Immigration and Deportation

When the European settlers arrived on the American continent four hundred years ago, they did not enter the country legally. The native inhabitants did not give them permission to enter or to stay permanently. I don’t know if the natives had any laws prohibiting entry unless it was formally granted; they may well have had territorial laws of some kind applicable to other tribes. In any case, let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that they did have such laws, so that according to their laws the settlers were illegal immigrants.  We know what happened next, but that is not my concern. My question is whether they had a legal right to deport these immigrants from Europe. And the obvious answer is yes. They had laws making it illegal to enter the country without a formal immigration procedure, and the newcomers were in violation of their laws. There might have been a debate among the native population about what to do with these people—with some advocating deportation and some in favor of accepting them into the population. After all, they might prove useful. Apparently, the settlers were escaping persecution and deportation could land them in hot water. If the Indians had prevailed in their conflict with the Europeans, but accepted the settlers and their children into the community, there might have been a movement to expel them. Some would have committed serious crimes, while some were simply here illegally, having broken the immigration laws established by the native population. The Indian majority might have had the power to implement these rulings. Would this be morally right? Would it be the decent thing to do? Would it be acceptable to deport the children of the original illegals? After all, it’s a big country, capable of supporting a large population, and compassion would recommend leniency for the original delinquency. The settlers could hardly claim that they had not violated the law of the land when they arrived. The question, obviously, is whether this situation is any different from what we are seeing today, mutatis mutandis.

Let’s go back even further in time. The human race is a race of immigrants: it originated in Africa and has since spread all over the globe. They went where they pleased and there were no laws to stop them. But suppose, contrary to fact, that there was another quasi-human population occupying the lands the Africans entered; and suppose they had enacted laws that prohibit access to territories they felt they possessed—let’s say the European continent. Then all those African migrants would be illegal immigrants, as far as the non-African population was concerned. Some no doubt had criminal tendencies and all were illegals going by the prevailing laws. The non-Africans might move to repel and deport the African migrants, irrespective of what they faced in their country of origin. They might even succeed in confining the human race to the African continent. Humans would not be dispersed as they are today. Some sort of intelligent giraffe-like species might rule the rest of the planet. Does this seem like a desirable state of affairs? Does it have any moral or legal justification? It’s a big planet, capable of housing large numbers of humans—why limit them to a small part of it? All animals migrate and spread—it’s natural. What to do about possible conflicts can be a difficult question, but simply declaring illegality is not a defensible solution. What if a country decides it doesn’t like blue-eyed people and enacts a law prohibiting them from living in the country in question? They are thereby rendered illegal and moves are made to expel them for violating the law by having blue eyes. Is it morally justifiable to deport them somewhere? No, so sheer illegality is not sufficient to warrant deportation. Some other reason has to be given—for example, that blue-eyed people are more prone to violent crime (and then we have to verify that claim). Deportation is a very severe penalty merely for living in a country illegally, i.e., according to the prevailing laws, and should not be applied absent other incriminating considerations.[1]

Suppose a volcano erupts in a certain country and the only way to survive is to flee to a neighboring country. Overnight people flood into that country, illegally. They do no harm and are quite willing to return when the danger is over. Is it reasonable to deport them on the grounds that they are there illegally, knowing that they will certainly die if they return to their volcano-ravaged country? That would rightly be seen as a very flimsy, extreme, and inhumane policy. Illegal immigration is not ipso facto an adequate ground for deportation.[2]

[1] What if a country makes it easy to break its immigration laws, with light punishment if apprehended (a small fine); then it decides to crack down heavily on those who break the law, deporting them to countries in which their lives will be in danger? Is that morally defensible? Of course not.

[2] The points I am making are very obvious, but are routinely ignored by contemporary apologists for mass deportation of “illegals”. Don’t forget that if you park your car illegally you are also an “illegal”, i.e., a person who has done an illegal thing.

American Intelligence

America is not a very intelligent country. I take it this does not need much arguing. The question is why. I think it is because America is young. The intelligence of a country does not arrive overnight; it takes centuries, millennia. It is hard won, a struggle. It is passed down the generations—not just genetically but culturally. It has a history, as long and convoluted as any history. It also needs to be nurtured. It is constantly changing, though sometimes stagnant. It is an invisible river, flowing through time. It is precious, but also destructible. Its natural home is the university, though it can live and thrive in many places. The American tributary of it is of relatively recent origin. Harvard was founded in the eighteenth century and took some time to develop. By contrast, Oxford university was founded in the twelfth century—as were other European universities. Similarly, for China, Japan, and other countries. A country’s universities shape its level of intelligence. So, American intelligence has about six hundred years of catching up to do. It is still an adolescent. What you can you expect? You may object that America and American universities have had the benefit of well-educated immigrants who brought their learning with them. True, but two points may be made. First, these people had to contend with the intellectual level they found in America, and they were in a minority. Second, their contribution was not home-grown but imported: American intelligence was still at a relatively primitive level. To repeat: the intelligence of a country, a people, takes many centuries to mature and needs constant nurturing and institutional support. It takes work, time, opportunity. People are not born that way (I am not talking about IQ—that is compatible with a marked lack of intelligence in the sense I intend). You need good teachers, but they in turn needed good teachers, and so on back. The level of teaching I got at Oxford went back centuries, as knowledge was passed on down the generations. It doesn’t come from nowhere. This is why it is so valuable: you can’t bring it into existence quickly and easily. Every nuance of it has a history. The tutorial system was its vehicle. You are what you have been taught. You can’t buy it at the supermarket. But America hasn’t been around that long. It still has a lot to learn. If you listen to American politicians and European politicians you notice a marked difference—it is the sound of intelligence in action. American society has not been permeated by the kind of intelligence present in old educational institutions, because that takes time. It is also felt as alien by many people not accustomed to it. Thus, politics is deformed and debased by the low level of national intelligence. I am bending over backwards not to blame the American people: they haven’t had the time to develop what other countries have had the time to develop. Intelligence is like a slow-growing plant containing the wisdom of ages. And you can’t see its degree of maturation. It isn’t really capitalism that’s the problem, or an entertainment culture, or an obsession with sports; it’s its time on earth. Maybe in another six hundred year it will have caught up.[1]

