ABC Interview

The interview last night of President Trump by Terry Moran of ABC News was an unbelievable display of petulance, egotism, mendacity, vindictiveness, and rank stupidity. It was an embarrassment to the country. The man’s mind is a slag heap of prejudices, stereotypes, grievances, vague generalities, and petty rivalry. He appears to lack a brain. Do you think I am exaggerating? Then consider two nadirs of the whole performance. First, when questioned about the lack of due process in cases of deportation, he demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the concept and hence of the nature of the law. All he could say was that that the deported individuals were given “a process”. He is certifiably legally illiterate, startlingly so. Second, and even worse, he insisted that he had photographic proof of the guilt of Abrego Garcia in the form of “MS13” tattooed on his knuckles. He kept repeating this as if it was indisputable. When Moran suggested it might be photoshopped he merely “doubled down” (to me these letters looked clearly superimposed). What is so deplorable about this is that he couldn’t even imagine the mere possibility that this “evidence” might not be probative. He seemed incapable of even the most elementary ability to evaluate evidence; and he was prepared to destroy a man’s life based on highly dubious “evidence”. His constant reference to President Biden showed the puerility of character we have seen so often. Nothing he said was remotely cogent, reasoned, or even properly formulated. He is unusual even by the standards of the most egregious ignoramus. He absolutely refuses to engage with awkward questions. There is no thought process, just affect-driven reflexes. Psychologically, he is in a class of his own. He understands nothing, but he isn’t going to let that stop him.

The World

The word “world” is a slippery customer. It seems to have two meanings, ordinary and philosophical. In one use it refers to one’s world-view or world of activity, as in “the tortoise’s world” or “How are things in your world?” Here the word is qualified by “of”—the world of X. There are many such worlds, as many as there are creatures with lives and a “point of view”. But the other use is quite different: it refers to something called theworld—that world which encompasses everything. This is the philosophical use: “the world is the totality of facts” etc. It is not a world for anyone but something quite independent of a life, a consciousness, a point of view, a perspective. Can it be paraphrased? The nearest synonym appears to be “reality”, but that word too has its ambiguities. The OED gives us “existence that is absolute or objective and not subject to human decision or convention” (so decisions and conventions are not part of reality). Evidently, these words are hard to pin down in their philosophical use, though they have an intelligible ordinary use. It is difficult to avoid the impression that the philosophical use corresponds to something like “the scientist’s world” or “God’s world” (the world of an omniscient being). That is, the ordinary use has been recruited into a special sort of subject—the world-of use. For what else can it mean? There is not my world and your world and the tortoise’s world and then the world, as if the last is just another world in the ordinary sense except that a special sort of being is invoked. The idea is to prescind from any subject, but then the meaning of the phrase becomes obscure. It’s like speaking of a point of view from no point of view—there can be no such thing. Even the absolute conception is a conception by someone, even if only a possible being. When we hear the phrase “the world” we conjure a suitable being whose world it is, or else we don’t know whereof we speak. That is the suspicion anyway—we have strayed into nonsense, invented a pseudo concept. There is really no such thing as the world—there are only the worlds of this or that conscious being (or unconscious being—“the world of the worm”). We have appropriated a word in ordinary use and bent its meaning to express a philosophical concept—but that concept remains elusive. You know what Wittgenstein would say.

We evidently feel a need to express such a concept, but no word suggests itself. So, there is either no such concept or we are unable to express it in language (and we have no way to show it). The suspicion arises that there is no such thing as “the world” in the intended sense, whatever that may be. It is a philosopher’s fiction, or fantasy. There are the worlds of conscious beings, but no world in addition to these. What is called “the physical world” is really the world of the physicist. Of course, there are physical objects and properties, but not physical worlds as additional entities. Nor are there “possible worlds” in some sense independent of the worlds of people and animals; this is just so much illicit babble. Dare I say it: meaningless verbiage. There is the theater world and the fashion world and the academic world, but there are no worlds tout court. We have no concept of all there is that is somehow analogous to the concept we have of specific human and animal worlds. The putative idea of the world is not the idea of a kind of super-world in the ordinary sense—as it might be, God’s world or the world of a super-scientist. It is really an empty abstraction. Thus, the concept of the “noumenal world” is actually contradictory: for the intended referent is not supposed to be a world for anyone, even God. The phrase conjoins incompatible meanings, because what is noumenal cannot be a world in the only legitimate sense of that word. The world is not a world, if I may put it so. Perhaps the best we can do is speak of existence, but that is devoid of descriptive content; the word “world” was supposed to fill the conceptual gap, because we are familiar with the idea of worlds. I know what I mean by “my world”; well, theworld is like that except that I am deleted from the picture. But worlds are always someone’s world; it is a misuse of the word to suppose otherwise. There is always a plurality of worlds in the proper sense; the idea of a single all-inclusive world is a chimera. Nonsense on stilts, as someone once said. The phrase should be banned. It gives us a false sense of security.[1]

[1] We think we have brought an elusive (or meaningless) idea under control by using the word “world” in its usual sense, but this use is precisely not what is wanted. We fool ourselves if we think we have hold of an intelligible concept, rather in the way Hume and the positivists maintain, though for different reasons. Nonsense is not always transparent. The word “world”, as philosophers use it, is an “abstract idea” in Berkeley’s sense, and as such empty of descriptive content. It is like “the negative” or “the True” or “the most perfect being”.

