Ok, I picked up Wittgenstein's philosophical investigations, and Heidegger's Being and Time, and plan on reading them soon. I'll be posting notes from my reading periodically. I still need to figure out how to do a table of contents.

Michael Vossen

Ok, I have a good smattering of essays down, I will re-read them eventually and post my comments. Anyone visiting this site should feel free to comment as well. Hopefully I can figure out how to make a table of contents as well, I'd like to order the essays chronologically. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know.

-Michael Vossen

Justice and the Good
Michael Vossen

In book II of The Republic, Glaucon presents the arguments “that all who practice it [justice] do so unwillingly, as necessary, but not good”(1). The argument is made of three part, first, that Justice is not good, second, that all who are just are not just willingly and third, they are just because of necessity.

Before Glaucon presents these arguments, he defines justice to be “a compact among themselves [those who cannot escape injustice and chose to be unjust] neither to do injustice nor to suffer it”(2). By this definition, justice is like a rule created by the players of a game, such as monopoly, where the players agree not to cheat (i.e. steal money from another player when they are not looking, move extra spaces to avoid jail, etc). Furthermore, this is a rule created by those who are not perfect at cheating, players who are sometimes able to steal money successfully and other times are not. Glaucon’s definition of injustice as something that is naturally good to do and naturally bad to receive (3), is also clarified by this analogy. Injustice in monopoly, such as stealing money from another player, is good to do, as the player benefits from the extra money taken from his opponent, and is bad to receive, as the opponent looses money. Glaucon’s definitions of justice and injustice are important because his argument is based on these definitions, which may vary from his audience’s ideas of what justice is, which could cause confusion because of conflicting notions of justice/injustice.
Glaucon’s first argument, that justice is not good, is rather concise. His first conclusion is that justice is between the best and the worst, with the premises that the best is “doing injustice without paying the penalty” and the worst is “suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself” (4). Recall that justice is neither doing injustice nor suffering it. If the best is “doing injustice without paying the penalty”, then a just man would not participate in the best, as he has agreed not to do injustice. However, neither would the just man participate in the worst, suffering injustice without being able to avenge oneself. The other men would be behaving justly due to the agreement, so none of them would commit the injustice. If some outsider to the agreement did an unjust deed to the just man, the just man is assured vengeance, as the men will group together to punish the outsider because he might potentially do injustice to them. This puts justice between the best and the worst, doing injustice and suffering injustice. If this conclusion is correct, then justice is not good. Recall that doing injustice is naturally good and suffering injustice is naturally bad. If justice is between the best, doing injustice, and the worst, suffering injustice, then justice is between the good and bad.

Glaucon’s argument is further supported through his definition of good, i.e. “... the desire for the better; this is what any nature naturally defines as good”(5), and his argument that the just man and the unjust man would both pursue the same thing, the better, given the chance (6). This shows that justice is not a good in itself, but a good in so far as it can lead to a higher good. This concept is similar to Aristotle’s hierarchy of happiness; one becomes a baker not because one wants to bake, but because one thinks that through baking happiness might be achieved. In Glaucon’s argument, it works this way; one becomes just not because one wants to be just, but because through justice, some good might be achieved. If the person could achieve that profit without justice, the person would not be just. Justice can not be good then, as if it were good, and then all men would pursue justice for justice’s sake, not for the sake of something else.

This leads into Glaucon’s second argument, that all who practice justice do so unwillingly, out of necessity. First, note that he is arguing that all who practice justice do so unwillingly, not most, or some. By asserting this, Glaucon must show that it is a characteristic of everyone who practices justice. To show that it is a characteristic of everyone who practices justice, Glaucon shows that it is in human nature to for people to pursue their desires, which are what they see as good. Glaucon implies that there are two kinds of people: those who can do injustice over another, and those who are not able to do injustice over another (7). Instead of writing this difference every time, I will refer to the man capable of doing injustice over another successfully as the strong man, and the man who is not capable of doing injustice over another as the weak man. Glaucon argues that the strong man would never agree to a system of justice, because “He’d be mad”(8). What Glaucon probably means by “He’d be mad”, is that an agreement not to be unjust would not be for the best of the strong man, and therefore not for his good. It is not clear whether or not Glaucon thinks a strong man will ever practice justice. It seems like he is saying that a strong man would never practice justice, but in lines 350d1-2, Glaucon says “...if a man were to get hold of such license [the ability to be strong] and were to never to do any injustice....” which suggests that some strong men might practice justice. Glaucon might be arguing that if a strong man follows a system of justice, he is doing so because some stronger force compels him to, and thus not following the system willingly, though he never specifically says anything like this. Hence, strong men who practice justice do so unwillingly.

Now all that Glaucon has to do is show that the weak men who practice justice do so because they are not strong. To do this, Glaucon uses the story of Gyges to illustrate his premise of human nature. The story presents a situation where a man can act without punishment due to finding an invisibility ring. (9). Glaucon asserts that anyone with the ring would commit injustice (10). This is Glaucon’s characteristic of humans, that they would do injustice if they were capable of doing injustice successfully, i.e. they would be strong men if they could. He uses this characteristic to argue that the weak men who practice justice do so because they are weak, and, if they could become strong, they would then not practice justice (11). Thus, Glaucon has argued that all men who practice justice do so unwillingly

The “as necessary” clause follows the assertions made earlier and is implied. The weak are just because together they are more powerful than the strong, and it is necessary for them to be just, because on a one to one basis, the strong would commit injustice against them. The strong who are just are because the weak are stronger than them as a group, and it is necessary for them to be just if they do not want injustice committed against them. This is Glaucon’s argument for “all who practice it [justice] do so unwillingly, as necessary, but not good” (12).
Glaucon's argument is flawed in that his premises of the good being what is best for oneself, and being what one naturally desires, is flawed. Let us examine each of these in turn.
The good is not always what is best for oneself. If the good was what was best for oneself, then good is only associated with an individual. But an individual might identify themselves as a part of a group as much as they identify themselves as an individual. If they consider themselves as part of a group, then what is best for them, as an individual, and what is best for them as the group can differ. For example, a person might dedicate themselves to their country, a group of people. Suppose that the person was in the position where if they were to die, they would save the country, but if they lived, there country would be destroyed. What is best for the person is to live. What is best for the country is to not be destroyed. Thus, what is best for the person and what is best for the group come into conflict. Here a judgment must be made; is it better to do what is best for the group, or is it better to do what is best for the individual? Regardless of the answer, good cannot be the best. For if good was the best, then it could be divided. It would be good to die, and it would be good to preserve ones country. However, the good cannot be the bad, for bad is opposite to good. And if one were to live, then he/she would be doing what is good for the individual and what is bad for the country, and visa versa. Thus, it would be good/bad to die, and good/bad to live. If good is truly good, then it can only be good, and not good/bad. Thus, what is good cannot be what is best, for the good could be divided if it is what is best.

