George Soros and Me

/23 Comments/in /by

George Soros and Me

George Soros is now 92 years old. I first met him at his home in Bedford, New York, in 2007, when he was one year older than I am now, at his invitation. It came about as follows. Robert Silvers, then editor of the New York Review of Books, had asked me to comment on an article written by Soros that had some philosophical content. I did so, dashing off twelve points one morning: there was a lot wrong with the philosophy, though the rest of the article was okay. Silvers accordingly turned it down. A couple of weeks later I received a handwritten letter from Mr. Soros asking me if I would like to visit him in his home to discuss the matter. Mainly out of curiosity about the man, I agreed; it wasn’t the philosophy that intrigued me. I told his assistant that I wanted to fly first-class with my wife, on the principle that if a billionaire wants you to come to see him for his benefit, he shouldn’t just provide economy. He did so. I knew little about him except that he was a wealthy financier. Meanwhile he sent me a copy of a book he was writing which went into the philosophy in more depth. It wasn’t very good, though the central idea of reflexivity wasn’t mistaken (on this more later). I rather dreaded our conversation, because I didn’t know how such a man would react to stern criticism. The meeting was scheduled for the following afternoon, after tennis in the morning followed by lunch. He struck me immediately as welcoming and jovial (to a degree), ready for honest discussion. I remember remarking that the only other property I could see from his house, which commanded a lofty view, was a single house in the far distance. He replied that that also was his house, now occupied by his ex-wife, and was where we would be playing tennis on his indoor court (he also had an outdoor court next to his current house, which he seldom used). The present house, previously owned by Michael Crichton, had been bought by his ex-wife, probably with an eye to divorce; it was she who had acquired the paintings by Picasso, de Chirico, Chagall, and others. He observed to me at one point that he gives away five hundred million dollars a year.

We duly played tennis (I with a coach) and had lunch. The Chancellor of Austria attended with a security detail, for reasons George couldn’t explain. At one point Al Gore telephoned. The philosophical conversation went well: he was receptive to correction, easy to talk to, obviously intellectually able. I think he made notes. The rest of the weekend went swimmingly. I got to know his exemplary butler Howie (tall, Canadian, nice), who I would see a lot more of in future. We parted amicably the following day. The next time we met was in St Barts just before Christmas and soon after our first meeting, where George had rented a house. There was a lot of tennis, windsurfing for me (arranged by Howie), fancy dining with other guests, and some private philosophy talk. I remember a restaurant in which table dancing was routinely performed—all joined in, including George. It was good fun. Then in the summer following he invited us to his Long Island home in Southampton, again with other guests. I had a tennis coach to myself (Ziggy), Howie was in attendance, the food (French chef) was excellent, we went to lunch with Tom Wolfe and others. It was all exactly as you would expect. This became a regular invitation and even started to bore me a little (but I always had Ziggy). At my suggestion, Martin Amis and his wife Isobel were invited to come over for dinner one day. I played tennis with Martin on the private court. George reported that he didn’t get on too well with Martin but enjoyed talking to Isobel. On one of these visits George told us a joke: “A Hungarian and a Rumanian will both sell you their mother–but the Hungarian will deliver”. He put up some resistance to gay marriage, despite his progressive tendencies, in opposition to my urging (Obama was also slow on the point). We became friends. I also stayed at his Fifth Avenue apartment (palatial is the only word) a couple of times; he didn’t know how many rooms it had and noted that it was “too big for one man”. We also went to St Barts at Christmas a few more times, which also began to grow tedious for me, especially since the tennis was scarce and the restaurants rigorously French. In any case, life with George Soros became a fixture, a habit, part of my normal existence. I was part of his close circle. When people asked me how I knew George, I would say I was his mentor, and he didn’t demur. We had many lengthy intimate conversations. There was a good deal of mutual respect and affection.

A few years into our relationship he asked me to accompany him to Budapest and introduce the first of a series of public lectures he was giving there. He flew me and my wife over, business class, and put us up in a fine hotel. His future wife Tomiko was also there, who I already knew well. He asked me to comment after the lecture (broadcast all over the world) on his concept of reflexivity—we had talked about this a good deal, with me trying to impose clarity on his messy formulations. I discovered after a little research that the same idea, called the “Oedipus effect”, had been stated by Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historicism, who had been George’s teacher at the London School of Economics, and was an acknowledged influence on him.[1]Evidently this concept had been absorbed by Soros as a young man and its origin forgotten. Somewhat horrified, I informed George of this fact on the very morning he was due to give his lecture and I to comment on it. Crestfallen is the word I would use to describe the look on his face when he read the relevant passage from Popper’s book (he was in his dressing gown in his hotel room). It was then my solemn duty to point this out after George had proudly spoken of his “discovery” of reflexivity (his name for the same idea) in his opening lecture. The air was thick with tension. Fortunately, I had devised a face-saving way out: I asked George to explain what he had added to the original idea. He replied that he had applied it to the financial markets (with spectacular success), which Popper had not done. This reply saved the day, though the moment was pretty excruciating. I also made up an impersonation of George’s style of lecturing that greatly amused his fiancé (“At this point I was making a billion dollars a day, but this did not satisfy me, so I decided to change the world”). In any case, none of this affected our friendship, though I suppose it put a big dent in George’s intellectual aspirations. In the book that came out of the lectures he wrote in the preface, “I owe a debt of gratitude to Colin McGinn…for clarifying certain philosophical points”. I might restate this by saying that I saved him from several embarrassing philosophical errors by criticizing what he had sent to me to read and comment on. And let us note that I was never paid for any of this time-consuming work. We carried on seeing a good deal of each other. I went to his extravagant 80th birthday party and also to his even more extravagant wedding to his current wife Tomiko. It was at this latter event that I told George’s joke to Al Franken, who unsmilingly pronounced it “a good joke”—an encounter with an eerie sequel. I also at this time became good friends with George’s youngest son Gregory, about whom I will not speak further, except to say it was a balm to me in future years.

