Book Reviewer Released

I am a recovering book reviewer. I used to do it all the time; now not so much, if at all. It started when I was twenty-two in Manchester, England, when I wrote a couple of reviews for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology at the request of Wolfe Mays, the editor, who was my teacher (one on Sartre, the other on materialism). It then went on for forty years non-stop. I wouldn’t say I was an addict, but I found it hard to decline an invitation, for a variety of reasons. I don’t know exactly how many book reviews I have written; I estimate about eighty. I have a whole book devoted to a subset of my reviews (forty of them), Minds and Bodies. I can’t think of another philosopher who has written as many, except perhaps Tom Nagel. Here is a list of the publications I have written for: Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Nous, Philosophia, Nature, New Scientist, New Republic, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, Times Higher Education Supplement, New York Times, LA Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Slate, Guardian. It felt like a full-time job; imagine all the original philosophy I could have produced had I not frittered my life away book reviewing! It made me a lot of enemies and not many friends (people hate being criticized—I could tell you stories).

But it all came to an end twelve years ago save for a couple of reviews I did for the WSJ (on the octopus and Oliver Sacks) and a few for the NY Review of Books (under Robert Silvers). I don’t lament it. It was a liberation. Also, a transformation: no longer was I preoccupied with the torture of reviewing philosophy books—the reading and re-reading, the deadlines, the imperative to be fair, the need to be critical, the inevitable backlash, the necessity to enter into another person’s intellectual space (this was the worst). I spent so much time inside other people’s heads! Now I dwell contentedly in my own head, think my own thoughts, criticize only myself (what a relief). It is as if I never lived that previous life. The thing is, I know it had value, or else I would never have done it; I contributed more this way than in other ways simply because of the breadth of readership. It also honed my skills. But I am glad to be out of it, at least for part of my life. I recommend reading my reviews, but I don’t miss writing them—not at all. I kind of hated it. It is just so difficult. As to the reasons for my liberation, perhaps the less said the better; it doesn’t reflect well on my liberators. I am glad I put in that work because some of my best writing comes in the shape of reviews, and it’s a valuable form in its own right; but it wasn’t fun (except sometimes). Not many people can do it well, though many would benefit from trying. I did what had to be done.

Are Space and Time Identical?

I wish someone would get to the bottom of space and time, because for the life of me I can’t. They reduce me to tears, intellectually (personally, I find them congenial companions). But I think I can ask some intelligible questions about them (at least I think I can). On the face of it, they are separate and distinct aspects of reality—elements, constituents, components (whatever the right word is). You could have one without the other; they have very different properties. That’s how it seems; and yet a dualist ontology creates conundrums. Is it possible to be an identity theorist about them? Is one reducible to the other? Which is basic? Descartes might say the essence of space is extension while the essence of time is duration—and one can exist without the other. God could have created space on a Tuesday and time on a Thursday (he took a break between creating them). But on reflection this is not so obvious. If time stopped, would space continue to exist? If space disappeared, would time march on regardless? Neither of these seems self-evident: how could space continue in a world without time, and how could time continue to pass in the absence of anything in time? Space needs time in order to exist, and time is pointless without anything in it. Space needs some sort of temporal career, and time needs space with which to occupy itself. These counterfactuals suggest a necessary connection between the two, though not an identity. But whence the connection? Space and time have quite different natures and are “distinct existences”, as Hume would say. Yet time seems like an essential property of space, and space seems like an essential property of time—but these things are not identical, apparently. If they were identical, then we would have an explanation of their necessary connection; so, we might wish to think again about an identity theory.

The things existing in space and time encourage such a project: material objects and minds. For these things inextricably involve both elements; they have space and time woven into them. The spatial thing is a temporal thing and the temporal thing is a spatial thing. The material thing in space changes over time, and the mental thing in time is embodied in a spatial object (the body). Extension and duration belong to the same thing, necessarily so: what changes in time is extended in space. There is not an extended thing and a changeable thing—as if there is a spatial chair and a separate temporal chair. Material objects and minds are where space and time come together, inextricably. Might not space and time also come together in some underlying unity? And not because time is just another spatial dimension, but because its essence is bound up with space—as the essence of space is bound up with time. But I have no idea how this could be. It seems that it has to be, but I can’t imagine how. The idea seems preposterous on its face. It would require a complete rethinking of the nature of space and time, as if common sense must be wide of the mark. What if both space and time had a fine structure way beyond anything conceived in physics (and mathematics), and that this structure formed a bridge between them? What if our senses distorted the objective realities to an undreamt-of degree? What if time were a wobble in the fine structure of space, and space were a geometrization of the fine structure of time? Yes, I know this is hopelessly metaphorical and wildly speculative, but we are trying to see how the universe as we know it is so much as possible. Space and time strike us as deeply connected but resolutely disjoined—a difficult combination to pull off (compare electrons as both particles and waves).