The good is not what someone naturally desires, because a person can desire something, and later not desire it. For instance, a person might desire a candy bar. Does this make the candy bar good? The person might take a bite of the candy bar, realize that it has nuts in it, or that it does not taste as good as it first seemed. A person might see waxed fruit, and thinking that it is real, bite it, then spit wax in disgust. Thus, these objects would appear to be good, and not really be good. However, it could be argued that these are not what you really desire, that you are being tricked. To this one might say that then people cannot know what the good is by desire, for if desire can trick someone into thinking something is good that is not really good, then one might not never know if they are being tricked or not. They can never be sure that what seems good now will be good later, and thus might spend their whole life pursuing what seems good at the time, never reaching it. Thus, the good cannot be defined to be what someone naturally desires.

“But”, Glaucon might says, “I said that good is doing injustice without getting caught. You seem to be arguing with some other good in mind, without much consideration of injustice. This does not directly counter my argument.” Glaucon would be correct in saying this. The previous arguments only pseudo-use Glaucon’s definition of good. To really make the arguments valid, it needs to be shown that doing injustice without getting caught is not really good, and to do this, one must have a conception of what is really good to work from. I do not have clear conception of what is really good, but I have some ideas as to what it would entail. To be really good seems to require permanence, and a degree of happiness, though happiness does not seem to totally be goodness. Injustice is not permanent. When one fulfills a desire, such as doing an unjust act, that desire is not really satisfied, it is only temporarily fulfilled. The desire after the fulfillment is usually stronger then the previous desire. For instance, say someone seeks pleasure. They might find an object or action that gives them pleasure, but with time and repetition, that pleasure is dulled, replaced with a stronger desire for pleasure. Continuing to pursue pleasure, one will get to the point where they can’t find anything that satisfies this pleasure. And desiring something without being able to have it is painful, especially over long periods of time. The person becomes ruled by this desire, and becomes miserable in not being able to fulfill it. A miserable life is not a happy life, and probably not a good life. Note that this is an inward misery, a misery inflicted by oneself, not an external torture. It seems like goodness, like this misery, comes from the inside, and not from anything truly external. However, I cannot prove to Glaucon that these ideas are right; I can only feel it inside of me. Glaucon would have to experience these things himself, and I cannot make him experience it, I can only try to help him recognize it.

Notes
1 BkII, 358c2-3
2 BkII, 359a
3 BkII, 358e3-4
4 BkII, 359a4-7
5 BkII, 359c4-5
6 BkII, 359c3-4
7 BkII, 359b1-2
8 BkII, 359b3
9 BkII, 359d-360b2
10 BkII, 360b3-c2
11 BkII, 360c2-c5
12 BkII, 358c2-3



Bibiliography
Plato. The Republic of Plato, second edition. Translated by Allan Bloom. Published by basic books. Copyright 1965, Allan Bloom.
Special Thanks to: Matt Cheruit, Kaitlin Lubetkin, and Colin Jones for editing/criticizing the paper.

On Love’s Form:
A platonic analysis of Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians.
Michael Vossen

The ideas of Love expressed in Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians and Plato’s
Symposium are, despite differences in method, purpose, and belief, remarkably similar. For both, love’s highest form is eternal, separate from material objects, and only partially comprehendible in this world, among other things. Both advocate knowing love’s highest form as a way to live a virtuous life. Their ideas are not the same, though, as Plato’s definition has a broader scope than Paul’s definition, which leads to different virtuous lives. These differences can be explained by the differences in purpose, method and beliefs held by the two authors.
Socrates makes Plato’s idea of love clear. Socrates explains that Diatoma, a priestess, taught him what love is when he was younger, and he agrees with her definition. Diatoma says “love is the desire to have the good forever.”1 ‘The good’ is the platonic form of good, and it encompasses all virtues, including beauty. Thus, the love of ideas and platonic forms is the highest form of love, because these are the only things that can be perfectly good and eternal. Material things’ beauty fades with time, people may become unvirtuous, but the virtues themselves are unchanging and eternal. Diatoma suggests that through a progression of loving things, a single person, that person’s mind/virtues, virtues in general, laws, thoughts, and finally love itself, a person might see true beauty. Diatoma’s progression causes a person to recognize that immaterial, universal things exist. This leads to knowledge of the platonic forms. This knowledge may finally fulfill the desire to possesses the good forever, for
“...when someone sees beauty with the part that can see it, that he’ll be able
to give birth not to just images of virtue (since it’s not images he’s in touch with),
but to true virtue (since it’s true beauty he’s in touch with). It’s someone who’s
given birth to true virtue and brought it up who has the chance of becoming
loved by the Gods, and immortal- if any human can be immortal”2
For Paul’s idea of love to be similar to Plato’s, love needs to be immaterial, like the form of the good, provide a virtuous life through it’s recognition, and be desirable for it’s eternalness.

Paul’s idea of love is immaterial. Love as purely bodily desire is distinguished and criticized early in both works. In the Symposium, Phaedrus’ eulogy is criticized by Pausanius for not distinguishing between a common and heavenly conception of love.3 Pausanius explains that the common notion, in which people “...are attracted to women as much as boys, and to bodies rather than minds.”4 is associated with inappropriate and unjust behavior in it’s followers. Through the rest of his speech, Pausanius concerns himself with creating laws that restrict the common notion’s inappropriate influence.

Like Pausanius, Paul is concerned with inappropriate conceptions of love. For example, Paul warns the Corinthians “... not to associate with sexually immoral persons.” 5 A sexually immoral person is a man or women who is “sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber.”6. Paul’s domain of the sexually immoral probably includes all “Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers...”7, though Paul does not explicitly identify these people as sexually immoral. Paul creates guidelines for members of his religion to restrict the immorality among them by separating immoral and moral desires and suggesting proper conduct. For example, Paul recommends that the unmarried and widows remain unmarried, as to control sexual immorality.8 Thus, both Paul and Plato concern themselves with identifying and promoting lovers’ proper conduct.

While Paul does not describe what his sexually immoral people are attracted to, Paul’s sexually immoral person appears to hold “common notions” of love, as Paul’s examples are all connected by attraction to physical things. This physical, “common” love is an inferior type of love for both Paul and Plato. Both present physical loves’ desire for material objects as leading a person possessing only a common notion of love to committing immoral actions. As both authors praise a different type of love, this distinction probably results from worries that a reader might confuse a common notion of love with the better aspect of love. The common, strictly material concept is thus distinguished and separated from love’s better conception.

