Philosophy Now - April-May 2016 PDF

ISSUE 113 APRIL / MAY 2016
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In this original new book, German philosopher Markus Gabriel

tackles the big questions of what exists and what it means to exist,
presented in a way to appeal to the general reader. Through a
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he demonstrates the importance of a questioning mind and brings
us to the conclusion that the world itself does not exist.
Ambitious and clever, yet highly accessible, this is a book with
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Philosophy Now
4 Keeping It Real Rick Lewis

5 News in Brief
NEW REALISM
Baker, Anja Steinbauer
BY
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WATER
Editor-in-Chief Rick Lewis

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EDITORIAL & NEWS
Jay Sanders, Ellen Stevens

jay.sanders@philosophynow.org
UK Editorial Board
Rick Lewis, Anja Steinbauer,

Bora Dogan, Grant Bartley
US Editorial Board
6 Interview: Markus Gabriel

Anja Steinbauer asks him why the world does not exist
11 Interview: Maurizio Ferraris
Manuel Carta gets real with this modern metaphysician
14 Introduction to Introduction to New Realism
Fintan Neylan explains Ferrariss New Realism in more depth
17 Interview: Sarah De Sanctis
Manuel Carta gets a translators take on philosophy
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New Realism
Pages 6-17
Dr Timothy J. Madigan (St John Fisher

College), Prof. Charles Echelbarger,
Prof. Raymond Pfeiffer, Prof. Massimo
Pigliucci (CUNY - City College), Prof.
Teresa Britton (Eastern Illinois Univ.)
Contributing Editors
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Socrates & Zen

Meditate on this. Page 34
The opinions expressed in this magazine

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18 The Use of Embryos

Elizabeth Hemsley considers the ethics of a new genetic technique
22 On Moral Arguments Against Recreational Drug Use
Rob Lovering spot tests the arguments
27 On the Philosophy of Conservatism
Musa al-Gharbi briefs us on various species of conservative
28 Philosophy & Cocktails
Robin Small concocts a charming cocktail of cogitations
32 The Universe Is Made Of Mathematics
Sam Woolfe sees how Max Tegmarks words and worlds add up
34 Socrates & Zen
Geoff Sheehan looks at Socratic philosophy through a Buddhist lens
44 Film: American Psycho
Matthew Gildersleeve psychoanalyses one American psycho
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48 Book: Anxiety by Jacques Lacan
reviewed by Peter Caws
50 Book: Walter Benjamin and the Media by Jaeho Kang
reviewed by Terri Murray
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ISSUE 113 Apr/May 2016
Intoxicating
Thinking
Drugs p.22, Cocktails, p.28
25 Brief Lives: Pierre Hadot

Thomas Dylan Daniel on philosophy and life la Franais
31 Philosophy Then: Meat is Murder
Peter Adamson chews over ancient Indian vegetarianism
37 Question of the Month: Whats Your Best Advice/Wisdom?
Youre well advised to read readers answers to this question
40 Letters to the Editor
52 Tallis in Wonderland: The P Word
Raymond Tallis wonders if philosophy is about making progress
FICTION
54 Epiphany
Kimberley Martinezs hero has one, momentarily
April/May 2016 Philosophy Now 3
Editorial Keeping It Real
ere at Philosophy Now we try to perform a whole set

of disparate tasks, often simultaneously, rather like a
seal juggling coloured balls while also honking a
horn with its nose and riding a bicycle. We endeavour to
present the best philosophy articles we can, for your edification and astonishment. We also delve into the history of
philosophy, exploring the ideas of some of the most intriguing
thinkers of the past 2,500 years, including the crazy ones. We
also investigate some of the great philosophical problems such
as the foundations of ethics, the nature of consciousness and
two months ago the existence of free will. But on top of all
of this, we keep a weather eye out for significant new trends
and developments in philosophy, wherever they take place and
then report them to our discerning worldwide audience (thats
you). For instance, we have previously published articles on
disjunctivism and on experimental philosophy by leading
exponents of those approaches. And in the issue you are
holding in your hands right now, we are covering a new philosophical movement from Italy and Germany that goes by the
name New Realism.
New Realism is this years hot trend among idea-fanciers,
particularly those in Germany and Italy. Its mainly the brainchild of (in no particular order) Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of the
University of Turin and Prof. Markus Gabriel of the
University of Bonn. By happy coincidence no, away with
this false modesty, it was through hard work and bold
planning! the current issue features illuminating interviews
with both of these influential contemporary thinkers. This
means that much of our New Realism section consists of
conversations with the very people who are pioneering this
approach. This is cutting-edge philosophy from the horses
mouths. I would like to particularly thank Manuel Carta for
his initiative and hard work in bringing this issue together, and
for conducting two of the interviews within it. I would also
like to express my gratitude to Sarah de Sanctis, translator of
several books by Ferraris, for her help and advice, and for
giving us her own thoughts in her conversation with Manuel.
An old joke about the Holy Roman Empire goes that it
wasnt Holy and it wasnt Roman. So what about the New
Realism? Is it New? Is it Real? Luckily, at least arguably it is
both.
Firstly, this isnt the first time a bunch of philos have
described themselves as New Realists. As youll read in Anja
Steinbauers interview with Gabriel, an earlier group did so
about a hundred years ago. Nonetheless the new New Realists
are undoubtably much newer than the old New Realists.
Secondly, what is a realist? In everyday speech, Ive been told,
it means any person sensible enough to realize that there is no
4 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
market for a philosophy magazine (compare with idealist).

But in terms of philosophical positions, a realist is somebody
who believes that the things we perceive are really, objectively,
there. So a moral realist is somebody who thinks moral values
have a real existence independent of us. A number realist is a
mathematician who thinks numbers really exist. (See article on
Max Tegmark in this issue). If you believed in the Easter
Bunny, that would make you an Easter Bunny realist. So
what do New Realists believe in?
New Realism springs from the tradition of hermeneutics,
that led through 20th century Continental philosophy to,
eventually, Derridas claim that our world is constructed like a
piece of literature and there is nothing outside of the text.
In reaction to this, the New Realists say that while society and
its institutions and customs are indeed socially constructed,
external physical objects arent, and resist our efforts to
reshape them. This sounds suspiciously like common sense.
Should we merely be cheering because these thinkers, despite
being philosophically born in the cave dug by Derrida, have
now climbed up to the light? Or do they have more to teach
us? It seems they do. For starters, both Ferraris and Gabriel
claim that the meaning of an object is not in peoples heads
but resides in the object itself. It is real, not subjective.
Perhaps if there is ever a New Realist ethics it will be a form
of moral realism.
How else does New Realism differ from other forms of
realism? A big clue comes from the title Markus Gabriel has
chosen for his book: Why The World Does Not Exist. This is an
unusual choice of title for any book purporting to advocate
realism. Gabriel thinks that the world is not real, but that
individual objects (chairs, trees, even unicorns) are real. This
is why we picked for the cover of this issue a painting called
The Librarian by Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo
(1527-1593), who specialised in constructing portrait heads
out of objects. Does the Librarian exist, or is he a social
construct out of individual elements that themselves have an
existence independent of society? This type of question ties
into some current debates in physics (if not in Library
Studies). For instance, do exotic particles like the Higgs
Boson exist independently of us, or do we find them because
our best theories lead us to expect them?
In our everyday lives too there are questions about what is
independently real and what is socially constructed. Houses
are literally socially constructed but seem pretty solid too.
What about bank loans, currency, countries? In the online
world, in social media and virtual reality to what extent are
the people and things we encounter real? How can we know?
Above all, what exactly do we mean by real? Read on!
Umberto Eco, novelist and philosopher,

dies at 84 Virtue in Virtual Reality
Universe full of bubbles
News reports by Anja Steinbauer.
Umberto Eco
(5 Jan 1932 19 Feb 2016)
Umberto Eco once wrote: We have a
limit, a very discouraging, humiliating
limit: death. This limit has now sadly
caught up with the author of these words
himself. Philosopher, semiotician, linguist
and novelist Eco has died at the age of 84
of pancreatic cancer from which he had
been suffering for two years.
Eco first came to wide public attention
for his 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a
medieval whodunnit whose plot centred on
a lost work by Aristotle, and whose title
connected it with Ecos interests in philosophy of language. Whats in a name? A
rose by any other name does smell as
sweet. He followed this with the complex
thriller Foucaults Pendulum, packed full of
hidden philosophical and literary allusions,
not to mention a pacy plot whose moral
concerns humanitys insatiable hunger for
meaning in a changing world. Yet Eco
claimed to be a novelist only at weekends:
during the week he taught at the University of Bologna and wrote numerous
academic texts particularly on semiotics
(the study of signs, communications and
meaning-making).
Bubble Universes
Stanford Universitys prestigious
Bunyan Lectures, proposed by philosopher
James T. Bunyan in 1970, are intended to
give a reasonable explanation of the origin
and structure of the Universe, the beginnings of life and the ascent and destiny of
man. This years chosen speaker was
Alexander Vilenkin, Professor of Physics
and Director of the Institute of Cosmology
at Tufts University. He is a proponent of
the eternal inflation model, and used his
lecture on March 9 to bring to public
attention the idea of bubble universes
created during the Big Bang. They are
distinct regions of the inflationary multiverse, which can decay to a vacuum. The
decaying regions constitute sub-universes
which are causally independent of each
other, though Vilenkin is investigating the
News
possibility of interactions between them.

Each bubble universe is characterised by its
own distinctive physical laws, which apply
consistently across its own region of spacetime. Concerning the significance of this
theory, Vilenkin remarked: It is said that
an argument is what convinces reasonable
men and a proof is what it takes to
convince even an unreasonable man. With
the proof now in place, cosmologists can
no longer hide behind the possibility of a
past-eternal universe. There is no escape:
they have to face the problem of a cosmic
beginning.
we dont yet know the moral effects and

long-term psychological effects of
continual immersion in a virtual world. He
frets that repeated immersive experience of
violent acts, for instance, may traumatise
individuals or make them more likely to
commit similar acts in real life. Therefore
in an article in the journal Frontiers in
Robotics and AI, he and Michael Madary
have for the first time outlined a code of
ethics for VR users, which they believe
should include principles such as not doing
anything as an avatar that you wouldnt do
in the real world.
Culture, Lies and Individuals

Immanuel Kant famously teaches us
that it is completely up to each individual
to decide not to tell lies. However, new
research suggests that social context
strongly shapes our behaviour with respect
to honesty or dishonesty. Findings of a
detailed study reported in Nature in March
reveal that individuals are more likely to lie
if they live in a country with high levels of
corruption and fraud at the level of government institutions. Simon Gchter and
Jonathan Schulz used data on government
corruption, tax evasion, and election fraud
from the World Bank and Freedom House,
to create an index of institutionalised rulebreaking. Over a five year period they travelled to 23 countries, conducting tests with
individuals measuring their propensity to
cheat and deceive in dice-based betting
games. The results showed a clear correlation between dishonesty on institutional
and personal levels. Schulz, an experimental economist at Yale University,
comments: It seems that people benchmark their dishonesty with what theyre
surrounded by in their daily life.
Philosopher Honoured by Medical

Establishment
Philosopher and essayist Konrad Paul
Liessmann, 62, has been awarded the
Watzlawick Prize, given by the Vienna
medical association to individuals who
have furthered the discourse between the
sciences and practical efforts to create a
more humane world. Liessmann, one of
Austrias best known intellectuals, is a
founding member and academic head of
the eminent interdisciplinary forum Philosophicum Lech.
Whats Virtue in Virtual Reality?

Prof. Thomas Metzinger, a philosopher
at the Johannes Gutenberg University in
Mainz, Germany, is looking forward to the
impending launch of virtual reality (VR)
gaming equipment such as the Oculus Rift
and HTC Vive. However, he warns that
Konstantinos Despotopoulos
(8 Feb 1913 7 Feb 2016)
Greece has lost a prominent philosopher-politician. Konstantinos Despotopoulos passed away the day before his
103rd birthday. A philosophy lecturer at
the University of Athens, he was jailed
during the civil war of the late 1940s, and
later during the Rule of the Colonels in the
late 1960s he was exiled to France, where
he worked at CNRS and the University of
Nancy. After the fall of the dictatorship he
was professor and rector of Panteion
University in Athens, before becoming
Minister of National Education and Religious Affairs from 1989 to 1990. He
fought for the abolition of the death
penalty and to promote gender equality.
He wrote thirty two books on ethics, the
nature of freedom, and the philosophy of
action as well as history and politics.
New Realism
Im talking with Markus Gabriel, Professor
of Philosophy at the University of Bonn, in
particular about his new book Why The
World Does Not Exist. But first tell us a
little about your background. How did you
get interested in philosophy in the first place?
At some point in school I felt frustrated
because the questions that were raised
there and the ways they were answered
didnt seem satisfying to me. The
answers were somewhat unjustified and
ungrounded, in pretty much all disciplines. Then I happened to break my
ankle skateboarding and I had to stay at
home over the summer, so I started
reading some philosophy because a
friend of mine who was much older gave
me Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure
Reason. So this is how it all started.
Markus
Gabriel
one of the founders of
New Realism, talks to
Anja Steinbauer about
why the world does not
exist, and other curious
metaphysical topics.
Wow, and you read through the entire book?

Oh yes, I read the entire book. Im not
sure what exactly I understood, but afterwards I read Schopenhauer, and then I
thought for a while that I had finally
understood what I had read before.
So then you decided to study philosophy?
Yes. When I was about fifteen or sixteen
I decided to become a philosophy professor! I said to myself thats the only
viable career if I want to do that.
You became a philosophy professor younger
than anyone else in Germany, so thats kind
of cool. Are you very ambitious?
Im certainly very ambitious, but I think
I just really absolutely love philosophy.
Its a form of obsession. Philosophy is
the one activity I love most.
So the sort of questions Kant asks in the Critique of Pure Reason [1781] are the kind of
questions that have stuck with you as well?
Yes, the topics Kant raised seem to me
still central. I disagree with most of the
things that Kant has to say about them,
but I think he raised the right questions
and defined the right framework. So in
that sense Im still working from within
that tradition.
Talking about traditions, would you align
yourself with a particular tradition, in terms
of the analytic/continental split, or perhaps
even something more specific?
I think I just think of myself as doing
6 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
what philosophers have done under the

name of philosophy. The only tradition I
like to adhere to is the one which happily
embraces the label philosophy. I hate
the idea of analytic and continental philosophy as distinct, I think this distinction is utterly misguided. Analytic philosophy usually just means philosophy, and
continental philosophy usually also just
means philosophy, but it is used as a
pejorative term by another group. On
the [European] Continent, where I am
from, you cannot find Continental philosophy just as you cant get a Continental breakfast in Bonn or maybe
only in some tourist hotel. But then also,
analytic philosophy; what exactly does it
mean? So I just happily embrace the label
philosophy, I dont want to go beyond
philosophy like Nietzsche or Heidegger
wanted to, so in that sense too I just
adhere to the tradition of philosophy.
I think youre right, that sort of labelling is
misguided. It is wrong to think that continental philosophers dont analyse, because
clearly they do, or that theyre only to be
found on the Continent. So philosophy in
your sense is not one thing, but could be lots
of different things?
Oh yes, thats true. In a certain sense
Im just a very traditional modern
philosopher, in that what I am trying to
do is to give an account of what reason
is in its most general shape. This commits me to radical cosmopolitanism, and
all sorts of things follow from it, but I
think that Im just digging into the
structure of reason itself.
Thats interesting. Where has it led you?
Well, currently it has led me into being
part of a group of people who are
declaring a new form of realism. New
Realism here is just the idea that with
the help of good old armchair philosophy we can actually describe how reality
is in itself. I dont think theres anything
standing between us and how things are,
and I think that reason, if it does a good
job, has an immediate grasp of how
things really are.
Your new book is called Why The World
Does Not Exist great title, and people
would want to know that. But who is the
book for? Is it for other philosophers, or for
Interview
Interview
everybody? Why should philosophers read it?
Why should everybody else too? What is it
meant to do?
Well its really a book for the general
educated audience, but it contains new
thoughts, so on the one hand its pretty
much a book for everybody, but many of
the ideas I present I think are new and
radical. It is a presentation of my
approach to philosophy, but its designed
to be accessible to anyone who is willing
to read a philosophy book, so I try not
to make any assumptions, neither historical, nor technical. It should just be
the clearest expression possible of my
thoughts on the topics I deal with in it.
New Realism was used as a label before, a
hundred years ago, but this is not the same
thing, right? This is a new movement, which
you have co-defined with Maurizio Ferraris,
is that right? So whats that all about?
Whats new is that I define New Realism
as a combination of two tenets. Tenet
one: we can grasp things in themselves.
Thats the sense that philosophers have
attached to the word realism as a theory of our access to how things really
are, so I hold on to that. My more radical approach is shown in tenet two:,
things in themselves do not belong to a
single domain, the world. So what I
mean by New Realism is realism without
the world. Many philosophers would say
that realism means we have immediate
access to the world [as it really is]; but I
deny the existence of the world in this
particular sense. So its realism without a single reality.
Thats what I think is new
about this particular
approach. In a certain sense
Ive learnt a lot from the
anti-realist philosophers who
popped up all over the place
after the earlier New Realism
movement, in which people
like Roy Wood Sellars, the
father of Wilfrid Sellars,
were involved. I think the
earlier movement was not yet
able to fully formulate the
theories needed because antirealism had not yet been
developed in the relevant
ways by Michael Dummett
and Hilary Putnam.
Interview
But now the time is right?

Now the time is right because now we
know why anti-realism doesnt work.
Before we hadnt even really tried it. Of
course there were all these anti-realist
ideas out there in the history of philosophy, but no one had really penetrated to
the logical core of anti-realism in the
way that Dummett did.
So philosophy is also kind of a historical
process. Why is it so important to you to claim
that the world doesnt exist? You seem to be
saying that at no time can we actually grasp
the world, but we can grasp smaller entities of
meaning. But why deny the existence of the
world? Why cant we accommodate all those
entities of meaning within one world, which
after all is something we can conceptualise?
Well I doubt that we can actually conceptualise it. I think what we can achieve are
local unifications. Of course I can depart
from an investigation into where I am
right now: we are sitting in a hotel
somewhere in London; London is part of
the UK, which in some sense is part of
Europe, et cetera. You widen your horizon
and try to encompass everything from a
given starting position. But when youre
almost done with it when youve
zoomed out, as it were, into the universe
and you are moving farther and farther
away, you can never get to a final point.
Youre almost done, and then someone
says, You forgot the numbers! Oh
damn, I have to go back, I forgot that the
numbers 1,2,3 and all the other finite
numbers also exist! So

you have to add them to
the mix. Then someone
else might say: What about
the past? Oh yeah, I forgot the past
Very soon you will realize that you have
always been reducing entities whilst you
were trying to construct a coherent single
world picture. Theres always a different
category that youve missed. I think that
this difficulty cannot be overcome even in
principle. Why? Not because we are feeble and finite and stupid and human, but
because there is no unified picture available. That which the picture aims to
describe cant exist in principle.
But even if we cant give a full account of the
world, does that mean it doesnt exist?
Well it does precisely not exist which is
why I start the book with a certain analysis
of the concept of existence: So what do we
mean when we say existence? There is
some linguistic evidence that when we
attribute existence to something, it means
that certain restrictions are in place: we
think things exist somewhere. In the series
of natural integers, the number 3 will be a
number between 2 and 4, say. Many statements of existence work in such a way that
they define a location. If you look at the
history, the very word existence which
comes by the way from Plato, and then
was picked up by the Romans means to
stand out. Existere just means that. And
in many languages you have the idea that
existence has something to do with a location, as in Italian and French, and, in a
certain sense, even in Chinese we can talk
about that. So the idea of existence comes
with the idea of a location. But now you
think Wow, so there must be a location
for everything. But what is the location?
Some people would say the universe. But
whats the universe? By universe I refer to
the object domain under investigation by
our best natural scientific practices. But
science doesnt investigate why Van Gogh
was a better painter than me, or why
Goethe is a better writer than Heidegger.
Those are just not objects of science.
Lets talk more about metaphysics. You address
both monism and dualism, and you align
yourself with pluralism, which is a position
thats not really taken by many, and hasnt
been since its great champion Leibniz [1646April/May 2016 Philosophy Now 7
New Realism
1716]. So tell us more about how that works.
First, could you just say what pluralism is?
Okay, here is how I think about this. By
metaphysics, I tend to refer to the theory of absolutely everything that exists. I
deny that this works. So metaphysics
strictly speaking is impossible it has no
object. By ontology, I mean the systematic investigation into existence: What
are we saying when we claim something
exists? What is existence? Those are the
questions of ontology for me, and if you
are a monist, what you are saying is that
everything which exists shares a feature
existence! Maybe you have a substantial
account of what existence is: to be spatial-temporal, to be thought of by someone, whatever. So that would be a form
of monism: to exist is to be a substance.
That of course is Spinozas idea, and
Descartes idea of substance too, maybe.
A dualist such as Descartes would further
say, Well, yes, what exists is substance,
but there are two kinds of substances.
Thats usually what is meant by dualism
in this context. Im a pluralist. That
means that you cannot unify everything
that exists by giving a substantial account
of existence. So existence itself is not a
unifying feature of things. Things exist in
indefinitely many domains. What it is for
the number 2 to exist, is for it to be part
of the series of natural numbers. What it
is for Angela Merkel to exist as the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, is for her to be subject to the German constitution, et cetera. And you cannot unify these entities under one
domain. So the pluralist has a radical
commitment to the existence of indefinitely many domains of existence.
And a domain would be defined as...?
Well that can be tricky. But certainly I
dont think that all domains are sets.
Thats a technical issue, but roughly, elements of sets in the mathematically precise sense are not artworks or chancellors.
They turn into elements for sets only if
we abstract away from their specific features. Thats why sets have no ontological
importance. If we say domain, thats
pretty vague; we just mean whatever
domain. So this term, although often used
by philosophers and logicians, is usually
not well defined. So I replace it with a
more clearly defined notion, which I call a
8 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
field of sense. By a field of sense I mean

objects appearing under conditions that
we can make exclusive through rules. For
instance, physical objects are subject to
those rules uncovered by [physical] science. The sense under which these things
appear is the sense of the laws of physics.
The sense under which an object appears
in the series of natural numbers is defined
by, for example, the Peano axioms. So
thats my idea. What distinguishes a
domain from other domains are the rules
that make the object available in domains
to a true thought.
So coming back to your example of Angela
Merkel, what are the implications for personal identity?
Thats a wonderful question! I think one
of the implications is that the question
of personal identity is not the question
of the identity of a certain body over
time. Its also not the question of the
identity of a narrative over time. I think
that the traditional spectrum under
investigation here is too limited,
because, for example, Angela Merkels
role as a chancellor is constitutive of
who she is. So the question is, How can
Angela Merkel continue to be what she
is? Part of the answer is that she falls
under the relevant concepts that turn
someone into the Chancellor of the
Federal Republic of Germany. If she
plays that role, shes going to be Angela
Merkel. But then there are other roles
that she plays under other concepts. So
to me the question of personal identity
is ultimately the question of which concepts something falls under, and not so
much the question of under which concept is the same body the same person.
So there isnt really a unified self?
Oh no, there is definitely not a unified
self, if by that we mean something like
an essence of Markus Gabriel somehow
floating around and contingently instantiated right now by me raising my left
hand. This is what is usually meant by
self. In that sense there really is no self.
Does that put you closer to a kind of postmodernism, perhaps? You know, the idea of
fragmentation, and the leaving behind of
absolutes and commitments to unified ideas?
There are very many similarities
between what some thinkers who are

