Best Blog

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Best Blog

Why is this the best philosophy blog out there? For one thing, you get it for free; you don’t pay a penny for it (and I don’t make a penny). But that is a common property of blogs—why is this one the best? Because it has the best content: the best written, the best philosophical ideas, the greatest variety, the most digestible format, and me responding to comments. No junk, no filler. In addition, I situate the philosophy in the context of a life, which makes it more approachable (“relatable”). I think it makes the ideal way to learn philosophy, though by no means introductory. Any graduate student could learn a lot from it. I don’t set out to teach, but it can be mined for instruction. It is also non-repetitive and freshly minted. Never boring. But perhaps the best thing about it is that I don’t get bogged down in academic bullshit; I keep it pure. Not all that dreary crap about how to make it in the “profession”, but pure unadulterated philosophy. No tedious academic politics. Here you get the real thing. But is it the best by far? Of course it is (not that I read the others). If anyone wants to suggest an alternative choice, I am all ears.

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Colors and People

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Colors and People

People come in different colors: their eyes, their skin. Colors have two interesting properties: they are contingent and they are active. Each person could have had a different color—in some possible world my eyes are brown and my skin black. And colors are active dispositions to produce color sensations—acts, in short.[1] They are therefore acts that could have been otherwise—my eyes and skin could have acted differently and it would still be me (and still human). But it is not true that I am free to be of a different color; I can’t choose to have a different eye or skin color. These things are outside the scope of my will, no matter how much I may desire them. True, I can paint my body and insert tinted contact lenses, but I can’t change the natural color of my skin or eyes. However, this inability is itself contingent: I could have been born with an ability to change my color at will. In some possible world I am like an octopus or cuttlefish in this respect: I can decide what color to be, optically or dermally. Suppose that in this world people change their color all the time to suit circumstances: they choose dark skin during the day to protect themselves from sunlight and light skin at night so they can be seen more easily. Or they might choose a mixture of dark and light for aesthetic reasons (good for mating). Or they might choose skin (and eye) color to indicate their political allegiances—black left-wing, white right-wing (I choose these colors at random). Then my question is this: would there be any color-based form of discrimination in this world? I venture to say not. Sometimes you are white, sometimes you are black; it is not part of your essence to be one color rather than the other. It is highly contingent, a matter of choice not destiny. You can see people in the process of changing color (it takes a few seconds). It would be ludicrous to harbor a prejudice in favor of one color over another (suppose we add a full palette of colors to this possible world). Yet the different colors might have different connotations, depending on their associations—such as political affiliation. But color in itself means nothing where human nature is concerned. It is entirely superficial. True, there might be some people in this world that form this prejudice—call them colorists—but they are generally regarded as completely irrational, if not outright bonkers. Some birds are red and others blue—so what? Nature has decided to paint some people in one color and others in another, but that’s all it is—paint. Superficial, skin-deep, contingent, possibly a matter of choice (in some possible world). People wear clothes of different colors, or apply make-up, but this tells you nothing of importance. I leave it to the reader to draw the obvious moral. Of course, this moral was obvious all along, but perhaps these thought experiments serve to vivify the lunacy.[2]

[1] See my “Are Colors Actions?’

[2] What if in some possible world the Europeans are all dark-skinned and the Africans are all light-skinned—surely a logical possibility? Would we have black supremacy on the part of Europeans? Probably (analytical philosophy has its uses). Let me note that there are white cats and black cats, rare and common respectively. No one makes a big deal out of this chromatic difference, and black cats have different meanings in different cultures, some regarding them as lucky and some unlucky. Why do people think the human species is different?  If I am accused of banality in making these points, I accept the charge; but sometimes the banal can escape attention.

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Invitation from South Africa

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Hi Colin
We run the Brain in Vat podcast. We have aired over 200 episodes with prominent thinkers on philosophical topics. We interviewed Peter Singer on animal welfare, Stephen Cave on immortality and David Edmonds on Derek Parfit.
We have also published a series of six books based on our favourite conversations.
We would like to invite you to be on our show to talk about Sex in Academia.
In terms of content, we ask all our guests to start with a thought experiment or real life case. We use that as a launching pad to discuss the topic in more detail. We don’t script our show, but we do a short chat just before recording to chart a path for topics to be covered.
Each show is roughly an hour, so if you are able to set aside an hour and half for us that should be enough time.
 