Paul’s love could be like the form of the good, but what Paul means by ‘Love’ is unclear. Paul could be talking about love as a thing or love as a relationship between two things. If love is a thing, then how does one possess it? For love is not material, so it cannot be found or possessed like an object. Paul probably means love as a relation between two things. More specifically, love for Paul probably means a relation between man and God. During his talk about marriage and the duties shared by husband and wife, Paul never describes the relation between men and women as love. Furthermore, all references to love in the Letter to the Corinthians describe the love between man and God, or are directed at love itself. Thus, Paul’s love, taken literally, is the desire for God. God is like a platonic form. Paul uses God as the platonic trait’s source, or as their combination into one being. To justify this claim, it is sufficient to look back to the text.

A similarity between Aristophanes’ separated lovers and a passage in Letter to the Corinthians helps to analyze Paul’s ideas. Paul writes
“Do you not know that whomever is united with a prostitute becomes
one body with her? For it is said ‘ The two become one flesh’. But anyone
united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him.” 9
Paul’s warning against sex with prostitutes suggests that a person united with a prostitute gains the prostitute’s immoral characteristics. Aristophanes’ speech presents a similar idea: if Hephaestus offered to merge two lovers’ bodies into one,
“Everyone would think that what he was hearing now was just what he’d longed
for all this time: to come together and be fused with the one he loved and become
one instead of two.” 10

Interestingly, both see lovers as one person’s parts. The two lovers’ desire for union into one suggests that a lover recognizes and desires some characteristics in another person that they want to possess. The lovers’ union is like a merge of identity; there no longer exist two objects with different properties, but one object with both of the previous objects’ properties. Union with the Lord would therefore merge the Lord’s properties with the persons. If the Lord is virtuous, then the union is like a person seeing true beauty, as both make a person becomes more virtuous. The Lord is different from a platonic form in that the Lord is has more properties than a form. While the Lord’s unknowablity makes it hard to comprehend what all the Lord’s properties are, power, beauty, knowledge, and eternalness are a few properties possessed by the Lord. A person loving God at least becomes powerful, beautiful, knowledgeable, and eternal, for Paul writes:

“If I speak in the tongues of mortals and angels, but do not have love, I
am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and
understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to
remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my
possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I might boast, but do not have
love, I gain nothing.” 11

Paul’s love contains or is a part of beauty, knowledge, power and an act’s goodness, because the actions he describes would normally be considered beautiful, knowledgeable, powerful and good, and the only thing missing from them is love. Paul could mean that love is like the sugar in cookies. If the sugar is removed, the cookie is no longer sweet. If I bake a cookie, as to harden it, but it does not have sugar, it is a flat biscuit. If this is Paul’s argument, then love is music’s attractive, knowledge’s meaningful, faith’s powerful, and piety’s good characteristic. Alternatively, Paul may mean that love is a necessary component of attractive speech, knowledge, faith and piety. Love may not be the source of beauty, meaning, power, and goodness, simply required among other traits for beauty, power, meaning, and goodness to exist. In this case, love is like one chemical of multiple chemicals necessary for a reaction. The reaction, which would be the beauty, power, goodness, or meaning, does not come from the love, but from love’s combination with other characteristics. Since Paul’s love is directed towards God, God is either the source of beauty, power, goodness, and meaning, or God is a necessary component of beauty, power, goodness, and meaning.

This differs from Plato, whose love is not beautiful.12Plato argues that people only desire what they do not have, so love itself is not beautiful, because it desires beauty.13 For Plato, beauty and good are two distinct platonic forms. While they can both exist in an object at one time, they are not the same thing. If God is like a platonic form, then God is all the platonic forms, for if God was not, then God would be separate from some platonic form. If God is separate from some platonic form, then God is gaining that forms characteristic from something other than himself. God, as described in Genesis, created all things, so, under this assumption, everything comes from God, so it is not the case that there exists something separate from God. Thus, for Paul, God probably is all the platonic forms, and the love of God is the love of the good.

For Paul, the love of God leads to virtuous acts, through service to the Lord. It is unclear whether these acts are similar to the Platonic acts of love. Paul writes:

“The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the
Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please
his wife, and his interests are divided.”14

,If pleasing the Lord only means praying, sacrifice, and fasting, then Paul’s actions are contrary to the Platonic lover-unless praying, fasting, and sacrifice involve rationally analyzing the Lord’s form. If pleasing the Lord means establishing religious institutions, almsgiving, and creating ethical doctrine meant to improve the communities’ morality, then the Lord’s affairs are like Diatona’s children of the mind- creating laws/programs to benefit humanity. The children of the mind are the results of love in more universal, higher, way. Laws and religious institutions are created to further the communities good. People who create these laws love all virtuous people within the community, and see beauty within all members. Paul’s idea of love could be similar to Plato’s, but, like the problems raised in the Euthyphro regarding piety, it is unclear what exactly pleases the Lord, and what the Lord’s affairs are. The actions could be good because they are pleasing to the Lord, or they could be pleasing to the Lord because they are good. If the acts are good because they are pleasing to the Lord, it is unclear what is pleasing about them. If the acts are pleasing because they are good, than goodness seems separate from the Lord, which is probably contradictory for Paul.

For Paul, good actions lead to immortality. Paul writes:

“For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable
and we will be changed. For this perishable body must put on
imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then
the saying that is written will be fulfilled.”15

, which is his premise for:

“Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling
in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your
labor is not in vain.”16

. Thus, love is desirable because of the eternalness gained through acts of love. Interestingly, marriage is no longer a means to immortality under Paul’s reasoning. If reproduction is an act of love that brings a sort of immortality, and if a person can become immortal by loving and serving God, then reproduction is not necessary for immortality. Furthermore, if the apocalypse will end this world, then marriage ceases to be a method of obtaining immortality. So, under Paul’s thought, reproduction is not an act that will help people acquire the good forever. Following this reasoning, laws, writing, noble acts, and all other material and temporal actions that are enacted to obtain the good forever are not acts of love, for they cannot obtain the good forever. Only God is good forever, thus the only act of love to perform is the act in which one unites with God.

There are many differences between Paul and Plato’s thoughts, which probably occur due to differences in purpose, method, and belief. Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 1 is written not primarily as a discourse on love’s nature, but as an argument for communal unity directed towards Christian factions in Corinthia. As such, Paul’s purpose is to persuade the Corinthians towards this end. Thus, his language and style may be tailored to a Corinthian audience, and he may be using Corinthian concepts and ideas that are not necessarily in complete agreement with his own. The similarities may be tools for persuasion, and thus will not completely represent what Paul believes.

