The Clustering Problem

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The Clustering Problem

How and why do properties cluster together into an object? How and why do many accidents join together to form a single substance? How do they constitute a cohesive unitary whole? The properties are separate existences yet they form clusters: what binds them together? What is the unifying glue? Why don’t they occur independently and singly, and why don’t they fall apart for lack of necessary connection? It is different for analytic connections: there is no puzzle about how and why bachelorhood and maleness and singleness cling together, but why do shape and color (say) keep each other company? What makes an object combine being red with being square?[1] How do these different things belong to the same thing? Parts of objects can exist separately, but properties of objects can’t: no property can be instantiated without other properties being instantiated alongside it. Properties necessarily come in pluralities; a certain sort of holism obtains. In fact, a given object has a huge number of properties if we include relations; it is a hive of properties. What makes them band together so tenaciously? There is no force that we know of that does this—nothing like magnetic attraction or superglue. They hold tightly together but without visible support. Yet they don’t merge or meld. They come in neat bundles but there is no mechanism of bundling. It seems quasi-miraculous—they just do it! In a world without clustering, it would seem like a miracle if someone brought it about—like bringing all the stars together into a single enormous super-star. How does Plato account for it, with his universals all lined up discretely in a row? Do they suddenly embrace each other? Predicates don’t do that: you can write one predicate down without having to write down any others. Even concepts are not so group-oriented: you can think one concept of an object without having to think other concepts of that object (except analytically connected ones). Whence this propensity to coalesce that we see in properties? They seem to seek out each other’s company, as if they can’t stand to be alone. What is this curious connective affinity? What is the solution to the binding problem?

Someone might feel so baffled by this binding that they contemplate denying the appearances. It isn’t really true that a single object has many mysteriously connected properties. There is no monism of objects at the center of a plurality of properties; rather, there is a corresponding plurality of objects. There isn’t one object that is both red and square; there is one red object and one square object. Each object has its characteristic property, but no object has both. It is like the mind and the body for a Cartesian: the mind is thought and the body is extension—nothing is both.[2] Similarly, nothing is both colored and shaped; different things are. We go dualist on objects, thus avoiding the clustering problem. There is no such thing as clustering, only a misguided monistic ontology. Away with the multiply instantiating object! We expand our ontology to save our metaphysics. Or again, we wax eliminative: the only true properties are shape properties—colors are mythical, non-existent. Then there is no clustering to worry about (compare eliminative materialism). And there is a third option: we go full monism–all properties are identical! We don’t have to worry about the mind-body problem (that mysterious psychophysical nexus) if all properties are physical; we just reduce the mind to the body. Similarly, we might claim that all properties are of a single type when you get right down to it—as it might be, shape properties (modes of extension). Colors are really shapes (of molecules, say). Then there is no clustering of disparate properties: everything can be done with macro shapes and micro shapes, with no one thing having more than a single property. Obviously, this is a pretty dramatic move, but it exists in logical space (I don’t believe it for a second). Or we could get even more dramatic and deny that anything exists—no objects and no properties. The whole ontology of substances and attributes is misguided, an illusion of reason. Then there will be no clustering of properties in objects, just the appearance of it. If the clustering is mysterious and inexplicable, as we naively think of it, then philosophers of a certain stripe will seek for extravagant solutions, generally revisionary (mystery phobia can lead to strange abreactions).

The problem of causation is that we can’t identify and describe the necessary connection in which we think causation consists. The problem of analyticity is that we can’t discern the semantic entailment on which it rests. The mind-body problem is that we can’t understand the emergence relation between brain and mind, though it apparently exists. The problem of clustering is that we can’t grasp the principle of cohesion that ties one property to other properties in a single object. We have a family of problems here of similar form, all centering on opaque necessary connections. My purpose has been to add the clustering problem to the list. This is a problem in basic ontology—it could hardly get more basic. It is the problem of how objects are possible; alternatively, what properties are.[3]

[1] Geometry treats shape independently of color, thus showing their independence, but shape cannot exist concretely without color—or mass, position, solidity, rigidity, etc.

[2] It is odd that the mind-body problem has not generated more than two substances (matter and spirit), given that the mind is not a homogeneous domain. Why not postulate one substance for reason and another for sensation, given the deep differences between them? Or one for volition and one for cognition. How could such different attributes coexist in a single object? Yet they appear to.

