George Soros

The attempt to indict George Soros on some Trumped-up charge is patently absurd, but will probably happen. I wish him well dealing with this nonsense. However, I have mixed feelings about the man, who I once considered a friend. I spent many hours reading his attempts at philosophy and discussing them with him (I remember a long session in St Barts). I saved him from many mistakes and spared him from public embarrassment. I introduced him with comments on “reflexivity” in Budapest (long trip). He never paid me for any of this work, though he paid for my transportation and put me up when we met (about a dozen times). We spoke on the phone often. I was friendly with his present wife and his butler Howie. I would describe us as close; I went to his wedding reception and his 80^th birthday party event. And then he cut me off abruptly and without explanation. I still don’t know why, but I can guess. This strikes me as terrible behavior—not illegal but morally deplorable. He seems not to understand friendship or gratitude. It pains me to say this, but it’s true. You can be a great philanthropist, but an awful friend. There is something seriously wrong here.

Earth Philosophy

The planet we call Earth has specific properties, physically and geologically. It is reasonable to suppose that all of life reflects these properties—physiologically and psychologically. It is also reasonable to suppose that human science is imbued with these properties; on other planets with intelligent life forms the science may be quite different. A totally liquid or gaseous planet might produce a different sort of science, there being no solid objects there (the scientists have liquid or gaseous brains).[1] There may be overlap with our science, but there won’t be identity. If these beings have evolved very differently, owing to the environmental difference, the departures from human science may be quite marked. Call this “planet-relativity” (it doesn’t imply relativism about scientific truth). The content of science is environment-dependent. But is the same thing true of philosophy? At first, I think the inclination is to say yes: philosophy too is planet-relative. Aliens will or may do philosophy differently from us. They have different problems and entertain different answers to those problems. They may not be so hung up on substance ontology and more receptive to ontological variety (their paradigm of the physical may be a volume of gas or a force field). But on reflection I think this is not so: philosophy will have a certain universality. For the problems of philosophy transcend environmental particularity. There will be an external world problem and a free will problem and a mind-body problem and an ethical realism problem. These problems employ highly abstract concepts that generalize across planets and habitats—mind-independence, determinism, subjective and objective, ethical variation across space and time. Philosophy is not concerned with this planet, or even this universe, in the way science is (“earth science”). Biology wants to know how life evolved here, but philosophy wants to know if free will is possible anywhere. It is concerned with possible worlds not local planets (or even galaxies). Philosophy is planet-independent. Thus, science is empirical in this sense, since it focuses on what is observable in this universe; but philosophy is super-empirical in that it tries to get beyond local phenomena. This is why it is so concerned with necessary truth—the kind that is not planet-relative (or even universe-relative). It seeks absolute generality; not just an absolute conception of this universe but of any universe. If philosophy were ever to solve the problem of mathematical truth, the solution would hold for all possible thinking beings in all possible worlds, no matter what planet these thinkers are from (it isn’t about the nature of mathematical truth here). The laws of gravitation may not hold in all sectors of our universe, still less all possible universes, but the laws of arithmetic do; they don’t vary with the physical environment. Nor is it possible for freedom to be compatible with determinism here but not elsewhere, or for the mind to be the body in Alpha Centauri but not in the Milky Way. Ethics is not objective on Earth but subjective on Mars. Philosophy is then different from the other sciences: it isn’t variable across planets and intelligent beings. Philosophical interests may vary, but not philosophical problems and truths. This makes it special. I don’t mean superior, though that may be argued; I just mean sui generis. It is a different kind of subject. A university science curriculum may be very different in another galaxy or possible world, but the philosophy curriculum will be much the same. You could get a job there in philosophy, but the science departments will never hire you (“All he knows is earth chemistry”).[2]

[1] You can find this question entertainingly discussed in Do Aliens Speak Physics? by Daniel Whiteson and Andy Warner (2025). I appear cartoon-like on page 228.

[2] I think this explains a lot about the experience of doing philosophy as opposed to science; it feels capacious, transcendent, nonlocal. It feels BIG.

Is Necessity Good?

Is there any sense in the idea that necessity is good and contingency bad? Is it somehow better to be necessary than contingent? I think there is a feeling that this is so, but it is hard to articulate. We know that many contingent truths or facts are bad, but are any necessary truths bad? Is it bad for bachelors to be unmarried or 3 + 5 to equal 8 or this table to be made of wood? No, but it is bad for bachelors to be unhappy or for there to be only 3 tigers left or for this table to land on my foot. Some contingent truths are good, but some are not, whereas all necessary truths are, if not good, at least not bad. If we thought that God created necessary truths, while Satan had a hand in some of the contingent truths, then we would suppose the necessary to be better than the contingent. And isn’t contingency more chaotic than necessity, less written into the nature of things? Moreover, moral truth is surely necessary not contingent, so the two are joined at that point. Still, it is hard to see how necessity could be intrinsically good and contingency intrinsically bad: why is a world of necessary truths better than a world of contingent truths? Is it more intelligible, or more beautiful? Is the association between necessity and intellect what makes it better than contingency, which is associated with the senses? Is necessity more reliable? Plato would surely prefer it to contingency, being so close to universals and hence the Good; but independent of his theory is there any deep connection? Is it perhaps that when we know a necessary truth we know about all possible worlds, while knowledge of contingent truth concerns just this world—and knowledge is a good thing? That sounds on the right lines, but it is hard to express the point rigorously. It is true that some of us enjoy necessary truth more than contingent truth, but is that just an idiosyncrasy of some minds? Is it just nice to think that some things couldn’t have been otherwise, thus sparing us of any responsibility for changing them? The question needs further thought.

Assemblages of Mind

Every substance that we are aware of is an assemblage of smaller objects. Everything perceptible is a coming-together of parts. This includes human bodies and brains. We apprehend these things as assemblages. They are essentially assemblages. But the same is not true of the mind or person or self: we don’t apprehend ourselves as made up of smaller cohering parts. Some have inferred that we must be simple substances—the I is a simple indivisible object. But a better conclusion is that mereology doesn’t apply to selves; they are not part-whole entities, or part-less simples. There is no mereology of the mental. This means that the mind can’t be the body or brain. It also implies that the mind (or self) cannot be a substance, given that substances necessarily have mereological structure. We don’t experience ourselves as compounds of immaterial parts either.