The apocalypse’s imminence also modifies Paul’s advice. For example, Paul advises the virgins, “...in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are.”17. The virgins might live differently if not for the impending crisis, assuming that the impending crisis is the apocalypse, in which the virgins are better off as virgins. So, Paul’s advice is constrained by time; the end is near, and people must recognize the truth or perish. Paul’s sincerity is questionable, because a lie or oversimplification might be justified if it can persuade someone to Christianity, which for Paul, would give the person a better life.

Paul’s love’s specificity is problematic in determining love’s scope. Paul does not create a general, encompassing definition of love, but rather cites various examples of what it is and what it is not. These specific examples are descriptively and poetically powerful, though do little to explain what love is. Paul’s description is thus ambiguous, as without defining his terms, he leaves his description open to interpretation. This is problematic in that readers may graft their own subjective notions of love into Paul’s letter. Paul may not have even had an explanation in mind. His descriptions are certainly persuasive if not meaningful, and his goal is to persuade a group to act a certain way, not to explain how one thing is. This is like the poetic descriptions of love in the Symposium.

Plato identifies problems resulting from poetic descriptions that do not accurately describe love’s meaning. Paul does not. In the Symposium, Agathon beautifully describes love in a classic eulogistic form. Agathon describes love’s virtues, writing:

“Love drains us of estrangement and fills us with familiarity, causing us
to come together in all shared gatherings like this, and acting as our leader
in festival, chorus and sacrifice, He includes mildness and excludes wildness.
He is gracious and kindly; gazed on by the wise, by the Gods; craved by those denied him, treasured by those enjoying him...”18
Likewise, Paul writes:

“ Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice
in wrong doings, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.”19

While both descriptions are poetic, beautiful and moving, they also, unfortunately, do not accurately explain love’s meaning. Socrates’ criticism, that the speakers are claiming the best features for their subject, whether their claims are true or not, seems applicable here.20For example, it seems folly to describe love as rejoicing in the truth when it believes all things, for love then could believe contradictory things, one of which must be false. Paul could have a different truth in mind, but what that truth is is unclear.

To Paul, people’s love of the physical may not be love at all; only the love of God is called love. If the love of God is the only love, then people are not mistaking the beauty in objects as the highest beauty, but rather, their desire is some new word for not behaving in the right matter. It is strange that in talking about marriage, which seems to involve love, Paul does not actually mention love. Marriage is for those who are not able to control their passion; if a man has uncontrollable desires, it is better for him to limit them to a single women. In discussing how husbands and wives should act, Paul writes “This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am.”21 . Paul is unmarried. So, Paul thinks everyone should be unmarried. Thus, marriage is separate from real love.

Finally, Paul’s ideas of love differ from Plato’s in that Paul’s relies on faith in the Lord’s dictates more than reason. Paul does not explain why immoral actions are wrong. Paul gives no reason other than God’s disapproval. Paul’s explanation of love comes from an unquestionable divine authority. It seems like Paul cannot explain why his description is right to his audience. People who do not understand God are not helped by Paul’s explanation and recommendations. If good actions are based on pleasing God, and a person does not understand God, that person will not know how to perform good actions. Sinners, people who commit bad actions, are expected to recognize their actions wrongness without knowledge of why the action is wrong, why God disallows one thing and allows another, and why right action is right. Expecting sinners to correct their actions based on unrelatable laws is an unrealistic expectation. Who considers an action wrong without explanation of why an action is wrong? Faith, an unquestioning acceptance and trust of an unknown principle, can be held for both true and false statements, regardless of their apparent validity in this world. Plato’s description relies on reason, which relies on the audiences’ experience and things existing in this world. If human experience, and the rationality developed from that experience is not a source of knowledge, than what can be called knowledge?


Notes
*Page numbers from the Symposium are taken from the universal notation on the side of the book, not from specific pages in the book.
1. Symposium: 206.a
2. Symposium: 212.a
3. Symposium: 180c-181.e
4. Symposium: 181.b
5. Letter to the Corinthians: 5.9
6. Letter to the Corinthians: 5.11
7. Letter to the Corinthians: 6.9
8. Letter to the Corinthians: 7.8
9. Letter to the Corinthians: 6.12
10. Symposium: 192.e
11. Letter to the Corinthians: 13.1-3
12. Symposium: 201.a-b.
13. Symposium: 200b-d
14. Letter to the Corinthians: 7.32
15. Letter to the Corinthians: 15.54
16. Letter to the Corinthians: 15.58
17. Letter to the Corinthians: 7.25
18. Symposium: 197.d-e.
19. Letter to the Corinthians: 13.4-8
20. Symposium: 198 .e
21. Letter to the Corinthians: 7.6-8

Undeveloped thoughts and unanswered questions
-God’s disapproval, rather than transcend the bad actions, reinforces them through its disapproval. The actions become rebellious, and this rebellion through committing them makes them attractive. Platonic thought transcends this problem – it does not deny the pleasure gained through the actions, but suggests that the person has not realized that the actions pleasure is incomplete, and in some cases, non-pleasure.

- Both Paul and Plato recognize that their knowledge is incomplete. A major theme in Plato’s works is Socrates’ ignorance of things other than himself. Through carefully analyzing people’s claims to knowledge, Socrates reveals moral issues inherent complexity.
“Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for
tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we
know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes,
the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I
thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an
end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see
face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have
been fully known. And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the
greatest of these is love. 13.8-13
What is Paul trying to say?

- (this is oversimplified and needs more thought). Plato’s notion of love is more forgiving. People love objects, people, etc because they see something beautiful/eternal/good in them that they want for themselves. Their desires are not perverse and amoral, simply incomplete, ignorant and capable of being developed. Where Paul’s flaws leads to God’s resent and eventual damnation, Plato sees human error as causing hurt to the individual, in them living a poorer life. Error in Plato is only wrong if it is not learned from- full knowledge, which leads to a full life, can be obtained from examined experience. In this way the Roman’s criticism of Christianity, that it hates humanity is correct. Only a life with minimal error, through utter adherence to Christian beliefs, can be fully called good in Christian thought. Mistakes, an important source of experience, detract from a good life. But can a life without mistakes, without pain, and trial, and joy and sexual feelings, and varieties of human experience even be called a life? Should we count unfortunate those who have never been unfortunate? Has a person who has lived with minimal error through faith overcome a desire for power, pleasure, fame, fortune and self-engrandising? Or are these desires suppressed and not spoken of? Are they enacted upon, by re-defining morality, like Nietzsche’s usurper of classical good? Discussing a good life is a topic in itself, and would stray beyond this paper’s bounds. Yet it is good to question what a good life is to Paul, and wonder if it is something we want to live.
Bibliography
The Symposium. Plato. Translated by Christopher Gill. Published by Penguin classics, 1999. Copyright Christopher Gill.