called postmodern worked out in the
1960s, 70s and 80s in Paris and what I
am saying. But you know, when it comes
to the details, there are very many differences too. In particular their take on
fragmentation tends to come with a
rejection of the method that I employ in
philosophy, rational argumentation. I
dont think that reason is fragmented in
the way that they suspect it to be. I
think reason is exactly homogeneous.
Thats a huge, major difference.
Thats kind of the red thread that runs
through everything?
Absolutely. That runs through everything philosophy says. So there is a red
thread but you know, that red thread
doesnt cover everything there is. Im
not saying something Hegelian that
reason is spread out over things, and
things are mysteriously dreamt up in
such a way that reason can grasp them,
and so reason and things cooperate. I
reject that picture; it seems to me overgeneralized. Reason is not that central
to what there is. But there is only one
form of reason. That doesnt make reason less central or more central.
In your book you argue that sense experience
is not subjective. This is kind of surprising
because it always seems that my senses are
my senses. You also state that our idea of
sense experience is restricted, is that right?
One way of looking at sense experience
is of course as something that pushes
experience into your head in a number
of steps. So it may be that in the end you
even believe that there is a veil of perception [that obscures reality]. But how
does sense experience enter our heads?
Let me redescribe the situation. If you
were to be sitting where I am, things
would roughly look to you the way they
look to me. Many things would be different because we are different
Well, we dont know.
Well, I think we do know. I think there
are objective optical facts about how
things look. Perspectives per se for
instance, are objective we can describe
the laws. Thats why we have glasses! So
the very fact that we have glasses and 3D
movie theatres tells us that there are
Interview
Interview
objective facts about sense experience.
Sense experience is not like a fleeting
thing nowhere to be found, like an afterimage. Many philosophers and neuroscientists construe sense experience as if we
were constantly looking through afterimages onto a material world. But I think
after-images are incredibly rare. Even
though after-images do take place, most
of what I see right now is there, in exactly
the way it looks seen from here. I want to
say that things seen, or heard, or smelled
from a given perspective, are no less real
than things unobserved. We tend to
think that theres a furniture to the world
out there, literally like there is in this
room, and that if no one is around then
the furnitures arranged in non-perspectival ways, as if Euclidean geometry
defined how things are really related in
this room; but then your subjective experience enters the room and that distorts
things. But in themselves things are
Euclidean. Well, first, we know they are
not exactly Euclidean; and second, I
think that this is a completely weird
metaphysical picture. Nevertheless, I
have to pay a price for my theory of sense
experience, and heres the price: I have to
Is this the Moon?
Interview
say that perspectives onto things are features of the things themselves. It is a
property of this [thing] to look that way
from here, it is not a property of me. I
dont bring perspectives into a world that
doesnt have perspectives, I sample perspectives that are already there. As the
philosopher Mark Johnston has put it,
We are not producers of presence but
samplers of presence.
But we can see how sense experience can go
wrong, and we try to correct it if we think it
doesnt work the way it ought so hearing
aids, glasses and so on. So in that sense
clearly there is something about my subjective sense apparatus that contributes, right?
I wouldnt call this subjective. The contribution that I make to the way things
look is a completely objective contribution. You can tell how its been done. Its
not unsayable, in that sense of subjective Its not like I see something that
you dont see, and I cant even describe
to you what it is the inexpressible
green. And so in that sense I also dont
believe that there are qualia [subjective
qualities of sense experience]. Let me
give another example that might be
helpful to understand
how I want to look at
sense perception. Think of
the Moon. How close do you
have to be to the Moon in order to be
sure that you see the Moon itself? You
might say, Well, look, thats not the
Moon, I can cover it up with my hand. It
cant be the Moon because I cannot
cover up the Moon with my hand. So
this is how people start thinking, So it
must be a sensation of the Moon! Im
not covering up the Moon, Im covering
up a sensation of it. But how close do
you have to be to the Moon so that it
really is the Moon? So you can see that
there is something confused about the
idea. I think what we need to say is that,
well, the Moon seen from here is such
that I can cover it up with my hand and
now you tell an objective story, also a
physiological story, of how this works
because photons from it arrive here
under certain conditions, my optical
instruments detect them, et cetera. So it is
the Moon that I can cover up, but its
only part of the Moon that I can cover
up namely, the part of the Moon that
arrives here in the form of photons.
Thats an interesting twist you introduce here,
although Im not convinced its the only possible account, or if its specific enough. We could
frame this another way. I think the problem
with saying Im covering up the Moon is
that perhaps were not specific enough about
what is exactly meant by covering up.
Definitely. Its just that people often think
that you can get at the contribution that
we make if we look at us in a certain way.
Let me give you an example. Theres this
wonderful discussion between Quassim
Cassam and John Campbell in their book
Berkeleys Puzzle [2014] where many
points that are relevant for my account
pop up. In this book Campbell defends
something very close to what I want to
defend, namely, what he calls a relational
view of experience. Here a sense experience, say of this table, is a relation
between me, the table and the perspective. So there are three entities involved
here me, the table, and the perspective
and the way that we are related is the
experience. Cassam objects: What about
eye doctors? Some people can see the letter A on an eye chart better than others,
New Realism
meaning the others have worse vision, so
there must be some kind of subjective
contribution. What Im saying is that
what is here called subjective is actually
super-objective. So I give up the idea that
there is the real A in the eye test case,
because no one can tell you what it is: my
A might be less or more distorted than
someone elses A. If anything is subjective about my A, there will be something
subjective about anybodys A. Hence we
lose the idea of an objective A on that
construal. This is why I think that my
account is better, because the relational
account can only give the idea that any
A in itself would be an A that is
absolutely clear, as it were.
NEW VISION
GRAPHIC
VADIM DOZMOROV 2016. PLEASE
VISIT VADIM.CREVADO.COM
Thats presumably got interesting consequences for various areas. An obvious one is
art. Aesthetics, of course, literally has to do
with the Greek aisthetikos, meaning, to be
perceived by the senses, and on the whole we
think of that as meaning that aesthetics is
very subjective. You have a whole chapter on
art in your book. Would you like to tell us a
little more about what you think?
Definitely. I am one of those who say
that Kants aesthetics is utterly confused
to the degree to which he makes statements about the beautiful and the sublime. Those are his own examples, of
course. He doesnt really go into artworks, and probably never went to a
museum, so I dont think hes a great art
expert. Kant walks through the woods,
and oh, theres a form! For him thats as
good as Picasso. That could tell us
something about his philosophy of art.
But of course hes not interested in art, hes
interested in aesthetics.
Exactly! Hes interested in the beautiful
and the sublime because he thinks that
judgments which contain Its beautiful
or Its sublime are somehow special:
they tell us both something about ourselves and something about the objects;
and then his analysis starts. But I think
that this is not at all helpful. I think hes
talking about tastes there. So this would
be gastronomic philosophy rather than
philosophy of art. I think that artworks
show us that they are things in themselves. They display the fact that theyre
constituted in such a way that perspectives on them are already integrated into
10 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
the thing. Artworks are there to be seen,

to be heard, to be eaten etc. I happen to
think of good restaurants as museums. I
think that artworks have exactly those
features that I ascribe to objects in general. So in my view, artworks show us
what objects are. But they always go
beyond themselves and tell us what
objects essentially are. Artworks paradigmatically speak in favour of the kind of
ontology Im laying out. The very fact
that artworks can then start talking
amongst each other No, this is what
objects are; No, that is what objects
are that disagreement among artworks
I think is pretty compatible with the
philosophical picture Im trying to
defend. But of course, now you might
argue, Well, look, youre just projecting
this on to the artworks. The real action
will take place in the actual interpretation
of the object. So come to a museum
with me, and then the question will be
who convinces whom.
Coming out of your philosophical position is
a sense that all perspectives are in a way
equally legitimate. Is that right? Theres a
sort of relativism there?
I dont think so at all. I think that all perspectives equally exist, if you like, but Im
not saying that theyre all equally legitimate. Recognising that something exists is
not tantamount to saying that its good.
Its very easy to refute the traditional
philosophical premise that existence is
itself good: a non-existing dictator is bet-
ter than an existing dictator. In general,

existence is not better than non-existence.
So I dont see any tie between what exists
and whether what exists is legitimate. On
the contrary, lots of things exist that
ought not to exist, such as dictators.
Fair enough. Where does this leave truth?
Truth is quite central here, I think that
Im a minimalist about truth in various
senses. I dont think that truth is a feature
of propositions or statements or assertions et cetera. Truth is not primarily linguistic. I think that when we say something is true, what we are saying is that
something holds good of something
objectively. Or, if we say that something
holds good of something, then we say
that it is true but what we say has
already been true, we just hadnt said it. It
holds good of me that I have two hands,
whether someone has ever said so or not.
So I think that truth means that something holds good of something and is an
objective feature of how things really are.
What do you mean it holds good? In what
sense?
Well, at the very least, it means that
something has a certain property. But I
think that there are objective relations. So
the many perspectival realities fields of
sense have objective structures that are
pretty much like those structures we
uncover when we make true statements.
So reality has various logical forms.
Theres nothing mysterious about this.
Philosophers have thought for a long
time that this is mysterious, but why?
Because they were Kantians, in my view
they thought that behind the logical form
of things, there might be something that
does not have that form. I think a lot of
philosophy has been under the grip of the
idea that But what if all our statements
were false? Then reality would not have
the form at all that we ascribe to it! But I
think that the very idea of But what if all
statements were false is so misguided.
We shouldnt model our philosophy
along the lines of how things would be if
everything we believed was false, because
we cannot even make sense of the idea
that everything we believe is false.
Dr Anja Steinbauer teaches at the London
School of Philosophy and is an Editor of PN.
Interview
New Realism
Professor Ferraris, are there any keywords
youd like to give our readers to help them
understand New Realism?
Ill give you seven, one for each day of
the week:
Individuals. Ontology (what there is) is
only made up of individuals: this interview; a summer storm; the ant that runs
across my table. Obviously, epistemology (what we know about what there is)
speaks of interviews, storms, ants,
using words and concepts that designate
classes of things; but the classes to
which these words refer do not exist
except in thought.
Unamendability. The fact that individuals exist independently of thought is
proven by the fact that they cannot be
amended or corrected with the power of
thought. This is in distinct contrast to
notions and concepts, that is, to what we
know, which obviously can be corrected
through thought. Individuals do not
change through our thinking about
them; but the knowledge that we have
of them has changed many times, and it
is far from certain that the knowledge
we have today is definitive although it
is probably closer to the inner nature of
individuals than it was in the past.
Invitation. Unamendability describes
the negative side of realism, but whats
more interesting is the positive side.
Precisely because they have unamendable internal properties, individuals
offer invitations or directions for use, or,
to use a philosophical term, affordances. I
cannot use a screwdriver to clean my
ears (except at great risk); but as well as
screwing screws in or out, I can usefully
use it to open a package, or to kill a
family member. Each of these actions
which are, so to speak, embedded in the
individual screwdriver, opens up a possible world, and, in the last case, even
serious moral and legal consequences.
Interaction. Individuals interact in an
environment, and this interaction, made
possible by the properties of the individuals, their unamendability and their
invitations, began long before the emergence of human consciousness. Objects
were there before people, and interacting too. This is proven by the fact that
we can interact with individuals
endowed with conceptual schemes
Interview
different from our own for example, I

can play with my cat Cleo and that
these individuals, in turn, interact with
individuals with conceptual schemes
different from theirs, or completely
devoid of conceptual schemes altogether.
Cleo tries to catch a wasp and the wasp
tries to escape, or Cleo plays alone with
a ball of string... these are interactions
between different beings that do not
depend on human consciousness.
Recording. Interactions leave traces: on
matter the glass of my watch was
slightly scratched against the wall and in
the specialized form of matter that we call
memory. Usually nothing happens as a
result. Sometimes something unpleasant
happens the glass of my watch is
broken. Sometimes a good thing occurs
an alteration of the DNA results in the
evolution of the species, or two memories
meet accidentally and create a passion or
an idea. In any case, these things are
recorded, and the importance of recorded
traces is possibly more manifest today
than ever before. Think of the amount of
permanently-recorded data online.
Emergence. Recording, or the trace of
an event, determines the birth of something new; if the Big Bang itself had left
no trace, the universe would have
returned to nothingness. Then theres
the birth of life and the evolution of
species, of meaning, of society in short,
all the objects that decorate our world
our ontology. From ontology, or the
existence of individual things, emerged
epistemology, or our knowledge of the
world. The process is exactly the opposite of that proposed by constructivists,
which is that a consciousness somehow
fallen as if from heaven determines the
genesis of individuals, that is, that epistemology constructs ontology.
Revolution. Realism is not the thesis as
claimed by fools, those essential products of evolution that there are tables
and chairs. Anti-realists know this too,
even though they insist that they are not
tables and chairs in themselves, but tables
and chairs for us. But least of all does
verifying reality mean accepting it as it
is, giving up the transformation wished
for by Marx. Realism is exactly the
opposite of this. The transformation of
reality, or more precisely, revolution, is
possible and necessary; but it requires
Maurizio
Ferraris
Manuel Carta talks with
Prof. Maurizio Ferraris of
the University of Turin,
another leading exponent
of New Realism.
Maurizio Ferraris
by Gail Campbell
(2016)
12 Philosophy Now April/May 2016
Interview
Interview
real action and not mere thoughts. Realism is the rejection of revolutions made
only in thought the Armchair Revolutions, revolutions made in speculation,
in the comfort of ones own head.
Despite your wish to overcome deconstruction, Jacques Derrida is one of the thinkers
who have influenced you the most. Can you
tell us more about your relationship to that
French philosopher?
Certainly. If I had to summarize my own
philosophy, Id say it is an attempt to
reconstruct deconstruction. Let me give a
few examples. Derrida, especially at the
beginning of his work, used to resort to
obscure expressions partly for political
reasons, or as he wrote in an interview, to
escape the Stalinist censure dominant in
the Ecole Normale Suprieure. By contrast,
I have tried to write as clearly as possible.
Derrida had dazzling insights, for example that writing has a transcendental role,
but then he compromised the originality
of this discovery by saying that there is
nothing outside the text, which went
along with the mainstream of the time
(Language is the house of being
[Heidegger] and so forth). I have
narrowed the scope of his claim about
writing to its own space, arguing instead
that there is nothing social outside the
text. Ive developed a social ontology
based on documents written and otherwise recorded, as Derrida had anticipated. Derrida based all his later philosophy on the role of otherness of what
resists the subject and his thought, and
surprises the subject. I have formulated
realism as the doctrine that to exist is to
resist, with an appeal to individuality that
is very Derridean. It is also linked to the
thinking of an author by whom Derrida
was secretly much affected: the Danish
existentialist Sren Kierkegaard.
How do you reply to those who argue New
Realism has misinterpreted Nietzsches saying
that there are no facts, only interpretations?
The accusation is a worrying sign of
confusion. If there are no facts, only
interpretations, I dont see how I can be
accused of having misunderstood
anything! Conversely, if one believes
that I really have misinterpreted this
assumption, then it is not true that there
are no facts, only interpretations, and
Interview
once again it is not clear to me what Im

being accused of.
In the section on Negativity in your book
Introduction to New Realism, you sum
up the problem of power in relation to
knowledge in the imaginary figure of
Foukant, who is Foucault+Kant [see the next
article for a further elucidation of this. Ed.].
What do you think was Foucaults mistake?
Foucault insisted on a true fact: that
knowledge is a tool of domination, and
so can be a form of power. Unfortunately, in doing so he overshadowed
another true fact, which was actually the
presupposition of his own work as a
politically-engaged philosopher: that
knowledge can also be a form of liberation the greatest one there is as well
as being the anti-authoritarian principle
par excellence.
knowledge can also

be a form of liberation
the greatest one
there is as well as
being the antiauthoritarian principle
par excellence.
New Realism is a global philosophy, in that

it involves the cooperation of thinkers from
different countries. Is this a new phenomenon in the cultural landscape, or can you
identify similar cases in the history of
thought?
Plotinus was born in Egypt, wrote in
Greek and lived in Italy; Thomas
Aquinas was born in Italy and studied
and taught in France and Germany;
Leibniz was born in Germany and
wrote in French. It is only from the
nineteenth century that philosophers
thought of themselves as national
thinkers who wrote in a national
language, speaking to their countrymen.
That was, I believe, a phenomenon of
involution, which also took place
precisely at the time when science was
going more global. On the other hand,
it was a transitory phenomenon, which
fortunately is coming to an end.
Is New Realism an exclusively academic trend,
or is it relevant outside of
university?
I hope it is also relevant
outside of academia, as was
the case with postmodernism,
hermeneutics and deconstruction. Id be
very happy if this trend got even wider
than it already is not because of any
megalomaniac drives I have, but simply
because I agree with Kant that in the
end the practical side is what matters. If
philosophy is useless outside of school,
then whats the point of it? This might
seem obvious, but it isnt. There are
philosophers quite a few, to be honest
who are proud of the fact that their
views are only spread among specialists
and academics. I dont understand why.
Philosophy has a public dimension to it:
its part of its essence. If you want to do
specialized research in a truly useful
way, choose oncology over ontology.
On the other hand, if you want to do
specialized research that is not useful,
that to me is rather a perversion.
Does todays philosophy need a specific
language as a lingua franca?
The fact that Conrad, Kafka or
Nabokov originally spoke languages
other than those in which they wrote
hasnt lessened the effectiveness of their
work... Conversely, imagine what would
happen to medicine if the research got
fragmented into languages and dialects.
It is not clear why philosophy should be
an exception. But there is no one
language for philosophy this idea was
claimed by the Nazi Heidegger, who
argued that philosophy only speaks
German. The philosophical language is
not English either; of course I use it,
badly, expressing myself in stammering
pidgin, because it is the most widely
spoken; but on occasion I use Italian
and French, and also as I have no
shame Spanish and German. I need to
make myself understood, not to show
that I speak a language well. This multiplicity of languages is a variety of
resources quite the opposite of the
single thought that fools wrongly
attribute to globalization.
Manuel Carta has an MA in Philosophy

from the University of Pisa, and is a freelance editor/writer.
New Realism
An Introduction to
Introduction to New Realism
Fintan Neylan explains the realism Maurizio Ferraris introduces in his Introduction.
t the opening of his 1907 lecture series Pragmatism,

William James commented on the growing disparity
between academic philosophy and a philosophy whose
relevance ordinary people would feel in their lives. This latter
philosophy would be one which truly mattered to us, James
claimed, because it would deal with our individual way of just
seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos
(Pragmatism, 1907). Yet while technical philosophy is found to
be wanting in this regard, James had no intention of presenting
Pragmatism as sundered from it. Instead he proposes it as a
middle road between the two demands, as the subtitle to the
published lecture series indicates: A New Name for Some Old
Ways of Thinking. What James determined was new about Pragmatism was not the ideas per se, but that it presented an alternate
way to discuss quite ancient ideas, or, rather, a return to them.
It is in this spirit of the new that we may assess Maurizio
Ferrariss recently published Introduction to New Realism. Here
I will focus precisely on that to which New Realism allows us
to return namely, a way to deal with perception in ontologi-
parts are inherently

structured, and thus
orientate the behaviour
and thought of humans
as well as animals
Maurizio Ferraris,
Introduction to New
Realism, p.37
Rudolph II of Hapsburg as Vertumnus by Guiseppe Arcimboldo 1591
cal terms (all will become clear).

As the books title suggests, it aims to initiate readers into
Ferrariss position, which he tells us has been developing for
well over twenty years. He clearly wants to introduce more
people especially those with a stake in aesthetics to the realist
movements that are taking root in the Twenty-First Century.
Sarah De Sanctiss translation of the text from Italian renders
Ferrariss prose in a way which preserves the brisk pace of the
book. Initiates are greatly helped by two extra elements too.
First is the foreword by Iain Hamilton Grant, which charts the
rise of transcendentalism in philosophy, the outcome of which
undercuts any claim to being, fact, or really existing state of
affairs (p.ix). This orients the reader to the challenges faced by
any realism emerging today. Paired with the second element,
the afterword that De Sanctis wrote with Vincenzo Santarcangelo, the reader is easily able to grasp Ferrariss position.
Negativity
Ferraris first sets out a number of elements of New Realism,
all of which are inspired by the fact that it is a critique of constructivism (p.10). Constructivism denies the reality of anything independent of the human mind or culture, because it
holds that all knowledge ultimately has a subjective or intersubjective origin. Ferraris sees constructivism as the result of
the modern periods uncertainty concerning the world perceived through the senses, so that it sees its task as being to
re-found, through construction, a world that no longer has
stability (p.26). In contrast, New Realism aims to be a return
to perception (p.8) and engages in a relaunch of ontology as
the science of being and of the multiplicity of objects (pp.8-9).
(Ontology is the study of the types of things that exist.) These
elements are framed against what Ferraris sees as the prevailing
tendencies in contemporary thought, which he explores in the
first section of the book, Negativity.
At the centre of Negativity are two philosophical figures,
Foukant and Deskant. These are not historical philosophers,
but rather amalgamations of viewpoints which cluster around
Descartes, Kant, and Foucault (or, more precisely, the reception of their ideas). In essence, both Foukant and Deskant
serve as Ferrariss intellectual foils.
Foukant is a postmodernist, and is the outcome of fusing the
subject, or the representing I (via Kant), with an ontology
based on power relations (via Foucault). Foukants position
proceeds from this syllogism: Reality is constructed by knowledge, knowledge is constructed by power, and ergo reality is
constructed by power (p.24). The problem with this is that
Foukant thereby locks himself out of being able to discuss a
mind-independent reality, in part because he believes knowledge of reality is a social construction. In itself, this would be
an unremarkable form of idealism, but it does not stop there.
New Realism
Not only is all knowledge socially constructed, but, in this
position, knowledge is always compromised politically, for
behind any form of knowledge there hides a power (p.25).
So on Foukants account, when we happen upon knowledge
which claims to refer to a mind-independent reality, what is
really going on is only an exertion of power by reigning forces.
This suspicion of knowledge is not limited to postmodernity; indeed, it goes back centuries. Ferraris claims it has its origins in a much older set of philosophical tendencies, which he
collects under the figure of Deskant (ie Descartes + Kant).
Deskants thinking combines the Cartesian subject, who is isolated from the physical world, with the Kantian subject, who
frames the world but is not a part of it. Deskants belief is that
our conceptual schemes and perceptual apparatuses play a role
in the constitution of reality (p.26). This is in response to the
uncertainty of the world opened up by early modern scepticism,
which generated the idea that the structure of the world people
see only comes through the subject: that it is what we ourselves
have put into the world via our conceptual apparati, and so not
present in reality itself. For this reason, the emergence of
Deskant marks the point where conceptual knowledge trumps
knowledge through the senses. There is a trade-off here: to elevate conceptuality, as Kant does with his pure concepts of the
understanding, shields one against uncertainty, but at the price
of there being no longer any difference between the fact that
there is an object X and the fact that we know the object X
(p.27). The trouble with Deskant and Foukant is that, in this
absconding from dealing with reality in itself, they cannot but
conflate of the knowledge of an entity with the entity itself.
Thus we enter an age where it is asked not how things are in
themselves, but how they should be made in order to be known
by us (p.26). Ferraris calls this collapse of ontology into epistemology the fallacy of being-knowledge (p.24).
Positivity
Having charted the various vestiges of Negativity, in the
next section, Positivity, Ferraris turns to his own position:
if the realist is the one who claims that there are parts of the world that
are not dependent on the subjects, the new realist asserts something more
challenging. Not only are there large parts of the world independent of the
cogito [the thinking subject], but those parts are inherently structured, and
thus orientate the behaviour and thought of humans as well as animals (p.37).
Ferrariss move here is twofold. He first agrees with Foukant

and Deskant that knowledge is a human construction, but
rejects their identification of knowledge of the world with the
world itself. He claims knowledge may still point to an independent reality which is inherently structured. There is not only the
structure of the knowledge we have of the world (i.e. the conceptual schemes we have developed, which he calls epistemological reality) but also the actual structures of the world,
whether perceived or not (ontological reality) (p.41). Thus his
account presents the reader with two strands of reality, or, as he
puts it two layers of reality that fade into each other (p.41).
With these two layers, it becomes clear that any attempt to
portray Ferraris as occupying a more traditional realist position falters. This becomes even more apparent when he calls
his position a nave physics (p.40). Guided by the principle

that the world presents itself to us as real without necessarily
claiming on that account to be scientifically true (p.40), nave
physics identifies a niche area in which philosophy can work,
giving full justice to the world as it appears while making no
claim to be doing science. As nave physics, New Realism takes
seriously the philosophical importance of sensibility (p.39),
by not treating perception as something to be explained by the
unknown principles of an unknown world of non-sensibility, or
as something to be reduced to the mechanics of neurophysiology. Rather, perception delves into the world to express the
reality of it as manifest to consciousness. Thus in Ferrariss
New Realism the world as we see and feel it is philosophically
central to his enterprise. Unlike philosophies which hold that
one may only seek out what exists by cutting beneath or
beyond perception, in the guise of his nave physics we may
consider the ontological aspects of perception itself.
In the rest of Positivity we get Ferrariss picture of the
world; and in the section called Normativity he explains the
essential elements of this ontology of perception. At its core is
a feature called unamendability, which Ferraris describes as
that aspect of reality which serves as a stumbling block to set
against our constructivist expectations (p.39). Unamendability
is an aspect of reality that manifests itself in terms of natures
resistance to the theories we concoct about it as what Ferraris refers to as refusals to the scaffolding of beliefs we have
constructed. The function of refusals is that they always make
it clear that reality is not quite what we think it is. That is,
reality is self-constructive because howsoever we attempt to
pin it down in formulated phrases, unamendability means that
reality always possesses the capacity to eventually shatter the
theoretical cast we have crafted for it.
New Realities
The unamendable aspect of reality does not just have the
negative role of providing refusals. It also pairs with what Ferraris calls the positive affordance of objects and the world
itself. By this he means that the very aspect of reality which can
break down our conceptual schemes is also that which affords
us new possibilities. These possibilities cannot be intellectually
deduced, but can only be discovered through interaction with
the world. For example, a lemon can be food, but with the rise
of electrical technology, through certain metal electrodes (zinc
and copper), it may also be used as a battery. At the same time
it resists being a battery with other metals. These facts are only
discoverable by doing science.
The worldview offered to us by Ferraris is thus one of
objects and their environments resisting and affording each
other in different ways. While it seems intuitive to think of the
natural world in these terms, Ferraris holds that this applies to
the social world, too. Yet here Ferraris encounters a problem:
given that he wishes to advance a realist position, he runs into
the issue of how to grant the same ontological status to both
the social and the natural worlds. Generally, one side is
granted reality at the expense of the other. As we saw, by privileging the social world as real, social constructivists (as represented by Foukant) came to see the natural world as being
little more than an exercise in power. Equally, scientific reducApril/May 2016 Philosophy Now 15
New Realism
tionists hold that if the natural world is real, then the social
world must be an illusion. For Ferraris, what is required is a
way to hold onto the social world as constructed while still
maintaining it as a real, causally effective domain.
Through what he calls documentality, Ferraris proposes a
theory of the social world which he claims can conceive of it as
fully real whilst still remaining mind-dependent. Documentality arises out of Ferrariss analysis of objects, which he breaks
down into four distinct classes: natural objects, ideal objects,
artefacts, and social objects. The first two types are mind-independent. If one considers a rock and the number one as a
respective instance of each class, for example, it is clear how
both objects might continue to persist without any mind contemplating them. It is with the latter two objects that matters
become interesting. What Ferraris has in mind when he discusses social objects is events such as commemorations, holidays, corporations, TV shows, etc. Such objects are fully
mind-dependent and cannot exist without people. While at
first blush it may seem counter-intuitive to think of social
events as objects, Ferraris rightly points out that they causal
effect natural objects: a corporation, for example, can determine the flow of raw materials and labour across the globe in a
way hitherto unimaginable three hundred years ago. Most
intriguing is Ferrariss account of what he names artefacts:
they are composed of natural objects, but one can only understand them with reference to social reality. Thus, although it is
made up of physical materials, an artefact such as a computer
had its genesis as a computer in a specific social context.
This dynamic of artefacts and social objects comes to force in
the final section of the book, Normativity. Ferraris makes it
clear that his aim is to show that meaning is located in the environment, and that people are mere receivers of meaning. In
short, he proposes an alternative to the idea that meaning is all
in the mind. Documentality offers an account of how meaning
may emerge from merely natural objects. Ferraris says documentality is the environment in which social objects are generated (p.63), Ferraris in fact argues that all social objects may be
considered documents. He makes a series of ambitious claims
about the extent to which documentality conditions and constitutes the social world. Essentially, Ferraris sees the social world
as emerging with the human capacity to record that is, with the
capacity to receive and store inscriptions. The development of
civilization would thus be paralleled by a development in
recording technology: although the social world must have first
existed only in the minds of prehistoric people, with the advent
of writing, the possibility for novel social objects came into being.
Ferraris calls his position a weak textualism or weak constructivism (p.65). This may seem odd, for New Realism was
initially said to be a critique of constructivism. However, just as
William James did not want to disregard the philosophies
against which his pragmatism distinguished itself, neither does
Ferraris wish to separate himself completely from late Twentieth Century thought. New Realism sets itself against the
strong textualism of postmodern philosophers, whose thesis
was that social and linguistic acts what Ferraris calls inscriptions constitute all of reality. Rather, the weak textualism of
New Realism means that it limits its constructivism to the
social world. As Ferraris claims, New Realisms constructivism
is Weak because it assumes that inscriptions are decisive in the
construction of social reality, but it excludes that inscriptions
may be constitutive of reality in general (p.65).
As we saw, for Ferraris it is only with the emergence of
recording that one finds anything like the social world. As if to
emphasize this point, he writes, it is through the sharing of
documents and traditions that a we is constituted (p.82).
This line of thinking culminates in the idea that it is documentality that makes us responsible, for he sees our capacity to
receive inscriptions as the basis of being able to make an obligation, which is the basis of any social relation.
Perceiving Reality Anew
So Ferrariss claim that New Realism allows a return to perception and to ontology as the science of being holds up. The
picture he offers us is of a long chain of being that, through
interaction, gradually leads to the emergence of everything
(p.80). This is ambitious stuff, and while the reader might at
times want further detail or exploration, it must be borne in
mind that the book is an introduction, and not a fully detailed
explanation of his system. Keeping this in mind, the somewhat
unorthodox move of using fictional philosophical figures
becomes understandable. This decision recommends itself if
only in that it gets around Ferraris having to labour the point
between how a philosopher was received versus what they actually wrote. While no-one would deny that sometimes doing so
is a scholarly necessity, it can be quite tiring on a reader who
has not been schooled in the history of philosophy, or who is
simply, and understandably, not interested in such minutiae.
This book as a whole aims to fully equip a reader unfamiliar
with the current wave of speculative and realist philosophical
positions. Given that such positions themselves are works in
progress, it will be interesting to see how Ferrariss thought
influences further discussions over the next few years.
For now though, we may explore with interest the realist philosophy of perception that Ferrariss work opens up. This is a
philosophy which is adequate to dealing with the push and pressure of the cosmos. In returning to perception on its own ontological terms, it opens up a philosophy that can matter to us.
FINTAN NEYLAN 2016
Fintan Neylan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Philosophy

at the Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Spot the dog: Our knowledge of reality points to

an independent reality that is inherently structured
Introduction to New Realism by Maurizio Ferraris, translated by Sarah De

