more a matter of faith. This is why we can entertain such possibilities as that time may speed up while clocks fail to register this fact—the sequence of clicks doesn’t track the actual passage of time. Our clocks are really substitutes for direct observation of time’s passage. The concept of measurement seems overoptimistic.

[2] Time has been a concern of poetry, precisely because it refuses to yield to more “scientific” treatment. But even the poets are defeated by the topic, managing only to lament its passage or rue its authority. The topic of death is never far from the topic of time. Analytic philosophy keeps a safe distance from it or bends it into something more tractable—or else you end up writing as I have just done. Lyrically, pretentiously, despairingly—hardly the stuff of a passable PhD or an article in Analysis. And yet I do have the feeling that time may one day be penetrated, laid bare, by some stroke of genius. It really ought not to be so impenetrable. What prevents us knowing about it? It doesn’t hide behind an opaque screen…

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Degrees of Intention

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Degrees of Intention

Does intending come in degrees? The question seems odd and to admit of only one answer—it does not. We don’t talk this way (“I half intend to drink a beer”, “Do you strongly intend to go to the shops?”). Intending is like knowing: you don’t weakly or partially know a fact—you either know it or you don’t. Both are like ordinary physical states of affairs: things don’t insipidly fall or are wholeheartedly square. When you intend to do something, you are committed to doing it, no ifs or buts; intending doesn’t come on a scale of intensity. It isn’t like pain or pleasure, which do come in degrees, as ordinary language attests and introspection reveals. Intending is an all or nothing thing. So it seems anyway. Yet a doubt can be raised and a puzzle produced. For belief and desire do come in degrees, and intention is intimately bound up with them. I might weakly desire to drink a beer and strongly believe there is no beer in the vicinity, so I refrain from seeking out beer (too much effort, too little reward). Or I might have a passion for pineapple and feel very convinced there are pineapples hereabouts; I head for the nearest pineapple, eagerly chomping it down. Do I have the same measure of intention in both cases? Don’t I weakly intend to look for a beer but strongly intend to apprehend a pineapple? Isn’t that what we would expect given my beliefs and desires? Intentions are a product of beliefs and desires, so shouldn’t the former inherit the properties of the latter? Shouldn’t gradation characterize both? It looks as if my reasons differ in strength in the two cases, so intentions ought to. What if we introduced a word “intending*” that is stipulated to mean “volitional mental state supervenient on beliefs and desires”—wouldn’t that designate the same mental state as “intention”? If intentions were constituted by beliefs and desires, they would certainly have all the properties of beliefs and desires, including the property of being graded. Does ordinary intuition refute such a thesis? Maybe we need to revise our intuitions in the light of the intimate connection between intentions and beliefs and desires (reasons). We also know that it is not possible to intend what you believe to be impossible, so shouldn’t very weak belief in the possibility of the action reduce the strength of the corresponding intention? Ditto for desire: we can’t intend what we have no desire to do (taking desire in the widest sense), so shouldn’t intention be attenuated by a weakening of desire, vanishing when desire does? From a theoretical point of view, degrees of intention make sense, given the psychological antecedents of intention; we really should view intention in that way. Perhaps this is one of those cases in which ordinary language is misleading. So, after all, intentions do come in degrees of intensity, right?

Still, the contrary intuition is stubborn, and not to be put down to mere conversational implicature. It isn’t just that saying “I somewhat intend to go to the gym today” conversationally implies that I probably won’t go; it seems to be in the very nature of intention that it knows no degrees. It clearly isn’t the same as belief and desire in the respect in question: what would a feeble lukewarm intention even feel like? Compare decision: what does it mean to say that someone only weakly decided to go swimming? Isn’t decision inherently all or nothing? You don’t “make up your mind” only partially or to some degree. We thus seem pulled in two directions. Why is this? I think I know why: it is because of the nature of action. Intention mediates between reasons and actions, with reasons (beliefs and desires) admitting of degree: but actions don’t admit of degree. You either do it or you don’t. There are no degrees of drinking a (whole) beer, as there are no degrees of slipping on a banana peel or splitting the atom. It happens or it doesn’t. Reaching your thirtieth birthday isn’t a matter of degree, and neither is banging a drum thirteen times. Actions are all or nothing, like events in general. They are not like beliefs and desires (or pleasure and pain): they don’t start from zero and then ascend upwards in intensity. You can’t measure their strength on a scale. But intentions lead into actions, partaking of their black and whiteness. Actions are an on-off matter, and so are intentions, since intentions are intentions to act. Intentions thus begin in mental matters of degree and culminate in sharply defined events. They have a foot in both camps; they face in two directions (a la Janus). Intentions are mongrel, hybrid, mixed up. This explains our uncertainty about their status: we can look at them from two angles, seeing them in a different light from each angle. Now they look like things with gradation built into them; now they look like things that know only on and off. As effects of beliefs and desires, they vary in intensity; as causes of action, they come in only two varieties, operative or inoperative. This makes them conceptually peculiar, even puzzling. How can they be both graded and ungraded, continuous and discrete? They seem unclassifiable. They seem mysterious, steeped in ambiguity. I think they have always seemed elusive to philosophers (and psychologists), which is why they are generally passed over in favor of beliefs and desires or overt actions. It seems less mysterious to talk of intentional actions than of intentions per se. This is not an oversight but a principled policy (possibly unconscious). Intentions really are hard to understand. We can’t even decide whether they come in degrees! Perhaps the concept should be split into two to reflect the nature of the items designated: intention1 is the upshot of beliefs and desire; intention2 is the immediate trigger of actions. Intentions1 come in degrees of forcefulness; intentions2 either operate or don’t operate, and don’t admit of degree. As the intending process nears the point of action it loses its variability and hardens into a simple on-off switch. It ceases to come in degrees and stiffens into a rigid rule. Instead of sliding up and down a scale it settles on a fixed value that tolerates no uncertainty. It solidifies into action.[1]

[1] The resort to physical metaphor is entirely predictable: we don’t know what we are talking about so we take refuge in the nearest metaphor to hand (not that this is a bad thing as long as it is recognized for what it is). Intentions are among the most inscrutable things in the mind.