[1] Let me be a bit more concrete: when I talk to an American academic, I don’t find the level and type of intelligence I find in a European academic (of course, I mainly talk to British academics, but the same is true of others). I may find cleverness, erudition, even originality, but I don’t find the same thoughtfulness, caution, and judgment that I find in the non-American (unless he or she has been educated at a British university at some point). This is the quality that is so hard to develop without the right intellectual environment. Humor is invariably part of it, as is verbal sophistication (I could give many examples). In comparison the American is apt to come across as simple-minded, competitive, and unsubtle—even if intellectually gifted (there are exceptions). The history just isn’t there.

Ducks

When I first started skateboarding in December 2024, I used to see a mother duck and her ducklings every day. There were seven of them, evidently just born. With the passing weeks they grew and grew. The mother clearly recognized me as time went by and became less afraid for her family. I always counted them to see whether any had perished. By the time they had grown up there were five left, not bad as these things go (but still a pang). Eventually, the mother left them to their own devices as they wandered and fed. I grew as a skateboarder the while. For the last couple of weeks, I have lost sight of them as a group—they must have dispersed as adulthood supervened. Then, yesterday, as I took my daily skateboarding exercise, I was treated to a new sighting: a mother duck with a brand-new brood of ducklings, evidently just born. I was curious: was this the same duck? I approached the group and the mother reacted calmly and in the same manner as before (beak open for food). It was the same duck with a new family—this time of nine small bundles of feathers. That’s a lot of mothering. I expect to watch them grow over the next few months, as I count anxiously. Odd what skateboarding can do.

Epistemic Necessity and the Self

Consider the two statements, “This table necessarily exists” and “I necessarily exist”, where “necessarily” is construed epistemically (“I could not be wrong that”). The former is clearly false, the latter apparently true. Why is the former false? It is false because I could be hallucinating or dreaming or otherwise under a misleading impression. Putting it in the jargon of epistemic contingency, there could be an epistemic counterpart of my present experience as of a table that is not of an actual table. I could be a brain in a vat imagining a table not really seeing one. We cannot deduce the existence of a table from an impression of a table; the two things can exist independently. There might not be any tables, though there are many instances of seeming to see a table. In normal life, such hallucinations occur, and they undermine claims to certainty (as the skeptic argues). This is all very intuitive and virtually inarguable; it doesn’t violate common sense or invoke recherche possibilities. Beliefs about the external world are epistemically contingent, notoriously and obviously. You don’t need to be a trained analytical philosopher, adept in far-out thought experiments, to see the point; being a nightly dreamer suffices. But the self is another matter, or so it has been thought: this is the domain of the Cogito and its associated convictions (“I know that I exist”). However, it has not been easy to trace out the logic of this intuitive conviction—the classic Cogito has met with a good deal of resistance. In what follows I will attempt to articulate the underlying reasoning behind the belief that the existence of the self is an epistemic necessity—the thought that I necessarily exist. Put more cautiously, I will spell out the difference between material objects and selves in respect of epistemic necessity.