Bodily Identity

Suppose you are interested in the nature of bodily survival: under what conditions does a body survive into the future? Your initial theory is that identity through time is a necessary and sufficient condition: the body then must be numerically identical to the body now. This is generally how it is and you conjecture this is how it must be: for example, a cat’s body will only survive if some future body is identical to that body; if no future body is identical to the given body, it will not count as that body surviving into the future. But now you notice a curious fact: some bodies can be bisected and the parts go on living. Some organisms divide, or can be divided, in two and the results survive into the future. Is there an identity between the original body and the surviving results of bisection? No, because neither of the two bodies is identical to the original body, since they are not identical to each other; and they can’t be identical to the original as a composite because the composite consists of different functional bodies and the original was not such a pair (the two bodies have grown extra limbs where none existed before). Yet we would want to say that the original survives the operation—bisection isn’t the same as death by obliteration. That is, in fission cases we have survival without identity. Fission is a better fate than death, if you care about bodily survival. It seems, then, that your initial theory of bodily survival was wrong: survival of the body does not logically require identity through time.

It has been claimed that survival of the person follows the same logic: a person can survive an operation in which no future person is identical to the original. These are brain bisection cases: you cut the brain into two and place the halves in two bodies, thus producing two persons not identical with any past person. Personal survival does not require personal identity, as these fission cases show. The human brain is made of two hemispheres each capable of housing a person if bisection is performed. The person can be divided from himself, as it were, as the body can be divided from itself. The anatomy of the brain makes that possible, as the anatomy of our hypothetical organism makes a similar thing possible. What metaphysical conclusions can we draw from such fission cases? What we cannot conclude is that persons are distinctively capable of survival without identity. We cannot say that it is a defining property of persons that they are able to survive without identity holding between them and some future person. It isn’t as if persons differ from bodies in this respect. It just turns out that in viable bisection cases we get survival without identity, whether it is persons or bodies that are at issue. We have made no such discovery about persons and only persons. So, we have not laid the groundwork for the further conclusion that personal survival consists of psychological continuity and connectedness as opposed to simple identity—unlike other classes of entity. In fact, the cases are precisely parallel: there is nothing particularly tenuous and degree-like about the survival of persons over time, as a matter of metaphysical necessity. It isn’t that personal survival is uniquely non-identity-requiring. In fact, this is a quite banal truth about survival in general—a matter of simple logic and the possibility of dividing things into two. It isn’t that persons possess the remarkable property, alone in the universe, of being capable of surviving in the absence of identity.

Let’s add another thought experiment: consider a possible world in which brains are not divisible in the way they are in the actual world—if you cut them in two, both halves die on the instant. Then there will be no possible fission cases in that world: there cannot be survival without identity of persons in that world. And yet there may still be fission cases for bodies in this world. Then we will have survival without identity for bodies but no survival without identity for persons. We invert the usual thought experiment. Teachers of philosophy in this world will be able to provide convincing thought experiments of the former type (bodies) but not the latter type (persons). Students will be persuaded that bodies can survive in the absence of identity, but not that persons can. If the latter is suggested, they will retort that such a thing is impossible, because brains cannot be divided without causing death. Bodies can, though, as illustrated by the organisms that do survive under fission; but persons can’t, because brains can’t survive under fission. It will be possible to write books about bodies drawing attention to their loose survival conditions, but not write such books about persons—they can survive only under conditions of strict identity.

Is it, then, that the correct theory of personal survival depends on the kind of world you are living in? If you are living in a world in which brains are like current human brains, then the non-identity continuity-and-connectedness theory holds; but if you are living in a world in which brains are not like this, then the simple identity theory holds. That would mean that there is no metaphysical truth about persons as such—only a kind of relative truth. It is only human persons (or those anatomically like them) that allow survival without identity, and hence invite a continuity-and-connectedness theory of personal survival; other species might not permit of the kind of operation envisaged by defenders of that theory. Indeed, it might be that the universe contains many species of persons all but one of which cannot survive without identity. This is not what proponents of the non-identity theory of survival had in mind—they purported to speak of the nature of persons not of some specific biological type of person. You can’t make metaphysics out of biological contingency.[1]

[1] I am alluding, of course, to the influential views of Derek Parfit.

Catch America

The reaction to Catch-22 constitutes an interesting sequel to the book itself. Ostensibly about World War II, it took off during the Vietnam war. It inaugurates the Sixties in America. Among the more perceptive critics, we find Robert Brustein writing in the New Republic (a magazine for which I used to write). He sees at once that the novel “has much wider implications than a war novel” to encompass “the postwar American world”. He writes: “Through the agency of grotesque comedy, Heller has found a way to confront the humbug, hypocrisy, cruelty, and sheer stupidity of our mass society—qualities which have made the few other Americans who care almost speechless with baffled rage—and through some miracle of prestidigitation, Pianosa has become a satirical microcosm for many of the macrocosmic idiocies of our time”. Those words could describe our present moment—and I don’t just mean Trump’s terrible tenure. I also mean the universities of the last twenty or so years, including the professors. Humbug, hypocrisy, cruelty, and sheer stupidity—these are all too familiar traits. Even worthwhile causes are tainted with them. It is easy to sympathize with the Yossarians of today. It is a world of fiction, paranoia, nastiness, hysteria, conformity, and (yes) sheer stupidity. The world of Catch-22 is the world we are living in, only magnified and extended.