Would you be available to record with us some time in May? 
If you could send me a few available days and times I will send through an invite.
Kind Regards
Mark Oppenheimer

Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar

President of the South African Institute of Race Relations

083 983 5848

Hi Colin,

I recently read your blog post on a sexual enticement  and I very much liked the thought experiment. It also got me thinking about a broader issue: the taboos surrounding relationships between university staff, and between staff and students, particularly at American universities.

My own view is that these taboos are often blown out of proportion, and that a number of academics have had their careers unfairly damaged as a result. Having looked into your case in particular, you strike me as someone who was also treated unfairly. That said, if you were to come on the show, there would be no obligation at all to discuss your own case, though you would of course be welcome to do so if you wished.

Over the years, we have done a number of episodes on sexual ethics, but nothing specifically on sexual ethics within universities. Two things recently made me think this would be a worthwhile topic.

The first was a paper proposing that any philosopher accused of sexual harassment should be cited as such in academic papers. I found that suggestion egregious, and told the authors as much. One of the people they treated as obviously guilty was Thomas Pogge, which prompted me to look more closely into his case. It seemed to me that he, too, had been badly treated.

The second was an anonymous article in the Daily Nous about how philosophers should have sex at conferences. It struck me as a particularly American obsession. Being based in South Africa, where we do not have quite the same level of taboo around sex, I found it strange that people would be so anxious about sex between adults who live in different parts of the country and merely happen to work in the same academic field. Much of the language around power and privilege in these discussions seems, to me, massively overblown.

In light of all this, I thought you might be a very interesting guest to discuss these topics: sexual ethics in universities, academic norms, professional taboos, and the ways in which moral panic can shape institutional responses.

Would you be open to coming on the show?

Kind Regards
Mark Oppenheimer

Advocate at the Johannesburg Bar

President of the South African Institute of Race Relations

083 983 5848
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Are All Properties Relations?

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Are All Properties Relations?

For some reason, philosophers tend to prefer properties to relations: the former are deemed more real, more concrete. To the contrary, I will argue that all properties are relations; so, if relations are unreal, so is the world. Fortunately, they are not, but that is not my concern today.[1] We have a wide range of properties to consider, so brevity will be our policy. The idea will be that all properties, so called, are polyadic, never monadic. Actually, it is not so difficult to establish this once we look more closely; we are under a kind of illusion on the question. Let’s start with sensible qualities: colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels. Here we can quickly announce that these are all tacitly relational; they are all relations to perceivers—ways things appear to perceivers. The external object appears a certain way in experience and this is what the property consists in; traditionally, it is regarded as a disposition to produce experiences in perceivers. The ontological form of “x is red” is “x appears red to y” (I am not being fussy about quotation). This is an excessively familiar story, so I won’t labor it; I am merely stressing the relational nature of this analysis. In the case of primary qualities, we can be equally brief: shape is a matter of relations between edges or surfaces or points, while size is relative to other objects (“x is big” means roughly “x is bigger than most things”). Mass is defined as resistance to motion under applied forces (like being pushed). Dispositions and powers are relations to other objects, as in a disposition to dissolve in water. Electrons and protons are particles that repel other particles with the same charge. Gravitational force is a relation between massive bodies. Chemicals and metals are defined by molecular and atomic structure, which involve relations between particles. Animal species are defined anatomically or by the ability to mate: the former involves spatial relations and the latter sexual relations. We should note that in all these cases the words used are grammatically once-place predicates, but the corresponding reality involves relations of different kinds: for example, the word “gene” and the structure of DNA. Language is no guide to reality here.