It will be helpful to have a stalking-horse: this is the contention that I may have epistemic counterparts that have no associated self—mental states that are indistinguishable from mine but correspond to no self. These are conceived as “free-floating”, not anchored to any entity that has them. In the case of my actual mental states, we can suppose for the sake of argument that a subject exists, but we can imagine an epistemic counterpart of these states that has no subject—so how do I know that this is not my situation? It would seem to me just as it does now, but there would be no existent subject. It would be subjectively the same but ontologically different: same appearance (phenomenology) but different reality (ontology)—self versus no-self. Couldn’t it be just like the table case? I think not. First, we must ask whether the epistemic counterpart conveys an impression of selfhood: does it seem to itself to have a corresponding self, or is it neutral on the question, or even negative? Well, does it seem to me as I now am that my experiences have a subject distinct from them? I think the answer is yes. It seems to me that my experiences have intentionality—they are as of various states of affairs—and it also seems to me that they have a subject, viz. me. That is, they have an as-ofcontent and an as-by content: as of a certain object and as by a certain subject. That is, an impression of selfhood is present in my experiences, as well as an impression of objecthood (at it might be, a table). Here a neologism will be useful: states of consciousness have both intentionality and “subjectality”. They are intrinsically subject-indicating (referring, representing); they are not subject-denying, or subject-neutral. Subjectality is part of phenomenology. Thus, any epistemic counterpart to my current state of consciousness will also have subjectality, by definition of epistemic counterpart. Put simply, it will seem to itself to have a subject—as my consciousness seems to have a subject. Consciousness is I-referential. But of course, it doesn’t follow from this that the subject referred to actually exists—maybe this is an error on the part of consciousness. Maybe consciousness hallucinates a self—as it can hallucinate a table. At this point things start to get hairy: for what kind of hallucination might that be? Are we familiar with such hallucinations, has anyone ever had one, how might they be produced? In the case of external objects these questions are readily answered: yes, yes, and easily. We have a model, a theory, of sensory hallucination: it happens a lot and is easily brought about. It isn’t just philosophical word-spinning. But the same isn’t true of supposed self-hallucination: have you ever heard of someone being under the illusion that they have a self? Are there patients in psychiatric wards suffering from hallucinations of selves? That is, we know they have no self (their states of consciousness have no subject) and yet they are under the impression that they have a self. The mind boggles: what could this even mean? We are being asked to accept that there could be, or are, cases in which a mind seems to itself to have a subject, an “I”, but doesn’t really. Surely, that is not possible; or if it is, such cases never actually occur and are impossible to comprehend. They are certainly not part of common sense and everyday life. Of course, there might, as a matter metaphysical possibility, be cases of people with a sense of self that have no body: you can hallucinate having a body. But there are no cases of people under the illusion that their mental states are had by someone (something). No one ever has the feeling that their consciousness is had but actually it is not had. We cannot make sense of subjectality without a subject. We can say the words, but we can’t provide any examples, or explain how the hallucination works, or suggest how it might be mended. So, the very thing that powers the intuition that this table’s existence is not known with certainty is absent in the case of the self. Hence, we quickly see the epistemic contingency in the table case, but not in the self case—here we are presented with just a jumble (or jungle) of words. The skeptic is limping at this point, but with tables he is off to the races. Maybe he can wheel in extra machinery (the skeptic is nothing if not resourceful), but he cannot rely on commonplace facts and powerful intuitions. He thus has a lot of work to do; he can’t just point to the existence of hallucinations and dreams (do you know of a case in which a person without a self had a dream in which it seemed to him that he had a self?). I am strongly of the opinion that there cannot be errors of selfhood—cases which subjectality is present but not a corresponding subject—but I have no direct proof of this. The point I am making is that the model of the table won’t work to derive skepticism about the existence of the self. Hallucinations of external objects are facts of nature; hallucinations of selves are figments of the philosophical imagination—would-be thought experiments not empirical facts. This is what lies behind our ready acceptance of the epistemic contingency of “This table exists” and our resistance to a like conclusion about “I exist”. The latter strikes us as a lot more necessary than the former (as that is more necessary than “Dark matter exists”). Epistemic necessity comes in degrees, and the self is at the high end of the spectrum (though perhaps slightly less high than “This pain exists”). What is interesting are the reasons for the difference, specifically the absence of demonstrable hallucinations of the self. The thought never occurs to us that our impression of our existence as a conscious self might be a lifelong delusion, possibly not shared by others, precisely because no such cases have ever been recorded. We might become convinced of it by a philosophical or scientific argument against the existence of the self (though I know of none such that really succeed), but we won’t be budged just by pointing to mistakes induced by hallucinations—because there are none. Our position ought to be, “Unless you can prove to me that the self doesn’t exist, I see no reason to abandon my strong (certain) belief that my self exists”. We would be right, however, to refrain from such a pronouncement regarding the table, given what we know about the human nervous system and the powers of certain drugs (you might have hallucinated a table only yesterday).

How do these points bear on the Cogito? Not very directly. That is a different argument altogether, proceeding from the existence of thoughts to the existence of a subject (a substance) that has them. It has been questioned on a number of grounds, persuasively enough. Descartes never argues that his premise about thought includes a thesis about self-indication (subjectality); nor does he invoke considerations about the constitutive conditions of hallucination. However, it may well be that the points I have adduced are subconsciously influencing our response to the Cogito, giving it an appearance of cogency it might not otherwise possess. Reasons for accepting a philosophical claim do not always coincide with the content of that claim (indeed, they often diverge).[1]

[1] Let me make clear, if it is not already, that I am working with a minimal view of the self or subject (as was Descartes). I don’t mean an animal with a certain kind of body (a human being), or a persisting self, or a type of substance, or a unified self, or even a knowable self; I just mean a thing that acts as a bearer (logical subject) of a mental state—something that has it. That could be ever so etiolated, so long as it doesn’t collapse into the mental state it is supposed to bear. The idea, then, is that states of consciousness make it seem as if they are had or possessed by something distinct from themselves (the conscious states don’t have themselves). We know with virtual certainty that this thing exists, however it may be with “thicker” things.