Sanctis, with a Foreward by Iain Hamilton Grant, Bloomsbury, 160pp, 14.99,
ISBN: 978-1-47259-594-2
New Realism
SARAH
DE SANCTIS
Your education was mainly focused on literature. How did you discover philosophy?
To be honest, my training in philosophy
dates back to high school. I also did a
module in Aesthetics Descartes, Kant
and Husserl during my BA, but that
was it at university. I have been cultivating philosophy mainly because of my
personal interest in the subject, but I
have to say my high school teacher was
absolutely exceptional most people
assume I have a degree in philosophy
they cant tell! So thank you, Maria
Teresa Cazzaniga. Its been incredibly
hard and challenging, but worth it!
Do you feel like an academic philosopher? If
not, what do you think about academia?
Thats a tricky question. I do not consider myself an academic, even though I
work in academia. Thats because I find
that academia has become increasingly
sterile over the years: it seems to me that
a select group of people speak to each
other pretty much for the sake of it. I
read somewhere that an academic essay
is read by five people on average. What
does that tell us? Personally, I believe
that knowledge should be spread, and
that part of the mission of academics
should be to make people interested, to
try and make people think about things
in a different way. But this cant be
achieved as long as academic philosophy
remains so unbearably technical, and,
lets face it, boring. Im a big fan of vulgarisation: Id rather simplify and perhaps bastardise a concept, but make it
known and debated, than talk about it in
a purist way to five other people on the
entire planet!
On this topic, theres a website/study
tool that I find absolutely brilliant. Its
called Shmoop, and its managed by PhD
students from prestigious American universities Harvard and the like. Shmoop
addresses great works of literature in a
witty and funny language, in a way thats
able to arouse interest even in the most
Manuel Carta
interviews
Maurizio Ferrariss
translator into English.
bored and lazy students it even

worked with my brother! That, to me, is
a real achievement!
You are a professional translator. In what
way has this given you extra skills to work
on your philosophical research?
In order to translate a text you have to
read it extra-carefully, and think about it
a lot. Any good translator is an excellent
reader the most demanding reader any
text will ever get. You have to assess a
text, and the ideas it expresses, almost
word by word. So the extra skill I developed is attention to detail. Also, I have
found that writers whose language is
Latin-based so French, Spanish and,
of course, Italian tend to write in a
rather complex, Proustian way with
very long and convoluted sentences.
Translating that into English implies a
process of simplification and adjustment
to a language that, by its nature, is very
logical and to the point, if you know
what I mean. This links back to what I
was just saying, namely my very personal mission to make philosophy easier
to understand, and, hopefully, less
scary.
Can you tell us about your interest in the
novelist David Foster Wallace? Whats the
link between his writing and New Realism?
David Foster Wallace is surely one of
my favourite writers. I was working on
my PhD project proposal on his writing
and philosophy when I attended the
famous Prospects for New Realism
conference in Bonn in 2012. I remember listening to the speakers and thinking, Hold on: this is exactly what
Foster Wallace was trying to do! New
Realism, broadly understood as a paradigm shift in contemporary thought,
does not disregard postmodernism and
what it stood for. It incorporates postmodernisms ideas and styles, but wants
to move forward and recover more
down-to-earth and sincere topics.
Hence it deals
with lived reality
rather than responses to
culture, with objects rather than
thought, and so forth. David Foster
Wallaces work seems to be the perfect
literary expression of this: he dared to
back away from ironic watching and
shunned self-consciousness and fashionable ennui, choosing to deal instead with
plain old untrendy human troubles and
emotions with reverence and conviction. His declared aim was to write in a
way that would be morally passionate,
and passionately moral. Foster Wallace
utterly scorned metanarrativity writing
which references itself within a piece of
fiction, and which is the postmodern literary trope par excellence seeing literature as a living transaction between
humans and not as a playground for
metanarrative show-offs. He still did not
reject postmodernism as a whole, to go
back to a nineteenth century type of
realism. Instead, he adopted realisms
techniques, albeit with ethical-realist
aims. This is exactly what New Realism
is trying to do in philosophical terms.
As an Italian, can you tell us which Italian
philosophers are most worth knowing?
Well, apart from Maurizio Ferraris of
course, there is a promising young
philosopher called Leonardo Caffo, who
is also a friend of mine. He developed
some interesting theories in the field of
animal philosophy. His book Only for
Them has just been published by Mimesis International. Also, together with art
critic Valentina Sonzogni, he wrote An
Art for the Other, published by Lantern
Books. Its an epistolary reflection on
animals in art, philosophy and our
everyday world, which manages to talk
about a tricky subject in a very personal
and engaging way. It is a fascinating
read. I do recommend it.
Manuel Carta has an MA in Philosophy

from the University of Pisa.
The Use of Embryos

Elizabeth Hemsley considers ethical arguments for and against
a new embryo modification procedure.
recent decision by the UK government to amend its
heart of what is uniquely troubling about the procedure.
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFEA) to
What Mitochondrial Donation Involves
allow for a procedure called mitochondrial donation was
As I said, the purpose of mitochondrial donation is to
preceded by vigorous debate, as is usual in bioethical issues.
replace the defective mitochondria of a mother with the
The procedure was lauded by some as a triumph for scientific
healthy mitochondria of a donor. There are two methods for
progress, while for others, it has raised the spectre of genetic
achieving this. The first is pronuclear transfer (or embryo repair,
engineering and so-called designer babies.
to give it its media-friendlier designation). In this method, two
The case in favour of the procedure is easily expressed. Mitoeggs one from a prospective mother who knows she is at
chondria, which exist in almost all cells in the body,
risk of passing on defective mitochondria, and one
are the biological mechanisms in cells responfrom a donor with healthy mitochondria are
sible for converting food into energy. If
separately fertilised, creating two embryos.
mitochondria are defective, they are
The mothers egg is fertilised with the sperm
unable to provide sufficient energy for
of the intended father, as in IVF; the
cells to function. The impacts of this
donors egg can be fertilised with donor
are different depending on which
sperm. The result is one fertilised egg
cells are affected, but they can
with the genetic inheritance of both
include blindness, deafness, heart,
prospective parents, including the
liver, or kidney disease, and other
mothers defective mitochondria, and one
severe forms of impairment.
fertilised egg with the genetic inheritance
Defective mitochondria are passed
of two donors, including healthy mitochonfrom mothers to their children, and
dria. The aim of the procedure is to produce
a woman who has defective mitochonan embryo which has the genetic inheritance of
dria cannot guarantee that her children
8- Cell Embryo,
the
prospective parents and has healthy mitochonwill be free from these diseases and their
3 days after fertilisation
dria. So a switch has to take place. This switch is actupotentially devastating effects. Mitochondrial
ally performed by removing the nucleus of the donor egg
donation is a procedure carried out on eggs or early
a cells nucleus is where all of the genetic information deterembryos with defective mitochondria, to give her genetic offmining things like eye and hair colour, innate intelligence and
spring healthy mitochondria taken from a donor embryo.
athletic prowess is held. The nucleus from the prospective
Afterwards, the embryo is implanted back into the womb,
parents embryo, containing the genetic information to be
where it can develop into a baby free from debilitating mitoinherited from them, is then placed inside the donor fertilised
chondrial disease. It seems a truism that preventing a child
egg. If successful, the outcome is an embryo with the genetic
from being born with a potentially life-threatening condition is
inheritance of the prospective parents, but the mitochondria of
a good, indeed morally necessary, thing, so the case in favour of
the donor mother. The alternative method, maternal spindle
mitochondrial donation is easily understood.
transfer (or egg repair), follows this approach, but instead of
The case against has proven trickier to elucidate. Far from
fertilising the eggs before switching the nuclei, it first replaces
denying that preventing a child from suffering is morally
the nucleus of a donor egg with the nucleus of the prospective
required, opponents of mitochondrial donation are engaged in
mothers egg, and then the resulting egg which now has
a complex unpicking of competing moral claims. Their posihealthy mitochondria plus genetic information inherited from
tion involves subtle claims about means and ends and moral
the prospective mother is fertilised with the sperm of the
status. In todays culture, where deep philosophical soulprospective father.
searching so frequently loses out to populism and rhetoric,
there seems to be little media space to fully express these conTwo Common Objections
cerns. This has meant that the challenge to explain why mitoOpponents to mitochondrial donation, including voices in
chondrial donation seems unethical to some has not been well
the Church of England and the Catholic Church, typically
met. The philosophical concerns that lie at the heart of objecexpressed their concerns about it via two routes. One questions
tions to it have remained ill-defined and obscure. In this artithe ethics of using and destroying embryos; the other chalcle, I want to examine the prominent arguments that have been
lenges the safety of mitochondrial donation, and worries about
advanced in opposition to mitochondrial donation, and the
the unknown ill-effects which could be borne by the recipients,
refutations of them provided by its proponents. In doing so, Ill
who were never able to give their consent to it.
also explain why none of these arguments really get to the
EMBRYO PIC DATABSE CENTER FOR LIFE SCIENCE 2013
Objection 1: The Moral Status of Embryos

The belief by some that the destruction of embryos is always
ethically impermissible because life begins at conception provides them grounds for having strong objections to the first,
embryo replacement, method. This is because the removal and
destruction of the donor embryos nucleus to accommodate the
nucleus of the prospective parents embryo, effectively
amounts to destruction of the donor embryo. The nucleus
contains all of the genetic material which makes us who we
are, and unique. Once this is destroyed, the donor embryo is
essentially just an empty vessel. Transplanting the nucleus
from the prospective parents embryo into this vessel effectively transforms it into another embryo. It now carries all of
the unique genetic material of the parents original embryo,
albeit that it is using the healthy mitochondria of the donor.
The blueprint of the unborn person that was contained within
the nucleus of the donor embryo no longer exists. For those
who see even recently fertilised eggs as human lives, this is sufficient to make the procedure ethically impermissible.
However, this complaint fails as a targeted objection to
mitochondrial donation per se, because it ignores the fact that
in the UK and elsewhere, early embryos are already legally
experimented with and destroyed in labs conducting stem-cell
research. In this respect, mitochondrial donation does not
entail anything thats not already happening. As a society, we
are a long way past the point of holding embryos as sacred
entities with a moral status anywhere near equivalent to that of
living, breathing people. Insistence upon the absolute moral
status of embryos ignores the reality of how they are already
viewed and treated. A more socially realistic argument would
couch the moral status of embryos relative to grown human
beings. The view that it is okay to use embryos for scientific
purposes, if this will help to minimise human suffering, can
then be accommodated on the basis that the lives of grown
people are generally held to be more valuable than those of
embryos. By this reasoning, stem cell research is off the hook,
and proponents of mitochondrial donation can now argue that
by the same logic, it too is off the hook. At the cost of one fertilised egg, they claim, mitochondrial donation can prevent a
human being from suffering, and possibly from dying a premature death. It is therefore permissible under the same justification as stem-cell research.
Embryonic protests
However, as I will argue, the attempt to weigh the moral

value of a destroyed embryo against the moral value of an adult
human life is disingenuous when the adult human life in question would not exist independently of the destroyed embryo.
This is not the main ethical issue in this situation. So for those
who are not committed to a view of embryos as morally sacrosanct, but who nevertheless want to say that there is something
worrying about mitochondrial donation, the idea that fertilised
eggs are morally inviolable provides only a straw-man argument, and unanswered concerns remain.
Objection 2: Unknown Risks
The second common objection to mitochondrial donation
is that we cannot be sure of its safety, and that unborn children, unable to give their consent, will be its guinea-pigs, with
unknown risks.
This objection expresses a concern about what the physical
impacts of this procedure might be on the children it creates. It
is a valid concern, but one which relates to the stage of scientific
development the procedure is currently at, rather than to anything essential about the procedure in itself. These concerns
about the unknowns of mitochondrial donation will be
addressed in time, and do not have much to say about the legitimacy of the procedure per se. All new medical and scientific discoveries take us into uncharted territory. For those who accept
that safety concerns are inevitable in any new and progressive
procedure, this argument fails to capture anything fundamentally and uniquely troubling about mitochondrial donation.
A More Convincing Concern
Notwithstanding the two common objections outlined
above, there remains something unsettling about the legalisation of mitochondrial donation that nags to be addressed. Basically, the third objection is that legalising this procedure places
us on the slippery slope of a type of consumerist mentality, at
the bottom of which is the chilling notion of babies designed
by their parents to exhibit certain favourable genetic traits,
and discarded when they fail to do so.
This objection comes closest to explaining the intuitive disquiet that many feel when confronted with the prospect of
genetic manipulation. It is a disquiet that is difficult to pin
down, but it has its foundations in the notion that we should
not seek to choose what type of people are
allowed to exist.
Harvard ethicist Michael Sandel attempts
to explain this in his book The Case Against
Perfection (2007). He argues firstly that one
virtue of parenthood lies in the fact that
more than any other human relationships
it teaches and urges an openness to the
unbidden. For Sandel, the decision by parents to genetically alter their unborn child
alters this dynamic, and so restricts the
opportunity for the unconditional accepting
love that normally exists from a parent
towards a child. Sandel also points to the
argument of German philosopher Jrgen
Habermas, that in order to think of ourApril/May 2016 Philosophy Now 19
selves as free, we must understand ourselves as originating

through a natural process, or at least through a process thats
not controlled or dictated by another person. For Habermas, a
child who is designed by their parents would not truly be free,
because they owe essential features of themselves to the deliberate choices of another.
Defenders of mitochondrial donation dismiss concerns
related to genetic engineering, such as the slippery slope argument, as misplaced. They point out that the prospective
parents potential child undergoes no significant change as a
result of the procedure, save for benefitting from the provision
of healthy mitochondria. The mitochondria this embryo
inherits accounts for less than 0.1% of the genetic material
that makes up a person. Replacing the defective mitochondria
of an embryo has no influence over crucial genetic traits such
as eye colour, hair colour, height, or innate intelligence. As
such, its proponents argue that the procedure is not genetic
engineering in the sense that producing a designer baby
would be. Its effects, they argue, are purely and straightforwardly medical. An embryo which was unhealthy is now
healthy, and all other things remain equal.
However, even if we accept this interpretation of the process
as not being genetic engineering (and I dont accept it), it does
not dispel fears that mitochondrial donation could mark the
opening of a floodgate through which the tide of genetic engineering inevitably crashes. This is the slippery slope worry:
that the acceptance of mitochondrial donation will also make
(other forms of) genetic engineering more likely. For instance,
before the new legislation, it was prohibited in the UK to use in
fertility treatment any sperm, egg or embryo that had been
genetically altered in any way, either through changes to its
nuclear DNA (contained in the nucleus), or through changes to
its mitochondrial DNA (in the mitochondria). The HFEA is
now amended to allow for the alteration of eggs and embryos
only for the updating of mitochondrial DNA. Proponents point
out that this change in legislation in no way permits changes to
the essential attributes of unborn children. For that type of
change to be permitted, further legislation allowing for changes
to the nuclear DNA of sperm, eggs, or embryos would need to
be passed. So genetic engineering of the

kind objected to by Sandel and Habermas is no closer to being legal as a result
of the amendments allowing mitochondrial donation, at least in the UK.
But there is something more to the
worry about the genetic slippery slope
than a straightforward concern about
what practices an amendment to the
law might permit. There are also concerns that once we justify the removal
of initial conceptual boundaries, for
instance between a genetically altered
and a genetically unaltered embryo,
there will be little to prevent us from
continuing down that path: if we can
justify erasing the distinction between
an altered and an unaltered embryo,
why not also the distinction between
altering mitochondrial DNA and altering nuclear DNA? This
worry attempts to grasp at something of ethical significance
about the precedent the legalisation of mitochondrial donation
sets. For the remainder of this article, I will try to set out what
I take that to be.
A Worrying Precedent
As a procedure, mitochondrial donation creates a uniquely
problematic scenario not previously encountered, and not yet
adequately addressed from an ethical standpoint. Embryo
repair mitochondrial donation creates two embryos, one of
which exists purely as a means of ensuring the healthy development of the other. Regardless of what we judge the moral
status of embryos to be (equal to grown humans, or less valuable), the two embryos created here must be judged as having
the same moral status as each other. And yet one must be
destroyed to facilitate the healthy development of the other.
To my knowledge, the challenge of how this trade-off
between the two embryos can be ethically justified has not been
adequately acknowledged or addressed anywhere in public
debate. Instead, a higher moral status has simply been assumed
for the embryo with defective mitochondria, and justifications
for mitochondrial donation have focussed on the necessity of
the procedure if this embryo is to develop into a healthy infant.
As discussed, many have attempted to justify the destruction of
the donor embryo by alluding to the medical necessity of doing
so for preventing the suffering of the human being that the
other embryo will (hopefully) become. However, how can the
destruction of one embryo be justified by the need to guarantee
the health of a person, since either embryo might have become
a person? We are left wondering why the well-being of the
person that one embryo has the potential to be is to be valued
so much more highly (and indeed at the cost of) the person that
the other embryo has the potential to be.
Someone might argue that the embryos possess a different
moral status to one another in virtue of the value that the
prospective parents place on their own embryo, as the one
which will hopefully become their child. But while we can
accept that the prospective parents might have an understand-
Regardless of what we judge the moral status of embryos to

be (equal to grown humans, or less valuable), the two
embryos created here must be judged as having the same
moral status as each other.
STLL FROM NEVER LET ME GO FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES 2010
able reason for preferring the embryo which inherited its

DNA from them, this does not naturally translate into a justification for the objective moral preference for that embryo.
Each of us is likely to prefer our own family members to total
strangers, for example; but this does not automatically afford
our own loved ones greater moral status. So it remains to be
demonstrated how the destruction of one embryo in favour of
another can be ethically justified from an objective standpoint.
We are now getting closer to what is uniquely troubling
about a decision to legalise mitochondrial donation. The justification for the legalisation of this procedure is that some parents
would prefer to have genetic offspring rather than adopt or opt
for surrogacy. Proponents of the medical necessity of mitochondrial donation recognise however that (as with stem cell
research) a justification based on the prevention of human suffering carries greater moral urgency than one based on the satisfaction of human preferences. But as I outlined, that justification does not exist in any independent sense. Rather, we have
the favouring of one potential person over another, and it is
ultimately the preference of the prospective parents that provides the justification for assigning a higher moral status to one
embryo over the other. Now we seem to be not only on the
edge of a slippery slope, but rapidly hurtling down one. Mitochondrial donation requires the creation of an embryo which
will only ever exist as a donor, but which has no moral status,
and this is not necessitated by any morally urgent ends, such as
research that could save the lives or prevent the suffering of
hundreds of thousands of future humans. Rather, it serves the
ends of ensuring the healthy development and flourishing of
another, subjectively preferred embryo. What is so troubling
about mitochondrial donation, then, is that it necessitates a sce-
nario whereby we sanction the destruction of one like entity in

favour of another based purely on our subjective preferences.
This sets a worrying new precedent about the types of
choices and trade-offs that can be justified when assigning
moral status to morally equivalent pre-person entities, if these
choices and trade-offs will satisfy the subjective wants of an
existing society, or, as with mitochondrial donation, of a handful of its members. There seems to be something rather consumerist about the idea that an embryo (or even a human egg)
can be utilised in such a way that is, not to address the
morally pressing ends of reducing acute human suffering, but
to satisfy subjective wants. If our subjective desires can create
the justification for the trade-off necessitated by mitochondrial
donation, what other types of trade-off might our social preferences eventually justify? What about a scenario akin to that
described by Kazuo Ishiguro in his dystopian novel Never Let
Me Go (2010), where human embryos are cloned to grow
adults specifically for organ donation? Just as the donor
embryo in mitochondrial donation is never considered to have
moral status equivalent to the embryo it will save, these
clones are not considered to have moral status equivalent to
the humans their harvested organs save. The difference is only
that this clone scenario treats one grown human as merely a
donor and another as a morally valuable entity, whereas mitochondrial donation treats one embryo as a merely a donor and
another as a morally valuable entity. The real justification
remains the same: that existing people will achieve a higher
happiness quotient if the donor is created than if not. And
having now created a precedent whereby moral status is not
objective, but is determined by the wants and preferences of an
existing society, we may come to find that preventing the creation of designer babies is
Just another donor clone:
the least of our worries.
A still from the movie
Never Let Me Go
ELIZABETH HEMSLEY 2016
Elizabeth is doing a PhD in

Political Theory at the University of Hong Kong. She
has an MA in Philosophy
from the University of
Edinburgh.
An early expression of the
ideas contained in this article
appeared in Athena (imagineathena.com), and I am grateful to
readers of the magazine for
their comments.
On Moral Arguments Against
Recreational Drug Use
Rob Lovering considers some of the arguments, and what they amount to.
ecember 5, 2015, marked the eighty-second anniversary of the United States repeal of the National Prohibition Act, an erstwhile constitutional ban on
intoxicating beverages. The Acts repeal did not bring an end
in the U.S. to the legal prohibition of every intoxicating substance, of course the recreational use of cocaine, heroin,
ecstasy, and many other intoxicating substances remains illegal;
but it did reinstate alcohol as one of many intoxicating substances of many drugs, lest there be any confusion that
Americans are legally permitted to use recreationally. The list
also includes caffeine and nicotine.
One might wonder why all countries currently legally
permit the recreational use of some drugs, such as caffeine,
nicotine, and (usually) alcohol, but prohibit the recreational use
of others, such as cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and (usually) marijuana. The answer lies not simply in the harm the use of these
drugs might cause, but in the perceived immorality of their use.
As former U.S. Drug Czar William Bennett once put it, I find
no merit in the legalizers case. The simple fact is that drug use
is wrong. And the moral argument, in the end, is the most
compelling argument (Drugs: Should We Legalize, Decriminalize
or Deregulate?, ed. Jeffrey A. Schaler, 1998, p.65). Yet, despite
strong rhetoric from the prohibitionists, it is surprisingly difficult to discern their reasons for believing that the recreational
use of certain drugs is morally wrong. Most of the time, no reasons are even provided: it is simply declared, la Bennett, that
using some drugs recreationally is morally impermissible.
This is not to say that there are no reasons for believing
that using some drugs recreationally is wrong. Indeed, there is
a wide array of arguments for the immorality of certain recreational drug use, ranging from the philosophically rudimen-
tary to the philosophically sophisticated. But the vast majority

of these arguments are unsuccessful, and those that succeed are
quite limited in scope.
Some Rudimentary Arguments
Take, for example, one of the philosophically rudimentary
arguments: Recreational drug use is generally unhealthy for the
user; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong.
Now it is true that recreational drug use is generally unhealthy
for the user in one respect or another, to one degree or another.
Just how unhealthy it is for the user depends not only on which
drug, but on the amount and frequency of its use, the manner in
which it is administered, the health of the person using it, and
more. In any case, there is little question that recreational drug
use is generally unhealthy for the user.
But does it follow then that recreational drug use is wrong?
It does if the mere fact that an activity is generally unhealthy
or, more broadly, generally harmful to the one who engages
in it renders that activity morally wrong. However, this idea is
very difficult to justify. Indeed, there seem to be conditions
under which harming oneself, even damaging ones health,
does not involve wrongdoing, such as when the harm is done
with ones voluntary, informed consent. From boxing to BASE
jumping, playing contact sports to mixed martial arts, snowboarding to bull-riding each of these activities can be and
often is unhealthy to the individuals who engage in them; but
none of them seem to be thereby morally wrong when those
engaging in them do so with their voluntary, informed consent.
Imprudent, perhaps, but not immoral. Or consider people who
eat unhealthy food and refuse to exercise. Their voluntary and
informed eating of unhealthy food and refusing to exercise
does not seem to be morally wrong in and of itself.