But there are less obvious cases: mental, mathematical, logical, semantic, moral, aesthetic. Are beliefs relational? Not to other people, to be sure, but internally they are—they are relations to propositions. This is a familiar idea: belief is a relation between a believer and what is believed. In turn the proposition is related to the world it is about. Some philosophers have maintained that intentionality is the essence of the mental, and this is clearly relational. Mental events are also causally related to the environment and behavior, and these have been thought essential to their nature (externalism and behaviorism). The mind is full of relations that constitute the nature of mental states. Mathematical properties are also relational: to be even is to be divisible by 2, all numbers are related to other numbers in various ways, numbers either precede or succeed other numbers in the series of natural numbers. Logic is relational in an obvious way: premises are related to conclusions by entailment—validity is a relational concept. To be a premise is to occur in an argument. Meanings involve the relation of reference and relations to other words (synonymy, antonymy). Morality is a matter of consequences or duties, both being relational—consequences for others and duties to others. Beauty is either in the eye of the beholder or a matter of the structure of the object (a painting or a musical composition)—this involving relations of various kinds. No property is relation-free. The world doesn’t neatly divide into monadic properties and polyadic relations—that is a superficial view. Scratch the surface and swarms of relations pop out. You can’t make a world by first installing the monadic properties and then adding the polyadic relations; the former require the latter. No relations, no properties. Language may make it seem like there are two separate categories of being here, but actually there are not. The world (any world) is a relational place.

Are there any exceptions? It is certainly hard to find them, contrary to first impressions, but there may be some stubborn holdouts. Anything come to mind? I think there is one area where relationality is hard to discern: pain. It may well be said that pain is not intentional and not a relation to a proposition; it is just a sentient thing being in a simple monadic state. Pains are free-standing properties of organisms, that’s all. For what are they relations to? However, this objection is not unanswerable: we may cite the body as the relevant relatum. I have a pain in my foot or head—there is no pain felt nowhere. How does this work for mental anguish, though? But isn’t it directed to reality in some vague way? Also, it might be argued that pain must involve a relation to the brain. The case is messy and controversial, but it shouldn’t be thought to undermine the whole metaphysical picture sketched above. It would be very odd if all of nature but pain had a relational ontology. Still, the case shows that this metaphysics is not trivially true; there are conceivable counterexamples. Maybe non-relational properties are at least logically possible. What is striking is how relational reality turns out to be on close examination. So, we had better hope that relations are real or else nothing is. My own feeling is that it is a surprise to discover that relations are as vital to reality as they seem to be.[2]

[1] See my “Relational Realism”.

[2] The notation of standard logic encourages a false dichotomy between properties and relations (an untenable dualism): we write “Fx” and “Gy” and distinguish these from “xRy”, as if we are plumbing the ontological depths. Thus, the talk of “properties and relations”, as if these were mutually exclusive. A kind of symbol-object fallacy ensues, wherein we suppose that the objects are as discriminating as our notation. In reality, what are called properties are disguised relations—relations masquerading as properties. Perception and language conspire to produce this illusion—this dualism of properties and relations. It even leads to denying relations full reality. The word “gold” and the look of gold make us think that gold is a non-relational attribute, whereas beneath the surface gold is a bunch of tightly compacted relations between particles composing atoms. We underestimate how relational things really are in nature. We are prone to anti-relationalism. Everything may not be relative, but it is relational.

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Are Colors Actions?

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Are Colors Actions?

We think of colors as attributes, like shapes or natural kinds: to be red is like being square or a cat—a property that something has, not an action it does. I will argue that colors are really more akin to actions than attributes. A color is an action of an object on the nervous system and mind. The object reflects or emits light and this acts on the eyes and occipital cortex with the result that a color is seen. The color is this action. It is generally agreed that colors are relational, something like dispositions to cause sense experiences; well, they are relations of acting-on. Many things act on organisms, some animate and some not, and these things have names—heat, collisions, cuts, contagions. Colors do likewise. The word “red” is more like a verb than a noun, ontologically speaking, because redness is an active presence in objects vis-à-vis the visual system. Colors are deeds not static attributes. Just as objects may shine or shimmer or smell or vibrate, so they may redden or yellow or purple. We don’t talk that way, but it corresponds to color reality. An object isn’t “red”; it reds. Objects reflect light actively (as gravity is active); they also actively produce impressions in the mind. When they produce color sensations, they have a particular color; this producing is the color. To be red is to produce sensations of red. Producing is a type of action. So, red is a type of action—redding (like running). If there were little men inside colored objects, intentionally producing color sensations, we would unhesitatingly say that an action is involved—an intentional action. It is the same if the production is non-intentional; nature is an active arena. Things are different with shape (assuming shape to be a primary quality), since shape is not defined by its effect on perceivers; things are square whether they are perceived or not. It is because colors are powers to produce sensations that they are actions—powers-in-action. Objects have the power to produce color sensations; therefore, colors are these acts of production. When objects change color, they cease to act as they did heretofore; they start to act differently. Colors are acting powers to produce sensations of color. In an ideal language they would be expressed by verbs not nouns. Red things red, blue things blue.