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A Puzzle about Desire (and Intention etc.)

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A Puzzle about Desire (and Intention etc.)

In “A Puzzle about Belief” Kripke introduces his puzzle about belief as a puzzle about belief—specifically, the behavior of names in belief contexts. I will contend that it is a not a puzzle about belief specifically and not about names specifically; that is just one version of the underlying puzzle. Kripke’s protagonist Pierre first learns about London (“Londres”) from a book, later visiting that city and learning English. He forms contradictory beliefs about the attractiveness of London from these two sources. But he could have formed these contradictory beliefs from the same kind of source: he could have read two books, one in English and one in French; or he could have paid two visits to different parts of the city. The puzzle has nothing essentially to do with testimony-based belief and observation-based belief (not that Kripke says it does). For simplicity, let’s assume the beliefs are formed from reading two books each ascribing different properties to London. Suppose Pierre forms the desire to visit London (“Londres”) by thus reading about it, but that he also forms the desire not to visit London by reading another book in English (the first book talks mainly about Kensington, the second about Hackney). He desires to visit London and he desires not to visit London. The same kind of disquotation principle applies to desire as to belief (“I hate London”, “J’aime Londres”). Accordingly, Pierre has contradictory desires. The same goes for intention, obviously enough: Pierre may intend to visit London and intend not to visit London, depending on the information he acquires. The names “London” and “Londres” feature in his vocabulary and they can generate the same result as they do for belief. It isn’t the concept of belief that gives rise to the puzzle; it’s the way names interact with propositional attitudes in general (but see below).

Does the puzzle arise only in the case of names? Apparently not: we can generate the same kind of puzzle using demonstratives or pronouns. Pierre may express himself by saying “That city is attractive” (in French) and “That city is not attractive” (in English), referring to London both times, while not knowing this. Indeed, we can get the same result even if he is monolingual. We can copy his linguistic preference by reporting him as believing that that city is attractive and also that that city is not attractive, unknowingly pointing at the same city twice (same for “it”). So, names are not essential to the puzzle either. Nor need reference to a particular object be part of the story: Pierre could have contradictory beliefs about a natural kind (e.g., water) or even about a physical magnitude (e.g., a mile). All he needs is two words in different languages (or the same language) associated with different bodies of information. So, it is not strictly accurate to say, as Kripke does, that the puzzle concerns “the behavior of names in belief contexts”: it is more general than that both with respect to belief and names—better to say, propositional attitudes and reference more generally. Nothing specific to belief or names is raised by the underlying puzzle.

Can the puzzle be generalized even further? Is language even necessary? I think not: Pierre could wander around a district of London one day and think that the city of which it is a part (“this city”) is attractive, while the next day forming the opposite belief while wandering around a different part—not realizing he is in the same city. Similarly for desire—he desires to stay in the first city but not the second, as he would put it. He need not express his beliefs in a public language, simply forming them without speaking. He need not even be able to speak, having never learned a language. A speechless animal could likewise form contradictory beliefs, as long as they are formed from different bodies of information. It isn’t language as such that is generating the puzzle; rather, it is propositional attitudes considered in themselves—desires, intentions, hopes, regrets, etc. We might even say it is a puzzle about concepts. No disquotation principles are needed to get it going, let alone proper names.

What about perception—can it generate the puzzle? I don’t see why not, though we might need to exercise more ingenuity to find a convincing example. Take someone looking at a tomato and believing it is red. Unknown to him, there is a mirror in his visual field reflecting that tomato, but cleverly disguised to give an impression of greenness. He accordingly believes that tomato not to be red—even though it really is. If he gives the tomato two names, under the impression that he is seeing two objects, he will commit himself to a pair of perceptual beliefs that are contradictory without realizing it. He has contradictory visual impressions: it seems to him that what is in fact a single tomato is red and not red—as we would put it, but not he. Or we could have an example in which an object seems square visually but seems oval tactually: the subject perceives it as square and at the same time as oval—his perceptions contradict each other (though he fails to see that). Or suppose an animal espies a potential predator and has the impression of a scary animal over there, but also sees its reflection in water and has the impression of a harmless animal (it seems to be on the point of drowning). The same animal seems to be both dangerous and not dangerous, and this seeming may not be a case of belief proper. So, concepts in the full sense are not even required to construct a case like Kripke’s, if we exclude perception from the conceptual domain. The puzzle really concerns intentionality in general—any kind of mental representation. It isn’t about beliefs in particular, and certainly not about names in particular. It’s about the representational mind, and clearly derives from the possibility of two perspectives on the same thing—two appearances of the same reality (in conjunction with other auxiliary factors). Kripke’s paper might well have been called “A Puzzle about the Mind”.[1]

[1] I don’t know if Kripke would reject the position here put forward, because he never denies that the puzzle generalizes in these ways. But he doesn’t explicitly accept it either; the possibility is simply left open. However, there is a strong impression that he takes the puzzle to be more restricted. I would be amazed if he had thought of these extensions but simply decided to leave them out. Nothing in the argument would be lost by generalizing it, as far as I can see.

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