[3] Hume called causation the cement of the universe—what holds the whole contraption together. But there is a more fundamental kind of cement—the kind that holds individual objects together. Properties don’t just co-exist in a single object; they cannot be instantiated without the assistance of other properties. Why is this and how is it accomplished? That is the problem of objects themselves—how the bundling of properties comes about, by necessity. They are not really bundles (loose assemblages) but more like living organisms—complex organized internally cooperative things. It is as if the properties are in a symbiotic pact with each other. Colors and shapes are born cooperatively into an object in which they live out their days till separated or the object is destroyed. In some ways they are like cooperating genes with objects as their vehicle. They stick together opportunistically. They cohabit in a single object for the duration; they have no choice.

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Moral Rigidity

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Moral Rigidity

We think of the morally rigid person as stiff, stern, intolerant, inflexible, old-fashioned, stubborn, and unintelligent. No one wants to be accused of being morally rigid—the Victorian prude, the stern and strict headmaster, the punitive prison warden. It’s just not nice, not cool, not lovable. But isn’t rigidity part of what morality is? Look at ordinary language: the good person is said to be strong, solid, upright, firm, unshakeable; the bad person is described as soft, weak, spineless, pliable, malleable, easily manipulated, bending under pressure, unreliable, lacking a backbone. To be a good person is to have principles, to stand one’s ground, to not back down, to have integrity—all terms that connote moral quality. A bad or weak person is the opposite of these—easily swayed, susceptible to corruption, unprincipled, lacking in moral strength or courage or fiber. A morally deficient person is made of jelly; a morally admirable person is made of sterner stuff—the right stuff (maybe gold or teak or bone). So, moral rigidity—unwaveringness—is an essential ingredient in the moral self. It is what integrity consists in. Of course, you have to be rigid about the right things—rigidity alone will not make you good. But you have to be able to stick with these things through thick and thin. You have to be able to keep your moral shape, come what may.

This point bears on more theoretical questions. Deontologists advocate following moral rules strictly; consequentialists favor being responsive to consequences, abandoning moral rules where necessary. This worries deontologists, to the point that they even ban any departure from strict rules, e.g., Kant on lying. Moral requirements are deemed strict and absolute, no exceptions allowed. This can seem dogmatic and extreme, but if we remember rigidity, we can see the motivation. Once rigidity is abandoned, morality comes under threat, because rigidity is essential to virtue—sound moral character. Consequentialism isn’t rigid enough; it smacks of a lack of principle, moral inconstancy. It makes morality into mush—the opposite of tough and unyielding. It makes us want to insist that we must adhere to the rules except under very special circumstances, if at all. It isn’t just a dogma of Kantian deontology; it’s part of the very structure of moral character. And we can always say that we are rigidly obeying the supreme moral imperative, namely to maximize happiness and minimize pain. We should be proud to be morally rigid (about the right things)—rigidly sexually tolerant, say, or rigidly free speech. Morality should never be flexible, i.e., ready to abandon itself. It is never right not to be moral. Rigid virtue is the only true virtue—all else is corruption and opportunism. We don’t “go with the flow”; we take our oar to the current. We never go morally limp or flabby or jelly-like. We remain stiff as a board, granite-hard, rock-solid. Rigidity is next to Godliness.[1]

[1] Why does every revolution involve throwing the baby out with bathwater? Why must we always be so undiscriminating? Why can’t we keep the good while trashing the bad? The history of human morality involves far too much baby-flushing. It’s apt to make a chap into a conservative!

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Al Franken and Me

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Al Franken and Me

I was at George Soros’s wedding in 2013, a lavish affair with hundreds of people in attendance, talking to Senator Al Franken. I explained George’s favorite joke to Al: What is the difference between a Hungarian and a Rumanian? They will both sell you their mother, but the Hungarian will deliver. No bad, Al remarked. This was before Senator Franken had been removed from the Democratic party; he was still a promising new senator representing Minnesota. I myself was in the process of being cancelled by the American philosophy profession. A couple of years later his own party destroyed his political career in their ill-advised liberal zeal. At this point I lost faith in the Democratic party, as I had already lost faith in the American philosophy profession (remember I was not the only philosopher to lose his job and reputation). This was American liberals at their worst. I don’t doubt that this kind of behavior—stupid and cruel—is what led to the troubles of the Democrats, which led to the triumph of Trump. I also think that the treatment of various philosophers around this time is a disgrace to American philosophy that will not soon be erased, if ever. It’s the kind of thing that makes people despise universities. We know what happened next: Trump and the rise of the punitive right. It is notable that Al Franken is still rejected by the Democratic party and the cancelled philosophers are still cancelled. I see a bleak future ahead in politics and university life. The politics of personal destruction is alive and well on the left.