Why don’t we see this? Partly it is because we don’t see the action that underlies color—the rebounding photons etc. Colors don’t look active. If we could see the whizzing photons, we would recognize the activity. Also, if colors kept changing rapidly, we would be less inclined to think of them as enduring attributes—less like shapes or species. And it is notable that we do adopt verb-like forms in some instances: a face may redden, a newspaper yellow, knuckles whiten, a sky darken. Why not talk this way all the time? Why not say “roses red” or “blackberries black” or “emeralds green”? Instead of saying the traffic light will turn red, we say that it will red (redden). The sky blues, grass greens, snow whites. These are ongoing chromatic actions of the sky, grass, and snow. And they come and go, commence and cease. Surely, smells are like this—actions on the nose that start and stop. Objects emit particles that reach the nostrils and act on the olfactory receptors; that is what a smell is. Same for sounds and sound waves in the atmosphere. Sounds and smells are actions, and colors follow suit. The grammar of our language encourages us to view colors as attributes denoted by nouns, but de re they are actions of nature, like earthquakes and rainfall. They are something nature does. Accordingly, we can say that primary perceptual qualities like shape are attributes and secondary qualities like color are actions. It isn’t just that one is objective and the other subjective, but that one is passive and the other active. Shapes are not definable as powers to produce shape sensations, but colors are definable as powers to produce color sensations—and hence fall into the category of actions (of nature). Metaphorically, colors are like pulsing hearts not rock faces. When an object looks red over time it is not that it hasn’t changed, but that it keeps performing the same action from moment to moment, stimulating your eyes with a barrage of photons (a stimulus is an action). It may look static, but in reality, it is a hive of activity (think of bees wiggling and buzzing). Flying photons are the bees of color. Colors are the honey of nature, actively created.[1]

[1] Don’t we sometimes think of colors as active, as when a diamond gleams and a strawberry displays a luscious deep red? We know intuitively that light is active and colors do seem somehow alive—more so than shapes. We find colors stimulating, exciting, sometimes overwhelming—almost like spirits. They pulsate, grab the attention, assert themselves. They seem to put on a performance. Drugs like LSD can make colors appear animated. Colors have agency.

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Table Tennis Story

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Table Tennis Story

I was over at the Biltmore tennis center on Saturday, hoping to hit against the wall. As it happens, a kid’s tournament was underway and the wall was occupied by kids. I noticed one young lad who seemed particularly proficient, especially with his two-handed backhand. A friend of mine there, a coach, came over and I remarked to him that this lad had an amazing backhand. He replied, “He’s mine”. He had taught his son to play like that; the boy was eight. He came over to us and I complimented him on his backhand. There was a table tennis bat on the table and he picked it up. I asked him to show me his strokes, which he did. I then gave him some instruction on correct technique. He then went over to the table to practice alone. I joined him and gently hit with him. He didn’t know how to serve, so I taught him. Within half an hour he could serve. I then went to the wall and hit some balls myself. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

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Relational Realism

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Relational Realism

There has long been a skeptical attitude towards material objects. People have doubted that they exist—from idealist philosophers, to phenomenalists, to free-thinking physicists. Some have regarded them as mental entities not material; others have identified matter with mind; others have jettisoned them in favor of energy or some such. Thus, we get anti-realism about material objects; there are no such things in reality. Much the same has been said about space and time. But we don’t hear the same anti-realism about relations between these putative objects: they are not taken to be unreal. Even if ordinary objects are unreal—mere appearances—their relations are not, particularly spatial and temporal relations. Even if we are brains in vats, there are real relations between the non-existent objects we seem to see. One thing is still next to another or far away, bigger or smaller, moving away or towards. This is what I mean by relational realism. It is compatible with object anti-realism. When we think of relations we think of real things, as opposed to thoughts about objects; we can’t think relations away. If everything is a dream, then no material objects exist, but our dream objects still stand in relations to each other, whatever they may be ontologically. In Berkeley’s universe relations exist between objects—though not material objects. Put generally, it doesn’t matter what kinds of objects exist in a possible world, they will always stand in real relations. Objects of whatever kind stand in relations; these relations cannot be non-existent.