Not long after this I faced the allegations that became public knowledge. I cannot make any comment for legal reasons on the merits of any of this; suffice it to say that none of it affected my relationship with George. He even offered to write a letter in support of me. However, six months after the initial contretemps the matter became public, even appearing on the front page of the New York Times. The annual invitation to Southampton was not forthcoming. Nor was it ever repeated. Nor have I seen or talked to George Soros since that time (2013). I was completely cut off. No reason was given. Nothing was explained. I happened to speak with Howie once, but he could offer no explanation to me (not permitted in a butler). (I was, however, still friends with Gregory.) Was this hurtful? You bet. Was it disappointing? Unquestionably. Frankly, I was amazed. I don’t really know why it happened and can only guess. But I won’t guess here, although I will say it is hard for me to believe that George thinks I did anything to deserve that kind of treatment. Was I just no more use to him after I put paid to his philosophical ambitions? Our friendship certainly had its transactional side. This was perhaps the most spectacular of the interpersonal implosions to which I have been subjected. What happened to that “debt of gratitude”?

[1] The basic idea is that prediction can influence the course of social events—not so physical events.

Share

De Re Necessity Reconsidered

/0 Comments/in /by

De Re Necessity Reconsidered

The necessity of origin is a beguiling thesis, instantly plausible. It sounds right. Queen Elizabeth II was necessarily born to her actual parents; in no possible world does she have different parents. If she exists in a world, so do her parents, dutifully giving rise to her. If she exists, those two people must have shagged her into existence. But we need to examine more carefully what the content of the claim is: what exactly do we mean by “parent”? The natural interpretation is that the person Elizabeth necessarily derives from the persons who actually produced her. Thus, we have the (interesting) thesis that persons necessarily arise from specific other persons. The origin of a particular person consists of a pair of other persons. However, this claim is demonstrably false, as we can see by considering brain transfer cases. Suppose Elizabeth’s parents had their brains replaced by other people’s brains so that the resulting person is not identical to the original person; then she would have been born to different persons yet still be Elizabeth (that person). She would have come from the same sperm and egg, but had different persons as parents. In that possible world her actual parents (quapersons) might never have existed, yet she would, because the same human bodies exist in that world and do their procreative thing. If my parents had been body-snatched a few weeks before I was conceived, I would still exist, even though the persons of Joseph and June would not be my parents (they had long gone before I was born). Result: persons don’t have persons as their necessary origins—no person necessarily originates in a particular pair of persons. There is no such de re metaphysical necessity linking persons with persons. It is not difficult to come up with variants on this sort of thought experiment—for example, cases in which your parents suffer such drastic psychological changes that they are no longer the same person as before. You still exist in a world in which this happens. The reason is obvious: the bodies of your parents still exist in these possible worlds. We can thus easily modify the thesis to accommodate these counterexamples: people necessarily come from the bodies they actually come from. I couldn’t have arisen from the bodies of my parents’ neighbors, say: that wouldn’t have been me, even if that individual looked and talked just like me. But isn’t that thesis in turn subject to the same kinds of counterexample? What if my parents’ reproductive apparatus had been grafted onto distinct human bodies and the same reproductive acts performed? I would still exist but from different bodies—those bodies would be performing the necessary acts. That is because it is the sperm and egg that really matter, not the body in which they happen to live.[1] So, we need to reformulate the thesis to register this fact: a given person necessarily arises form a particular combination of sperm and egg. Now we seem in the clear—but are we? What if the sperm and egg were replaced but the DNA left the same? We change the cellular vehicle but preserve the genetic passengers. Then we would have numerically the same DNA molecules but numerically distinct sperm and egg. Does that change the identity of the person that results? Apparently not: we just need to reformulate the thesis yet again—the person necessarily comes from a specific packet of DNA (the enclosing sperm and egg be hanged). This is a physical object admitting of the type-token distinction: I had to come from that token chunk of DNA—a distinct token of the same type would not be me (this person). A twin of me isn’t me. Are we now home free? Not quite: what if in a possible world a fragment of my actual DNA chunk has been chipped off? That wouldn’t be the same DNA chunk (aggregate) and yet I might still exist in that world. How much of the origin object can be lost before the person ceases to be? None of this is as straightforward as it seemed at first when the example of Queen Elizabeth II was paraded before us. The necessity of origin is murkier than we thought, with different implications for the metaphysics of persons; it is more recherche, more obscure. Though not simply false. It has an analytical depth that wasn’t immediately apparent. There is a fine structure to it. We might say that the correct thesis is that persons necessarily come from their micro-origins, not from macro human beings.