Heres another philosophically rudimentary argument:
Recreational drug use is unnatural; therefore, recreational drug
use is wrong.
Now there are at least seven different meanings of unnatural that one may employ in this argument: statistically abnormal or unusual; not practiced by nonhuman animals; does not
proceed from an innate desire; violates an organs principal
purpose; gross or disgusting; artificial; and contrary to divine
intention. But regardless of which meaning is employed, this
argument is also unsuccessful.
Consider just one meaning of unnatural: artificial. Whats
typically meant by the claim that recreational drug use is artificial is that it involves inducing mental states that would not
have occurred were it not for human intervention or contrivance. But whats wrong with artificially inducing mental
states? This is precisely what individuals taking medication for
depression or bipolar disorder do; yet hardly anyone believes
that taking medication for depression or bipolar disorder is
wrong. Granted, artificially inducing mental states for depression or bipolar disorder differs from artificially inducing mental
states for recreational purposes in a particular and perhaps
morally significant way: the former use is medical in nature
while the latter is not. But if the claim, as here, is simply that it
is wrong to artificially induce mental states, then why the
mental states are artificially induced makes no difference to the
argument. Furthermore, even if the reason the mental states are
artificially induced were relevant to the argument, this would
not necessarily entail that artificially inducing mental states for
recreational purposes renders doing so wrong. Indeed, we have
good reasons to think that artificially inducing mental states for
recreational purposes is morally permissible in some cases: by
way of listening to music or reading a novel, for instance. Both
the music and the novel are products of human contrivance. To
that extent, the mental states induced by listening to music or
reading a novel are induced artificially. Nevertheless, there
seems to be nothing immoral about artificially inducing mental
states by doing either of these things.
There are many other philosophically rudimentary arguments: one grounds the supposed wrongness of recreational
drug use in the claim that it squanders the users talents; another
in the claim that the pleasure of recreational drug use is unearned,
and so on but let this suffice for now. Equivalent analogies can
be cited to show why these other arguments dont work either.
More Sophisticated Arguments
More philosophically sophisticated arguments for the moral
wrongness of certain recreational drug use fare no better. Consider the following argument: By using drugs recreationally, the
user instrumentalizes himself; therefore, recreational drug use is
wrong. To instrumentalize oneself is to use oneself for a purpose
to which one, as a rational moral agent, cannot in principle agree.
(A rational moral agent is someone who can think in terms of
moral reasons and act on that basis.) Most simply put, to instrumentalize oneself is to agree to behavior to which one could not
rationally assent. For instance, if Joe necessarily desires x, then
Joe cannot rationally agree to behavior that thwarts x, since
doing so would involve contradicting himself for were Joe to
assent to behavior that thwarts that which he necessarily

desires, Joe would be at once desiring both x and not-x.
So, does recreational drug use involve using oneself for a purpose to which one cannot in principle agree? That depends on
what the purpose of recreational drug use is. This, in turn,
depends partly on the drug in question. For the sake of space,
let us consider the recreational use of just one drug: marijuana.
Typically, the purpose of using marijuana recreationally is to
get high. The question, then, is whether the marijuana user
can in principle rationally agree to the end of getting high. At
first glance, it appears she can the individual agreeing to get
high does not on the face of things seem to be contradicting
herself in doing so. But to be sure about this, we need to determine whether a pot smoker necessarily desires something that
getting high thwarts.
Although lots of things might be proposed here, but again
for the sake of space, I will consider just one: Perhaps as a
rational moral agent, the pot smoker necessarily desires all that
is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral
agency. And it may be that not being high in a word, sobriety
is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral
agency. Two questions now arise: do rational moral agents necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? And, is sobriety required for the
preservation and exercise of rational moral agency?
Properly addressing the first question would involve a
lengthy digression into the nature of rational moral agency.
Instead, I will simply assume that rational moral agents do necessarily desire all that is required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency.
This brings us to the second question: Is sobriety required for
the preservation and exercise of rational moral agency? Arguably
not. To be sure, sobriety may be required for the optimal exercise
of rational moral agency, but it is not required for the exercise,
much less the preservation, of rational moral agency. The high
individual can and typically does think in terms of moral reasons
and act on that basis. As Jeffrey Reiman writes, Even drugbeclouded individuals know the difference between right and
wrong and can understand when they are hurting others and so
on (Critical Moral Liberalism: Theory & Practice, 1997, p.89).
Getting high, then, does not necessarily thwart all that is
required for the preservation and exercise of rational moral
agency. Accordingly, the marijuana user can indeed agree in
principle to the end of getting high, even given that she necessarily desires all that is required for the preservation and exercise
of rational moral agency. Substitute alcohol, cocaine, heroin, or
ecstasy for marijuana here, and similar arguments may be proffered for the view that users of these drugs can also agree in
principle to the end of these drugs intoxicating effects at least
up to the point of the incapacity of rational thought.
Another philosophically sophisticated argument for the
wrongness of recreational drug use is worth mentioning, given
its popularity: By using drugs recreationally, the user may
become addicted and thereby diminish his autonomy; therefore, recreational drug use is wrong.
Perhaps the most important word in this argument is autonomy. And although there are many definitions of this word, for
present purposes we will use the capacity to govern oneself.
It is clear that, generally speaking, recreational drug users

may become addicted to their drug of choice. Indeed, in Drug
Legalization: For and Against (eds. Rod L. Evans and Irwin M.
Berent, 1994), psychiatrist Michael Gazzaniga estimates that
there is a ten per cent chance that any user of any drug will
become addicted to it.
To what extent a drug is addictive may be determined in a
number of ways, two of the more common ways being by
establishing how likely it is that an occasional user of a drug
becomes a habitual user of it; and by establishing how difficult
it is for the habitual user to quit (see for instance Jim Leitzel,
Regulating Vice: Misguided Prohibitions and Realistic Controls,
2008, p.61). Under both methods, nicotine is considered the
most addictive of commonly-used drugs. Marijuana is much
less addictive. Alcohol, heroin, and cocaine all fall somewhere
in between nicotine and marijuana. And some recreational
drugs, such as LSD and other hallucinogens, are considered
virtually non-addictive, if at all: as Brian Penrose writes,
Whatever else may be true of [hallucinogens], theyre more or
less universally recognized as non-addictive (Regulating Vice).
However, even given that recreational drug users may become
addicted to their drug of choice, and, in turn, diminish their
autonomy to a greater or lesser degree, this does not itself render
recreational drug use wrong. After all, most of us diminish our
capacity to govern ourselves from time to time in ways that
appear to be morally innocuous. Consider someone who is
having trouble sleeping and decides to take a sleeping pill. In
doing so, the individual chooses a course of action that will result
in the diminishing of his capacity to govern himself. But does
he thereby do something morally impermissible? It seems not.
Of course, taking a sleeping pill involves the use of a drug.
And since what is at issue here is the moral status of using
drugs recreationally, of course, but using drugs nonetheless
it might be helpful to invoke a case that does not involve the
use of a drug. So consider enlisting in the military. Those who
do so diminish their capacity to govern themselves rather
severely with respect to where and with whom one resides,
when one goes to and gets
out of bed, what and when
one eats and drinks, whom
one considers to be an
enemy, whom one considers to be an ally, whose
commands one deems
authoritative and obeys,
what one considers to be
acceptable conduct, under
what conditions one will
kill another human being,
and so on. Even so, it does
not seem to be morally
wrong to join the military
at least, not on the grounds
that doing so diminishes
ones capacity to govern
oneself. (It may be imprudent in some ways, of
course.) This suggests that
other cases involving a less-than-extreme diminishing of ones

capacity to govern oneself are not morally wrong either.
To be sure, the diminishing of ones capacity to govern oneself that occurs through joining the military is not the result of
using a drug. But again, this fact is inconsequential to the argument. If it is precisely the diminishing of ones capacity to
govern oneself that renders certain recreational drug use
wrong, as is alleged here, then any activity that involves the
diminishing of ones capacity to govern oneself will also be
wrong, regardless of the means by which this is achieved.
To make this clear, suppose that what makes murder
morally impermissible is that it involves the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individuals consciousness
against their will. On this supposition, any activity that involves
the intentional permanent destruction of an innocent individuals consciousness against their will should be morally impermissible including the intentional rendering of an innocent
individual permanently comatose against their will. The means
by which the permanent destruction of the individuals consciousness is achieved is different in the comatose case, of
course; but it is the permanent destruction of the individuals
consciousness nonetheless so rendering someone comatose
will be wrong for the same reason that murder is wrong. Similarly, if diminishing ones capacity to govern oneself is morally
wrong in and of itself, then joining the military is thereby
morally wrong. But this is implausible.
There are many other philosophically sophisticated arguments one which grounds the wrongness of recreational drug
use in the claim that it blocks basic goods; another which
grounds it in the claim that it degrades the user, and so on
but the preceding considerations will do for now.
Much more can also be said about each of the arguments
above, and I have done just that in my book A Moral Defense of
Recreational Drug Use (2015). Suffice it to say that if the objections that I have raised against these arguments for the
immorality of recreational drug use are cogent, then to that
extent the moral case for legally prohibiting recreational drug
use is undermined.
ROB LOVERING 2016
Rob Lovering is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of

Staten Island, City University of New York. His book A Moral
Defense of Recreational Drug Use is available from Palgrave
Macmillan.
Brief Lives
Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)

Thomas Dylan Daniel on what one Frenchman says to anglophone philosophy.
espite the near-ubiquity of analytic philosophys

abstract, narrow, questioning procedures these days,
there are still philosophers who pay little attention to
its puzzles. Some instead spend their time focused upon the
activity of philosophy itself. Pierre Hadot (1922-2010) was one
such philosopher. His essays and books have been making
their way from their native French into English translations
for three decades now, largely due to the work of Michael
Chase. Hadots work focuses heavily upon the historical and
social aspects of the philosophical minds he finds himself
engaged with mainly ancient Greek thinkers. These thinkers
heavily influenced his critique of overly theoretical but practically vacuous analytical philosophical traditions. He criticized
the analytic tradition implicitly rather than explicitly, but,
despite his focus upon presenting an alternative, this criticism
is among the most effective of all such efforts undertaken in
the Twentieth Century"
poignantly states some of the overarching views Hadot held

regarding philosophy:
The experience recounted in [Thoreaus book] Walden seems extremely
interesting for us because in choosing to live in the woods for some time,
Thoreau wanted to perform a philosophical act, that is to say, to devote
himself to a certain mode of philosophical life that included manual
labor and poverty, but also opened up to him an immensely enlarged perception of the world.
(The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19, no. 3, 2005, trans. J.A. Simmons.)
In Walden, Hadot saw philosophical action, which is close to

the way of life he saw the ancients as having lived. The critique
of analytical philosophers evident in this perspective, then, is
that in being content with theoretical discourse, they encourage men to keep living in an absurd manner (ibid).
PORTRAIT OF PIERRE HADOT DARREN MCANDREW 2016
Background
Born in Paris on 21st February 1922, Pierre
Hadot had two brothers, and all three of them
became priests. Hadot was assigned to compulsory labor during World War II, and was
ordained a priest in 1944 at the age of 22. His
work in the Church led him to philosophy. He
eventually left the priesthood when he disagreed
with a Papal encyclical. Hadot translated Marius
Victorinus with Father Paul Henry, initially
looking for fragments of Plotinus, and was led
to fragmented works by Porphyry instead.
However, his project of studying ancient Greek
literature was in no way hindered by the
Church. In fact, the Christian writers whose
works Hadot studied contained references to
the ancient Greeks which simply could not have
been found anywhere else. And the great Classical thinkers, such as Porphyry, Plotinus, and
Plato, were absolutely central to the development of Hadots thought. Hadot was more than
a philosopher: he was also a historian of philosophy whose focus was a desire to understand the
ancients as they understood themselves.
Hadot was a lecturer at cole Pratique des
Hautes Etudes from 1964-86, and from 19821991 also at the Collge de France. He died at
Orsay on April 24, 2010, at the age of 88.
Hadots Philosophical Vision
From his well-informed vantage point,
Hadot published a piece about American
philosopher Henry Thoreau in 1994 in French
entitled There Are Nowadays Professors of
Philosophy, but not Philosophers. This work
Brief Lives
Hadot does not entirely despise theoretical discourse, and
allows for its necessity; his contention is merely that there
needs to be action involved as well. As Luc Brisson and
Michael Chase note in their essay, Behind the Veil In
Memory of Pierre Hadot (in Common Knowledge 17, 3, 2011):
Hadots writings are not only works of erudition; they are also exhortations to adopt a philosophical way of life, in any one of its many guises...
Hadots writings make us understand that, in antiquity, religion and philosophy were inseparable; that interpreting an author went beyond an objective reading of texts and that philosophical argument could not be
divided off from everyday life.
Indeed, the bulk of Hadots work seems to revolve around

the necessity of reclaiming the activity associated with the
ancient tradition of thought. In this way, Hadot runs counter
to the present popular analytic trend, which seems to be more
preoccupied with truths than life including delineating the
sorts of actions which should be taken by individuals in particular situations. The assumption underlying an analytic approach
to an ethical problem such as Philippa Foots trolley problem
about whether one should divert a runaway trolley to kill one
innocent person instead of letting it kill five innocents is that
there must be some truth which is to be understood by asking
people analytical questions and collecting and analysing the
answers they give. Hadots interests involve an entirely different focus: philosophical individuals, philosophical schools,
philosophical lives. However, Hadot might approve of Foots
problem, if its employed in an introductory-level philosophy
course and applied as a means of helping students learn to do
philosophy. Hence, it is not precisely fair to categorize him as
an opponent of analytical philosophy. Rather, his idea is to
embrace both analytical methodology and philosophy as a way
of life so long as neither is entirely neglected.
Philosophy As A Way Of Life
Two of his books that have been translated into English
provide us with further metaphilosophical insight into Hadot:
Philosophy as a Way of Life (initially published in French in
1981) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (first published in French
in 1995). The latter book is the smoother read, but the former
is the more substantial contribution, consisting of a deeper
account of Hadots particular philosophical themes.
Philosophy as a Way of Life explains that the goal of history is to
structure an account of events from which conclusions can be
drawn. In contrast to Michel Foucault who advocates the
ceaseless development of new readings of texts and events
Hadot believed that it is possible to understand the past once a
sufficiently cogent account has been given of it. Yet the project
of understanding the past remains incomplete, due to the faults
of historians who have come before. As Hadot writes, error was
the result of bad exegetical mistranslation, and faulty understanding. Nowadays, however, historians seem to consider all
exegetical thought as the result of mistakes or misunderstandings (Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase, p.74).
In an essay called Spiritual Exercises, Hadot connects
ancient and more modern thinkers around the theme of reasoning in conjunction with living. Reading is not a departure from
26 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
this central motif: And yet we have forgotten how to read: how
to pause, liberate ourselves from our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and originality, in
order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to us
(p.109). Hadots anxiety about the crises of information, entertainment and advertising confronted by modern people represents a common thread with other philosophers, and his solution to this problem is to focus upon reading, upon thinking,
upon living a well-reasoned life. Other contemporary thinkers
working on similar issues include Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault,
MacIntyre and Pirsig, to name just a handful; but it is no accident that, of all these philosophers, the one most focused upon
maintaining and encouraging the practical application of philosophical thought is the one whose work is the most accessible.
What Is Ancient Philosophy?
Hadots concept of the circumstances within which philosophy finds itself becomes clear in What Is Ancient Philosophy?. He
frames the discussion within this brief characterization:
Philoposia, for instance, was the pleasure and interest one took
in drinking; philotimia was a propensity to acquire honors.
Philosophia, therefore, would be the interest one took in
wisdom (trans. Michael Chase, 2002, p.16). Here again, Hadot
thinks that the intersection of theoretical and practical wisdom
is the ground upon which good life is produced.From this perspective, then, we may oppose a purely theoretic philosophical
discourse to a practical, lived philosophical life (p.80). Hadots
philosophical viewpoint is perhaps summed up best in his statement that Reflection is inseparable from the will (p.273).
By discussing the successful ideas of the past, Hadot makes
salient points about the present his reading of ancient philosophy provides a clear, accessible platform from which to present his vision of the importance of remembering to practice
philosophy. By contrast, wisdom is treated by the analytic tradition as though its like a game of chess, in that the solution to
the problem is all thats really relevant. Well, Hadot is not
going to push this line quite that far; but he does want to say
that philosophical reasoning is in itself very important to
human beings a key part of the art of being a good human.
This point is easily discovered in Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics,
among other ancient Greek texts.
It is worth noting that Hadot did not deride what might be
seen as opposing viewpoints. In fact, there is seldom any reference to the analytic philosophy of the Twentieth Century in his
work at all. By ignoring those who partook of the analytic style
from Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore to Robert Nozick and
John Rawls Hadot made clear the absolute difference between
the way in which these thinkers pursue philosophy from their
armchairs and the way he believed that it should be practiced
throughout life. Although this does constitute a conflict, the
emphasis upon reflective, philosophical, living evident in these
works is merely intended to quietly return our focus to the
notion that philosophy can be lived as well as spoken of. Though
many such efforts were made, no other Twentieth Century
philosopher was as effective in this pursuit as Hadot.
THOMAS DYLAN DANIEL 2016
Thomas Dylan Daniel recently graduated from Texas State University with an MA in Applied Philosophy and Ethics.
On the Philosophy of
Conservatism
Musa al-Gharbi outlines the varieties of conservative stances.
hat do conservatives stand for? One popular idea is

that conservatives cling to tradition and resist
change. There is an element of truth to this description, in that conservatives do value tradition albeit not for its
own sake, but (following Edmund Burke), out of the conviction
that systems and institutions that have proven themselves over
the course of generations should not be hastily cast aside in
favor of the untested (and typically ill-fated) vogue. But ultimately, this is a feature of conservatism rather than its essence.
Conservatism is a response to progressivism. The point of divergence between them relates to the (im)perfectibility of man a
centuries-long debate with theological origins but profound
present political implications. Progressives tend to view history
in a generally linear fashion: they think that as a result of
mankinds essential goodness, or rationality, or else as a result of
immutable suprahuman forces, humanity is on a trajectory
towards some end of history (the notion of progress is incomprehensible without an end-state. What would constitute
progress on an infinite line?). Insofar as this climax is viewed as
utopian and so desirable in nature, progressives often believe it
is their responsibility to hasten this outcome, or even try to
instantiate their ideal in the here-and-now. They typically view
governments as a means to achieve these ends, appealing to
some conception of the Good that the state is supposed to realize, often by means of some presumed superior mode of social
arrangement. This is the impulse that undergirded the Enlightenment, Marxism, and myriad other revolutionary movements
and its negation forms the basis for conservatism.
Classical Conservatism
Given their rejection of political perfectionism, conservatives tend to envision a much smaller role for the state. However, unlike (political) libertarians, conservatives emphasize
community over the individual. Within communities, people
are held to be responsible for, and accountable to, one another,
without much need for state interference typically by
upholding traditional values and modes of social organization.
Civil rights, civil liberties, and private property, are viewed as
essential bulwarks against potential government overreach.
The function of the state is not to promote any particular
socio-political arrangement, but instead to protect and promote conditions for communities to arrange themselves as
they see fit principally through the enforcement of agreedupon rules defining relations in and between communities, and
by providing a forum for resolving disputes. The state also
serves as a vehicle for protecting against outside threats and
advancing common interests abroad. However, the scope of
such duties is narrow: governments are not responsible for citizens of other countries, and they have no more of a mandate
to advance particular ideals or socio-cultural arrangements
internationally than they do domestically. Accordingly, the
state should avoid costly, risky, or open-ended foreign commitments unless absolutely necessary. It should similarly abstain
from jeopardizing public safety, interests or resources, by
needlessly threatening or otherwise antagonizing other states.
Other Conservative Strains

Classical conservatism calls for realism and restraint, both
domestically and abroad, then. Unfortunately, many contemporary politicians who describe themselves as conservative
reflect little of this. So-called paleoconservatives embrace foreign policy restraint, but (often because they wrongly conflate
pluralism with relativism) hold that society should be premised
more-or-less exclusively upon Christian-derived Western
norms and values in the process providing intellectual cover
for xenophobes or people who are otherwise intolerant in
regard to immigration and diversity. Many associated with this
line of thinking view with suspicion and sometimes contempt
attempts by non-WASPs to form enclaves within society to
protect or promote their cultural identities, generally holding
that minorities have a duty to integrate with the prevailing
order: a convenient position to take insofar as this order happens to reflect ones own values and interests.
The self-described neoconservatives are less concerned
about social issues, and yet embrace progressive absolutism in
terms of foreign policy and national security. They hold that it
is the responsibility of national governments to protect and
advance the American-centric unipolar world order by virtually
any means. These include forcibly spreading liberalism around
the world; destroying incompatible political and economic systems and institutions; surveilling and disrupting internal dissent by means of pervasive law enforcement and security apparatuses; and by deploying oversimplified good vs evil narratives that portray any skepticism of or resistance to their
agenda as dangerously nave or even outright traitorous.
For the sake of political expediency, most conservative libertarians seem to affiliate themselves with one of these camps,
according to their priorities. But more generally, conservative
libertarians tend to overemphasize individualism and a universalized albeit minimal government, with a streamlined set of
rules, duties and rights that uniformly apply to all citizens.
Classical conservatism instead emphasizes communities.
Perhaps its fullest realization would be a legally pluralistic
system which empowers groups of like-minded citizens to
arrange themselves as they see fit thus including radically different economic, legal and political processes within their
domains ensuring that all citizens can live in a society which
reflects their own interests and values, rather than being forced
into the secular zero-sum pluralistic game over who gets to
define the supposedly neutral position. The closest libertarian
approximation of this view is captured in Robert Nozicks
Anarchy, State and Utopia. There are also a number of contemporary public intellectuals who have not defined themselves as
conservative, but whose work exemplifies strains of classical
conservative thought, and could serve as an accessible introduction to it. Among them are Nassim Nicholas Taleb,
William Easterly, and Evengy Morozov.
MUSA AL-GHARBI 2016
Musa al-Gharbi is a cognitive sociologist affiliated with the Southwest Initiative for the Study of Middle East Conflicts (SISMEC).
Connect to his work and social media via his website, fiatsophia.org
Philosophy &
COCKTAILS
everal books on wine and philosophy have appeared in

recent years. Amongst these, Roger Scrutons I Drink
Therefore I Am (2011) stands out to me as a discussion that
treats the subject in detail. But a striking feature of that book is
its dismissive mention of cocktails. Scruton clearly thinks that
getting drunk is the only reason for drinking a cocktail or
rather, for drinking more than one, since he assumes you will
keep going until you reach that goal. That looks like a recycling
of the old line about the quickest way out of Manchester being
a bottle of gin. But linking cocktails with binge drinking is just
a ruse, which in turn suggests a more positive response to them.
Might it be that something of philosophical interest can be
found in cocktails, as much as has been found in wine?
I can see one problem already. Discussions of wine and
especially of philosophy and wine tend to be earnest. Wine
drinking is evidently a serious business. In contrast, cocktails
have a reputation for being frivolous. Many of them come with
straws, little umbrellas, and pieces of fruit, and go by silly
names. Surely no thoughtful discourse on, say, the nature of
love, can be given with one of those concoctions in hand?
Maybe not. Still, I want to argue that cocktails have theoretical
dimensions as interesting as the ideas explored by philosophers
of wine; and given that so much theorising has been done
about wine, its high time to do something similar for cocktails.
Eventually I will go a step further, and argue, or at least insinuate, that cocktails and philosophy have some strong affinities.
There Are Cocktails, And There Is The Martini
But first, anyone writing about cocktails must acknowledge
the Dry Martini as a special case. Its place in a philosophy of
cocktails corresponds to the place of the Good in Platos metaphysics: it is the necessary point of reference, the absolute
standard and ideal to which everything else aspires.
What is it about the Martini that gives it this unique status?
First of all, a striking abstractness. It is colourless and clear (I
assume here that it has been stirred, not shaken). And it is
simple, in the sense of having no parts. It is true that a Martini
is made by combining gin and vermouth. But this is misleading, because you are not drinking vermouth only using it to
modify the gins taste so as to prevent it from cloying. For this
reason, any Martini recipe that speaks of parts should be read
with scepticism and disapproval. At the same time, the Martini
also has concrete qualities: it is cold, has a distinctive taste, and
it packs a punch. This combination of abstractness and intense
immediacy is a key to the cocktails distinction as a drink.
Within philosophical writing, the nearest parallel is the aphorism, as practiced by thinkers such as Schopenhauer and,
above all, Nietzsche. Every word is a prejudice Nietzsche
says in Human, All Too Human (1878). In just five words, this
aphorism offers readers a whole theory of language and communication. A Martini is the cocktail equivalent of that.
James Bond drinks

a Martini, dirty,
in Spectre
Of course, there are variations on the classic Martini. I suspect that the main point of the James Bond version has to do
with ordering the cocktail rather than with drinking it that is,
with giving instructions to a bartender, preferably in front of an
admiring female audience. That said, the result is certainly
drinkable assuming that we are speaking of a Martini with
added vodka, not one in which vodka simply replaces gin.
Phenomenology of the Cocktail
To begin, it is worth noting that cocktails have had a definite
influence on Twentieth Century philosophy (and cocktails only
existed in ancestral forms before then). A well-known school of
modern philosophy, French existentialism, owes its very existence to cocktails, or, more exactly, to one cocktail.
In her memoirs, Simone de Beauvoir describes her life with
Jean-Paul Sartre in Paris from 1929 onward thus:
In the evening we would look in at the Falstaff or the College Inn and
drink our cocktails like connoisseurs Bronxes, Sidecars, Bacardis, Alexanders, Martinis. I had a weakness for two specialities mead cocktails at the
Vikings Bar, and apricot cocktails at the Bec de Gaz on the Rue Montparnasse: what more could the Ritz Bar have offered us?
(Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, 1965, p.17, trans. P. Green.)
No more is heard of the mead cocktail, and maybe just as

well; but the other speciality she mentions has its important
role in a well-known episode that occurred in 1932, when Raymond Aron returned from a year spent in Berlin, where he had
discovered Edmund Husserls phenomenological philosophy:
We spent an evening together at the Bec de Gaz in the Rue Montparnasse.
We ordered the speciality of the house, apricot cocktails; Aron said, pointing
to his glass, You see, my dear fellow, if you are a phenomenologist, you can
SPECTRE STILL MGM/COLUMBIA PICTURES 2015
Robin Small will have a Martini stirred, not shaken.
talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it! Sartre turned pale
with emotion at this. Here was just the thing he had been longing to achieve
for years to describe objects just as he saw and touched them, and extract
philosophy from the process. Aron convinced him that phenomenology
exactly fitted in with his special preoccupations: by-passing the antithesis of
idealism and realism, affirming simultaneously both the supremacy of consciousness and the reality of the visible world as it appears to our senses.
(Ibid, p.135. The mistranslation of conscience has been corrected).
Sartre presents his new solution to the central problems of