The same applies to the world of number: no matter what numbers are, they stand in relations to each other. This is true whether you are a Platonist, a formalist, or an intuitionist. Anti-realism about numbers does not entail anti-realism about relations between numbers (e.g., the successor relation). The same is true of the mind: anti-realism about mind (e.g., behaviorism) doesn’t entail anti-realism about mental relations, say precedence in time or causal relations. Anti-realism about a given subject matter does not imply anti-realism about the relations holding between items in that subject matter. Even subjective points in a visual field stand in objective relations to each other. This is an ontological point, but it has an epistemological corollary: not knowing whether certain things exist doesn’t imply not knowing the relations between them. Even hallucinated objects can be next to each other; we don’t hallucinate that. And we can know this, even if we can’t know the objects exist. The relation is invulnerable to skepticism. You can be an agnostic about whether a certain pair of objects exists without being an agnostic about their relations to each other. You can be an agnostic about the existence of God and the devil but not an agnostic about their relative goodness. Relations are more knowable than things, in short. So, relations are both real (ontology) and transparent (epistemology). Substances, by contrast, are open to anti-realist challenge and knowledge of them to skeptical challenge. Relations are on a more solid footing than substances (objects), ontologically and epistemologically. They should figure more prominently in philosophical discussions. Matter doesn’t exist in Berkeley’s idealist world but relations do; and relations are more immune to Cartesian skeptical challenge than substances. Relations are known existences—whereas material things can be questioned at both levels. They are the constants of our conceptual scheme.

Causal relations require special mention. There has been a tendency to deem them less real and less knowable than material substances, but this is wrong. Causal relations are everywhere in reality and we can know them. What is less knowable are causal relata and the ground of causal necessity. We know the causal structure of the world, but not so much the nature of the world and the nature of causation itself. The nature of physical things is open for debate, but it is not debatable that the world runs on causation—whatever precisely that is. Causal structure is more indubitable than matter. We can have causal knowledge without having knowledge of objects, i.e., their real essence. If the universe reduces to quantum reality in which conventional matter has no place, it will still be subject to causal (and other) relations. To put it crudely, God invented relations before he invented anything else; then he chose what kind of stuff to put into the world. This is relations-first metaphysics not substances-first. It is also relations-first epistemology—not sense-data or material things. The next step is to make relations basic in semantics, and indeed we know semantic relations prior to individual meanings: that is, we know that one word entails another without knowing what meaning is. Semantic structure is more fundamental than semantic substance, i.e., what constitutes meaning. Entailment, synonymy, and antonymy are the semantic givens. So long as these come out right, our theory of meaning is on the right track; the rest is speculative. And language depicts relations above all; what exactly these relations are between is a secondary matter. You don’t need to know—really know—what persons are in order to use proper names of persons, but you had better know what kind of entailments names have and how persons are related to each other. Linguistic knowledge isn’t metaphysical (or scientific) knowledge.

You might be wondering about shape and color: these don’t appear to be relations but they certainly figure in the ontology and epistemology of the physical world. But aren’t they actually relational in their own way? Colors are really relations to perceivers, as renaissance thinkers taught us: that is their underlying ontology. And what are shapes but relations between points (or edges)? A circle is defined by reference to a center and a circumference, etc. We see these relations when we look at an ordinary object. Perception is shot through with relational data. The whole visual field is constituted by relations of adjacency and other geometric relations. If you couldn’t perceive relations, you couldn’t perceive anything. Reality is relational and so is knowledge of reality. Of course, there is also some sort of stuff out there, but all structure comes courtesy of relations over this stuff. What this stuff intrinsically consists in is pretty incidental; what matters is how it is related to itself. All the action comes from the relations. This is why in metaphysics you can vary the stuff and leave everything else unchanged—it could be inert matter or a form of mind or God himself. The type of substance is irrelevant. Relations are what make the world go round. Not particulars, not even universals in the manner of Plato, but the whole pattern of relations. To be is to be related to something. Not a substance ontology or an event ontology or a property ontology but a relations ontology. In its most austere form this is an ontology of nothing but relations.[1]