Plato, The Collected Dialogues. Plato. Edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Published by Princeton University Press, at Princeton, New Jersey.

The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Edited by Michael D. Coogan. Published by Oxford University Press in Oxford, New York.

Plato’s Imperfection Argument

Plato’s imperfection argument tries to prove two interesting claims. The first claim is that F’s exist. The variable ‘F’ here designates concepts such as Equality, Beauty, Justness, Piety, etc, which Socrates claims to be equivalent in regards to his argument at 75c-d. The second claim is that our souls exist before our birth. I’ve tried to take what is central to his argument, and present it in a pseudo-Fitch format.

Plato’s Imperfection Argument Notes

1. We can only think of things we have
experienced.

2. We have had senses since birth.
3. Our bodies did not exist before birth
4. The sight of one thing makes us recollect
another.
5. We are able to discern the degree to which an
object is F.


6. Suppose an arbitrary perceptible
object(s) exists
7. The object(s) appears to be F
8. It is not the case that the object(s) appears to be F
9. Absurd
10. The perceptible object(s) is/are imperfectly F

11. All perceptible objects are imperfectly F.

12. An object is F if and only if it is perfectly F.

13.. We are aware of this imperfection in
perceivable objects.

14. We perceive objects to be imperfectly F.
15. If we are aware that something is imperfectly
F, then we must know of a perfect F.


1. 75 (end of page 65). Note that experience here is sense perception.
2. Suppressed Premise
3. Suppressed Premise
4. 73d-e

5. 74-b. This is not an exact discernment. Also, this may only apply to recollected, similar objects.
6-10. 74b-c. This is an attempt to show why Socrates might think 11. Eleven may simply be a suppressed premise. If this is the case, then I’m not sure what to make of the “objects appear to be F and not-F part”.

11. Suppressed conclusion. Also, objects are limited to this-life objects. (6-10 All intro).
12. 74c-d. (Stipulation or an analytical consequence of F’s)
13. 74d-e. (11, 5 analytical consequence-abbreviated as AC from here on out.)
14. (13, Reiteration)
15. 74e This is either a suppressed premise or (5, AC –we can’t discern if we don’t know a perfect F because everything would be perfectly F)
16. We know that there is a perfect Fnot just that there is one, but that we know the F

17. There is such a thing as the F itself


18. F type things exist


19. Suppose F type things exist

20. Looking at objects that are imperfectly
F reminds us of F

21. We can only think of things we have experienced.
22, If we can think of F, then we must have
experienced it at some time.
23. We haven’t experienced F after birth.


24. We experienced F before our birth.

25. Our bodies did not exist before birth

26. Something identical to us, but not our
body, that is able to sense (since it can
know things) exists.I don’t think he’ll want to say that our soul senses, though. I would rephrase this premise.
27. Call this thing the soul.



28. The soul sensed F before our life














16. (15, 13 If elimination)

17. (1, 16 AC) Alternatively, a Parmenidian principle may be in play.
18. (17, Existential introduction) Alternate phrasing is “some things are F’s”


20. (4, 19 AC) or (4, 14, 15 AC)this step doesn’t seem to be required


21. (1, Reiteration)

22. 75 (21, 20 AC)it doesn’t appear that you need step 20 to get this. All you need is step 21.

23. 75b-c (11,1, 12 AC?) Everything is imperfectly F, so no after birth experience of F.you might want to include this claim in the main argument as a set of steps. You’ll also need some claim about that which we experience after birth (in addition to 1, 11, and 12)
24. 75c (23, 21 AC)-Sketchy move?
25. (3, Reiteration) –Remember, this is a suppressed premise.
26. Suppressed conclusion
(24, 25, 1 AC)

27. Suppressed conclusion. Stipulation on 26, I’m just naming the theoretical thing.

28. 76c-d. Socrates replies to two objections to this premise here. The first is that we don’t seem to know everything. The second is the possibility we gained this knowledge at birth. The objections and responses do not play a role in the argument I’m outlining and will not be considered here.





29. The soul exists before our birth.

30. If F type things exist, then our souls exist
before our birth.

30(a) If F type things exist, then our souls exist
before we are born and F things exist in the
pre-birth realm.

31. F type things exist.

32. Our souls exist before we are born.

32(a) F things exist in the pre-birth realm






29. (27, 24, 25 AC)

30. 76d-77 (19-29, If intro)


30(a) Alternate stronger conclusion. F things exist to be sensed pre-birth, so Socrates could add this.
31. 77 (18, reiteration)

32. 77 (30, 31, If elimination)

32(a) Same as above, but suppressed



My objection to Plato:
Plato’s argument seems weakest at steps twenty-four. In step twenty-four, Plato seems to resolve the paradox created by his claim “we can only think of things we have experienced”, and the fact that we have knowledge of perfect entities (Justice, Equality, etc.) that we haven’t encountered in our lives by concluding that we must have encountered the perfect entities before we were born. Plato could have alternatively concluded from the absurdity that it is not the case that we can only think of things that we have experienced, or that we don’t really have knowledge of perfect entities. Concluding that we encounter the perfect entities before we are born introduces more problems that need to be explained, such as the existence of a soul, the soul’s location before birth, and the apparent divide between the perfect entity’s pre-birth location and real-life manifestations of them. I think that Plato should have appealed to a simpler explanation in resolving the paradox, and not have concluded that we encounter perfect entities pre-birth.

Works Cited
This webpage was helpful: http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/phaedo.htm#imperf

Exegesis on De Anima 412b10-24*

In Aristotle’s De Anima, Book II, lines 10-24, Aristotle explains what a soul is. Aristotle writes, “It [the soul] is substance in the sense which corresponds to the account of a thing”. Aristotle tries to clarify this definition through analogy with an axe. Aristotle asks us to suppose that the axe is “natural body”. It seems like Aristotle wants us to make this distinction because an axe is normally considered as an “artificial body”, and only natural bodies can have souls. After this supposition, Aristotle notes that “being an axe” is the essence of an axe, and “if this disappeared from it, it would cease being an axe, except in name”. This passage is a bit unclear. At first glance, Aristotle seems to be suggesting that if “being an axe” disappeared from an axe, the axe would cease “being an axe”. This seems tautological, as it is trivially true that an axe minus its axeness isn’t an axe.