We can parallel the above discussion for tables and pieces of wood. It sounds right to say that this table necessarily came from a particular tree; any table looking like this table but coming from a different tree wouldn’t be this table. But that can’t be quite right once we take account of certain operations on trees, such as splicing. Suppose that in a possible world the piece of wood that composes this table had been spliced onto another tree not the one it is joined to in the actual world. Then the table would have come from a different tree but from the same piece of wood. Well and good, then let us restate the thesis to acknowledge this possibility: the table necessarily comes from that particular piece of wood, no matter what tree it belongs to across possible worlds. Does that imply that it must come from the same bunch of atoms? Couldn’t the same tree part have been composed of different atoms (like an animal body)? Sure, so let’s make that explicit—we don’t mean the table had to have been composed of the same atoms, though it does need to come from the same (atom-independent) piece of wood. Again, this is starting to lose some of its initial clarity as a modal claim, though perhaps it deepens the interest (it’s not the lump of matter that counts). And we still have questions about how much of the piece is necessary in order to get the specific table in question—how much can be chipped off or replaced. Surely it doesn’t have to be the whole piece. Could the table exist but be an inch shorter because the piece of wood didn’t stretch as far as the actual piece? Things are murkier than we thought, less clear-cut (as it were).

What about necessities of natural kind? Is a particular cat necessarily a cat—could it (that cat) have been a dog or a platypus? Again, intuition is strong: no way that cat (any cat) could have been of another animal kind—in no possible world is a cat an elephant! But careful thought starts to blur the picture. A cat could certainly have had different properties from its actual properties—properties of location, food intake, color, etc. A small genetic alteration could make it bigger or smaller, changed its eye color, influenced its furriness. Cats come in breeds, so could a given cat have been of a different breed? It depends how breeds are individuated and how extreme the differences are. It could certainly be somewhat different phenotypically and still the same cat, but could a Maine Coon be a Siamese? Now intuition begins to waver and struggle: we don’t know what to say. Could this oak tree have been a beech tree? Could an octopus be a shark? What if the octopus’ egg were subjected to radiation and its DNA arranged like that of a shark, developing accordingly? Would that creature be identical to the octopus that now exists but in a shark’s form? Hard to say. There seem to be all sorts of gradations and weird cases; modal intuition turns soft. What seemed obvious at first now seems obscure, even meaningless. We go from clarity to cloudiness, confidence to diffidence. This doesn’t mean there aren’t clear cases—a cat couldn’t be a clock (an ordinary wristwatch). There is no possible world in which your pet cat is a Rolex! But what kind of argument could settle the difficult cases? They seem irresoluble. What does this tell us about de re necessity? Possibly this: there is such a thing as the indeterminacy of essence. Meaning has been held to be indeterminate, and quantum behavior too, but perhaps also necessity de re. There is just no fact of the matter about certain modal questions; modal reality can’t make up its mind about these questions, try as it might. The metaphysics of modality is therefore subject to inherent indeterminacy. Essence is real, but it’s blurry. At first it seems quite sharp and clear, but on closer examination it starts to wobble and darken. Possible worlds are not as well defined as we thought; some hover on the border of possibility. Necessity is not limpid and crystalline, much as we would like it to be.

I will end where I began—with origin. Are there also necessities of termination? Is it true that a person could only end with a single terminal offshoot? Consider the corpse: it results from an antecedent living organism, often a person. It isn’t identical to the person: the person is no more but the dead body lingers. Nor are the sperm and egg identical to the person. A person’s life is bookended by non-persons: eggs and corpses. Could a given person have a different corpse in another possible world? In this world the corpse is a certain dead body; in another world could it be a numerically distinct dead body? I think not: that body could not have come from a different living body, and the living body could not have produced a different dead body (given that it did leave one). Death necessarily turns a living thing into a single dead thing, across all possible worlds. My corpse could not be the corpse of Sydney Sweeney, say. The “corpse-of” relation is rigid across possible worlds. That seems evident enough, as evident as the necessity of origin. True, we can manufacture hard cases: if the corpse is headless in a possible world, is it the same corpse as the one still joined to a head in the actual world? What if it loses even more of its parts? In any case, there is a symmetry between origin and terminus, modally speaking: both are subject to de re necessities. We should therefore add necessity of termination to necessity of origin.[2]

[1] I am obviously drawing on Kripke’s discussion of origin in Naming and Necessity, which in turn draws on a 1962 discussion by Timothy Sprigge. Kripke is well aware of the need to restrict the thesis to the sperm and egg, though he doesn’t mention the further possibilities I consider here. I take this for granted in my paper “On the Necessity of Origin” (1976).