metaphysics in a short essay on intentionality published in
1939, Intentionality: A Fundamental Feature of Husserls
Phenomenology. Consciousness is intentional meaning, it is
always about or directed towards something but a core
thought of Husserls phenomenology is that this intentionality
is not just an inner state: the givenness of things in our experience cannot be thought away and so disposed of, but is a result
of our consciousnesses being immersed in the world. So we
can know in our very experience that there is a world independent of us. (Hence, we can be realists where cocktails are concerned.) In Sartres novel Nausea (1938), this idea of the givenness of the world takes an existential turn when the protagonist
Antoine Roquentin experiences his environment as a startlingly immediate presence. He reflects: To exist is simply to
be there; what exists appears, lets itself be encountered, but you
can never deduce it Everything is gratuitous, that park, this
town, and myself. When you realise that, it turns your stomach
over( p.188, trans. R. Baldick). But then, Roquentin is a beer
drinker, and his reflections could be taken as confirming Nietzsches identification of beer with disgruntled heaviness.
What is an apricot cocktail, anyway? Hard to say, given that
it was made in one particular bar, over eighty years ago. Being
based on an apricot liqueur, it must have been a sweet drink,
not much to todays tastes. Does that matter, though? In
Simone de Beauvoirs anecdote, the apricot cocktail is taken as
something to be seen and touched, not consumed.
Sartre never gave us his philosophical interpretation of the
cocktail. Perhaps he agreed with the critic who wrote: the
image that it tries to make philosophy out of cocktails is just
the sort of thing that tends to give phenomenology a bad name
(Robert Burch in Phenomenology + Pedagogy 9, 1991, p.39).
Oddly enough, the writer who has come closest to providing the kind of analysis Sartre should have given is Roger
Scruton. Despite some offhandedly slighting comments on
Husserl, the treatment of wine drinking in I Drink Therefore I
Am is a model of orthodox phenomenology, relying on a realist
conception of intentionality close to Sartres. For an example
of this realist conception of intentionality, according to Sartre
in his Intentionality essay, being dreadful is an essential
property of a certain Japanese mask, not just our subjective
reaction to a certain piece of wood. In the same way, Scruton
asserts that when we describe a drink as intoxicating, we are
referring to a quality located in the drink itself and not (as
many would argue) talking about our own inner state and projecting that out into the drink (I Drink Therefore I Am,
pp.118119. See also Scrutons The Philosophy of Wine in
Barry Smith, ed., Questions of Taste, p.6).
Metaphysics of the Cocktail
Even in his summary dismissal of the cocktail, Scruton puts
his finger on one genuine aspect of it: it makes an impact. The
same is true of other drinks, of course, and his account of winedrinking makes a similar point. Still, the immediacy of the effect
is more noticeable with the cocktail. This impact is not just due
to its high alcohol content: coldness is just as important; and
presentation, including both look and feel, also plays a part. So
let me survey the properties of the cocktail that give it a distinct
conceptual character. A good way to identify these is to start
from features that stand in sharp contrast with those of wine.
First of all, a cocktail is something artificial, a product of
human creativity. Wines, however, are grown as well as made.
As wine writers tell us, they arise out of a subtle negotiation
between ourselves and nature. Hence, making wine is an art
that requires lengthy experience and acquired judgement
whereas anyone can make a decent Martini simply by following instructions. A further consequence of their artificiality is
that cocktails are consistent. It is true that instructions for
making particular cocktails may differ amongst authorities, but
a given recipe will always produce the same outcome. In contrast, wines vary even when they come from the same place at
different times. A wine depends on grapes being planted,
grown and fermented all complex and unpredictable
processes. With cocktails and wine, the contrast between the
artificial and natural is seen in operation.
Further, wine comes from somewhere; its nature is due to the
soil and climate of a particular place. In contrast, a cocktail
Cocktails do not keep, let alone improve. Every minute waiting

before drinking it is a delay that threatens to bring the drink to
room temperature a disastrous event. So a cocktail comes and
goes quickly a parable of human life that has as much in its
favour as higher-flown metaphors involving wine.
SIMON + FINN CARTOON MELISSA FELDER 2016
PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM
Why Philosophy And The Cocktail Belong Together

The artificiality of cocktails is also reflected in their cultural
location. They belong in cities, and modern ones at that. Wine
philosophers, by contrast, like to pose as sons of the soil, even
if in practice they are seen outside city limits only on their
occasional expeditions to wineries. But philosophy too belongs
to city life. As Socrates says to Phaedrus, The men who dwell
in the city are my teachers, not the trees or the country
(Plato, Phaedrus). When philosophy became a university discipline, its civilized habitat was confirmed once and for all. Even
Heideggers greatest admirers have no intention of moving to
huts in the Black Forest. Like other philosophers, they settle in
university towns or in big cities.
Now by tradition, wine is associated with wisdom: in vino
veritas, the wine drinkers say. In contrast, cocktails are associated with wit and inventiveness not the same thing at all, and
yet found in some notable examples of philosophical thinking.
Ive already mentioned Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, both of
whom prove that wit and wisdom can exist together. Readers
can add more up-to-date examples if they wish. Many will no
doubt start with Slavoj iek, whose work is described by commentator Richard Kearney as a postmodern cocktail of Lacan,
Sade and Hegel (Strangers, Gods and Monsters, 2003, p.97).
Kearneys choice of metaphor may carry a hint of disapproval.
The philosophical tradition tends to be suspicious of thinking
or writing that risks the same accusations of superficiality and
irresponsibility directed against the cocktail by wine-drinking
critics. But philosophers who have learned to read Nietzsche
attentively might be prepared to think again.
comes from a bar not far from the drinker in fact, very often
its constructed in full sight of the consumer. Any association
with another part of the world is only symbolic. A Mai Tai may
make you think of Hawaii, and its just possible that it was
invented there, but thats as far as any connection goes. Only
one cocktail is called a Cosmopolitan a combination of vodka,
lime and cranberry juice, popular because featured in Sex and the
City but in principle they could all carry that name.
Just as cocktails have no relation to place, so too they have no
intrinsic temporality. Wines are usually years old (apart from the
wine made by Jesus at the wedding in Cana, and that involved
setting aside the laws of nature). Wine lovers are aware of times
work, and seek out preferred vintages of a given wine. In contrast, a cocktail is typically made just before being consumed.
Clink, Drink & Think

Nothing I have said about wine and cocktails is meant to
imply that they are in competition for philosophical allegiance.
My aim is certainly not to talk up one at the others expense. I
will even concede that whereas most wines are good, or at least
drinkable, many cocktails are pretty awful. At least, the majority
of recipes given in what are sold as cocktail guides look undrinkable to me. I suspect they have never actually been made, or
only once, and are included to pad out the books length. Fads
and fashions are also evident. Even so, here as elsewhere, the
classics have a staying power that outlasts transient challengers.
Cannot we say much the same thing about works of philosophy?
So I come to my conclusion: true philosophers will drink
cocktails. No doubt they will go on to drink wine, and in a
spirit of conciliation, I recommend the pinot noirs of Central
Otago to readers wanting to broaden their experience. In
terms of the contrasts I have listed, philosophy itself has a
foothold on both sides. As I said, cocktails are to wine as wit is
to wisdom. Why shouldnt we have both, if we can?
ROBIN SMALL 2016
Robin Small is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of

Melbourne, and Emeritus Professor at the University of Auckland.
IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON
Philosophy Then
Meat is Murder
Peter Adamson contemplates non-violence in
ancient Indian thought.
n my last column, I talked about the

challenges and excitements of tackling
ancient Indian philosophy in my History
of Philosophy podcast thankfully with the
help of an expert, Jonardon Ganeri. Weve
already received some feedback about the
series, young though it is. One of the most
common queries is whether we can really
talk about philosophy in ancient India, as
opposed to religious belief systems. Is Buddhism a religious tradition, or a philosophical tradition? Are the Upanisads really
philosophical texts? My response to these
questions has been twofold: first, theyre
slightly above my pay grade, and second,
even if we think that these texts and traditions are religious, they certainly contain
philosophical material.
An interesting test case is the Indian
concept of ahimsa, meaning non-injury or
non-violence. Even Indologists do not
agree as to whether this notion is fundamentally religious or ethical in character.
It is invoked most famously, and perhaps
obviously, to encourage abstinence from
eating meat. But ahimsa is about more than
vegetarianism. In the hands of its most
devoted practitioners, the Jains, ahimsa
becomes a comprehensive way of life. The
Jains want to avoid killing even minute
organisms on the ground or in the air
around them they sometimes wear face
masks to avoid inhaling tiny creatures, or
observe a fast after nightfall lest they may
ingest a stray insect in the dark. This is
part and parcel of a radically ascetic
lifestyle, adopted especially by Jain
renouncer monks in imitation of
Mahavira, a contemporary of the Buddha
whom Jains revere as the last in a line of
great teachers (ford-makers) who pointed
the way to escape the cycle of rebirth. Not
that the Jains have an intellectual copyright on ahimsa. Other texts and traditions
also encourage a non-violent way of life.
Famously, the Buddhists make this part of
their compassionate approach, and Hindu
texts also speak of the ethic of ahimsa
sometimes in a way that flirts with self-
contradiction: the Laws of Manu (2nd C.

BCE to 3rd C. CE) tell us not to harm any
living thing since this bars the way to
heaven, but also that killing an animal in a
Vedic sacrifice doesnt really count as
killing and is needed to maintain the balance of the cosmos. This illustrates the
difficulty: were these discussions of violence really ethical, or rather disagreements about religious practice?
You can argue the point both ways. On
the one hand, scholars have argued that
ahimsa first emerged as a kind of ritual
taboo, born out of the embarrassment of
engaging in rituals that required the slaying of an animal. Slowly rituals became
more symbolic and less bloody, not to
respect animal rights so much as to escape
the prospect of karmic retribution. (There
are stories about sacrificers being fed upon
in the afterlife by the animals they had
slain and eaten. Thats enough to put
anyone off their food.) On the other hand,
numerous ancient texts argue for ahimsa in
a way that irresistibly calls to mind the
Golden Rule: do unto others as you would
have others do unto you. A Jaina work says,
All living beings without exception desire
to live, not to be killed. Therefore, those
without fetters [i.e. the Jaina monks] avoid
the dreadful act of killing (from Haranandalahari, trans L. Schmithausen, 2000,
p.273). And we can find similar passages in
Buddhist texts and the Mahabharata.
Perhaps then we should settle, as some
scholars have, for the idea that ahimsa began
as a religious taboo born out of fear of
karmic retribution, but evolved into a genuinely ethical precept. Its a story that flatters the philosopher: religious ideas being
refined and purified until they count as
philosophical ideas. But as so often in the
history of philosophy, what looks familiar at
first sight comes to seem more exotic on
closer inspection. Were used nowadays to
philosophers arguing that we should be vegetarian and more generally promote animal
welfare, often from a utilitarian point of
view. But the Jains, and other ancient Indi-
ans who designed their lives to avoid violence, were no utilitarians. They were not
trying to maximize pleasure or utility for
the greatest number of sentient beings.
This is shown by several facts. For one
thing, they didnt only care about sentient
beings, or at least those beings we would
recognize as sentient. Jain dietary restrictions extend to some kinds of fruits and
vegetables, which are believed to contain
numerous life forms within them. Plants
arent people either, but you can still kill
them: thus if meat is murder, so is salad.
Thats not to say that all killing is seen as
on a par. It was recognized that the violence involved in killing a plant is less
heinous than that involved in slaughtering
an animal, to say nothing of a human.
Still, what are you to do if you believe that
even eating plants violates ahimsa, in however minimal a fashion?
These renouncer traditions found a
solution. Buddhist and Jain monks lived
on alms food donated to them by charitable laypersons in part because it
meant allowing them to eat without
killing anything. (The Buddhists even
have texts applying this strategy to meateating.) So long as the food was not actually prepared with the monk in mind, the
monk could eat these leftovers with a
clean conscience. The renouncers were
above all concerned with their own
purity with ensuring that they themselves were not directly implicated in
violence. Jains and Buddhists have certainly encouraged others to follow the
same non-violent path, and can thus be
credited with trying to reduce the total
amount of harm to living things. But this
wasnt their primary goal. Rather, much
like ancient Greek and Roman virtue
theory, the ancient precept of ahimsa was
above all about shaping the self.
PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2016
Peter Adamson is the author of A History of

Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1 &
2, available from OUP. Both are based on his
popular History of Philosophy podcast.
The Universe Is Made Of Mathematics

Sam Woolfe recounts the mathematical metaphysics of physicist Max Tegmark.
WORLD OF MATHEMATICS KEN LAIDLAW 2016 PLEASE VISIT WWW.KENLAIDLAW.COM TO SEE MORE OF KENS ART
ax Tegmark is a Swedish-American cosmologist currently teaching at MIT. He has made important

contributions to physics, such as measuring dark
matter and understanding how light from the early universe
informs the Big Bang model of the universes origins. He has
also proposed his own Theory of Everything. His Theory of
Everything is known as the Ultimate Ensemble or by the more
attention-grabbing name, the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis.
This hypothesis can be summed up in one phrase: Our external physical reality is a mathematical structure. In this case, a
mathematical structure means a set of abstract entities, such
as numbers, and the mathematical relations between them. So
the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis states that mathematics is not just a useful tool we have invented to describe the universe. Rather, mathematics itself defines and structures the universe. In other words, the physical universe is mathematics.
This is a very strange and bold statement, and at first glance
its not easy to wrap your head around it, but lets try.
32 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
Tegmark & Plato

The Mathematical Universe Hypothesis has a very philosophical nature to it. It can be considered a form of Platonism,
the philosophy of Plato, who argued that certain abstract ideas
have a real independent existence beyond our minds. Similarily,
Tegmarks hypothesis argues that mathematical entities such as
numbers exist independently of us these abstract entities are
not merely imaginary; they exist as part of mind-independent
reality. In a sense, Tegmarks hypothesis goes well beyond Platonism, since Tegmark claims that ultimately only mathematical objects exist and nothing else does! In his own words,
there is only mathematics; that is all that exists (Discover magazine, July 2008). This position is known as mathematical monism.
Some may view Tegmarks mathematical monism as an
extreme and nonsensical position, due to the fact that we never
perceive these mathematical objects, whereas we do perceive a
physical world, full of physical objects. Based on our experience, it would seem that there is no evidence for the existence
of mathematical objects, whereas there is unavoidable evidence
for a physical world. However, in his paper The Mathematical

Universe in Foundations of Physics (2007), Tegmark argues that,
in those [worlds] complex enough to contain self-aware substructures [they] will subjectively perceive themselves as existing in a physically real world. So we shouldnt be surprised
to find that we perceive a physical world, because this perception is the inevitable result of a mathematical universe which is
sufficiently complex. Ultimately, then, our perception of a
physical world is due to the nature of our consciousness r, and
not due to the true nature of the universe itself.
In a way this is similar to Platos belief that ordinary minds
cannot perceive or even understand the true nature of things.
The true nature of things, Plato claims, can be traced to what
he calls Forms or Ideas, which are abstract, timeless, archetypal, non-physical entities. In order to go beyond the illusory
appearance of things, we need to use reason to uncover their
true nature, not visual or other perception. This, he argued,
only those trained in philosophy could do.
Similarily, Tegmark argues that there are two possible ways
to view reality; from inside the mathematical structure, and
from outside it. We view it from within it, and so see a physical
reality which exists in time. From the (purely hypothetical)
external point of view, however, Tegmark thinks that there is
only a mathematical structure which exists outside of time.
Some might respond to this by saying that the idea of outside
of time and timelessness is verging on the mystical.
Mathematical Reasoning & Science
Indeed, Tegmark admits that he is in a minority of scientists
who believe his Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. It took a
while before he got his ideas published in a scientific journal,
and he was warned that his MUH would damage his reputation and career. But there are some reasons why one might
believe it. The physicist Eugene Wigner wrote an essay called
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences (Communications in Pure and Applied Mathematics,
vol. 13, No.1, 1960), asking why nature is so accurately
described by mathematics. Tegmark answers that the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in describing reality
implies that mathematics is at the very foundation of reality.
The ancient Greek thinker Pythagoras and his followers
also believed that the universe was built on or from mathematics; whilst Galileo said that nature is a grand book written in
the language of mathematics. But it is also worth reminding
ourselves that there are those who think mathematics is purely
a human invention, albeit one which is extremely useful. For
instance, in their book Where Mathematics Comes From (2001),
George Lakoff and Rafael Nunez maintain that mathematics
arises from our brains, our everyday experiences, and from the
needs of human societies, and that mathematics is simply the
result of normal human cognitive abilities, especially the
capacity for conceptual metaphor understanding one idea in
terms of another. Mathematics is effective because it is the
result of evolution, not because it has its basis in an objective
reality: numbers or mathematical principles are not independent truths. (However, these authors do praise the invention of
mathematics as one of the greatest and most ingenious inventions ever made.) An extreme version of this evolutionary idea
is the mathematical fictionalism put forward by Hartry Field in

his book, Science Without Numbers (1980). Field said that mathematics does not correspond to anything real. Instead he
believes that mathematics is a kind of useful fiction: that statements such as 2+2=4 are just as fictional as statements such as
Harry Potter lives at Hogwarts. We know what they mean,
but their assertions do not correspond to anything real.
Tegmark In The Multiverse
Interestingly, Tegmarks Mathematical Universe Hypothesis
also relates to the multiverse hypothesis, in that he maintains
that all structures that exist mathematically also exist physically. This means that anything that can be described by mathematics actually exists. It follows, then, that there are other
universes in which I dont exist, whereas there are an infinite
number of me in still other universes.
Tegmark also writes in his paper Parallel Universes in Science and Ultimate Reality (J.D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, & C.L.
Harper, eds, 2003), that his Ultimate Ensemble/Mathematical
Universe Hypothesis encompasses all levels of multiverse, of
which he says that there are four types or levels. The first type
of multiverse is a universe which is infinite in space in which
there are regions which we cannot observe, but which may be
similar (or even identical) to our observable region. For this
type of multiverse, the physical constants and laws are the
same everywhere.
The second type is a multiverse in which some regions of
space form distinct non-interacting bubble universes, like gas
pockets in a loaf of rising bread. Different bubbles may have
different fundamental physical constants, such as the strength
of gravity, the weight of an electron, and so on.
The third type or level of multiverse, is one in which all
possible courses of action actually take place in separate or parallel universes. If, for example, I decide to take the bus to work
instead of the train, reality will split at the point of my decision
such that there will be another universe, which is just as real,
where I take the train to work and not the bus. This idea was
originally Hugh Everetts many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and it is quite mainstream in the physics community. The Level III multiverse can be thought of as a tree
with an infinite number of branches, where every possible
quantum event creates a new universe and so signifies the
growth of a new branch.
Tegmark writes, "The only difference between Level I and
Level III is where your doppelgngers reside. In a Level I
concept of the multiverse, my doppelgngers (copies) live exist
somewhere else in the same universe as me; whereas in Level
III they exist in a different universe altogether.
The Level IV type of multiverse is the Ultimate Ensemble,
and it contains all the other levels of multiverse, or describes
all the other levels. This is why the Ultimate Ensemble is considered a Theory of Everything because it can supposedly
explain every single universe that possibly exists. To Tegmark,
every different universe is ultimately a different mathematical
structure.
SAM WOOLFE 2016
Sam Woolfe is a Philosophy graduate from Durham University who

currently lives in London and blogs at www.samwoolfe.com.
Socrates & Zen

Geoff Sheehan uses Buddhist parables to illustrate Socratic philosophy.
any share a common picture of Socrates: a goggleeyed, pot-bellied, barely clothed man, asking all and
sundry difficult, and irritating, questions about virtue,
a fixture in the public places, shops and gymnasia in and around
the central market place of fifth century BCE Athens. What
was he on about? One answer to this question, searching for
definitions, seems on the face of it utterly inadequate: Socrates
was tried and executed because he was searching for definitions!
Yet definitions are important. For Socrates, only if we make
clear and distinct definitions which can illuminate all situations
under discussion can we be said to know what a particular
moral value is. So we can know what bravery is only if we can
discern what the many acts we call brave have in common,
from the bravery of the soldier in pitched battle, to the bravery
of the worker who stands up to bullying in the workplace, to
the bravery of the depressive who crawls out of bed every
morning despite every fibre of their being urging them to stay
put. But simply to arrive at a common definition even assuming that this is possible seems to me to fall short. Socrates is
after more than the knowledge enshrined in definitions; or
rather, the knowledge he is after must be passionate knowledge.
It was this passionate search that led to Socrates death at the
hands of a justly-admired democratic state. His search for the
meaning of values like courage, justice and piety, values which
Socrates himself demonstrated, and his attempt to make his
explanations of those values clear and compelling to those with
whom he conversed, made him deeply unpopular. He was seen
as undermining the very values which Athenians regarded as
being hallmarks of their society even if they could not articulate them. Of course everyone knows what bravery is, Socrates!
Why do you need to confuse everyone by searching for a definition of it?
The Search For Wisdom
At the risk of turning Socrates into a closet Buddhist, there
are some instructive parallels with that religion, particularly
Distant view of Mount Fuji by Keisai Eisen, 1835
with some of the Zen koans or parables, which may help us to

understand Socrates search for knowledge more clearly.
A key element in Socrates search for certainty involves
preparing the ground: only by getting rid of the dead wood of
opinion, prejudice or misguided beliefs can the student make
progress on the path to knowledge. The Zen story A cup of
tea illustrates this nicely:
Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a
university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitors cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself: It is overfull. No more will go in!
Like this cup, Nan-in said, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?
Although many of those whom Socrates challenges get no

further than recognising their preconceptions, Socrates would
see this as a boon, for now the ground is prepared for the journey to continue.
Perhaps Euthyphro, a religious expert who has taken his
own father to court on a charge of impiety, does not get even as
far as this: by the end of the dialogue named after him he is
repeating himself and seems incapable of seeing the implications of Socrates questions. His mind has been numbed in the
manner noted by the playboy-general Alcibiades, who compares Socrates questions to the numbing effect of a stingrays
barbs (Meno, 80a). Most of those to whom Socrates talks end
up feeling numb and at a loss, unsure how to continue. This
state has been termed aporia (impasse) and Socrates sees
reaching it as a vital part of his method. His skill as a framer of
questions now comes to the fore, as he guides his interlocutor
on to the next stage, towards knowledge a stage which generally has very limited success!
A famous Zen parable which illustrates the importance of
the search is The sound of one hand clapping. Twelve-yearold Toyo seeks enlightenment from Mokurai, the head
monk at his local temple. Finally Mokurai agrees, and
sees Toyo in the monks instruction room. Assuming
that Toyo knows what sound two hands clapped
together makes, he asks him: What is the sound of one
hand clapping? The boy retires to his room to consider. Over a long period of time (it is not clear how
long), Toyo offers a variety of sounds to Mokurai,
including the music of geishas, the dripping of water,
the sighing of the wind, and the hooting of an owl.
None of these, of course, is the answer. It is not until
he meditates fully, and in doing so transcends all
sounds, that he reaches the soundless sound the
sound of one hand clapping.
Toyo achieves enlightenment. Socrates is seeking
knowledge; or perhaps it is better to say that he is seek-
BUDDHIST SOCRATES STEVE LILLIE 2016

PLEASE VISIT WWW.STEVELILLIE.BIZ
ing wisdom, in that the values in question are not just an intellectual matter, but are values to be lived. In Socrates eyes, a man
who claims to know what bravery is but does not act bravely
would thereby prove that he does not know what bravery is.
The World & Its Temptations
One of the ideas Socrates offers in the Apology would have
been greeted by astonishment by the jurors and spectators at
his trial: I do not believe, he says, that the law of God permits a better man to be harmed by a worse (31c). Socrates was
no doubt making a barbed comment against his accusers here;
but we can also understand this remark in a deeper way. The
Zen story Is that so? can help:
The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbours as one living a pure
life. A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near
him. Suddenly, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with
child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man
was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.
In great anger the parents went to the master. Is that so? was all he
would say.
After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost
his reputation, which did not trouble him; but he took very good care of
the child. He obtained milk from his neighbours, and everything else the
little one needed.
A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents
the truth that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in
the fish market. The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin
to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back.
Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: Is that so?
Hakuin is secure in his self-knowledge. What other people

think of him is of no consequence. Similarily, Socrates knows
that he is innocent of the charges against him, and he certainly
doesnt care how he is regarded by others.
Socrates was also not interested in worldly possessions or
money. However, he lived life to the full: he enjoyed bodily pleasures, including drink his capacity for alcohol was the stuff of
legend. So it is a little surprising to find in the Phaedo [65 abc]
that he gives the body a hard time. Its chief defect is that
impedes the path to knowledge: our senses let us down, we
suffer from pain, we get distracted by sex and other bodily pleasures, and by clothes and ornaments. in short, the body gets in
the way of our reflecting on the things that matter the wisdom
Socrates is searching for by tying us to its demands. Therefore
it is the task of philosophers to distance themselves from their
bodies. A Zen story helps us to see how this might be achieved:
Tanzan and Ekido, two monks, were once traveling together down a
muddy road. A heavy rain was falling. Coming around a bend, they met a
lovely girl in a silk kimono, unable to cross the flooded intersection.
Come on girl! said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried
her over the mud.
Ekido did not speak again until that night, when they reached a lodging
temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself: We monks dont go
near females, he told Tanzan, Especially not young and lovely ones. It is
dangerous! Why did you do that?
I left the girl there, said Tanzan. Are you still carrying her?
Tanzan boldly carries the young woman over the mud, but
his kind action does not lead to the sort of impure feelings
which have presumably dogged Ekido since the encounter.
Tanzan is able to put the encounter into perspective, and is
grounded enough in his Buddhism for any sexual feelings he
may have had to be of no consequence for him.
Socrates obviously enjoys the pleasures of this world, but he
too can put them into perspective. When necessary, Socrates is
able to escape the bodys demands. In the Symposium (symposium means drinking party) Alcibiades delights in telling his
fellow guests how Socrates behaved during the siege of Potidea
during the Peloponnesian War. Not only did he ignore the
bitter cold during the winter months of the campaign, in the
summer he stood on the same spot for a day and a night lost,
one might say, in Zen-like contemplation.
Living Knowledge
What then of the sort of knowledge or wisdom that Socrates
is seeking? Perhaps we can approach this through one of
Socrates most puzzling statements: No one does wrong willingly (Gorgias, 509e). For Socrates, if one knows the correct
course of action, one undertakes it. The corollary is that if one
doesnt follow the correct course, then one simply did not know
it (and therefore cannot be punished!).
Knowledge then is far beyond a question of definitions. We
might say that wisdom is a matter of life or death. A Zen-like
parable told by Mark Vernon may help in this regard:
One day a dispassionate young man approached the philosopher and casually said, O great Socrates, I come to you for knowledge!
The philosopher took the young man down to the sea, waded in with him,
and then dunked him under the water for thirty seconds. When he let the
young man up for air, Socrates asked him to repeat what he wanted.
Knowledge, O great one! he sputtered.
Socrates put him under the water again, only this time a little longer.
After repeated dunkings and responses, the philosopher asked, What do
you want? The young man finally gasped, Air. I want air!
Good, answered Socrates. Now, when you want knowledge as much as
you wanted air, you shall have it.
(from Wellbeing by Mark Vernon, 2008)
The response Socrates wants from those he questions is not

simply a definition: that definition must be grounded in a passion for understanding the value to be defined, to the extent
that a failure to live the value would be instant proof that it was
in fact not known. To put the matter another way only if we
are as full of knowledge of our values as the young man wants
to be full of air, can we be said to know their meaning.
We are no further along the road to the sort of moral
knowledge which Socrates is searching for; but perhaps the
koans here may make the path a little easier to travel.
GEOFF SHEEHAN 2016
Geoff Sheehan studied philosophy at the University of Auckland, and

is an enthusiast of fifth-century BCE Athens, particularly its troublemaking philosopher Socrates.
The Zen stories are taken from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, compiled by Paul
Reps at terebess.hu/zen/101ZenStones.pdf
Question of the Month
???
Whats Your Best Advice or Wisdom?