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Knowledge of Matter and Mind

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Knowledge of Matter and Mind

We don’t naturally know the nature of matter. We can’t know it just by looking. We had to figure it out over a long period of time. It wasn’t easy to discover the atomic theory. But the same is not true of the mind: here we do naturally know whereof we speak. We know what consciousness is; we don’t just point to it from afar. We may not know how it works, but we know what it is. We know what it is because it is as it appears: and we know how things appear to us. It seems to us that consciousness has objects (intentionality), and it does. By contrast, it seems to us as if matter is continuous, but it isn’t; we would never have thought that matter is mostly empty space punctuated by tiny particles. We know how things feel to us and that is what consciousness is. But matter is not the same as how it feels to us—we know that perfectly well. Matter is not consciousness of matter, but consciousness is consciousness of consciousness; there is no gap between consciousness and itself. We thus naturally know our own consciousness. This is a deep epistemic dualism. On the face of it, it implies an ontological dualism. We can therefore mount an “ignorance argument” against the identity theory: matter is something we are naturally ignorant of, whereas mind is something we naturally know; therefore, they cannot be identical.

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Extremism and Violence

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Extremism and Violence

People (pundits, politicians) have been trying to figure out the origins of political violence. We are told that such violence stems not from the radical left or the radical right but from being too radical. We need more political moderation, less “radicalization”. The dictionary (OED) gives us the following for “radical”: “relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something—innovative or progressive”. It is hard to see what could be wrong with that: surely, we can be concerned about the fundamental nature of something and be innovative and progressive in regard to it. Reading on we find as the third definition: “advocating thorough political and social reform; politically extreme”. The first part is again unexceptionable: sometimes thorough reform is desirable and welcomed (e.g., various forms of tyranny). It is the second part that people have in mind in speaking of being overly radical: we mustn’t be extreme. Extremism is the problem, the cause of violence. We must educate people to be less extreme in their opinions (perhaps also in their emotions)—more restrained, qualified, compromising. But is that right? Isn’t extremism sometimes warranted? Wasn’t Jesus pretty extreme? If something is very wrong, you need to be extreme about it—you can’t be mealy-mouthed, wavering, compromising. I myself am quite extreme about genocide: I think people who do it are behaving very badly (and are probably bad people—I would not hang out with such people). I am an anti-genocide extremist. Aren’t you? In fact, I am an extremist about many things: torture, animal cruelty, rape, murder, etc. I think these things are really bad and I am completely against them, extremely so. There is nothing wrong with extremism as such, obviously. It all depends on what you are extremist about. Racial discrimination is clearly bad, or the death penalty for naughty children, or a boss who works his employees to death—we should be extremely against such things. It is right to be an extremist in support of the good, but not in support of the bad. In other words, you can’t keep substantive moral values out of the definition of what should be discouraged. Obviously! There is no morally neutral definition of what kind of extremism should be tolerated. It isn’t how strongly you believe, it’s what you believe in. If you believe in evil things, you are apt to do evil things—and they are likely to be violent acts. If you falsely believe that all people of a certain ethnic group are murderers and rapists, you are likely to do harm to members of that group—you might even advocate deportation for anyone of that group. If you have false ignorant beliefs about the badness of innocent people, you will be apt to do violent things to them. Not so if your beliefs are true and rational. So, we need not teach moral and political moderation; we can teach instead moral and political rationality. Accordingly, if one side of a political divide has many irrational false beliefs, while the other side has mostly rational true beliefs, then the latter should be applauded and the former criticized. The right policy, then, is simply this: instill true beliefs and discourage false beliefs. Then you won’t get people acting on false moral and political beliefs, sometimes violently. We can’t avoid the hard work of truth and logical reasoning by simply banning any form of “extremism”. For sometimes extremism is good and anything short of extremism less than good, even bad (“Oh, I’m not so opposed to genocide in all cases, though I agree it can be quite bad sometimes”).

But this is not the end of the story. It isn’t just a matter of beliefs; we need to reckon with emotions, traits of character, streaks of insanity, criminal tendences. Some people are more prone to violence than others, with beliefs held constant—they just tend to hit out more. The roots of political violence, then, are not confined to moral and political beliefs, but include other psychological factors—and these need to be controlled too. What are these violence-inducing psychological dispositions? That is a hard question, but it is not to be answered by talk of being “radical” or “extremist”. These mantras are far too simple, papering over a complex psychological reality. But better to acknowledge this than offer threadbare formulas like “Don’t be a radical” or “Don’t go to extremes”. This is political punditry not genuine intellectual engagement with the issue.[1]

[1] It is sometimes said that the internet is the problem, but it can only be part of the problem. I read things on the internet but I don’t get hijacked by crazy or evil ideologies; the reason, presumably, is that I am too well-educated to be so easily fooled. So, better education must be part of the solution.