[2] We can imagine reversing origin and terminus such that a person begins as a corpse and ends as a pair of cells. First, the dead body exists and life is breathed into it (think Frankenstein’s monster); then, at the end, the person’s body gradually withers away so that only a pair of cells remain. We could accordingly say that the person necessarily came from a certain corpse (lifeless body) and necessarily ended in a certain pair of cells. The table might likewise begin in a pile of ashes and end as part of a living tree (this would be a rather miraculous possible world).

Share

Skateboarding

/4 Comments/in /by

Skateboarding

I already had a skateboard, but it hadn’t ventured much beyond my living room. It seemed like asking for trouble (too small, too unstable). Then I saw someone using a longer type of skateboard at my local park (I was throwing discus and frisbee left-handed at the time). I went on Amazon and found that such boards are made and quite a bit longer than the average skateboard (about 44 inches). I ordered one. I tentatively tried it out in my driveway clad in appropriate armor (knee pads etc.). Then, yesterday evening—crepuscular time—I decided to make a real effort to make some progress. I went out on a local street, again protectively clad, and took the plunge. Yes, it’s pretty scary, steering is hard, and stopping feels impossible; but it is possible. I learned how to do it in about half an hour. Admittedly, I had some experience with board sports—paddleboarding, surfing, windsurfing, snowboarding, skim boarding—but it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. Fun, too. So now, I’m a skateboarder, age 74.

Share

Morality of Life and Death

/2 Comments/in /by

Morality of Life and Death

Morality is often presented as a list of commandments, imperatives, duties, requirements, rules. Among these we have the commandment not to kill—along with commandments not to steal, lie, betray, break promises, be ungrateful, etc. These are treated as much on a par; together they form a moral whole—a code, a system. In some presentations unity is imposed, as in utilitarianism and Kantianism. In particular, the prohibition against killing is regarded as just one duty among others (as in W.D. Ross’s catalogue of prima facie duties or obligations). Killing is not singled out for special treatment. But surely it stands out as special, not just one commandment among many. I want to suggest that morality should be bifurcated so as to record and respect the special character of the wrongness of killing. There is stealing and lying (etc.) on the one hand and killing on the other. These are distinct moral kinds, superficially similar but actually deeply different. We might speak of “normative dualism” as we speak of “substance dualism”. Let’s not lump everything together as if morality were a homogeneous domain. Some of morality is concerned with rules concerning the conduct of life, but some relates to the business of death. Some is about how to live with other people (also animals) and some is about the morality of ending life.

The most obvious point of difference is that killing is far more serious than other immoral acts—deserving of the greatest censure. Lying and stealing are wrong, but killing isn’t just wrong—it’s really seriously wrong. It sounds oddly understated to describe killing as the wrong thing to do. The word “wrong” is inadequate to express its moral badness (the word “bad” isn’t much better). Here we reach for words like “heinous”, “abominable”, “evil”, “wicked”—none of these apply to garden-variety cases of lying and stealing. Taking a life is in a class of its own. Life is “sacred”, we say, unlike property. We underrate its badness by classifying it along with other bad acts. The prohibition against killing is particularly strong, not easily overridden. Hence, the kind of severe punishment reserved for it alone.

Second, the other moral rules cluster around the notion of harm or unhappiness: lying and stealing make people suffer, cause unhappiness, reduce utility. They make the recipient worse off. But killing doesn’t make the victim unhappy—it makes the victim no more, not even capable of being unhappy. A broadly utilitarian account of the non-killing norms sounds reasonable, but we can’t explain the wrongness of killing by appeal to how the victim feels after being killed. The state of being dead is not an unhappy state. The killing itself may cause pain, but the result isn’t more future suffering. This makes killing a very special kind of wrong.

Third, it is not easy to say precisely what is bad about being dead, whereas it is easy to say what is bad about being stolen from or lied to. The badness of suffering is no mystery, but the badness of not being able to suffer (because dead) is perplexing. The sophistical murderer may contend that he has spared his victim future misery, and that is certainly true, since all human life has its quota of misery. It is common to say that the wrongness of killing consists in depriving the victim of future pleasures, and that is intelligible enough; but killing is much worse than, and quite different from, just preventing future pleasures—that could be achieved simply by moving the person to an unpleasant environment. Killing is really bad even if the victim’s life isn’t all that pleasurable. Taking a life is much worse than depriving a person of pleasure. But it is hard to say what this special badness amounts to—which is not to say that it amounts to nothing.