Further examples suggest a different reading. Aristotle asks us to “...apply this doctrine in the case of the parts of the living body.” and to “Suppose that the eye were an animal-sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance of the eye which corresponds to the account, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name.” This example helps clarify Aristotle’s definition, and suggests a better reading of the axe passage. Sight can be called the soul of an eye in that it is the essential, distinctive feature that the matter of an eye is arranged for. Likewise, instead of describing an axe’s essence as “being an axe”, Aristotle could have described an axe’s essence as “axeing”; that is to say, the distinctive action that an axe does, such as splitting matter like wood into halves. Also, like the eye is the matter of seeing, an axe is the matter of axeing. Here, Aristotle may be suggesting that matter is arranged so that a certain function may be carried out; the eye is spherical so as to better its seeing, and the axe is heavy on one end with a sturdy grip so that it might better carry out the function of axeing.

Interestingly, Aristotle seems to think that when the matter of an eye or an axe is not able to perform its function, the matter can only be considered an eye or an axe in “name only”. Aristotle compares these functionless objects to “...the eye of a statue or of a painted figure.” This seems a bit strange since it seems like people would still call the dull, axe shaped object that used to be an axe an axe. At most, they would describe it as a broken axe, but a broken axe still seems like an axe. Here, Aristotle seems to be departing from his usual practice of explaining how ordinary language correctly or quasi-correctly describes things. Aristotle’s account would probably benefit from an explanation of why people are confused when they speak of broken axes as a axes, and sightless eyes as eyes.

Physics 1.8

In Physics 1.8, Aristotle addresses Parmenides’ claim that “nothing that is can come to be or pass away”. Aristotle begins by presenting Parmenides proof:

“So they say that none of the things that are either come to be or passes out of
existence, because what comes to be must do so either from what is or from what
is not, both of with are impossible. For what is cannot come to be (because it is already),
and from what is not nothing could have come to be (because something must be
underlying).”

Next, Aristotle considers in what sense Parmenides and his followers are right, and the sense in which they “...were mislead in their search for truth by their inexperience.” Aristotle does this by showing that there are two ways to understand the expression ‘from what is’ and the expression ‘from what is not’.

In the case of ‘what is’, Aristotle distinguishes between ‘from what is’ and ‘what is acted on’. Here, Aristotle talks about how a doctor does not build a house qua doctor, but qua house builder. Aristotle then explains that, properly speaking, we talk about a doctor becoming or changing only when he is doing so qua doctor. In this way, when Parmenides speaks of coming to be from “what is not”, properly speaking, he refers to things becoming qua what is not. Aristotle thinks that in this sense, Parmenides is correct to say “things can’t come to be from what is not” but maintains that in the other, qualified sense, Parmenides is wrong. As we can speak of a doctor building a house outside his function, we can speak of what is coming to be from what is not. For example, a bird can come to be from what is not a bird (an egg), because the bird becomes a bird not qua what is not, but qua egg. Notice that here there is something underlying the change.

Using the same distinction between doctoring qua doctor, and doctoring qua house builder, Aristotle explains that Parmenides’ claim “nothing comes to be from what is” is right in cases where what is comes to be qua what is, but wrong in qualified cases. For example, Aristotle thinks an animal of a certain kind can come to be from an animal of a certain kind, and animals can come to be from animals. The dog Lassie (what is a dog) can come to be from the dog Rosy (what is a dog). Here, Lassie comes to be from a dog, but not qua dog, since the dog qualification caries over. In this way, what is can come to be from what is.

The main problem I have with Aristotle’s solution is that it seems to misconstrue Parmenides argument. When Parmenides talks about the impossibility of things to pass out of or into existence, he seems to be referring more to an original creation and not the generation and decay of existing things. In this way, he seems to be arguing that what exists always existed and always will exist. Parmenides might respond to Aristotle by saying that, while Aristotle might be correct about the use of man’s opinions, he has missed the point about what is or is not outside of it.

Physics VIII.4-5 Exegesis

In lines 255a24-255b31 of Aristotle’s Physics, Aristotle tries to explain the “motion of heavy and light things to their places”. Aristotle does this by explaining in terms of potentiality what an elements potential movement is. Aristotle notes, “Whenever something capable of acting and something capable of being acted on are together, what is potential becomes actual.” By this he seems to mean that when thing A, which is potentially thing B, becomes B, it becomes actually B, and potentially C. Aristotle uses this distinction to talk about the elements’ natural movements. Aristotle needs a further mechanism, though, to explain why the elements are not consistently changing. He does this by suggesting that something prevents or hinders a change. For example, Aristotle thinks that cold is potentially hot, but has something hindering its movement so that all things do not progressively get hotter. Aristotle seems to think that if you remove the thing that is hindering cold, it will go from potentially hot to actually hot. Aristotle also uses the example of potentially light things becoming light.

Aristotle also thinks that an element can change into another element and still have some other potential change. For example, Aristotle notes that water is potentially air, which is potentially light. When water becomes lighter, it goes from potentially being air to actually being air. As air though, the once-water still has the potential to become lighter, and thus rise further. All that is needed is for some hindrance to be removed. This is much like a hand cupping some air under water; the air has the potential to move upwards, but can’t since a hand is hindering it. When the hand is moved, the air actualizes its potentiality and moves upward until it meets with another hindrance.

Finally, Aristotle claims that in all cases, the element is not moving itself, but “...contains within itself the source of motion – not of moving something or of causing motion, but suffering it.” Aristotle’s motivation for making this claim is to show that the elements do not move naturally like animals and humans, but accidentally, through other causes. Aristotle explains how the elements movements are accidental by looking at some parallel examples and seeing how people talk about them. Aristotle notes that when a person removes an obstacle to a pillar’s fall, properly speaking, we say that the person caused the pillar to fall, not that the pillar moved itself. In the same way, when an element changes form, it is because something that hinders its change has been removed.

It is a bit unclear whether Aristotle thinks the removal of hindrances needs to be done by natural things. If lightning hit a tree, and removed the hindrances from being hot and dry, I’m not sure if Aristotle would say that the lightning caused the tree to burn, or if he would maintain that some natural being removed an obstacle from an element, through which in a chain of events caused the tree to burn. (i.e. a butterfly flaps its wings, removes some small hindrance in the air, which leads to the removal of other hindrances, snowballing into the lightning being formed.)

Response To Brian

Brian, in his response to Irwin’s article, argues that Irwin has erroneously associated “acting for the sake of an ultimate good” with “acting for the sake of happiness”. He does this by explaining how a human’s actions and a human should not be thought of as acting for the sake of the same thing; the human’s actions are for the sake of the something, but the human is “...for the sake of something else- “the function of man is an activity of soul in accordance with, or not without, rational principle.”” He then offers an alternate interpretation, in which human’s final cause is being rational, and happiness is the motivation for acting as a human.