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Political Violence

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Political Violence

Understandably, people are anxiously and angrily discussing the causes of our current spate of political violence. Is it caused by being of one political persuasion rather than another, as it might be right-wing political ideology? Well, do right-wing people from other countries exhibit the same levels of political violence? Evidently not. Same for left-wing people. The answer is obviously that America is an unusually violent country, especially given its state of economic development. This is not explained by there being a large number of mentally disturbed people in the country compared to other countries. So, what is it? We need to ask what gives rise to violent behavior in the first place and see whether there is a lot of that in America. Again, the answer is not far to seek: violence is generally committed by nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—violent types. It is not generally committed by kind, gentle, compassionate, intelligent people. Therefore, America has an unusually large number of nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—proportionately larger. The people here are worse than other people on average. But why are they worse? Now things get murky, but we can be confident that history, culture, and education (in the broadest sense) play a causal role. The violent past, the competitive ruthless capitalist culture, the lack of proper education. In other words, America has a violent psychology. I have seen this even in philosophy: nasty competitive stupid people (I could names names). It is obvious just from watching people arguing on cable news. The problem is general not confined to politics. The average American’s idea of a good person is one who kills bad people, where badness is a floating commodity and a matter of taste. So, the solution to our current political violence is to change the American psyche. Good luck with that! I have a sneaking suspicion that Americans secretly love violence: they love to hear about it on TV and practice it in their own lives (one way another—bullying, verbal attacks, legal violence, etc.). They can’t live without it. They enjoy a good hanging (they still have capital punishment in many places). It’s in their DNA (not literally). Political violence is just a special case. Americans need to start by looking into their own souls.

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SH in Philosophy

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SH in Philosophy

I see that Brian Leiter is reverting to the topic of sexual harassment and the surge in female enrolment in philosophy programs, both perfectly legitimate topics. If anyone would like to hear my perspective on this subject, as one caught up in it, I invite them to contact me and I will attempt to answer any questions they might have, within the limits of what I am legally permitted to discuss. Hostile questioning is welcome. I already had two solid days of vigorous interrogation from an attorney, so I am used to it. My phone number is 305 812 5377 and my email is cmg124@aol.com.

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Inside Knowledge

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Inside Knowledge

Let’s try to recover some of the insights of seventeenth century philosophy which have been obscured by twentieth century philosophy.[1] I am referring to instrumentalism, operationalism, positivism, phenomenalism, and behaviorism. I offer for your consideration the following two propositions: we don’t know the nature of matter, and we do know the nature of mind. I want to understand why these propositions are true. We know matter by means of perception, particularly vision; we know mind by means of what is called introspection. The thesis, then, is that perception doesn’t reveal the nature of matter, while introspection does reveal the nature of mind, specifically consciousness. Perception is a way of knowing about a wide variety of things, such as animal bodies, but it doesn’t get to the bottom of what it knows; introspection on the other hand is a way of knowing about a relatively narrow band of things, such as human minds, but it does tell us the true nature of what is known. Thus, we know about bat bodies as well as human bodies, but we don’t know about bat minds as we know about human minds. We know what bat bodies are like, but we don’t know what bat minds are like (in respect of echolocation). But we do know what we know of minds extremely well, while we only graze the surface of bodies: we know the essence of consciousness, but we don’t know the essence of matter. Perception is weak vertically but strong horizontally; introspection is weak horizontally but strong vertically. I really know what the essence of consciousness is, but I don’t really know the essence of matter—I just know how it appears to me. Matter is a mystery deep down; but mind is not a mystery when it comes to its nature as mind. I know very well what it is to be conscious, but I don’t know at all well what it is to be material. That is the bit of seventeenth century philosophy I want to retain, alien though it may sound to the twentieth-century (and later) mind. I know myself better than I know the world outside of me. Inside knowledge is superior to outside knowledge in point of depth, if not breadth. The reason is that introspection perspicuously reveals its object whereas perception does not. We might say that perception purports to reveal matter while not delivering the goods, but introspection makes good on its promise. Perception gives putative knowledge while introspection gives perspicuous knowledge.