So, the prohibition against killing cannot be assimilated to the other prohibitions; it is sui generis. Killing is seriously bad, inexplicable in terms of utility, and somewhat mysterious as to the ground of its wrongness. I would also say that it is much more shocking than other misdeeds, even torture. It is nihilistic, extreme, inexcusable. Of course, there are contexts in which it is not wrong, such as self-defense (or other-defense), just as there are contexts in which stealing and lying are not wrong. But when killing is wrong, it is shockingly wrong. Slavery is no doubt very wrong, but genocide is shockingly wrong (think how feeble it sounds to describe genocide as “wrong”). It isn’t just one of those things one shouldn’t do; it is outside the range of normal human wrongdoing. We don’t say to our children, “Don’t tell lies, and while we’re at it don’t murder either!” That’s not something we feel we need to warn them against. We don’t say, “Don’t torment your sister, and don’t kill her either!”

One might reasonably insist that the injunction against killing is not a moral rule at all, not a piece of moral guidance or advice; it goes deeper than that. It is a self-evident moral truth recognized by every sane halfway decent person. It really doesn’t need a commandment to back it up. A natural response to “Thou shalt not kill!” is “Yeah, tell me something I don’t know”. You don’t need to be educated into that piece of moral knowledge, whereas the standard moral rules do require a bit of prodding and instruction. To describe the prohibition against murder as a “prima facie duty” sounds hopelessly inadequate and quaint, the result of trying to impose unity on a heterogeneous bunch of moral no-nos. You don’t owe it to people not to kill them, as you owe it to people not to lie to them, or not to steal from them, or not to be ungrateful for what they have done to benefit you.

I thus recommend that we have two lists of moral injunctions: one list contains all the standard injunctions, arranged alphabetically and printed in black ink; the other contains only the injunction against killing, written in italics and red ink. Then people will see that it is not just any old piece of moral sermonizing (perfectly justified as that may be) but a special moral principle deserving a position of its own. Metaethically, we should subscribe to moral dualism.[1]

[1] One wonders whether the traditional list reflects the fact that in the old days people didn’t really distinguish the wrongness of killing from other sorts of wrong act. Killing was far more commonplace and indiscriminate; it took centuries before we realized how bad it actually is. Now we see that it is a different kind of immoral act—it has a different “real essence”. But we persist with the outmoded list, as if killing were not much worse than telling the odd fib or stealing apples from an orchard (“scrumping”). As Ryle would say, it belongs in a different category.

Share

Pain, Consciousness, and Morality

/0 Comments/in /by

Pain, Consciousness, and Morality

Consciousness (sentience) evolved at a certain time on planet Earth, many millions of years ago. It didn’t emerge all at once but piecemeal: a certain type of consciousness evolved first, with additions later. What was this type? We don’t know; we can only guess. What we do know is that, whatever it was, later developments bore the stamp of it—they grew from it, modified it, extended beyond it. The machinery that enabled it to emerge was coopted in later versions of the original manifestation. The original adaptation set the course for subsequent developments. It is not to be supposed that consciousness was required for all information processing operations—the organism could respond effectively to environmental stimuli without being aware of them. I doubt that consciousness came about via primitive versions of the five senses we know today. It is not even clear that the senses require consciousness to do their job. No, the first form of consciousness would be something that is necessarily conscious—also vital. It seems to me that the best candidate is pain perception: the first glimmers of consciousness took the form of sensations of pain directed to the immediate environment. Pain perception is clearly highly adaptive, given the dangers presented to the organism—it warns of life-threatening impingements. Organisms that can feel pain will out-compete organisms lacking such sensations. One might think it was only a matter of time before pain became a standard (but not universal) feature of life on Earth. Moreover, pain is not possible without consciousness—without there being something it is like to have it. There is no unconscious or preconscious pain; sentience is built into it. Once pain exists consciousness is off and running. So, we can imagine the first sentient beings as pain perceivers, and only pain perceivers. Organisms with it became aware of the world as painful. They lived in a painful world (unlike plants and bacteria). Objects became consciously categorized as painful (or not painful). The primal phenomenology is a painful phenomenology.