The following responses to this sagacious question each win a random book.
magine if Alice hadnt followed the White Rabbit down the

rabbit hole. She would then not have drunk the potion (or
was it ate the forbidden fruit?) and met the March Hare and
the Mad Hatter. My best piece of wisdom is therefore for us not
to lose our sense of wonder about the world around us. If not for our
inquisitiveness, we would still be living with the Flintstones.
Evolution did not have in mind a Buddha or a Beethoven; we
nevertheless went on to discover fire, invent the wheel, and to
write Hamlet. An inquiring mind led us also to relativity, quantum physics and all the natural laws. If we had not uncovered
them, we would still be conflating acts of nature with acts of God.
All animals may be curious in their own way. However, their
curiosity is chained to their survival needs. Humanity may be
the only species that exhibits curiosity for curiositys sake. Our
zest for inquiry may therefore be unique, in a way another
reason why we should cherish it. Moreover, just as language
makes infinite use of finite means, as Wilhelm von Humboldt
found, we can derive unbounded use from our sense of wonder
too. Considering that we may be the most intelligent beings on
the planet, we have a moral imperative to use that intelligence
to better the world. Such an action would give us also immense
satisfaction and pride. As Francis Bacon exhorted, all knowledge and wonder is an impression of pleasure itself.
Curiosity of course occasionally kills the cat. Hence the need
for it to be tempered with common sense. Nevertheless, it is
preferable to dare to explore Icarus-like rather than die ignorant.
As astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar said in a tribute
to the great scientist Arthur Eddingtons spirit of discovery, let
us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our
wings. And when we pass on, we leave behind somewhat like
the Cheshire Cats surreal grin the fruits of our wonder.
VENKAT RAMANAN
PARKINSON, AUSTRALIA
onstantly be mindful of your own fallibility. It is generally easy

to be aware of the many imperfections possessed by others, but (for some of us at any rate) knowing your own limitations is a little more difficult. Charles Darwin summed up one
of the key problems here (and anticipated the concept of confirmation bias) when he wrote that when he came across a published fact, observation or thought that was opposed to his general results, he would make a memorandum of it without fail
and at once for he had found that such facts and thoughts
were far more apt to escape from the memory than favourable
ones.
The roots of error are many. A partial list includes the inherent and usually unconscious biases to which we are all subject,
as well as ignorance, inexperience, the irreducible complexity of
many real-life situations, tiredness, stress, illness, stubbornness,
and ego. Recognising that these influences are universal and
Advice/Wisdom
inescapable engenders a certain humility.

Why should it matter? In daily life the consequences of being
overly certain may be no more than to cause annoyance to
friends, relatives and colleagues. However, you dont have to look
far in the world to see the tragic consequences of too much certainty. Few atrocities are committed by those prepared to admit
at least the possibility of anothers point of view having merit.
Moreover, in order to learn, it is necessary to admit ignorance.
Scientific progress depends on a tacit admission that the current
state of knowledge is provisional and incomplete underlining
Karl Poppers view that real scientific theories are falsifiable.
An admission of fallibility need not imply paralysis when
making decisions, but allows for more considered thought, and
the possibility of avoiding a damaging course of action if an
error becomes clear. As John Maynard Keynes said, When the
facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir? Bearing
this in mind may help us to realise that when others disagree
with us, they are not necessarily fundamentally misguided. They
may even be right. Although I cant be sure about that, of course.
DAVID BOURN
WHICKHAM, NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
here are different forms of wisdom. First there is the kind

that is directed towards enhancing the inner life of the
individual, as propounded by teachers such as the Buddha. It
generally counsels self-control and detachment from everyday
pressures. The other kind of wisdom I would call worldly wisdom, and it concerns itself with handling other people in order
to achieve safety and perhaps social promotion. Typically, this
wisdom counsels wariness Neither a lender or a borrower
be and the need to dissemble. So the Sixteenth Century
courtier and author Castiglione tells us to work hard but not
let others see that we are doing so. Or the Jesuit philosopher
Gracian says, know how to be all things to all people. There
tends to be a cynical side to worldly wisdom which wants to
exploit human foibles to ones advantage: Find everyones
weak spot (Gracian again). There is even a dark side to it. So
the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli says it is better for a ruler
for him to be feared rather than loved.
These two forms of wisdom are not incompatible. I think
Dale Carnegie advocates both in his book How to win Friends
and Influence People. He believes that happiness depends on
inner conditions not outward conditions, but also advocates a
concern for others and a sincere interest in their affairs in
order to win their friendship. But there is a cynical side here
too: Talk to somebody about themselves and they will listen
for hours, he says. To him you must be sincere and honest,
but an insight into the nature of people can be used for personal gain. But students of Dale Carnegie, beware of looking
too good or talking too wise. Lofty and eloquent statements
??
can be undermined by parody or irony. So wisdom needs to

protect itself by casting itself in the mould of wit, using incongruity and paradox as commonly understood. Besides, jokey
epithets stick in the mind. So if I were to dispense unsolicited
wisdom, I would try to protect myself with this paradox. In this
spirit I offer the following pearl: Dont listen too much to the big
things people say observe the little things people do. That way you
will understand them better. For instance, the news item showing Al Baghdadi, the leader of ISIS, wearing a ten thousand
pound wrist watch, should make us think just as much as what
he says, if not more.
CHRIS GOULD
NORWICH
sing the definition of advice as an opinion offered as a

recommendation worthy to be followed, it becomes necessary to decide what would make an opinion meet that criterion. Noting that the question also asks for my wisdom, and
putting those two ideas together, it seems to me that what I am
being asked for is wise advice.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines wisdom as having knowledge of what is true or right, coupled with just judgement as to
action, sagacity, prudence, or common sense. In the ancient
world, wisdom was also thought of as the type of knowledge that
people needed to discern the good, and live a good life. If wisdom, and therefore wise advice, is knowledge about living a
good life, the answer I give needs to be underpinned by knowledge of just that sort. Therefore wise advice would be based on
the truth; that is it would be accurate, and would recommend
actions that are discriminating and prudent. However, what constitutes a good life for me may not be right for someone else.
Giving, and getting, wise advice is thus fraught with difficulty.
Personally, I have always found it more useful to ask advice
from those who have demonstrated that they have knowledge of
the area about which I am seeking an answer. For example, if I
want to know anything about my mobile phone, I ask my gen Y
children, not my elderly mother. So this is probably my best
advice: Look for wisdom from someone who has demonstrated that they
have the sort of knowledge about living well that you seek someone
whose life reflects that knowledge, or who has the education and
training that would give them that knowledge.
LORIN JOSEPHSON
SYDNEY
ike Polonius to Laertes in Hamlet, my best advice would

be To thine own self be true, for the same reason he gives:
Thou canst not then be false to any man. But what does it
actually mean? Its certainly up for interpretation, but this is
what I think it implies.
In human affairs, it is often best to express yourself fully and
avoid dishonesty, especially when revealing to others your
thoughts, opinions and natural inclinations. For example, in a
job interview, it is wise to recognise that you should answer
questions truthfully and not hide important details about yourself, because the truth will eventually out. But this is not the
entire picture. Saying you should be true to your own sense of
self-identity also implies that you should adhere to your deepest ambitions and desires, seeking to achieve them and not be
38 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
dissuaded from them; for, arguably, if you dont, they were

never your true ambitions and desires. It also suggests you
should aim to craft an identity you find fitting, for the achievement of the goals you set yourself therefore acting as a catalyst for self-improvement.
Conversely, what if you are naturally horrible and/or selfish
an instinctively unpleasant person? By acting openly horribly and
selfishly, people will know how unpleasant you are. However, you
have not acted duplicitously you have been true to yourself
and arguably, have acted in a wise and of sorts honourable
manner. People will respond accordingly, and probably shun
you. But again, such an outcome may act as a catalyst for change,
as you observe the undesirable effect of your own disagreeable
character and behaviour upon others behaviour towards you.
Consequently, it seems that being true to your own self is,
indeed, good advice, and Polonius appears, in this instance at
least, to be offering sage guidance.
JONATHAN TIPTON
PRESTON, LANCASHIRE
s far as received wisdom, I would quote either Russell or

Whitehead (Im not sure which): Humble yourself or the
world will do it for you. As concerns the creative act, the best
advice I ever received was from a famous cook that the main
ingredient (excuse the pun) of a good cook is a good taster. To
this I would add that, more than we are what we eat, we are
what we take in. As far as crisis situations, the best advice I ever
heard was the survivors words from a documentary on people
stranded in snowstorms: dont waste energy on assigning
blame, accept that you have a situation, and that if you just
trudge on, one way or the other, it will pass. From this I would
say that faced with adversity or anxiety, sometimes the only way
out is through. And have confidence in the face of uncertainty,
courage in the face of the absurd.
On the other hand, gun to head, I would suggest that
although we believe in things like afterlives, higher powers, and
higher principles, our point A to point B is pretty much a given.
And what better could we do with what we have been given, than
see what consciousness can experience, and our minds can do?
But there is no gun, and I refuse to be taken seriously. So if I
had to crown any advice, it would be the three assumptions by
which I work, which also underlie all the offerings above:
1. Everything takes its natural course. Even when we intervene, it
merely becomes part of that course.
2. Everything must be questioned including, and most importantly, ourselves.
3. Assumptions are made to be broken.
D.E. TARKINGTON
BELLEVUE, NEBRASKA
y first advice is not to give unsolicited advice. People find

it annoying and take no notice anyway. My second advice
is to accept the ideas that you are alive (not in a vat) and that
you have the freedom (your life is not predetermined) to give
meaning to your life. My final advice is to get out there and give
your life meaning. But but you say what about my obligations to x, y or z? Careful rational analysis of these buts and
obligations will reveal that you really could just get the next bus
Advice/Wisdom
out of town and exercise that freedom. On the other hand, failure to exercise your freedom will mean a life unfulfilled and a
deathbed regret. You will not get a second chance at life, and
your lifes meaning is something that comes only from you.
GORDON CONROY
PENNANT HILLS, NEW SOUTH WALES
he best advice is the positive Golden Rule, Do unto others as

you would have them do unto you. This entails the negative
rule, Do not do unto others what you would not have done unto you.
The positive rule encourages us to do good; the negative, to do
no harm. What more could you ask for? The Golden Rule has
its limitations, but who ever said it was the only advice? It has its
critics, but what general moral maxim doesnt?
It may also be said that this advice is trite, but that only
illustrates its value. The most important question is the ethical
question, What should I do?, and the Golden Rule well
answers it. The best advice should be practical, not theoretical.
It should be something that one can act on, not just think
about. It should be something that improves both the person
and society. The Golden Rule does all that.
The best advice also addresses the young and provides good
enculturation. Young children have basic needs and want
immediate satisfaction. They are selfish and need to be socialized. They need to get out of themselves and learn that there
are others. The Golden Rule enables that process. The young
also need something easy like the Golden Rule that provides
fundamental moral insight but teaches them empathy, compassion, and fairness.
The Golden Rule rests on the idea that others are fundamentally like oneself, and that this provides a basis for fruitful
relationships with them. It assumes a common human nature,
and that by and large what hurts me hurts you and what benefits me benefits you. It provides the basis for fundamental
human equality. We are all equal in fundamental aspects, and
what is fair for me is fair for you. With developing maturity we
also realize the importance of individual differences within this
context of equality. Because I do not like to be embarrassed, I
should not embarrass you; but in time I learn that what embarrasses you is different from what embarrasses me. The process
of maturation is that of building good character, which is
essential to civilization. So the best advice to anyone, but especially the young, is practice the Golden Rule.
JOHN TALLEY
RUTHERFORDTON, NORTH CAROLINA
f we want to share some good advice with the world, we

need to find something that not only are we deeply convinced of, but which can be useful for people from all walks of
life and with different skills and cultural backgrounds.
With that in mind, my advice is, write down something about
your day, every day. It can be done by pretty much anyone you
dont need expensive equipment, pencil and paper will suffice.
But its useful because it will help you have a clearer picture of
where your life is going, and will prevent you from wallowing in
self-pity in the incorrect assumption that things have never been
so bad before. It will allow you to look at what you were years
ago, and realise how much you have changed and grown up. It
Advice/Wisdom
??
will give you the chance to preserve your bright ideas and not let
them dissolve into thin air. Not to mention the fact that it will
nurture your ability to express your ideas in writing.
In our world, where the present is all too ephemeral and the
future doesnt exist yet, our identity is based largely on our
memory of the past. But our memory can be inaccurate,
incomplete, and affected by our mood and mental state. Only a
daily record will allow you to maintain a global perspective on
your past and, ultimately, on your own personality.
ENRICO SORRENTIN
OXFORD
he following are offered as pieces of good advice for budding philosophers. The more experienced lot should have
figured it out by now:
Get a nail clipper. You will need it to avoid biting your nails off
your fingers when dreading that you are the only mind in an
external world that may not exist.
Cultivate your transparent gaze. People will expect it when trying
to understand if you mean the bizarre things you say: What
do you mean I do not exist?
Have a toothbrush handy. Too much candy will serve your brain
well when pondering the origins of knowledge, but it will eventually ruin your smile.
Open the windows. You will need some fresh air when thinking
whether the set of all those sets that do not contain themselves
contains itself. What did you say, Bertrand?
Buy yourself a comfortable armchair. You will need it to doze away
the afternoon thinking about beauty by imagining some beauties. Good head-support is required, and a place away from
open windows. No need for fresh air here. Beauty should not
be a paradox, and you do not want to catch a cold.
Use as many of Ariadnes threads as you can. Else youll lose your
way in those classics of philosophy. Nowadays we call them
bookmarks.
Keep strong! I mean, keep some strong coffee available at arms
length from your armchair. Your attention span will evaporate
in a few pages and you need to recharge your circuits.
Have a nice pair of walking shoes always available. When solutions
refuse to show up at your armchair, its time to hit the road.
Aristotle did it. They called it the Peripatetic School of Philosophy. You can wear sandals instead of shoes if you want.
Finally, two things you wont need:
Get rid of your wristwatch. Philosophy is timeless and thus there
is no need for a timetable. Listen to Ludwig, and always greet
yourself with a Take your time.
Get rid of your clothes. Thats what Diogenes the Cynic liked to
do. It freed up his mind. He went public, you should go private.
You have been warned!
DR NIKOS ELEFTHERIADIS
THESSALONIKI
The next question is: Is Morality Objective?
Please both give and justify your answer in less than 400 words.
The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Subject
lines should be marked Question of the Month, and must be
received by 13th June 2016. If you want a chance of getting a
book, please include your physical address. Thanks.
Letters
When inspiration strikes, dont bottle it up!
Write to me at: Philosophy Now
43a Jerningham Road London SE14 5NQ U.K.
or email rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
Tastes of Freedom
DEAR EDITOR: In the Editorial in Issue
112, you say that It is entirely consistent
to say that we do choose, [even if] God
knows what were going to choose (and
presumably if we were to have chosen
differently, He would have known that
too). You say that this question is utterly
different from the scientific question of
free will. Im not so sure. Substitute
Laws of Nature for God: It is entirely
consistent to say that we do choose, but
the Laws of Nature can explain what we
choose. But are we free if the Laws of
Nature can explain everything we do?
Note that I have used the word
explain rather than determine. I suspect that quantum indeterminacy allows
explanations of our choices consistent
with scientific laws. Im suggesting that
in our brains quantum effects may not
be entirely random. I mean, although
observation yields random results, choice
may produce non-random quantum
effects that, taken together, explain the
brain state correlated with a choice. Perhaps this is what you had in mind when
you stated I personally think that the
power of will operates through our
choices being indirect observations of
our brain states in a quantum manner.
IAN LANG, LONDON
the generally-accepted interpretation of

quantum mechanics is related to an
absence of similar considerations that
would undermine free will. Conway
claims that the exercise of free will by an
experimenter is a necessary condition
for the success of experiments showing
particle indeterminacy. His work is
described in Siobhan Roberts entertaining book Genius at Play (2015).
Conway makes no claim to have
proved that we have free will, and his
result deals only with a vastly simplified
situation, and, if accepted, would be no
more than a straw in the wind. But, for
those hoping for reasons to believe in
free will, it shows that the wind could be
blowing in the right direction. Any link
between quantum indeterminacy and free
will is, at the least, of very great interest.
Niels Bohr, the father of quantum
theory, kept a horseshoe hanging over
the front door of his house in the country. A visiting scientist taunted him for
this overt endorsement of superstition.
Bohr retorted that it worked whether
you believed in it or not. The concept of
free will is a horseshoe hanging over the
door of the philosophical academy.
Long may it remain there.
ALISTAIR MACFARLANE
BARMOUTH, NORTH WALES
DEAR EDITOR: Whether or not we have

free will is the most important question
in philosophy. If we do, then philosophers can continue to devise meaningful
new philosophies. If we dont, then their
only useful role can be to explain why
we cant. So it is hard to think of any
question of greater consequence. Thus it
was very welcome to see the last theme
of Philosophy Now devoted to this topic.
Readers may be interested in some
recent, and controversial, work on this
topic by the well-known mathematician
(and prankster) John Conway. He has
argued and supplied mathematical
proof based on a simple set of axioms
that the absence of hidden variables in
DEAR EDITOR: In response to PNs five

essays on Free Will (Issue 112), I would
like to highlight some key points that
appear to have been overlooked. To wit,
your mind/brain cannot be manipulating
you the whole time if (as seems to be the
case) you are your mind/brain; human
beings are not robots made of meat, slavishly following their programming; the
suggestion that both determinism and
indeterminism can disprove free will is a
Heads I win and tails you lose argument; and the self cannot be tricked into
falling for the "illusion" of free will if (as
alleged) the self does not exist. Denial of
free will makes even less sense if we
reflect that it can be lost (drugs, alcohol),
taken (hypnotism) and even abdicated

(turning all decisions over to coin flips).
We may also wish to compare dreams in
which we have no free will (most of
them) with lucid dreams in which we
take control. And whilst we cannot wind
back time to see if we could have chosen
differently, we do all have that experience
in the moment of decision and so have
no more reason to dismiss this as an illusion than we would have to dismiss all
conscious thoughts and experiences as
illusory.
KEITH GILMOUR
GLASGOW
DEAR EDITOR: Im grateful to Steve Taylor for his Reclaiming Freedom in Issue
112. He reminds us of various explanations offered over recent decades to
account for the nature of our being, from
behaviourist through to Freudian, existentialist, and humanistic psychology,
then on to sociology and linguistic theory, gene theory and neuroscience. Some
of these explanations can be seen to support the idea of our autonomy and some
to undermine it, if not reject its existence
altogether. It is especially with the latter
that Taylor is concerned. I would like to
add that such explanations themselves
deeply affect the way we think about ourselves, especially if they become persuasive, for then we may become too confident in them and conclude that thats
how we must be. Our growing sophistication in research methods and their related
tools, for instance increasingly high resolution digital imaging, can carry with it a
spurious verisimilitude that makes us
think that we are looking directly at reality as it really is, or ourselves as we really
are. Instead, we are looking at representations of reality, with their attendant
mechanistic emphases. It may be tempting to think that the most recent explanations (currently gene theory and neuroscience) have it right and this is how it is;
but over the decades the pattern seems to
be that as soon as we think we have the
Letters
right explanation, another more persuasive one follows. It needs emphasizing: all
are but explanations of reality. If we conflate the map with the territory, we muddle ourselves and impose unwarranted
limitations upon our autonomy and freedom. As neuroscientist Gerald Edelman
pointed out in Bright Air, Brilliant Fire
(1992), the conscious life [that science]
describes will always remain richer than
its description (p.209).
COLIN BROOKES, LEICESTERSHIRE
DEAR EDITOR: Ching-Hung Woos article Free Will is an Illusion but Freedom
Isnt and Natasha Gilberts The New
Argument about Freedom in Issue 112
both show the impossibility of finding the
reality of our freedom in the deterministic
laws of physics. Our will is indeed determined, but not by abstract physical laws
by our desire to enjoy a good life and
death, and freedom lies in our ability to
choose actions most likely to achieve this
goal. The delusion is thinking that the
soulless abstractions of physics are more
real than the passionate wilful beings who
created them. Physics is a powerful tool.
It is, however, a purely theoretical system
derived from abstractions based on observations. This process of abstraction means
the wilful passions of its creators are
removed. Thus physics has nothing to say
on the issue of its creators freedoms or
the moral consequences of their actions. I
think this simple conclusion provides
another example of physicalisms total
failure to explain the reality of our being.
STEVE BREWER
ST IVES, CORNWALL
DEAR EDITOR: I have to say that I was
underwhelmed by your free will issue.
Five articles on the subject, three of
them arguing that the free will we seem
so obviously to have is all or mostly illusion. Singletons article is good on akrasia, but says little about its bearing on
free will. One paper (Taylor), correctly
noting that human achievement and personal fulfilment are dependent on the
genuineness of libertarian free will is
written by a psychologist!
Lack of coercion (Woo) is not enough
to establish responsibility (speaking metaphysically and not legally). Coercion
means nothing if it doesnt restrict some
pre-existing freedom. If my un-coerced
choice was determined at the Big Bang
then I cannot be responsible for it now
anyway! Determinism is prior-coercion!