[1] The type of underlying stuff has always been a metaphysical headache; dispensing with it is perennially attractive, though suspiciously anti-mysterian. Relations are the most unmysterious of things (pace some idealists of Hegelian persuasion). The idea of a totally relational reality certainly has metaphysical bite to it; we would like it to be true. It upends centuries of tormented thought.

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Philosophy and Writing

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Philosophy and Writing

There is a strong correlation between good philosophy and good writing. Good philosophers write good prose. These are separate abilities, but they are correlated—connected, we might say. I don’t know of a good philosopher who writes ineptly. And if the writing is good, good philosophy is apt to follow. Russell is perhaps the prime example: arguably the best philosopher of the twentieth century and inarguably the best writer (Nobel prize and all). I could also cite Strawson, Quine, Nagel, Lewis, Davidson. I mean sheer writerly ability, not necessarily clarity—putting great sentences together. Style, elegance, wit, creativity, euphony—like, poetic. Clever constructions, wide vocabulary, memorable phrases. Not Nabokovian, but getting there. You know what I’m talking about; you know it when you see it (it’s hard to define). Hume is a great prose stylist, though old-fashioned now. Kant gets a bad rap for obscurity, but he is a perfectly good writer. Wittgenstein is also good, in both the Tractatus and the Investigations. Moore is not so great: repetitive, dull. Descartes is excellent and Locke highly competent in his careful way. Berkeley is sublime. There are just no top-quality philosophers who write badly—how could there be? You couldn’t be a first-rate philosopher and write like an American undergraduate. Writerly skill and philosophical nous go together, like love and marriage. The prose is the form of the thought; the thought is only as good as the prose. And I mean philosophical prose not just any kind—logical, lucid, careful, polished. The reason for this is that both call on the same basic abilities: organization, ingenuity, cleverness, originality, resourcefulness, genius, mechanics, skill, beauty. Philosophical skill developspari passu with writerly skill. The two skills are inseparable.

It isn’t the same in all subjects, though no doubt there is some correlation. A physicist is likely to be good at mathematics and calculation, though his verbal skill might not be well developed. A laboratory scientist will be expert at devising experiments, but may not be a great communicator. A psychologist could be insightful without being a master stylist (Freud and William James are the shining exceptions). But philosophy is all about words—manipulating them. Manipulating ideas is manipulating words. Kripke was a master speaker and lecturer, though not a scintillating writer (but clear and amusing). Dummett could write reams of forcefully composed prose, though he wasn’t easy reading. They both could combine words into shimmering monuments of philosophical thought. The intellect was mirrored in the writing. There is not just one kind of good philosophical writing, and you can be good in some ways and less good in others. The very best all-round philosophical writer will be the best philosopher, other things being equal. This may be a matter of debate, since good writing is the result of various factors, some more important than others. I like clarity, wit, and surprise; others may prefer sober, dry, and predictable (they feel more secure this way). But the connection to philosophical ability is surely clear: the prose is the most reliable indicator of philosophical intelligence. If you can’t understand a word he is saying and his prose is a pain to read, he is not going to be much of a philosopher. Indeed, he may be a complete philosophical fake—covering up his mediocrity in supposedly impressive jargon-ridden verbiage (you know the type). A bluffer, a phony, an impostor.

By this measure who is the best philosopher to have graced this unphilosophical planet? Who is the best writer of philosophical prose? Who has the best reputation as a writer? Who can do it all in the writing department? For that person will be the best philosopher. If his writing is unimprovable, he will be the best philosopher of all time—the best at doing philosophy ever. Interesting question, is it not? I think Plato is up there, closely followed by Hume, with Russell standing out among moderns—these guys could all write up a storm. But who is the best? Hmmm.

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