Given that consciousness first arrived in the form of pain, we would expect its later forms to reflect that fact. What is the likely course of evolution for this newfound capacity? Pain and touch go together, so we would expect consciousness to extend itself into touch generally. The sharp pointy object will cause pain and be perceived as sharp and pointy, consciously so. Sensations of shape and hardness will be added to sensations of pain caused by such objects. Both sorts of sensation will be experienced simultaneously, and joined together. An association will be formed such that object properties come to be imbued with pain productivity, potentially if not actually. Objects perceived as sharp and pointy will be regarded as inherently pain-inducing. The tactile world is a world of potential pain.[1] That is, indeed, the main significance of tactile perception—the detection of dangerous objects that cause pain. Pain is always a whisker away from touching objects; touch is risky, pain-prone. Just consider handling a kitchen knife! Touch is the careful sense—burns, scratches, grazes, cuts, stabs, collisions. Thus, touch is haunted by intimations of pain. That is its phenomenology, its intentionality. Tactile consciousness is steeped in pain consciousness—even kissing can turn painful! So, this sense is not far removed from the initial pain consciousness that (we are supposing) was the first manifestation of consciousness on Earth. Smell and taste are not very different: it is important for the organism to detect bad and dangerous food—hence nasty tastes and smells. This is not pain exactly, but it has the same kind of urgent avoidance that characterizes pain—you spit that stuff out reflexively. Tasting and smelling are also geared to the noxious and dangerous—that is their prime purpose (fine dining can come later). The negative is the original function and feeling. Tasting bad and hurting are the prime modes of the corresponding senses, because most vital to survival (gene transmission). What about the distance senses? Well, both vision and hearing can become loci of pain and discomfort if the stimulus is too strong, which it can easily be. But isn’t it also true that seen and heard objects are always assessed for their danger potential? The sight and sound of a predator, the falling rock, the rough pathway ahead, the thorn, the nettle, the fire. Vision and hearing inform us of a perilous world; they are not pleasant luxuries. Pain lurks in the background; it shapes the affordances. Vision, combined with touch, informs us of a dangerous world, only too ready to deal out quantities of pain. The case resembles feathers: originally evolved for purposes of thermal regulation, later extended into devices of flight, but still bearing the marks of their thermal origins. Visual and auditory consciousness stem originally from pain consciousness, according to our hypothesis, and they never lost their association with pain. Pain is their sine qua non. Pain is what enabled them to evolve. Perhaps they would never have evolved without it (qua conscious processes). Thought and rationality take a further step away from primitive pain, but they too bear its imprint—pain is written into them, albeit remotely (like limbs and fins). In the genetic book of the dead pain is a footnote in the chapters on thought and reason (ditto language). Evolution is an essentially conservative process, with earlier traits preserved in later developments. Let me put it with maximum bluntness: the mind is riddled with pain, or the idea of it. Consciousness exists in the shadow of pain. It is an outgrowth of pain. No doubt other ingredients were added in the fullness of time, but the evolutionary history is never completely abandoned (we are still fish—though long out of water). Our consciousness is a construction out of pain, as biological raw material. Attenuated, modified, reformed—but still pain-derivative. We are built to suffer, like all sentient beings. Suffering is our biological fate. Any study of consciousness, then, should be aware of this ancient history preserved in stone.[2] What it is like to be conscious is informed by what it is like to feel pain. Could we even say that all consciousness is really a modeof pain? Physically, we have bacteria distributed throughout the body, lurking in every cell (mitochondria); mentally, we have pain distributed throughout the mind, though modified greatly over evolutionary time. Even mathematical thoughts have pain lingering in them somewhere; certainly, they are made possible by the original appearance of pain consciousness (if our hypothesis is correct). The machinery and phenomenology of pain are the origin of everything mental. Pain is a mental universal (“pan-painism”).

Why do I mention morality in my title? The reason is simple: pain is also the origin and basis of all morality. How did morality evolve (i.e., our thoughts concerning right and wrong)? It came from the reality of pain (not so much pleasure): the prime moral directive is “Cause no pain!” It is obvious to any half-way intelligent being that pain is bad—always has been, always will be. So, it is wrong to cause it. Isn’t that the most fundamental of moral principles? Other ideas can be added to it, but it is never left completely behind: increase pleasure (minimize pain), don’t torture and steal (they hurt the victim), keep your promises (don’t disappoint people), be grateful (don’t make your benefactor regret helping you), be just (don’t cause unhappiness in people unfairly), etc. It’s all about suffering and the avoidance thereof. If there is anything else, it is secondary, not of the essence. Thus, there is no morality worthy of the name without the reality of pain (suffering, unhappiness); no real point to it, no urgency. The first moral thought on planet Earth was “It’s wrong to hurt people” (though “people” might be restricted to one’s own kin, or just oneself). Pain is the sine qua non of morality as we know it. Pain is necessarily conscious, so there can be no morality (of any consequence) without consciousness. Pain is the origin and focus of morality, as it is the origin and focus of mind (not the exclusive focus). Two great things therefore owe their existence to pain: consciousness and morality. Two good things exist only because of a bad thing (though pain has its good side as an indicator of danger). Some philosophers say death is the shaper of human life; others say it is free will; others say beauty: but pain has a good title to that status. It is formative, inescapable, and terrible. We can’t live with it, but we wouldn’t be here without it. Once felt, never forgotten. It made us conscious and it made us good.[3]

[1] We might define matter as what causes pain: not extension (Descartes) and not solidity (Locke), but painfulness (McGinn). The mind isn’t painful; you can’t collide with it. Your mental state never causes you to reel back in agony (“Ouch, that belief stung!”).

[2] If we could solve the problem of how pain arises from the brain, we would have pretty much solved the mind-body problem.