Here is a mind-bending thought experiment: suppose you existed outside space and time (a type of god) and that you were about to enter a spatial and temporal world—what would you notice first, space or time? Would you see space first or time first or both together? Answer: I don’t know. I rather think it would be time by a small margin, but space would loom into view very quickly. According to an identity theory, it would be a simultaneous perception of the two things (really one thing)—the Hesperus of space and the Phosphorus of time. Or try to imagine a fetus having its first experience of the world: I picture it as a kind of undifferentiated perception of what we might, from the outside, describe as space-in-time. We never perceive space without an impression of time, or time without an intimation of space. Maybe our concepts of space and time are a kind of grid we lay over the world that disguises its essential unity—spacey time and timey space (noumenal space-time). But, as I say, space and time leave me baffled and lachrymose, speechless and bereft. They badly need to be got to the bottom of.[1]

[1] Would other things fall into place if space and time were rendered transparent? Would consciousness become limpidly intelligible? Would the origin of the universe become plain for all to see? Would the jigsaw puzzle of the world resolve itself into a simple pattern? Who the hell knows. Space and time are the original mind-fuck (in the technical sense of my little treatise Mindfucking, 2008).

Spatial Logic

Does logic have a real essence, and what might it be? And what exactly is logic? These are not easy questions; they invite us to dig deep. First, what is real essence? The paradigms are material substances and animal species: gold and tigers being the favorite examples. I won’t rehash all this; I will simply observe two things: (a) space is centrally implicated in both, and (b) the real essence doesn’t look much like what it is the essence of. As to (a), real essence is conceived as an arrangement of parts—spatial parts spatially arranged. Thus, we have atomic structure conceived as a configuration of particles in space; and genetic structure consisting of molecules, combined with an anatomical structure of organs. As to (b), the appearance of gold and tigers to the naked eye is not like the real essence as specified under (a), i.e., a particulate corpuscular structure invisible to ordinary perception. So, the real essence is both spatially constituted and hidden from sight; it is not evident to the senses or anything like an ethereal Aristotelian form. It is spatial-material and a matter of theory not observation—hence surprising. It may take an elaborate and bold theory to disclose real essence, and it may not even be possible in some cases. It may not be particularly intuitive or uncontroversial; it isn’t like “bachelors are unmarried males”. Do we, in fact, know of any cases in which real essence is notboth of these things? One might cite mental natural kinds like pain: but it is not at all clear that we have any idea of the real essence of mental kinds, or whether they even have real essences. To put it simply, real essences invariably turn out to be hidden shapes, geometric invisibles—micro-anatomy.

We may therefore entertain the hypothesis that the real essence of logic consists of spatially arranged units of some sort—points or regions or configurations. That is, logical space is, or is analogous to, physical space. Physical space exhibits logical structure in its own right: for example, it is not possible, logically, to move from point a to point b without traversing the intermediate points; and it is necessary that if a point is inside a given region, it must be inside any region that contains that region. Then too, we have all the theorems of Euclidian geometry, as well as the thesis that space is necessarily three-dimensional. And so on.[1] These provide a model for logic as a system of necessary truths regarding propositions or states of affairs or facts. Might the formal properties of space constitute the real essence of the subject matter of logic? Here we run into the question of what precisely logic is: is it a human construction or is it completely independent of the human mind? I won’t adjudicate this question except to say that as a human institution—a symbolic system with an interpretation—we would expect something human to enter in. The natural view, then, is that logic in that sense is a combination of the objective and the subjective—the extra-human and the human. To cut to the chase: logic as it exists today is a combination of space and language. Predicate calculus, say, is a combination, a confluence, of mind-independent modal facts concerning space and its material occupants, themselves modifications of space (strings, knots, holes, what have you), on the one hand, and human language, on the other. Logic is the logic of space (space-matter) and grammar: hence the formulas that crowd the pages of logic texts—those squiggles and spacings. According to metaphysical spatialism, mind and language are both upshots of space as the fundamental stuff of the universe.[2] So, logic is an amalgam of two aspects of space—its own logical structure and the structure of the human mind as it has evolved under conditions of spatial life. The real essence of logic is space in its manifold guises. There would still be logical facts if there were no language and mind, though there would not be logic as we currently think of it. It is the same with geometry: there would be geometrical facts without human minds, though the subject of geometry would not exist under those circumstances. In logical reality, it would still be true that no object can both be in a place and not be in it, but the discipline of logic—what is taught in schools—would not exist (there would be no logical statement of the law of noncontradiction). However, language by itself cannot produce logical facts; it needs space to confer logic on it (and on the world). This is the killer: logic requires space in order to have any reality, because all of reality is ultimately composed of space–in particular, matter and mind are so composed. Logic makes claims about reality, and reality is basically spatial; it turns out that its truths reflect that reality. The logic of space is logic; there is no other logic. Conceptually, it is like this claim: H2O is water; there is no other water. The logic of the world is logic—there is no other logic. Reality’s logic is logic’s reality.