My objection to Brian is that the “ultimate good” for humans should be considered as simply being an excellently functioning human. This explains why reason is required, for reason is the unique to humans. Note that here ultimate goodness is relative to a creature. In his footnote, Brian claims that if the ultimate good is rationality, then only humans can be good. This would be true if the ultimate good were the same for all beings. This does not seem to be the case in Aristotle. Since each creature has its own distinctive characteristics and end, each creature will have its own ultimate good. So, the ultimate good of a fish is different than the ultimate good of a cow. If acting in the ultimately good way a creature can act is happiness, then this explanation explains why a cow and a fish might be happy under different circumstances; it is not part of the cow’s ultimate good to swim underwater, and the fish is not happy when it is in a field of grass.

I also disagree with Brian’s claim that doing what makes a thing happy will make a thing a good thing. I think that it is the other way around; acting how you should act will make you happy. I think that Brian’s claim is correct in most situations, simply because the things which make you happy are the right type of things you should do. However, I think that there are some cases where you can act in a way that makes you happy, but still not be a good human. For instance, nutrition and sleep make people happy, but if all they did was eat or sleep, or ate and slept to an extreme, these people would not be good humans under Aristotle’s theory, since they are not fulfilling all their functions as humans.

I haven’t really argued for my position much though, and most of it relies on my intuitions. One textual reference that supports my view is Aristotle’s definition of happiness. According to Aristotle, “Happiness is the activity of the soul exhibiting excellence, and if there is more than one excellence, in accordance with the best and most complete.” (1.7) By ‘exhibiting excellence’, Aristotle probably means functioning “humanly” well, where functioning humanly primarily involves reasoning and using language. Thus, the happiness of a human consists in its soul acting in accordance to the best and most complete human function. Another consideration is that, generally, Aristotle seeks the good of a thing by examining the specific results it has. For example, the good of strategy is winning wars, and the good of medicine is producing health. While I agree that these are actions, and there is a difference between arts and humans, I think that the “good of” strategy can be applied to humans. Thus, in looking as to what the good of humans is, we should look at the unique thing they can produce. As humans are the only rational animals, humans are the only things that can reason. So, reason is unique to humans, and if it is the most excellent thing produced (I think it is for Aristotle, as reason/philosophy has no end other than itself, so is an end in itself) is the only, the ultimate good of humans. Thus, I think my view is prima facia justified.

Legal Positivism And International Law
Michael Vossen

Legal-Positivism, the dominant theory of law in the field of international law, motivates and in part justifies many international legal practices. In this paper, I will explain legal-positivism in depth, and access its adequacy in the international arena. The first section of this paper contains a formal characterization of legal positivism as a theory, with the intention of using this model as a target for criticism. In the second section of this paper, I look at some compelling objections to legal positivism as a theory, and consider the legal-positivists response. Finally, in the last section I look at some alterations and alternatives to Legal Positivism, most notably the alternatives presented by Ronald Dworkin, and consider their implications on international law.

Formally, Legal-Positivism can be characterized by three major principles. The first principle is that “what counts as law in any particular society is fundamentally a matter of social fact”1. The method used in identifying these facts is called the pedigree thesis. The second principle is that law is separate from morality in that law does not allow for the existence of moral facts; “What law is and ought to be are separate questions”2. This is known as the separableity thesis. The third principle is that judges create new law when making legal decisions on subjects not covered by the law. This is known as the discretion thesis. Note that this characterization is meant to represent the basic, essential characteristics of Legal-Positivism, and will not represent the wide number of variants that derive from the basic view; the strength and scope of each principle I present is debated among Legal Positivists, so these positions might be interpreted more or less strictly. Since these principles are by no means self-evident, an explanation of each will help flesh out the legal positivist’s position.
According to the first principle of Legal-Positivism, what law is is determined by social fact. This is where positivism gets its name; laws are not found in or derived from nature, but posited by man. Historically, John Austin developed the first social-fact recognizing model, however, contemporary legal-positivism generally uses H.L.A Hart’s method of distinction, for reasons that will soon be apparent. Austin, borrowing from Jeremy Bentham, argued that a valid legal system is distinguished by the existence of a sovereign power that is customarily obeyed by members of its society, but is not subject to any higher sovereign power. 3Austin identifies law using the following model: a rule R is a law in some society S if and only if:
1. R is commanded by the sovereign in S; and
2. R is backed up with the threat of a sanction 4
Austin’s model is a bit too simplistic for practical use. One problem Austin’s model faces is that sometimes it is impossible to trace a rule back to a sovereign. While theoretically the people or the people’s representatives lead democracies and republics, modern governments are generally pluralistic. As such, various special interest groups, including corporate, religious, and ecological entities, factions among political parties, as well as intra-governmental divisions, such as judicial, executive, and legislative branches, and the governmental institutions that enact law interact with each other such that no single individual or group is clearly “the sovereign”. 5
With regards to international law, Austin’s model commits positivism to the claim that, without some sovereign or mechanism to enforce the law, international law is not in fact law. Austin’s conditions for legal validity are thus too narrow, as they prevent many legal systems which seem intuitively to be legally valid as invalid. Under Austin’s model, for international law to be valid, either a single nation, or an entity such as the U.N. must be capable of enforcing all rules it makes. While this may be appealing to the ordinary person, students of international law will recognize that the international community works horizontally, as apposed to the vertical nature of domestic law. This means that no nation has absolute legal authority over another nation. National sovereignty motivates this situation; all nations generally respect each other’s claim to self-governance, as this protects their own sovereign powers. With the importance that nations attach to sovereignty claims, it is unclear whether international law could exist under Austin’s model, as rules created and attempts to enforce them will probably come into conflict with nations’ sovereignty.
With these considerations in mind, H.L.A Hart modified the validating mechanism of legal-positivism as to make it capable of dealing with complex power structures, and more applicable to the international community. Hart criticized Austin’s view by pointing out that there is a difference in being obliged to do something and being obligated to do it. 6 Roughly speaking, force and threat oblige people to do things but does not obligate them to do it. For example, a robber might order somebody to give her all their money, and back it up with a threat of violence. In this scenario, the person being robbed is obliged to give the robber all their money, but not obligated. In other words, even though the robber’s orders meet all Austin’s conditions for law, Hart wants to say that it is not a law. The key aspect that is missing in Austin’s conditions is an appeal to a normative force; Hart notes that obligations are normative because laws appeal to something beyond force to enforce it. Hart fills this “something” out in terms of authority; the difference between a robber and a lawmaker, according to Hart, is that the lawmaker has the authority to make laws, whereas the robber does not. Dworkin gives an apt description of Hart’s sources for law’s authority:

“(a) A rule becomes binding for a group of people because that group through
its practices accepts the rule as a standard for its conduct. It is not enough that
the group simply conforms to a pattern of behavior: even though most Englishman
may go to the movies on Saturday evening, they have not accepted a rule requiring
that they do so. A practice constitutes the acceptance of a rule only when those
who follow the practice regard the rule as binding, and recognize the rule as a
reason or justification for their own behavior and as a reason for criticizing the
behavior of others who do not obey it.