[3] If we ask what consciousness (or morality) would (or could) be like without pain, we run into difficulties. Our consciousness, and that of other animals, is so conditioned by the reality of pain that it is hard to imagine what consciousness without it would be like. Even vision would have to be very different, because it would no longer be surrounded by the apprehension of pain, actual or potential. Seeing a red cube, say, would have no relation to potential collisions—what it would feel like to be struck by such an object. The consciousness of a heavenly being would be very unlike our terrestrial consciousness, being bereft of any pain-inducing danger. The world would not be experienced as adversarial. Terrestrial consciousness, by contrast, is up to its neck in an adversarial world experienced primarily via pain or its possibility. For us, consciousness is as of a world of the permanent possibility of pain; removing this leaves something unreal and barely imaginable. It would be a consciousness devoid of fear. Likewise, in a world without pain (unhappiness, negative affect) morality would be scarcely recognizable, and of little account. It might consist of pallid injunctions to return your books to the library on time and the necessity not to open your mouth while eating.

Share

Coach Colin Redux

/2 Comments/in /by

Coach Colin Redux

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I arrived at the Biltmore tennis center for my daily practice and was confronted by a mob of high school students—not dressed in tennis gear. My first concern was whether this would interfere with my hitting session. As I parked my bicycle one of them, a boy, asked me if I was going to play tennis. Yes, I said. He then said he wanted to learn to play and would I help him. Sure, I replied, a little annoyed at having my own tennis interfered with. Instantly, a small crowd gathered, boys and girls, all eager to watch and be taught, about fifteen of them. Suddenly, I was placed in the teacher role. First, I gave them some verbal pointers, mainly about keeping the ball down; then I demonstrated, hitting the ball softly against the wall. They watched carefully, silently, then applauded, I’m not sure why. I commented on what they had seen and how I executed the stroke. Much bright-eyed nodding. Then I demonstrated some harder hitting to give them a sense of the real game—more applause (well-deserved, I thought). Then things got interesting: I asked for volunteers. First, a boy had a go—“Not terrible”, I remarked. They could all see how difficult it is to hit a tennis ball well, him especially. I coached him a bit. Then I took a second volunteer, making sure it was a girl (no sexist, me). She responded well to coaching and managed to hit the ball straight and fairly hard a couple of times—she was clearly thrilled. Then another girl stepped up, brimming with enthusiasm; but she kept missing the ball altogether and could hardly make it hit the wall when she did make contact. The kids were sympathetic and supportive. Suddenly, they announced they had to leave; their teacher beckoned. They were all smiles and thankyous. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I felt the joy of teaching again. I reflected: they knew nothing of me beyond what they picked up in those few minutes. Quite unlike what I would expect of a bunch of students being taught philosophy by me now. It was how things used to be. I carried on hitting.

Share

David Lewis

/0 Comments/in /by

David Lewis

I have in my possession a long letter from David Lewis replying to my paper “Modal Reality” (1981). Several years ago, I was contacted about this letter because no copy of it existed in Lewis’s files, but at that time I didn’t know where it was or even if it had survived. I came across it recently when I sorted through my old correspondence. If the executors still want it, I have it now. It is very characteristic. I had little contact with Lewis during his lifetime, though I read a fair amount of his stuff and treated him with respect when I saw him. I can’t say I was much impressed. He didn’t strike me as the epitome of intellectual honesty or personal warmth, and was quite careerist. He was never particularly friendly to me. More important, I never found him very persuasive, especially in metaphysics and philosophy of mind. He was clever but misguided. I remember liking his earlier work more, especially Convention and “General Semantics”. I just never got much out of his later stuff. I didn’t even read A Plurality of Worlds—far too doctrinaire. I find his current exalted status rather surprising (I wouldn’t say this about Saul Kripke). I think he answers to a certain image of what a successful American philosopher should look like.

Share

Romantic Harassment

/4 Comments/in /by

Romantic Harassment

We hear a lot about sexual harassment these days, but not much about romantic harassment. Indeed, I just invented the phrase (and perhaps the concept). What is it? Suppose A falls in love with B and wants B to fall in love with him. He begins a series of efforts to secure this result—flowers, invitations to dinner, declarations of love. Trouble is, B doesn’t feel the same way. She feels uncomfortable about the whole thing, and wishes it would stop. Eventually A resorts to more aggressive measures: he starts threatening B with loss of job opportunities, online defamation. She feels harassed, stressed, and angry. That’s romantic harassment. Her harasser doesn’t want sex (he is insecure in that area), but he does want candlelit dinners, love letters, and affectionate gazes. He is behaving badly, all because of his love for B. You know, love can make people do crazy things, shameful things. It’s bad, definitely, but it doesn’t quite have the punch carried by the phrase “sexual harassment”. It doesn’t come with the counterpart phrase “romantic assault” (what would that be?), and we don’t hear talk of the “romantic predator”. It doesn’t sound as bad, and it doesn’t introduce the topic of sex. But it has the same structure as sexual harassment and can have the same consequences. It comes in degrees, clearly, and it is hard to imagine it as a criminal offense, or as career-ending; it is doubtful the newspapers would be much interested in covering it. The phrase “romantic misconduct” doesn’t have the same salacious zing as “sexual misconduct”—it’s not as juicy and titillating. You see, it isn’t sexual—and we know how people are about that.