Look at it this way: what else could logic consist in? If we insist on space-logic dualism, we run into the following conundrum: how can logic and space (including matter and mind) be so well suited to each other? How come the logical world and the spatial-material-mental world fit so snugly together? If logic had an entirely separate source, we would expect a lack of fit: space over here, logic over there (each with its own creating deity). It would be a giant coincidence that logic describes concrete reality. But logic seems tailor-made for the spatial universe, as if created for it—by it. The spatial world suggests logic to the mind, if it is properly receptive; space isn’t logically neutral. Space is logical; once it is combined with language we get logical systems, construed as human creations. Space was also material and mental even before these realities showed themselves; the seeds were there before the big bang hit. According to metaphysical spatialism, space is the ultimate reality, the foundation of everything—everything. How could anything not be in space and made of spatial stuff? The only alternative is a non-spatial divine being (whatever that may be) as a source of being. But once we drop this fantasy and embrace cosmological naturalism, we reach the conclusion that space is the engine that brings it all about. That is why Platonism always ends up locating things in a quasi-space; for this is how we imagine universals and numbers to exist. Space is God, to put it bluntly. In any event, space-logic dualism faces a problem of interaction: how do the spatial world and the logical world mesh so tightly together? Does space have a pineal gland of some sort? Metaphysical monism is always superior from this point of view, and spatial monism looks like the way to go. Why has it not been thought of before? Because to the human eye space is an absence, an emptiness, a passive receptacle. But this is to overestimate the physical and metaphysical powers of the human visual system; better to go with the modern view and accept that space is an active medium, the root of all being. Space-matter dualism is a myth, a visual illusion. We need to unify matter and space—matter as knots in space anyone?—and when we do we get a brand new metaphysics. Even logic comes out as a spatial phenomenon (consciousness already went spatial). But this space is not the phenomenal space we see with our eyes; it may not even be fully intelligible to us. Nor is it identical with, or reducible to, the material universe as it emerged after the big bang, since that universe did not even exist at that explosive moment; but it is closely related to the matter that congealed in those early seconds, and to the form it took post-big bang. No doubt the space that now exists owes its nature to the primal space that preceded the big bang, so we have not left that reality completely behind. Perhaps when the universe cools down to absolute zero (or heats up tremendously) the original form of space will re-appear and look more capable of its remarkable feats. In any case, the present point is that space (plus language) constitutes the real essence of logic, appearances notwithstanding.

I have tried to keep this discussion at the ontological level without venturing an opinion about our knowledge of logic, though that inevitably creeps in. Now let me make some remarks about the epistemological question: how do we know logic? We know it by perceiving space and knowing our language. We see that certain things are necessarily true of the spatial world, particularly regarding motion, such as that solid objects cannot pass through other solid objects, and then we use our language (itself a product of space) to state certain logical truths. This introduces the subject-predicate grammatical form into logical cognition, which then influences the form of the formulas familiar from logic texts. That is, perception, particularly vision, makes certain possibilities and impossibilities evident to us, and we express the resulting knowledge in the grammatical forms of our language; thus, we concoct the formulas of standard logic. We combine spatial perceptual knowledge with grammatical knowledge to produce symbolic logical systems. For example, we see that every part of space is necessarily adjoined to another part of space, and this gives us the idea of entailment, when conjoined with a grasp of grammatical structure. Likewise, we understand moving from one place to another, and we then form the idea of moving from one proposition or sentence to another, by relying on our grasp of language. Thus, we construct a conception of logical space modeled on physical space. Space plays an indispensable role in the formation of logical concepts. Epistemology recapitulates ontology.[3]

[1] See my “Logic and Space”.

[2] See my “Space, Time, and Logic”.