Gilbert relies much on Galen Strawson, but Strawson was just plain wrong:
libertarian freedom does not require that
every influence on a choice (Gilberts
values, principles, and reasons) was freely
elected by the subject in the past. Only a
single aspect of the choosing need be
open (in the present) for a choice to be
freely willed.
Raymond Tallis gets in on the act as
well, though he points out, correctly, that
all of the proposed solutions are problematic. The fundamental problem is
that if physics is causally closed and all
there is is physics, then free will is impossible (and for that matter so is consciousness). That flatly contradicts our experience, but no amount of fiddling will
restore genuine metaphysical responsibility. If on the other hand free will is genuine, then either physics is not causally
closed as we believe it to be, or there is
something else in the universe capable of
adding freedom, being an uncaused cause
in the physical that isnt itself physical!
Philosophers cannot have it both ways.
MATTHEW RAPAPORT, CALIFORNIA
DEAR EDITOR: I much appreciated the
seasonal reference in Professor Kambers
article on Ebenezer Scrooge and his dire
destiny in the absence of changing it in
PN 111. I was however left uncertain as
to how Scrooge may avoid his doom. On
the one hand, Professor Kamber says as
did Gilbert Ryle many years ago that
choices made in a truly random way are
not an attractive proposition: we would
think that they were the product of madness. He also rightly says that determinism implies we have no meaningful way
of saying that we could have decided otherwise. In an attempt to get around this,
Kamber points to the fact that we cannot
actually prove that our actions are completely determined. But we are still missing the necessary third way, of describing
how our decisions can meaningfully be
described as free. Kamber himself suggests that our will is engaged when, as
one of the links in a deterministic chain,
we cause the next event to happen. He
then says that the free part is because
there may have been an undetermined
event at some time before we played our
part in the drama. Left at that, I dont
find this idea of free will convincing.
However, I think that we can in fact
combine determinism and randomness
to give us the third way we need. Professor Kamber asserts that random decisions would be more like an uncontrolled spasm than a voluntary choice
and in his essay Of Clouds and Clocks,
Karl Popper refers to random brain
events as producing what he disparagingly calls snap decisions. But those are
wholly unwarranted evaluations. Random events at the atomic level in the
brain need not emerge as fully-formed
decisions: they could present themselves
in a variety of ways as ideas, doubts,
desires, connections, or insights in
other words, as precursors to decisions.
And because our thoughts, however they
arise, are ultimately the subject of our
(relatively) rational checking processes,
then even randomly generated thoughts
need be no more dangerous to our sanity
than a suggestion randomly read in a
book or arising from a discussion with a
friend; and they could be just as productive of rational change. This may be a
significant way of making us look at
things differently. And we can go one
step further: what if some random event
deep in Scrooges cortex ultimately set
off a series of hallucinations which, in
turn, made him reflect on whether he
wanted to continue on his miserly path?
His decision to mend his ways would be
both rational and unpredictable.
Do we need to ask for anything more
as a description of how free will may
work? Is that not the missing third way?
PAUL BUCKINGHAM
ANNECY, FRANCE
Animal Autonomy Arguments
DEAR EDITOR: Im sure it was just coincidence that Shawn Thompsons article
about the pursuit of rights for chimpanzees was in the Humour edition of
Philosophy Now (111); but the arguments
for chimps to be legally persons and so the
subject of Habeas Corpus seem to me, as
a lawyer, to be, shall we say, a bit thin.
The chimpanzees self-appointed legal
representative, Mr Wise, first argues that
the definition of a legal person has
changed over the years: At different times
in Western Culture, certain classes of
humans such as women, children, slaves
or natives were not legally full persons...
in contemporary law, corporations have
the status of person even though theyre
not intelligent beings like apes... This is a
non-argument. Slaves were conveniently
regarded as less than human precisely in
Letters
order to deny them the rights common to
human beings. Women in Britain did not
have the same voting rights as men until
1928, but no British court suggested that
women were therefore not full persons
and hence unable to rely on Habeas Corpus. All we see from these examples are
classes of humans finally being recognised
as members of the same species, and so
entitled to the same treatment under the
law as all other humans. And corporations are simply a legal fiction created by
Statute to give limited liability to the very
real persons running or putting their
money into them. So then, thats hardly an
argument for the Courts, independently of
the Legislature, to decide to confer personhood on other great apes.
Wises wider argument is that Habeas
Corpus should be used to protect the
autonomy of all autonomous and selfdetermining beings. In his opinion apes
have these qualities and are sufficiently
like us to warrant the protection we give
ourselves. As highlighted in the same
article, some specialists in chimpanzee
behaviour disagree. With our fellow
human beings we are at least members of
the same species, and that makes it very
difficult to say that a right to liberty for
one should not be the same for everyone
else. But apes? Clearly the Courts could
decide to cross the line based on the
divided opinions of experts, but this
would be a major shift in jurisprudence.
Judges mostly leave major changes in the
law to the Legislature, that is, the democratic will of the people, rather than taking decisions about obviously contentious
propositions into their own hands. I suggest that that is the right course here, too.
THOMAS JEFFREYS, WARWICKSHIRE
DEAR EDITOR: I have been a volunteer
with the Gray Whale Census and Behavior Project off of Los Angeles for thirty
years, and often witness harassment of
whales by boaters, kayakers, and news
agencies out to get a good picture. The
problem here is not autonomy, but
respect. Just last spring, I witnessed three
boats harass a mother humpback whale
and her calf for three hours. In these situations, the whales often dive and move to
another location nearby; but all the
boaters have to do is wait for the whale to
resurface, and then they go over and start
the harassment all over again. Calling
NOAA and other agencies has little effect
regarding this kind of on the spot harass42 Philosophy Now April/May 2016
ment. This fact only reemphasizes the

importance of respect. Being autonomous
is one thing, but how one uses that autonomy to engage in harassment or to remove
oneself from harassment, is another. With
such an uphill battle for the legal treatment of animals as Wise is encountering, I
can tell you from hands-on experience
that the first step is respect. Without
respect, no one will listen. Such is proven
by women getting equal rights to men but
still earning lesser pay; and black people
gaining their civil rights but still suffering
the majority of arrests. Respect is key.
Without respect, equal civil rights may be
legal, but not respected.
CORINE SUTHERLAND
LOS ANGELES
Detail of Lawrence Lees design for the Royal

Society of Chemistry (not its natural colours)
In The Light of History

DEAR EDITOR: Your readers may like to
know that the picture of William of
Occam that illustrates your article on him
in Issue 111 is taken from a stained glass
window in the parish church at Ockham
which was designed and made by my
father, Lawrence Lee, in 1985. I visited
this church in 2010 with my friend Paula
Bailey, who took the photographs, which
now seem to pop up all over the place
whenever William of Occam is mentioned!
Like many artists, my father had a
philosophical turn of mind. After all, art is
another way of exploring the mysteries of
existence. Of course, most of his windows
explore that aspect of philosophy which is
defined as theology, but there are plenty
of examples of wider themes. Many of his
windows depict earth, air, water and fire,
the ancient foundation of scientific

knowledge which still holds good today.
He also followed Plato and Kepler in
believing geometry to be the governing
factor of life, and this is evident in his
magnificent abstract windows in the
Royal Society of Chemistrys building in
Burlington House, Piccadilly. He made
another window concerning someone of
potential interest to your readers. In St
Dunstans Church, Canterbury, is his
memorial window to Thomas More, the
author of Utopia (1516), who is shown
surrounded by his family and friends,
and events of his life.
STEPHEN LEE
Absurd Disagreements?
DEAR EDITOR: Im pleased that my article Dancing with Absurdity in Issue
110 stimulated discussion. I appreciate
the many thoughtful comments and
respond to them below.
1. Russell Berg wrote that when I
park my car and later return to it I
expect to see it rather than a pumpkin.
So, contrary to what I say, I do assess
probabilities.
In the opening paragraphs of the article I acknowledge the disjunction
between my belief in radical skepticism
and the way I conduct my daily life. But
my expectations do not rebut radical
skepticism.
2. Jon Cape disagrees with my assertion that without some certainty to rest
on, probability cannot be meaningfully
assessed. Probabilities can be figured
mathematically, as when we assess the
likelihood that a coin will turn up heads
ten times in a row. But that requires at a
minimum that we be certain of the laws
of probability; certain that the coin is not
smudged or otherwise biased to one side;
and certain that no chicanery is involved.
Or we can assess probabilities by evaluating our own experiences. As Cape
wrote, If I run for a bus, I improve the
probability that I will catch it...
Not necessarily. Youd have to be certain that the ground wasnt very slippery,
that the bus driver wasnt having fun
with you, that a hungry tiger wasnt
lying in wait for the runner, and so forth.
Such examples may be dismissed as silly,
but we have no way of knowing how
likely they are. Someone somewhere is
surprised almost daily to find out that
their lovable friend and neighbor is a
serial killer or spy or terrorist or...
Letters
3. John Comer wrote that, though
individuals cannot be certain of anything,
knowledge is a collective endeavor.
Maybe so, but the collective might be
wrong. At one time people collectively
believed that the Earth was flat and that
it was the center of the universe.
4. D.N. Dimmitt argued that an argument that leads to an absurd or unreasonable conclusion is fallacious.
It would be a serious impediment to
progress if an apparently valid argument
is rejected only because the conclusion
makes people uncomfortable. If an argument is fallacious, find the fallacy. The
history of science is full of seemingly
absurd conclusions that turned out to be
correct.
5. Tracey Braverman argued that, if it
is impossible to know anything, then I
have no right to claim that radical skepticism is true. And, since I claim that reasoning is an unreliable tool, it is hypocritical of me to use reasoning to try to
prove my case.
It is not self-contradictory to say that
we can know nothing other than that we
can know nothing. And, if there are no
fallacies in my reasoning, then either
radical skepticism is correct or we must
reject reasoning as a way to the truth.
Either of those conclusions requires a
profound change in worldview, at least
for most people including myself. Thats
scary, because Im convinced that there
are no fallacies in my reasoning.
FRED LEAVITT, OAKLAND, CA
https://fredleavitt.wordpress.com
Godly Causes and Effects
DEAR EDITOR: Roger Jennings argues
(Letters, Issue 112) that the word God is
conceptually incoherent. He seems to be
saying that the concept itself cannot be
made coherent. Yet there seems no obvious sense in which he can be correct.
Even taking a minimal definition of
God say, something like First Cause
the concept is very coherent: as coherent,
in fact, as the concept of a causal chain,
which everyone will recognize as quite an
ordinary scientific one. To fill out the
Theistic claim to say the First Cause is
intelligent would create no more difficulty, since intelligent is also a very commonly-used adjective, that a great many of
us find quite coherent, especially when we
use it in reference to other humans.
DR S. ANDERSON,
LONDON, ONTARIO
DEAR EDITOR: Audrey Borowskis article

Al Qaeda and ISIS in Issue 111 presents
the reader with a dilemma. Whilst some
might sympathise with the complaints
about Western hypocrisy and double
standards in Osama Bin Ladens Messages
to the World or perhaps even with ISISs
relentless efforts to usher in an anticipated
apocalypse, the sceptical observer also sees
an authoritarian God demanding obedience at any cost, and requiring the committing of atrocities in his name. The
adoption of any fundamentalist belief a
belief based on unchallengeable authority
absolves followers from personal responsibility. Whatever misgivings one may have
about the theological suppositions of
Christianity, the very idea that God is love,
and that all men are equal in his sight, presents a contrasting theistic argument to
unquestioning fanaticism. With terror
threats unpredictable and indiscriminate,
and carried out by individuals or cells
rather than armies, retaliation can too easily prove indiscriminate too. Western
humanism is based on a broad respect for
life in all its diversity, its fragility and its
uniqueness, and overcoming the brutal
darkness of terrorism may ultimately
depend on the communal sharing of such a
vision; a revaluation of belief in the promotion of individual achievement and purpose
for the benefit of all, and exposure of
indoctrination as a form of abuse.
JOHN GREENBANK, MOSTERTON
Killer Logic
DEAR EDITOR: I was perplexed by Robert
Newmans unsatisfying critique of
autonomous killing machines (Can
Robots Be Ethical?, Issue 110). The origin of my complaint is his final argument,
that humans can assess factors machines
cant. I find it to be quite the opposite.
Humans can calculate, of course; but not
very well. Where we excel, at least compared to machines, is in making and then
justifying under-determined decisions:
when the information we have and the
logic we follow are insufficient to clearly
identify the best course of action, we can
still act. We rule out the preposterous,
the outlandish, and the impossible in
order to arbitrarily pick one among the
remaining possibilities. We dont fly in
the face of logic here; our logics are simply insufficient. Then and this could be
the greatest of human geniuses we justify ourselves using an elaborate poetry of
reasons that make our action seem to be
the one and only possible choice, and

usually a desirable one. (We often call
our ability to act in spite of uncertainty,
judgement.) Again, this isnt to say that
we can never calculate a best course of
action, only that when we cant we still
act, and then adorn ourselves with reasons. The whole point of a computer, by
contrast, is to avoid arbitrary picking.
While we need to rationalize because
were so bad at following logics, computers are learning to follow logics so
quickly theres no point in teaching them
to rationalize. In short, if we still need
judgement, then we should let humans do
what they do best.
While Newmans examples suggest
that empathy helps us understand others
in some special way, we would do well to
remember three things. Firstly, the literature of social psychology amply demonstrates how poorly we empathize with
those we see as different a problem
computers are unlikely to face. Secondly,
empathy amounts to putting ourselves in
others shoes that is, understanding the
logic they followed. Thirdly, empathy is
perhaps the primary reason we dont
think critically about the bullshit we and
others use to make our logics palatable.
Obviously, computers are still far from
understanding most of our logics; but to
me at least, teaching them to think like us
looks like teaching them empathy. Ideally,
however, coding empathy wont also
require coding credulity.
The problem is our faith in our judgement. It buttresses our confidence in ourselves when we play sovereign, legislator,
judge, and executive the roles that regularly require under-determined, executive decisions. We who make important
decisions must be endowed with nigh
divine judgement, or so the story goes...
We dont, in fact, need judgement to the
extent we play these roles, however,
because in them we just make the rules
and precedents. The capacity to judge
with which the rest of us are endowed
then amounts to the ability to follow the
arbitrary decrees of authority. In other
words, falling for rationalizations can only
help our leaders efforts to develop
autonomous killing machines and pretexts
for their use. Paradoxically, the only hope
of clearing the air of such nonsense might
be nuanced, intricate, and digital logics
that reduce uncertainty to the point
where rationalization becomes obsolete.
PETER BRAUN, OTTAWA, ONTARIO
AMERICAN PSYCHO
acques Lacan (1901-1981) was a
French psychoanalytical philosopher. I
would like to apply some of his ideas to
Mary Harrons film American Psycho (2000)
in order to understand the psychotic
behaviour of its protagonist, Patrick Bateman. My hope is that explaining the film
in these terms will contribute to a better
understanding of psychosis. Specifically, I
want to show that we can understand Batemans psychotic behaviour in Lacanian
terms, since his behaviour at the end of this
movie demonstrates the lived experience of
psychosis, where, as Lacan says, That
which has not seen the light of day in the
symbolic appears in the real.
All will be revealed.
Lacan & Psychosis

To understand Lacans interpretation of
psychosis, it is imperative to first grasp his
concept of foreclosure. In Lacan, Language, and Philosophy (2009), Russell Grigg
explains that foreclosure is an initial, primary expulsion of an idea or symbol whose
expulsion constitutes a domain that is
external to, in the sense of radically alien or
foreign to, the subject and the subjects
world. Lacan calls this domain the real.
Thus the real in Lacans sense is not simply what we mean by the everyday use of
the term. Rather, it refers to a world that is
psychologically separated from a persons
own inner world; and foreclosure is the process of psychological separation. These concepts are also fundamental to understanding
Batemans behaviour in American Psycho. I
put Patrick Bateman in inverted commas
because, as will be explained, Patrick Bateman is not real-ly Patrick Bateman.
It is also important to grasp the real in
contrast to the Lacanian category of the
symbolic, which is that aspect of human
experience that involves the production
and understanding of the meaning of an
experience. When an experience is not
meaningfully understood in the symbolic
category, it is rejected and subsists outside
of symbolization that is, as what is foreclosed in the real. But although the real
can be excluded from the symbolic field, it
may nevertheless appear in the real. It
44 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
will do so, for instance, in the form of hallucinations or delusions. As Grigg explains,
the real is capable of intruding into the
subjects experience in a way that finds him
or her devoid of any means of protection
(ibid). Hence, as Lacan says, That which
has not seen the light of day in the symbolic appears in the real. This is exactly
what we find in American Psycho.
In even deeper Lacanian terms, the
movie demonstrates that the main character
in American Psycho creates the imaginary
reality of Patrick Bateman through foreclosure of a primordial signifier (symbol)
the Name-of-the-Father, which we might
think of as the idea of paternal authority.
Lacanian scholars commonly agree that the
foreclosure of this primordial signifier is the
cause of psychosis. This is because this signifier allows a person to overcome the
Oedipus complex, since Its function in the
Oedipus complex is to be the vehicle of the
law that regulates desire both the subjects
desire and the omnipotent desire of the
maternal figure. In other words, the Oedi-
pus complex is overcome through the

paternal metaphor of the Name-of-theFather. This is an operation in which the
Name-of-the-Father is substituted for the
mothers desire, thereby producing a new
species of meaning. Without this new
meaning concerning the desire of the
mother provided by the signifier of the
Name-of-the-Father, the subject is left
prey to... the mothers unregulated desire,
confronted by an obscure enigma... that the
subject lacks the means to comprehend
(ibid). The foreclosure of this primordial
signifier is therefore catastrophic for the
person undergoing it, resulting in psychosis.
The Real In American Psycho
In his article Diagnosing an American
Psycho (International Review of Psychiatry,
21, 3), Wayne Parry provides a summary of
the plot of the movie. The narrative centres around Patrick Batemans murder of
his colleague Paul Allen. As Parry says,
Bateman chooses to kill Allen out of envy.
They meet for dinner and afterwards, in
That awful moment

when your lawyer
tells you you arent
a serial killer.
LIONS GATE FILMS 2000
Films
Matthew Gildersleeve goes to the movies

with Jacques Lacan.
Film Review
Film Review
dian Horror, American Bodies, (Brno

Studies in English, 39 (2), 2013). Loiselle
quotes the transcript from the film:
Patrick: Dont you know who I am? Im not Davis.
Im Patrick Bateman. We talk on the phone all the
time. Dont you recognize me? Youre my lawyer.
Now, Carnes, listen. Listen very, very carefully. I
killed Paul Allen, and I liked it. I cant make myself
any clearer.
Lawyer: But thats simply not possible. And I
dont find this funny anymore.
Patrick: It never was supposed to be. Why isnt it
possible?
Lawyer : Its just not.
Patrick: Why not, you stupid bastard?
Lawyer : Because I had dinner with Paul Allen
twice in London, just ten days ago.
Films
Jacques Lacan
LACAN PORTRAIT IRONIE 2007
Batemans apartment, Allen is very drunk

and Bateman attacks him with an axe and
disposes of the body. He changes Allens
answerphone message to say that he [Allen]
has gone to London and packs a bag to
corroborate the supposed trip. After this,
Bateman continues his murderous spree,
often using Allens apartment as the site of
the murder or a place to keep the bodies.
Yet Batemans serial killing suddenly
unravels towards the end of the film.
When Bateman is caught by a police car
having killed an elderly lady, he kills the
policemen and blows up the patrol car.
Having killed a night porter and a janitor.
he phones his lawyer, confessing all his
crimes and the events of that night.
However, after his confession of his
serial killing to his lawyer, we start to see
the real intruding on Batemans psychotic symbolic universe: The following morning, Bateman goes to Allens
apartment only to find that it is empty
and undecorated. As he checks a closet
where he left a few bodies, an estate
agent asks him to leave after Bateman
questions what had happened there.
This is in fact the first of three crucial
moments in this film where we recognise the true nature of the psychosis of
Patrick Bateman. Here the truth that
Bateman has been foreclosing cannot be
kept excluded: in the earlier parts of the
film, Bateman had used Allens apartment as the site of the murder or a place
to keep the bodies (Diagnosing...,
p.281), but now the apartment is empty.
This gives the viewer a clue that Batemans symbolic universe is not what it
appears to be. As Slavoj iek puts it,
this moment is when the barrier separating the real from reality is torn down,
when the real overflows reality (Looking
Awry: An Introduction To Jacques Lacan
Through Popular Culture, 1992, p.20).
There are also two other moments in
the film when the real overflows into
Batemans symbolic world. The second
of these is even more significant than the
first. Bateman runs into his lawyer in a
bar and asks if he got the phone message
last night. The lawyer believes that the call
was a joke. Bateman tries to convince him
that it is true but the lawyer states that he
had dinner twice with Paul Allen in London ten days prior, leaving the reality of
the events ambiguous (Diagnosing an
American Psycho).
It is important to note something else
from this scene that was missed by Parry
but picked up by Andr Loiselle in Cana-
This is a crucial moment to retrospectively understand everything in the film up

until then. This scene highlights the expulsion and foreclosure of the real in Batemans psychotic symbolism, since it turns
out that not only did Bateman not kill Paul
Allen, but Batemans real name is Davis!
Unfortunately, what the lawyer, Carnes,
is saying to Bateman is radically alien or
foreign to the subject and the subjects
world. Its alien to Davis (Bateman)
because, as Lacan might put it, the desire
of the Other has been foreclosed from
Daviss psychotic symbolic reality (in this
instance, the Other is the lawyer, who
called him Davis and who told him that
Paul Allen is not dead; and so the desire of
the Other is what the lawyer believes). Yet
although Davis may have excluded a fact
from his symbolic universe it may never-
theless appear in reality. Thus Lacans

remark, That which has not seen the light
of day in the symbolic appears in the real.
This is exactly what we find in this scene in
American Psycho, when the real intrudes on
Daviss psychosis.
The conclusion that Davis lacks the
means to comprehend the desire of the
Other what the lawyer is saying is supported by the final scene of the movie,
where after hearing this revelation from
Carnes, Davis returns to his friends table
in confusion. His friends are watching
Ronald Reagan give a speech on television, and arguing about whether or not
Reagan is lying. One of his friends asks,
Bateman? Come on, what do you think?
This small detail demonstrates that Davis
lacks the means to comprehend the
desire of the Other: with this detail, the
viewer can understand that we are now
watching events through Batemans psychotic symbolic universe again. So the
Lacanian interpretation of this scene is
that Davis lacks the means to comprehend
the desire of the Other which appeared in
the real as an intrusion to the psychotic
symbolic universe in which Davis imagined he was a serial killer called Patrick
Bateman.
The other moment in which the viewer
sees the way things really are instead of
through Daviss fantasy, is when his secretary is shown to be leafing through his
[Daviss] diary alone in his office, where
she discovers an escalating number of poisonous doodles and designs devoted to the
desecration of womens bodies, much like
the various murders he claims to have committed (from Canadian Horror... p.130).
With this and the other two moments we
have examined, the viewer can see that, as
Loiselle says, This scene clearly establishes the overriding possibility that Batemans violence has all along been confined
to the level of daydream and fantasy. The
viewer can also now recognise that the
majority of the film has been shown
through this psychotic fantasy.
MATTHEW GILDERSLEEVE 2016
Matthew Gildersleeve teaches and researches at

the University of Queensland in Brisbane.
Philosophy Now
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Back Issues Paper

Issue 98 Camus: Life, Ambivalence, Absurdity, Transcendence, etc / Testing
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Gods Existence, or Not: William Lane Craig, Simon Blackburn,
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Peter Caws critiques Jacques Lacans psychoanalytic

obscurantism, whilst Terri Murray surveys Walter
Benjamins perspective on the media within cultures.
Books
Anxiety by Jacques Lacan,
Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller,
trans. A. R. Price
SOME THIRTY YEARS AGO, AT
an academic retreat in the
south of France, I met a young woman who
announced herself as a lacanienne a disciple of the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan
(1901-1981). At that time Lacans so-called
seminars were being published one after
another in French, as the Seminaires. However, they werent really seminars, more like
meandering lectures transcribed by faithful
followers. There were already a lot of them,
and more to come. Reading them was obligatory for people like my new acquaintance,
and I wondered how she managed to take it
all in. Je pratique, she said, la lecture flottante I use the technique of floating
reading. I knew about attention flottante a
psychoanalytic practice in which the analyst
allows him- or herself to listen as it were
loosely to the patient, without any expectation of particular clues to the latters state of
mind, without taking any notes, almost
without listening at all; rather, letting the
patients unconscious speak directly to his
or her own. But I hadnt come across the
technique as applied to reading, unless in
the form of what we used to call skim-
LACAN PORTRAIT IGNACIO GARATE MARTINEZ 2012
Lacan
proclaiming
his
genius
48 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
ming. Maybe it could be called reading

with the third eye, after listening with the
third ear a name given to the relevant
psychoanalytic practice by Theodor Reik,
one of the few precursors other than Freud
for whom Lacan seems to have had any
genuine esteem.
Faced with the three-hundred-odd
dense pages of the tenth Seminar, at two
removes from the voice of the master
first transcribed, then translated I would
have liked to have managed floating reading in my turn, but the conscience of the
reviewer, along with all the bizarre flotsam
on the surface of Lacans thoughts I kept
bumping into, defeated me. In any case I
doubted whether I could get in touch with
Lacans unconscious, since it was clear
from the beginning that what he was offering an effort to bind the faithful to an
ever-tighter adherence to his idiosyncratic
version of psychoanalysis was, on one
level at least, eminently conscious. So I
ploughed through the whole book,
increasingly bemused as I went on at the
thought that my job was to make something of it that would be of interest to the
readership of Philosophy Now.
The Unintelligibility of Jacques Lacan
It might be asked why I took on this
task in the first place. The reason was that
back in the days when I was trying to make
something philosophically interesting out
of the structuralist movement, Lacan was
one of the writers who seemed to offer
some promise in that direction. He occupied a position in psychoanalysis analogous
to that of Claude Lvi-Strauss in anthropology, Roland Barthes in literary criticism, Louis Althusser in Marxism, or
Michel Foucault in the history of ideas.
His early publications, such as the Ecrits
[Notebooks], while verbose (but which
French thinker isnt?) still had a form of
intelligibility that could be reconstructed
with a bit of work. I thought it would be
interesting to revisit all that.
One of the Seminars, the eleventh, was
published years ago as The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (1973) a
largely successful attempt on Lacans part
to justify his return to Freud after his
expulsion from the official French psycho-
Detail from
the cover of
Anxiety, after
M.C. Escher
analytic community and his single-handed

foundation of LEcole Freudienne de Paris.
That book, no doubt heavily edited and
rewritten from the seminar transcript,
showed that he could be fairly straightforward when he wanted to be. Among the
fans at his weekly performances, however,
he didnt have to bother; professionals and
hangers-on alike flocked to their gurus
presentations and drank in every word
with what degree of comprehension it is
sometimes hard to fathom.
The French title of the tenth Seminar is
LAngoisse, whose translation as Anxiety is
already problematic. A correct English
translation of angoisse is anguish, whereas
anxiety is a correct English translation of
the French anxit. At least the two languages seem to be making the same distinction in the same way. However, one of
the French definitions of angoisse does map
pretty well on to the ordinary non-medical
meaning of the English anxiety, whilst
the specifically medical use of anxit is as a
pathological type of angoisse. So is Lacans
anxiety pathological? It would have been
helpful to have some clarification of this
Book Reviews
Books
little linguistic tangle.
The original French publication of
LAngoisse appears to have been a limited
edition, no doubt intended, like its spoken
original, for a relatively small audience of
professionals and cognoscenti. It came in
two hefty volumes, softbound in bright
orange, with no indication of publisher, or
place or date of publication. Having tracked
down one of the few original copies, I find
that it was put out in 1982 by a small printing house called Piranha (we can make of
that association what we will). The seminar
itself had taken place in 1962-3, the official
French edition was published at Le Seuil in
2004, and the English translation is part of
a series now being put out by Polity Press
one cant help wondering, with what readership in mind? Fifty-odd years is a long
time to wait for the word from on high, and
it would seem that only those transfixed by
Lacans fame and charisma, or perhaps professionally persuaded enough to wish to
follow his eccentric example, would want to
wade through these rambling monologues.
The Seminars, together with Lacans
other works, constitute a massive and repetitive body of doctrine, intended to throw
light on the human condition and the practice of psychiatry. I will return to the doctrines, but given the occasion of this review,
will first address the claim, sometimes
direct and sometimes implied, that they are
of philosophical importance. Anguish and
anxiety belong to a closely-related cluster
of terms, including fear and dread, which
has been a happy hunting ground for existentialists since Sren Kierkegaard (18131855). This is Lacans chance to show the
relevance of his concept of anxiety to the
recent history of philosophy, and he takes it
in the very early pages of the Seminar. I
provide here an example of the way he
approaches this topic, both to give a flavour
of his style and the verbal padding and
glancing commentary that is typical of his
approach, and also to suggest how easily
this book could have been a lot shorter,
with a bit of determined editing:
Everyone knows that projecting the I onto the
inroad to anxiety has for some time been the ambition of a philosophy that is termed existentialist.
Theres no shortage of references, from
Kierkegaard to Gabriel Marcel, Shestov, Berdyaev
and a few others. Not all of them have the same
place, nor can they be used in the same way, but I
insist on saying at the start of this disquisition that
this philosophy insofar as, from its patron saint,
named first off, down to those whose names Ive
listed after him, it incontestably shows some
Book Reviews
decline is marked, I feel, with some haste and