Are there other forms of harassment that follow the same pattern? What about friendship harassment?  You badly want X to be your friend, but he doesn’t seem interested. You do everything you can to make X like you: you compliment him, give him presents, invite him for drinks. Trouble is, he’s just not that keen. He already has a lot of friends and he finds you, well, a bit boring. He finds your attentions annoying and wishes you would leave him alone. He even tells you he doesn’t want to be your friend, but you persist, hoping to win him over. You might even threaten him with a loss of professional assignments (you have that kind of power). None of this is good, though your motives are pure—you are sure (perhaps correctly) that you and X would be great friends. Again, it is hard to see how this kind of thing could excite much of a frenzy. It shouldn’t be illegal or career-ending; it should be handled in the usual quiet ways (see TV sit-coms that deal with the topic). If it escalates, sterner measures might become necessary, but in the normal course of events it isn’t likely to require the full weight of the law, or total ostracism. Why? Because there is no sexual element—and we know how people feel about that. The same goes for “chess harassment” or “table tennis harassment”: trying to find partners to engage with you in these activities. It would be possible to become quite harassing about these things—persistent, annoying, even threatening. People might start saying you are a serial chess harasser, a menace to society, and excluding you from social gatherings and paid employment—all very hysterical, but justified by your proclivity to pester people to play chess with you. You might even be accused of “grooming” people to play chess with you (giving them beautiful chess sets, etc.). The point is that this kind of unwanted interpersonal behavior is structurally just like sexual harassment and may have the same kinds of consequences, but it doesn’t excite the same kinds of censure and antipathy (“His unhealthy need for chess was his undoing”). One might begin to wonder if too much emphasis is being placed on the sexual in sexual harassment and not enough on the harassment part. That’s what’s really bad, not the fact that sex is the harasser’s aim. And what is the sex that is aimed for—does light kissing count? Many distinctions need to be made, not just brandishing the phrase “sexual harassment” like an all-purpose bludgeon. The question of degree of severity must not be ignored.

There is another area in which sex plays a considerable part—consensual sexual relations in work contexts. These are supposed not to occur, or if they do remedial measures must be adopted. People are required to report sexual relations to the authorities, and the same goes for romantic relations. The latter are generally understood to involve sex, or else the rule becomes far too inclusive (what is to count as “romantic”?). But this is not the only kind of relationship that raises analogous questions—friendship does too, or family connections. The purpose of such rules is to exclude bias in treatment and evaluation—for example, giving your lover an A he or she doesn’t deserve. That can certainly happen in such cases, though it is not a necessary truth; but it can also happen in other kinds of case too. You can be biased in favor of your friend or your niece—say, if they are a member of your class in animal husbandry. In fact, you can be biased in all sorts of ways, depending on your dispositions—by religion, nationality, clothing style, looks, eye color. The human mind is full of prejudices, stereotypes, likes and dislikes. Romantic entanglement is just one of these, and may not be the most powerful or insidious. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that sex is figuring too prominently in attempts to enforce impartiality. It is attitudes specifically to sex that underlie the policies adopted by various institutions. People can be fired from their jobs if they are found guilty of failing to report their romantic or sexual feelings in an instructional context, but when did you hear of this happening in the case of feelings of friendship or family connections? What is the missing ingredient? Sex, of course.

Here is a final case to consider: what we might call “negative sexual harassment” for want of a better term. Suppose a professor finds a particular student extremely repellent sexually: he just can’t bear the sight of her. Nevertheless, he has to deal with her: she sits in his class, comes to his office hours, chats with him in the hallway. Let’s suppose our professor is a happily married man who just happens for deep psychological reasons to experience extreme sexual negativity in certain cases (something to do with his mother, say). He just can’t help it. When this student accosts him (as he might say) he has to stand at least ten feet away from her, cannot look directly at her, and keeps the interaction as brief as possible. All this is obvious to her, and very distressing. She worries the professor is biased against her and will not give her fair grades. Actually, he is perfectly fair, but the appearances are certainly not encouraging. Should she complain? Should he be reprimanded, or even fired? He is guilty of harassment by sexual negativity, it may be said. The situation is delicate and needs to be handled carefully, but I doubt it would rise to the level of administrative discipline, dismissal, or the attention of the press. Why? Because it involves the marked absence of sex as a motive for the behavior that is causing the trouble—the professor is the opposite of sexually attracted to the student. Yet his behavior may occasion the very types of reaction occasioned by overt attraction—discomfort, anxiety, fear, etc. These are the things that really matter, not the psychological cause of the problematic behavior. We need to be less obsessed with the sexual motive and more concerned with the effects of the behavior. And the language in which we talk of these things matters, especially if it is incendiary and triggering to the contemporary psyche.[1]

[1] In case of any misunderstanding, let me make clear that I have no wish to underplay the seriousness of sexual harassment. It is obviously a very bad thing to do. Cases do vary, however.

Share