[3] I keep thinking of Kant: he sensed the absolutely central role of space in the construction of reality, ontologically and epistemologically. Human sensibility is deeply spatial, but so is objective reality; indeed, the former is true because of the latter. It is strange that we ever stray from strict spatiality—why do we even seem to conceive of non-spatial things? Do other animals entertain such fantasies—aren’t they strict Kantians? Told of non-spatial entities, they respond, “Humbug, away with such nonsense!”—or words to that effect. Is it language that creates such strange ideas is us? Do we have a misguided propensity towards abstraction, suggested by words? I have the feeling that Mr. Spock is a strict spatialist; perhaps he instinctively thinks of the mind as a spatial thing, paceDescartes (but then he does have a very sophisticated conception of space). As to logic, he sees the link between logic and space quite clearly; only human emotion could obstruct such perception. In his mind, logic has reality just because space does: both are staring us in the face. He is not sentimental about logic. Here he sides with terrestrial beasts (and Immanuel Kant, the original Space Man).

On What It’s Like

It has become orthodox to state the mind-body problem using the locution “what it’s like”. Consciousness is defined as there being something it’s like. Pain is conscious because there is something it’s like to be in pain (it feels a certain way). I will argue that this is neither necessary nor sufficient; it is also very obscure. We would be better off without it. In fact, it turns out to be more or less vacuous, a mere meme (to put it harshly). Let’s start with an intuitive point; then we will get more analytic. The intuitive point is that the locution only applies to a subset of conscious states—roughly, sensations. There is something it’s like to feel pain and pleasure, to experience tastes, to see colors, hear sounds, and feel shapes; but there is nothing it’s like (no way it feels) to have thoughts, know things, have goals, intend to act, introspect. I don’t think if we began our inquiry with these latter states of consciousness, we would ever have come up with the what-it’s-like formula.  If a person had the equivalent of blindsight for every sense, and hence no sensations in the ordinary sense, he could still be conscious—by thinking, knowing, wanting, intending, introspecting. Why is this? We might turn to the comparative use: pain, say, is like some other sensations and unlike others. Suppose someone had never been in pain and wanted to know what pain feels like; we might reply, “Well, it is a bit like tasting hot peppers—it’s intense, unpleasant, and you want it to stop; quite unlike tasting something sweet or hearing a pleasant melody”. In the same way, seeing red is like seeing orange and unlike seeing blue. These are perfectly meaningful statements, and they have an established use; we might hope that the philosophical use could piggyback on this use. Then, we might go on to suggest that to be exactly like pain a mental state would have to be a pain (ditto for a particular kind of pain, e.g., throbbing). Thus, what it’s like to experience pain is to have a mental state of pain—nothing else will do, though other mental states may approximate. To be a pain (etc.) is to be like…a pain. So, haven’t we found a good sense for “what it’s like”? There are two problems with this approach. First, the same is true of mental states that intuitively there is nothing it’s like to have—ones unlike bodily sensations. Thoughts about philosophy are more like thoughts about physics than they are like desires for a biscuit, and a thought can be exactly like itself. Second, such comparisons apply outside the mental realm, as when we say that one metal is like another but unlike a non-metal. So, we have not captured what it consists in to be conscious.

Can this be fixed? There is an obvious move: to be conscious is to be similar to a sensation, sensations being paradigms of consciousness. To be conscious a state must be like a sensation: this comparison must hold. And now we see the problem: this presupposes the concept of a conscious sensation; we are using the concept of sensation to explain what what-it’s-likeness is. We could do that, but then we are assuming that all consciousness is sensational consciousness; we are assuming that all conscious states are, or involve, sensations. But surely that is not true; sensations are a subset of conscious states not the general essence of them. The what-it’s-like-locution is presupposing that all consciousness is the consciousness that sensations have. The OED defines “sensation” as “a physical feeling or perception resulting in something that happens to or comes into contact with the body”. Surely, there are many conscious states that do not involve such feelings. The philosopher is stretching the word “sensation” if he asserts that all conscious states are literally sensations. Some are and some aren’t. Notice that other attempts to define the notion of consciousness do not suffer from this problem; they have the requisite generality. Thus, definitions in terms of intentionality, privacy, or first-person authority; or definitions that say that consciousness is a cluster concept made up of several notions loosely linked. It is hard to devise a suitably general definition of consciousness, and the what-it’s-like definition stumbles on this reef. We can give examples of consciousness by citing sensations and what they are like, but this won’t give us a general definition applicable to all conscious phenomena. It follows that we can’t formulate the mind-body problem as the problem of explaining what-it’s-like in terms of facts that there is nothing it’s like (brain states, say). The problem isn’t simply the explanation of sensations; this is just one part of the problem. Also, the what-it’s-like locution turns out to be either completely mysterious or equivalent to simple talk of sensations—to being similar to a sensation. This is why people so readily resort to saying that consciousness is a feeling (a feeling where?). That would make the mind-body problem into the problem of explaining feelings.