Before going further let me dispel a possible line of objection. This is the idea that the essence of matter (bodies, physical substances) is extension and perception represents matter as extended; thus, it delivers knowledge of the essence of matter. Accordingly, there is no asymmetry such as I have alleged. Just as introspection reveals the mind as characterized by thought, so perception reveals the body as characterized by extension (as Descartes contended). There are a number of problems with this line of objection, however. First, it is not clear that extension is the essence of matter or body: space is also extended, and there are other theories such as cohesiveness and solidity. Second, it is doubtful that we perceive actual objective extension, as opposed to mind-generated phenomenal extension, which is not the essence of matter as it objectively exists. Third, do we really know what extension itself is? To know that we would need to know what matter and space are, which takes us back to our original question. Fourth, there are illusions of extension in which no existing object is really extended: would this make hallucinated extended objects into matter? The obvious point is that when we see extended objects this does not tell us the essence of matter as it objectively exists: matter is what constitutes extended objects not (perceived) extension itself—but what is that? Simply perceiving objects doesn’t tell us. So, we are in the dark about the nature of matter, i.e., the non-mental physical world. We don’t know its real essence, as Locke would say, only its nominal essence. We don’t know what that stuff is (note the demonstrative).

Perception brings together mind and matter (or purports to): the mind of the perceiving subject and the matter of the external object. These are different kinds of things. But introspection brings together the mind with itself, since its objects are mental. The mind doesn’t need to apprehend anything alien to itself. Perception, though, is an attempt by the mind to transcend itself—to reach out into the non-mental world. In this it is only partially successful (if that)—it strikes a glancing blow. The heart of matter, so to speak, remains out of reach as far as brute perception is concerned. This can no more be seen than consciousness can be seen in another mind. That is why we have the feeling that the essence of matter might be anything, because perception doesn’t preclude different hypotheses (e.g., Berkeley’s idealism). But we don’t think consciousness allows for various hypotheses, e.g., materialism or behaviorism, because such hypotheses strike us as violating its very nature—they strike us as unacceptably reductive. Perception is more metaphysically neutral than introspection. Perceptual experience doesn’t preclude being a brain in a vat, but introspective experience does preclude there being no inner life. Perception is not as closely connected to its objects as introspection is to its objects. The latter is more intimate, revelatory, finely tuned. Perceptual knowledge is relatively lacking; it doesn’t provide a transparent account of what matter is. It doesn’t have the authority that introspection has. The eyes don’t see into matter. These are the two fundamental truths of epistemology: we know mind, but we don’t know matter. A philosophically satisfying physics is thus harder than a philosophically satisfying psychology. In this sense matter is more mysterious than mind (very seventeenth century). Our knowledge of the external world is more remote and dubitable than our knowledge of the internal world, because of the very nature of our epistemic faculties (this is not the usual skeptical argument from justification). It leads to such startling doctrines as that the mind can only truly know itself; the rest is conjecture, speculation, blind faith. In other words, the mind can only have acquaintance with itself; it cannot be acquainted with matter as it is in itself.

This epistemological point has a bearing on the mind-body problem. For how can something truly knowable by introspection be reducible to something not knowable—how can the introspectable be identical to the perceptible? That would make the mind essentially unknowable, granted that its mode of existence coincides with the mode of existence of matter. But the mind is knowable in its real essence, as we all can see. It would be as mysterious as matter if identity held. In the seventeenth century, it was generally accepted that matter is fundamentally unknowable, though its behavior could be mapped to some degree; and it was also accepted that the mind, by contrast, is fundamentally knowable, i.e., in its defining real essence. The problem lay in physics not psychology (theory of mind). The mind-body problem was at bottom the matter problem. This is a problem located in our epistemic faculties: our perceptual faculty fails to disclose the true nature of matter, while our introspective faculty provides an accurate picture of (our) mind. It isn’t a metaphysical problem—a problem in the ontology of matter. Matter might well be the basis of mind, as Locke famously conceded, but we have no means of knowing, because perception doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about matter (specifically, the brain). For all we know, the brain is up to the task, but we lack the perception-based knowledge to be sure. The basic point in all this is simply that perception, and the ideas derived from perception, is unable to penetrate to the real essence of matter. We don’t have the necessary knowledge, and never will if empiricist epistemology is correct (nor will rationalism help). In the end it is not deficiencies in our knowledge of the bat’s mind that poses the problem but deficiencies in our knowledge of its brain and matter in general. Perceptual knowledge is the wrong kind of knowledge to provide the materials for a solution to the mind-body problem. The difficulty is already apparent in our ordinary visual perception: how does that provide information about the ultimate nature of the material world? This is the problem as it was conceived in the seventeenth century, and it can’t be said to have been solved (rather, ignored).[2]

[1] For background see Michael Ayers, Locke and Knowing and Seeing.

[2] The question of why perception is so limited is not difficult to answer: it’s because perception is an evolved cost-cutting adaptation and there is no pressing need to build in metaphysical eyes (cf. Locke’s “microspical eyes”). Do you think our animal ancestors needed to see the ultimate constitution of nature? And why should light be able to carry the requisite information? Compare our perceptual knowledge of the stars.

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