even some disarray, Id say, in relation to the reference in which, in the same era, the movement of
thought has put its trust, namely, the reference to
history Since I have called on two witnesses
here, Sartre and Heidegger, I wont hesitate to call
on a third, in so far as I dont think him unworthy
of representing those who are here, observing what
he is going to say, and thats me (pp.7-8).
No hesitation then in enrolling himself

among the leading thinkers of his time. Yet
it is notable that in all this he does not go
into any detail as to the positions actually
held by the philosophers in question, but
just contents himself with name-dropping.
This is quite characteristic of his mode of
operation he comes across not as learned
and scholarly, but as grandiose and narcissistic. Those who are here, observing
what he is going to say is just one example
of a recurring preoccupation with himself
in relation to his audience: here they are,
all of them, listening to me, so I must be as
good as these other people.
Confident in his authority and domination, Lacan talks down to these listeners,
repeatedly alluding to what he has been
teaching them, what they will miss if they
dont attend regularly, what other people
have missed by not paying attention to
him. A typical case: he recommends that
they look up the texts of Kurt Goldstein,
very accessible texts since theyve been
translated into French, to see how close
these formulations are to our own, and
how much theyd gain in clarity by referring to ours more expressly (p.60). Again,
its all about him. Two delicious ironies
here: Goldsteins work was actually done a
decade or so earlier than Lacans; and
Lacan takes pride in his own lack of clarity,
his style having a certain Gongorism
about it, as everyone knows (p.42) (Luis
de Gongora was famous for the deliberate
obscurity of his writing). After acknowledging this similarity, Lacan says, Well, I
dont give a damn.
Assessing Lacans Doctrine
Extracted from its vanity and verbosity,
Lacanian doctrine does represent an
impressive theoretical structure, replete
with borrowings from and allusions to a
wide range of disciplines, above all of
course Freudian psychoanalysis, of which
Lacan considered himself the heir and
trustee; but also Saussurean linguistics, and
most especially, mathematical topology.
This is not the place for exposition of this
doctrine, which in its roundabout and frag-
mentary way occupies the bulk of the

book, but it is an occasion for commenting
on the scientific standing of his theories. I
happen to think that psychoanalysis does
belong among the sciences (see for example my Psychoanalysis as the Idiosyncratic
Science of the Individual Subject, Psychoanalytic Psychology 20, 2003). Unfortunately, Lacan is of no help whatever in
making this argument, because he manages to confuse the issue with spurious
technicalities not obviously applicable to
actual cases, and thus to cast doubt if not
ridicule on the whole enterprise.
It is true that the crucial concepts
required for the analysts clinical enterprise are of enormous difficulty and complexity. As a case in point: what exactly is a
living human subject? How are we embodied, how gendered, how stressed by life
experiences, how affected by and how
expressed in what language, how to be
understood, how to be helped in dealing
with the fears and the anguish not to
mention the anxiety produced in it by
the hostility of the world and the body and
other people? But is it at all useful to compare the human subject to a Moebius strip,
as Lacan does (pp.96, 204, etc.), or to any
of the other topological structures of
higher dimensionality scattered through
A higherdimensional
structure:
A Klein bottle
Books
LACAN OLDER PORTRAIT PABLO SECCA 2009
his pages? Moreover, it isnt clear that he

really understands any of them, although
they do make for nice diagrams. Granted
that the subject is experienced as it were
from its inside whilst presenting itself to
others as an outside; granted also that the
Moebius strip manages the neat trick of
appearing to have two sides, an inside and
an outside, while in fact having only one
continuous side what light does the one
fact throw on the other? Perhaps the
metaphor is provocative, but its relevance
for therapeutic clinicians unfamiliar with
higher mathematics strikes me as beyond
dubious. (It does provide the cover art for
the book an Escher graphic of six ants
following one another around a lattice in
the form of a Moebius strip an apt image
of Lacan and his seminar audiences.)
Lacan, older and more

distinguished
Here this reviewer begins to feel contrite, seeming to be making fun of a

notable and distinguished figure of twentieth century culture. But these comments
arent just sniping: they are a product of
reading not only Anxiety but much more
from the same source, and of personal if
brief encounters with the author himself,
as well as with other figures in French
intellectual life who knew him, and knew
also some of the patients who committed
suicide while under his care, if care is
what it was (and in at least one case, in
despair at not being admitted as his
patient). Lacan wasnt merely a theoretician, he was a therapist of repute who was
at the same time not only unorthodox but
often unscrupulous and exploitative, and
he did great harm under the guise of being
a benign father figure to a family of besot50 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
ted acolytes. In a review of Elisabeth

Roudinescos history of psychiatry in
France, Raymond Tallis aptly dubbed him
the shrink from hell.
All this is not a recommendation not to
read this book I have certainly not done
justice to its eccentric richness: for example, its treatment of the fundamental complexity of the relation between subject and
object, from the objet petit a (a from autre),
the object with a small o, to the fullfledged Other (Autre) as Object, by way of
the subjects coming to specular awareness
in the mirror-image of itself. The objet
petit a is any object of primitive desire that
is not fully an object for a subject, on the
part of a subject that does not yet fully
know that it is a subject. Thats one way of
looking at it at least. And along the way is
the flotsam I mentioned at the beginning,
including details of the genitalia and sex
life of exotic animals and insects, as well as
of the complementary complexities of
sadism and masochism. In this connection
Lacan takes issue with an old distinction
that holds fear to be of some fearful object,
but anxiety to be a state of apprehension
without an object. No, he says, anxiety is
not without an object, although that object
often turns out to be an attitude or state of
mind of some Other on whom the anxious
subject wishes to make an impression or
from whom he or she wants recognition (as
in the case of the performance anxiety
many psychiatric patients are familiar with).
No, by all means read Lacan if you have
an appetite for long-winded free association and bold if frequently impenetrable
speculation. Hes sometimes quite good at
these things. Just dont take him at his own
estimation, or expect to learn anything
reliably useful from him about any particular human being. We arent all made like
that. Its not obvious that any of us are.
PROF PETER CAWS 2016
Peter Caws is University Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at The George Washington University, Washington DC.
Anxiety: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book X,
ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. A. R. Price, Polity Press,
2014, 352 pp, $19.95 pb, ISBN: 074566041X
Walter Benjamin & the

Media by Jaeho Kang
DOES IT MATTER
whether this review is
presented to you in a
one-off public gathering
that takes place at a unique historical time

and place, such as a literary salon, or in an
edition of Philosophy Now magazine? Does
the change from collective audience to
solitary reader have any impact on your
cognitive faculties, or even have political
implications? Furthermore, does it make
any difference if youre reading this not in
the print version, but via some earlytwenty-first-century communication tech,
such as a smartphone or an iPad?
Walter Benjamins Information Age
The German Jewish philosopher Walter
Benjamin (1892-1940) certainly thought all
this does make a difference. He had reason
to reflect on new forms of communication.
Hounded by Nazi propaganda, he settled in
Paris, and later, after the fall of France,
committed suicide while attempting to
escape through Spain. Benjamin sought to
develop a new kind of media critique, applicable to the new forms of media technology
that were emerging in the twentieth century. In Walter Benjamin and the Media, Dr
Jaeho Kang illuminates how and why Benjamins theoretical contributions to understanding the development of the media are
still relevant and applicable to todays new
technologies. For example, we might transpose Benjamins famous account of flnerie
the nineteenth century urban consumers
whimsical street-strolling, involving serial
observations of street spectacle, of shop
windows, shop fronts, caf terraces, pedestrians onto the twenty-first century habit
of web surfing. There are many such interesting issues here, and Jaeho Kangs masterful account of Benjamins life and work
invites us to rediscover Benjamins unique
and multifarious engagements with the
question of how new media forms have
shaped modern communication, and also
how the different media themselves transform our experience, shape our perceptual
capacities and faculties, and reconfigure
embodied experience in relation to both
private and public spaces. Consider Benjamins account of the impact of printing
on oral culture and storytelling, in particular, its role in the social disintegration of
community and the shift to an individualist
social structure. In this way, print technology shaped the very constitution of modern
lives, ushering in our epoch, in which visual
communication predominates. Kang also
shows how such observations anticipated
the analyses of later media theorists such as
Marshall McLuhan and Jean Baudrillard.
Benjamin is probably best known for his
highly influential essay The Work of Art in
Book Reviews
Books
STREET CREDITS CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT:
BERKELEY URBAN-COMMONSWIKI 2005; KLN ELYA 2005; PARIS MYRABELLA 2014; TOKYO RUDOLF AMMANN 2004
Serial observations of street spectacle as gained by surfing the web
an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936).

Here he expounded the theory that what
sets apart works of art is their aura
which is precisely what cannot be captured
in any reproduction. While an original artwork possesses a unique existence
immersed in and arising from tradition
and ritual and conditioned by a magical
authenticity and authority, the age of
mechanical reproduction demolished these
conditions. The sense of art images and
objects as unique and permanent was
replaced by a sense of their transitoriness
and reproducibility. According to Benjamin, this shift in perception reflects a
significant change in the consciousness of
the masses.
Kang points out that for Benjamin, the
medias possibilities are always political in
character. However, in contrast to other
members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Benjamin saw opportunities
for political rebellion within the medias
mechanisms of ideological propagation.
The work of art can be emancipated from
the trappings of tradition. So although the
decline of individualised art is greeted with
a sense of loss, Benjamin also sees liberating possibilities in mechanical reproduction. The shift to reproducibility contains
the promise of bringing the very apparatus
Book Reviews
of communication technology closer to

people, both spatially and humanly, so that
media users can be transformed from consumers or suppliers into engineers, refunctioning communications technology
for progressive political ends.
Kangs Medium In Culture
Like Benjamins, Kangs breadth of reference is extraordinary. This may make
this book less accessible to the Critical
Theory novice, but it enriches it for readers already familiar with the Frankfurt
Schools main theorists and its detractors.
At every step Kang points out Benjamins
distinctive contributions to understanding
the human impact of media, revealing how
he influenced more recent media theorists,
or how his work represented a dissenting
viewpoint vis-a-vis his well-known peers.
Kang also details the influences of a whole
array of artists Baudelaire, Brecht, Kafka,
Leskov, and Proust on Benjamins thought.
Although dense, this book is expertly
organized according to four key themes:
the crisis of communication; mediated storytelling; technological reproducibility, and
the media city. And in his conclusion Kang
draws out the further theoretical implications of Benjamins media critique by comparing it with the central doctrine of the
Frankfurt School. For the Frankfurt

Schools key members, especially
Horkheimer and Adorno, the culture
industry attains political precedence
through its power to induce compliance
with dominant social relations: we are
cemented into the status quo via mass media
and commodity culture. So ubiquitous is
the manipulation and control exerted by
the culture industry that the communication of authentic experience that is, experience that hasnt already been influenced
by, or isnt interpreted through, the mass
media is rendered impossible. The dominant class imposes capitalist culture and
mass media as its means of achieving total
control of society. The entirety of the cultural arena has been reified, or objectified,
such that society is falsely understood to be
a monolithic totality.
However, for Kang, this theory is too
abstract and unitary to be fruitfully applied
to an analysis of media culture, primarily
because it pictures the media as no more
than a tool of ideological domination.
Their reductionist vision of the media led
the Frankfurt School theorists to overlook
the subversive dimensions of popular culture, and also induced a failure to grasp
the complex material aspects of modern
society that are interwoven with various
modes of communication technology (p.
204). This lurches towards obscurity, but,
in essence, I think Kang is saying here that
Benjamin emphasised not just the content
but also the technological and social forms
in the manipulation of the masses and dissemination of capitalist ideas. By form,
Benjamin meant not just the stylistic conventions of a work of art, but the material
mechanisms of production, distribution
and consumption.
Walter Benjamin and the Media is a masterful overview of Benjamins biography,
career, and work, in its historical context, as
well as his influences, ideas and unique
contributions to Critical Theory. It shows
how Benjamin was able to strike a balance
between hailing the revolutionary possibilities of new media and warning of their
totalitarian dangers.
DR TERRI MURRAY 2016
Terri Murray is a graduate of New York

Universitys Film School. She has taught Film
Studies at Hampstead College of Fine Arts &
Humanities in London since 2002, and is
author of Feminist Film Studies (2007).
Walter Benjamin and the Media: The Spectacle
of Modernity, by Jaeho Kang, Polity Press, 2014,
15.99 pb, 196pp, ISBN: 0745645216
decisive arguments in philosophy are rare decisive arguments for positive views are even rarer, and
decisive arguments for positive answers to the big
questions are so rare as to be almost nonexistent.
David Chalmers, 2015
hat the arts do not progress in the

way that the sciences progress
does not seem to worry us. We
dont wring our hands because the latest
Nobel-prize-winning poet or dramatist
cannot hold a candle to Shakespeare. A
contemporary scientist who had not
moved beyond Galileo, on the other hand,
would be an object of ridicule. But what of
philosophy? Does it progress, and if it
doesnt, should we dismiss it as a cognitive
relic an ox cart in the age of the jet plane?
Philosophy versus Science
David Chalmers, best known for his
work in the philosophy of mind, addresses
this question in an illuminating recent article, Why Isnt There More Progress in
Philosophy? in Philosophy, 90 (1), Jan 2015.
One marker of progress, he argues,
would be convergence to a consensus on
answers to the Big Questions. By this criterion, things dont look good. Take
Chalmers own area of interest: the philosophy of mind. According to a survey he
quotes, physicalists, who nowadays tend to
believe that consciousness is identical to
brain activity, and non-physicalists (such as
dualists) are still slugging it out, centuries
after Hobbes and Descartes set those hares
running. What is more, even if there had
been consensus, this wouldnt mean convergence to the truth. At present physicalism commands a majority opinion, but, as
both Chalmers and I believe, it is probably
wrong.
Its no use philosophers fighting back by
pointing out that science, too, is in a state of
permanent quarrel with itself, and consensus is only temporary. The history of science is a history of discarded theories.
There is, however, a crucial extra element.
Each epoch in science hands down solid
results to its successors, giving them some52 Philosophy Now
April/May 2016
The P Word
Raymond Tallis asks, does it matter if philosophy
does not make progress?
thing to build on. In the history of physics
from Archimedes to Galileo to Newton to
Einstein, important truths survive successive revolutions in thought. Einstein did not
disprove the idea of the measurement of the
volume of irregular objects by displacement
of water that prompted Archimedes to leap
out of his apocryphal bath.
In short, there is cumulative gain in the power
of science to explain
and predict phenomena, which is
translated into ever
more potent technology. There is no
such apparent cumulaDavid
tive gain in philosophical
Chalmers
explanations.
The contrast with mathematics is
even more striking. As Chalmers points out,
of the twenty-three mathematical problems
that David Hilbert proposed in 1900, there
is universal consensus on the solution to ten
of them, and partial consensus on another
seven. None of the problems in Bertrand
Russells 1912 The Problems of Philosophy has
come close to this level of consensus.
There are of course areas in the sciences where progress seems to have
stalled; for example, the reconciliation of
quantum theory and relativity, explaining
the origin of life, and making sense of the
relationship between brain activity and
consciousness. These, however, are at the
cutting edge, behind which there is a massive body of solved problems and robust
knowledge. And, as Peter van Inwagen
(quoted by Chalmers) points out The cutting edge of philosophy is pretty much
the whole of it.
Clarifying Philosophy
What conclusion shall we draw from
the contrast between science the art of
the soluble as Peter Medawar called it
and philosophy, whose clear-up rate of
problems is such that, if it were a police
force, it would be taken into special measures? Shall we deem that Plato, Descartes,
Kant, Frege, and Russell have taken us no

further on the road to truth? Or shall we
conclude that solving problems or even
exposing them as pseudo-problems and
dissolving them in true Wittgensteinian
fashion is not the ultimate or the primary
aim of philosophy?
Chalmers argues that seeing philosophy as a search for answers to problems is overly scientistic. (After
all, once they are open to empirical investigation there is a tendency for problems to migrate to
science.) Perhaps, he suggests, it
is a quest for something else:
understanding, clarity, enlightenment. This would certainly correspond to the goal of philosophy
described by Peter Strawson in Skepticism
and Naturalism Some Varieties (1985), of
getting a clear view of our concepts and
their place in our lives and establishing
the connections between the major structural features or elements of our conceptual scheme. This is more ambitious and
interesting than philosophy as pre-scientific problem-solving, or even as primitive
science carried out from an armchair. And
it captures something central to the traditional philosophical enterprise: stepping
back from, and reflecting upon, our ways
of speaking and thinking about the world.
But it is still not the whole story. Philosophical inquiry also questions, at the most
fundamental level, our customary ways of
explaining and understanding what we take
to be real. This includes challenging the natural sciences when they encroach upon the
traditional preoccupations of the humanities, such as metaphysics, and especially
understanding our own nature. Philosophy
offers an external view of the character and
scope of scientific understanding. It may
also contribute to the project of seeing how
the different sciences relate to one another,
and (more importantly) examine the vexed
relationship between the scientific account
of the world and the way we experience it in
everyday life the manifest image of the
world, as Wilfrid Sellars called it.
CHALMERS PIC ZERESHK 2008
allis
T
in
Wonderland
CARTOON CHRIS MADDEN 2016
WWW.CHRISMADDEN.CO.UK
Pinch Yourself
Reflections, both descriptive and critical, on the conceptual schemes through
which we experience the world and indeed
view ourselves, are clearly not to be
reduced to problem-solving narrowly construed. So why do problems figure so
largely in the history of philosophy? Or
why does the history of philosophy seem
sometimes to look like a series of doomed
attempts to solve problems that were first
raised thousands of years ago? What is the
point of seemingly insoluble problems?
Quite simply, they are a means of
pinching ourselves awake.
Consider the hoary conundrum of our
knowledge of the external world. Philosophers have been concerned that, since all
such knowledge is mediated through our
bodies, more specifically our senses, we
cannot acquire an uncontaminated view of
what is out there, beyond our senses,
beyond ourselves: we cannot even be sure
that there is anything out there. Kant
described it as a scandal that philosophy
had not solved this problem. Martin Heidegger argued that, on the contrary, it was
a scandal that proofs of an external world
were still being sought. This seeming
stalemate, however, is not futile. Thinking
about what is out there in the most general
sense (and about what out there might
actually mean) highlights some of our
most fundamental assumptions about ourselves, our bodies, and the world Strawsons conceptual schema to which we
might otherwise be asleep. And such waking up is not merely the answer to a question, the passage from a premise to a solution, but the beginning of more questions.
Philosophy is, of course, a house with
many rooms, and it is misleading to think
that there will be a single point to or purpose of ontology, metaphysics, epistemology, formal logic, political philosophy, aesthetics, and meta-ethics. Even so, there are
characteristics common perhaps to all its
many preoccupations, disciplines, and subdisciplines, although they are sometimes
lost sight of in a thicket of technicalities
and footnotes on footnotes. Most important is the aspiration to see matters from
the most general viewpoint, least cluttered
with unnoticed presuppositions, and the
other side of this seeking the most fundamental aspects of those matters. These in
turn are expressions of a deeper ambition
to look at the world as if from the outside,
with unpeeled gaze, to wake out of ordinary (that is to say half-asleep) wakefulness.
There will be some overlap with the aim
of literature and other arts to acknowledge
and celebrate the rich fabric of our lives;
but the ache of the philosopher to uncover
problems and mysteries strangely hidden
in what is merely obvious in the practical
business of our lives, and hence to untake
the taken-for-granted, is a special ache. So
the question What is the of point of philosophy when it cannot solve its Big Questions? becomes Whats the point of being
awake? To which the answer is that, if
anything is an end in itself is valuable
purely for its own sake this surely is.
It is also important to appreciate that
problems may be fruitfully transformed
even when they are not solved, and that in
the process of transformation all sorts of
insights may be gained. The human understanding of universals has been radically
altered enriched and deepened by the
2,500-year long discussion that Plato set in
motion. Each century has its own dialects
of thought and takes up the philosophical
quest at a different place, even
when it is often
expressed in
addressing a
seemingly
unchanging curriculum of brainteasers. Each era
brings its own
mode of awareness to the traditional eternal
problems, and
may turn them
into a mirror of
its preoccupations and anxieties.
allis
T
in
Wonderland
Join The Conversation
If as must be the case complete selfunderstanding eludes every age, then the
fault lies not with philosophy but with our
finitude, for which nothing philosophy,
art, or science offers any cure. Philosophy may sometimes feel like the imminence of a revelation that never comes
(Jorge Luis Borges description of the aesthetic experience). This tension is indirectly reflected in the life of the individual
philosopher as well as in the shared history
of philosophy. Henri Bergsons observation in his address to the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy in 1911, is
apposite: a philosopher worthy of the
name has never said more than a single
thing: and even then it is something he has
tried to say, rather than actually said. Pursuing that single thing is rather like Gustav
Mahlers wonderful hunt for that tune in
the course of nine and a half symphonies.
Besides, the endeavour to make things
clearer for ones self, to connect this over
here with that over there, and to open
dormer windows on our parochial consciousness, surely qualifies as something
intrinsically valuable.
If there are grounds for despair, they are
not to be found in the intractability of many
philosophical problems. Rather they lie in
the knowledge that we enter and leave the
philosophical conversation at arbitrary
points separated by small stretches of time;
that our dance with the insoluble that
makes the mystery of our existence more
visible is so brief. For me, philosophy began
in 1963 (between the trial of Lady Chatterley and the Beatles first L.P.) and will end
in a few years time, or tomorrow.
We are fated to enter and leave the
deepest and most illuminating conversation
humankind has with itself in mid-sentence.
For this reason, philosophys closeness to
its beginning its lack of progress is connected with its surpassing value.
PROF. RAYMOND TALLIS 2016
Raymond Talliss latest book is The Black

Mirror: Fragments of an Obituary for Life
(Atlantic). His website is raymondtallis.com.
Fiction
EPIPHANY
Kimberley Martinez sees through the unreality of reality, disastrously.
ou know that feeling you sometimes get just before

youre awake? That moment when youre not quite
asleep yet not quite awake, when you suddenly understand every mystery there has ever been, and you think
Of course! Then as consciousness dawns, the
understanding goes as quickly as it came. The
fleeting memory fades as you pull yourself out
of bed and begin your morning rituals. Perhaps you solemnly regard yourself as you
brush your teeth, your reflection staring
back at you, urging you to remember.
That feeling happened to Mr Pepperfield all the time. This morning, for example, precisely two minutes before his alarm
sounded, he twitched, slowly opened his eyes
and thought, Yes, yes, of course thats it!
In the usual course of events, his alarm clock
shocked him fully awake and he went unthinking about
his day as a very important man in a very important job, driving to work in his very important car and spending the day
being very important, before returning again at the end of the
day and becoming the least important person in the household. The household consisted of an elderly cat and Mr Pepperfield, and quite clearly the cat had superiority.
Today was different. The feeling did not subside. Mr Pepperfield jumped out of bed, Of course, of course! he kept
thinking in wonder. He had a sudden urge to cartwheel across
the room, and did indeed attempt the feat, rather disgusting
the cat in the process. It was in fact a resounding failure, but
this did not appear to dampen Mr Pepperfields spirits at all.
He walked around as if in a daze, occasionally jumping and
skipping a little.
Looking out of the window he could see the postman
approaching. Do you know its nearly impossible to do a cartwheel when you have a goddamn knee replacement! he
shouted in his excitement as he opened the door.
Umm... Your letters the postman mumbled, thrusting
them towards him.
Yes yes, not even remotely important, come in, come in!
Before the postman could protest, Mr Pepperfield had
gripped him firmly around the shoulders and guided him in:
Now a cartwheel, if you will!
With surprisingly little resistance (it was that kind of day)
the postman soon obliged, and was tumbling across the floor
with a curious grace. A few streets away, a bus driver, suddenly
feeling the loss of a long-dead dog, stopped his bus and wept
bitterly. A policeman holding up traffic, realised his hands provided a perfect imitation of God and started to study them,
swirling them in front of his face, and causing two minor road
accidents. Everywhere people were stopping on the street, or
getting out of their cars, or putting down the phone firmly in
their offices, suddenly realising the great mysteries and
wonder of everything that ever has been, everything that is,

and everything that will be.
Do you realise, said Mr Pepperfield to the dizzy postman,
that you knocked at my door just because I can conceive of a person such as you?
I didnt actually knock, sir, said the postman,
rubbing his head, which was sore from all
the tumbling.
A minor point, dear man! But now I
choose to conceive of a hmmm He
cast around the room, his eyes landing on
a old photograph of a trip to the zoo a
hippopotamus! he shouted triumphantly,
rushing to the window, to watch the hippopotamus make its ponderous way past.
The postman felt he should be more surprised. He was vaguely aware that if this had happened yesterday, he would think he was in a dream. But
now he understood dreams better than any kind of reality.
Keen to be in on the action, he shouted at Mr Pepperfield, I
conceive of the most beautiful woman that ever existed!
Pah, how boring! Mr Pepperfield exclaimed as a busty
blonde also went by the conveniently large window. Is that
really your idea of beauty? So clichd!
But conversations such as this were taking place in every
home, shop, business and office in the world. The pavements
were full as people rushed out of their houses or left their jobs
unattended, in astonishment that they had spent so long doing
such pointless things. As they began to realise what they could do,
a myriad of strange, wonderful, beautiful things started popping
in and out of existence, making the world altogether more interesting, and rather different than it had been the previous evening.
But they dont exist, do they, these things? asked the postman in an effort to voice the understanding that had been placed
so clearly in the centre of his head: They dont exist, and I dont
exist, and it doesnt really matter. Thats right, isnt it?
Of course its right! said Mr Pepperfield, attempting
another cartwheel, and this time realising his potential, windmilling across the room unhindered by knee replacements.
And because we dont exist, we can do anything we want!
But what if... mused the postman, effortlessly scaling the
walls, What if?
Dont say it! Mr Pepperfield shouted with alarm from his
position in the top corner of the room, seeing the direction of
the postmans thoughts.
What if... the postman murmured again, What if the
world and us and everything in it just suddenly pops out of
existence?
There was silence then, because it did.
KIMBERLEY MARTINEZ 2016
Kimberley Martinez is a social worker in Scotland, with a 13-year-old

daughter.
Interested in Philosophy
but have a degree in

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Enter the disc

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In this original new book, German philosopher Markus Gabriel

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25 Brief Lives: Pierre Hadot

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ere at Philosophy Now we try to perform a whole set

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Wow, and you read through the entire book?

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once again it is not clear to me what Im

knowledge can also

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Introduction to New Realism by Maurizio Ferraris, translated by Sarah De