Why do we talk this way to begin with? Why do we say there is something it’s like to be a sensation but not a thought or item of knowledge? I don’t know; it is something of a puzzle. But I can imagine how such a use got started: we want to know what a given sensation is similar to (is like) because we are wondering whether to seek out such sensations ourselves—but this is not true of other types of mental state. Thus: should I taste this new fruit, say a pineapple? I ask someone who has tasted a pineapple what it tastes like. He tells me it tastes like a grapefruit only sweeter. This gives me some idea, if I am familiar with the taste of grapefruits. I bite into the pineapple. We are naturally interested in the sensations various stimuli produce and we can gain information about this by being informed of similarities to sensations with which we are already familiar. This is not so for other kinds of mental states like thoughts and wishes. The language game of discussing and evaluating sensations has a place for the “like” locution, and philosophers pick it up and (mis)use it for their own purposes. And it is certainly true that if a given mental state is like a sensation, it will a conscious state—though this is not a necessary condition of being a conscious state.

I now want to ask whether the formula is sufficient: is every state S such that, if there is something it is like to have S, S must be a conscious state? Perhaps surprisingly, that is not so—and in a rather obvious way. This is bad news for the what-it’s-like criterion of the conscious. For consider: there is something it is like to have the brain state of one’s C-fibers firing. If your C-fibers are firing, you are in a state there is something it is like to be in, namely pain. C-fiber firing is sufficient for pain what-it’s-likeness, either by identity or lawlike correlation. Yet C-fiber firing is not in itself a conscious state (unless you are an outright identity theorist). The concept C-fiber firing is not a what-it’s-like concept—unlike the concept pain. But it gets worse: there is also something it’s like to have a pin stick in your hand, but this is clearly not itself a sensation with a what-it’s-likeness attached. And the same goes for a great many bodily states and even external stimuli. It is a conceptual truth that pain feels a certain way, but it is not a conceptual truth that C-fiber firing feels a certain way; so, the alleged definition fails. In other words, many physical states are not sensations, though they are sufficient to produce sensations. These physical states are not like (comparative use) sensations.

What should we conclude? It became fashionable a few decades ago to bandy about the phrase “what it’s like” (thanks to the good work of Brian Farrell, Timothy Sprigge, and Thomas Nagel[1]), and there is no denying its heuristic value. But as a strict definition it leaves a lot to be desired (and was it ever intended as a strict definition?). Other definitions also proved unsatisfactory (or unfashionable): intentionality, privacy, incorrigibility, subjective point of view, higher-order belief, nothingness, etc. Perhaps we do better to rely on a cluster of criteria to guide our thoughts and forgo strict definition. I think that we don’t really know what consciousness is—that is, we have no articulable discursive conception of consciousness (we know it by acquaintance alone). This means we don’t know what the mind-body problem is (in that sense of “know”), construed as the consciousness-brain problem. There is no shame in that and it need not hamper our efforts (do you think physicists know what matter is, or energy?). Still, it is always wise to be aware of the limits of our definitions. Intuition is not the same as insight.[2]

[1] The history of the phrase is of some interest. It was first used by Farrell in his 1950 paper in Mind (the year of my birth), “Experience”, but it made no discernible impact; Nagel informs us in The View From Nowhere that he had read the article but forgot Farrell’s use of the phrase that he (Nagel) later made famous—so it made no real impact on him either (!). Sprigge employed it in 1971 three years before Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”, but again no impact. I never heard the phrase used in Oxford when I was a student there (1972-1974). I don’t believe it took off even after Nagel’s paper, not for a while anyway. I have never made heavy use of it in my own writings on the mind-body problem, though it seems to work in getting the problem across to students. Why the neglect? I think the answer is fairly obvious: it just isn’t a very penetrating or theoretically useful phrase. It can serve an introductory purpose, but you don’t want place too much weight on it. This is why it didn’t catch fire immediately, way back in 1950. I succeeded Brian Farrell as Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy at Oxford in 1985, so I am trying to bury a phrase he is responsible for introducing 75 years ago. I rather doubt that my opposition to it will catch on quickly either, so entrenched has the phrase become. The slowness of the philosophical mind.

[2] Several philosophical problems are like this: we know more about the problem than we can say. This is because knowledge comes in two forms—roughly, by acquaintance and propositionally. I think this is particularly true in ethics, but also in epistemology (skepticism) and philosophy of perception (sense-data theories and naïve realism). Some people are better than others at seeing the problem, though no better at stating it. It would be nice to be able to say more about this subject.