(b) A rule may also become binding in quite a different way, namely by being
enacted in conformity with some secondary rule that stipulates that rules so enacted
shall be binding. If the constitution of a club stipulates, for example, that by-laws
may be adopted by a majority of members, then particular by-laws so voted are
binding upon all members, not because of any practice of acceptance of these
particular by-laws, but because the constitution says so. We use the concept of
validity in this connection: rules binding because they have been created in a manner stipulated by some secondary rule are called ‘valid’ rules.” 7

International law clearly relies on Hart’s model, and many international practices and national policies seem to derive from it. For example, Hart’s model provides an explanation for why the standard hierarchy for sources of law is as it is. Under article 38(1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, general or particular international conventions that establish rules recognized by the contesting States, international custom – i.e. evidence of a general practice accepted as law, general principles of law recognized by civilized nations, and judicial decisions plus highly qualified publicists’ teachings are recognized as sources of law. 8The first two sources correspond with (b) and (a) of Hart’s model; treaties represent the secondary rule(s) that stipulate rules which are binding, and customary practices look cultural behavior patterns that represent an acceptance of a law. Due to the use of customary practice as source of law, states are careful about what practices they adhere to. For instance, the United States has repeatedly rejected the International Court of Justices claims to jurisdiction when it conflicts the U.S.’s control of its citizens. This stance can be seen as reacting to the practice of customary law, which was suggested by Hart. Legal positivism also accounts for the forth source, as will be seen after considering the third principle of positivism.
The second principle of positivism is that law is fundamentally separate from morality. This position is motivated by the philosopher David Hume’s skepticism about moral facts. Hume claimed that what is the case is logically distinct from what ought to be the case. For example, if Tina wants to claim that Sam ought not to steal from Ben, she cannot arrive at her claim through the fact that stealing from Ben causes him pain. Tina needs some further claim, such as people ought not to cause other people pain, to argue for her position. Hume’s worry is that such claims cannot be derived from scientific, empirical phenomena. From these considerations, some philosophers following Hume’s example concluded that moral facts are separate from other facts in the world. Historically, Hume used this divide against moralist rivals, arguing that whoever tries to derive laws from moral fact cannot derive law, as no moral facts exist.
Contemporarily, positivists maintain that a legal system does not necessarily rely on moral facts; that is to say, it is possible to have an a-moral or immoral legal system that is still a legal system. However, some positivists think that it is possible for morality to plays a role in a legal system, whether expressed in customs or through moral constraints on legal validity. Here, Legal-Positivism can be divided into two camps:
inclusive positivism, which tries through its rules of recognizing law to include moral constraints, and exclusive positivism, which maintains that “the existence and content of
law can always be determined by reference to its sources without recourse to moral argument.” 9
Hart is an example of an inclusive positivist. Under his rules of recognition, moral claims can be incorporated through a societies customs as criteria for legal validity. If a society accepts the rule that people ought not to steal, or that there should be an equality of voting rights, then that rule becomes law. Here, the legality of the no-stealing and equal suffrage rules are not derived from a moral claim about stealing, but from a societies’ customs and/or accepted secondary rules. Exclusive positivists, on the other hand, do not treat morality as imposing restraints on law. Instead, they argue that equality of voting rights rules force judges to consider certain positions in the process of making decisions, but the judge’s rulings, even if they are based on moral principles, are to be considered law. As such, debate about a moral principle in courtrooms is not an argument about morality, but an argument about law.
In international law, the separability thesis keeps cultural moral relativity from interfering with the creation of law, which makes positivism a more attractive legal system than naturalism on an international scale. For example, under positivism, two nations can differ radically on fundamental moral issues, yet still can create and maintain a legal system. This is because law under positivism does not depend on moral principles. Under a naturalist system, the two nations would need to agree on moral issues to avoid deriving conflicting laws. Few, if any, international laws would result from this system. International law also seems to be inclusive in that, when considering sources of law, judges consider general principles of law, which include notions of fairness and other moral considerations, as constraining a law’s validity. In this way, positivism can be flexible enough to deal with the cultural diversity present on an international scale.
The third principle of Legal-Positivism is that judges create new law when making decisions on subjects not covered by law. Dworkin gives a good explanation: “The set of these valid legal rules is exhaustive of 'the law', so that if someone's case is not clearly covered by such a rule (because their is none that seems appropriate or those that seem appropriate are vague, or for some other reason) then that case cannot be decided by 'applying the law.' It must be decided by some official, like a judge, 'exercising his discretion,' which means reaching beyond the law for some other sort of standard to guide him in manufacturing a fresh legal rule or supplementing an old one.”10 Note that judges have the discretion to create new law in absence of standards. This means that the judge’s ability to create law is contingent, and depends on the lack of a rule found by a rule of recognition (i.e. Austin and Hart’s rule identifying models). As such, this principle is only in place so far as “fuzzy” areas of law exist.
In international law, this principle is reflected in judges use and respect for the standards created by judicial decisions. Judges use all aspects of court rulings as sources of law. Even the statements of judges who dissent in cases can be used as sources of law. Thus, judges must be judicious about the reasons they present for their position. This principle also forces judges to be cautious about the standards created from the legal decisions they make, as the decisions create new sources of law that can be used in alternate cases. For example, judges in the Pinochet hearings must be cautious about revoking Pinochet’s immunity as a diplomatic official and head of state, as the rulings they make count as new law, which can be applied to other diplomatic officials and heads of state.

Legal-Positivism naturally has its critics. Foremost among these is Ronald Dworkin, who has challenged practically every principle of positivism. Gustavo Zagrebelsky, in his essay “Ronald Dworkin’s principle based constitutionalism: an Italian point of view” summarizes Dworkin’s complex position well. Gustavo notes that the target of Dworkin’s criticism is the positivist’s claim to “(a) the existence of discretion on the part of the judge who is said to operate (b) pursuant to the norms proposed by the legislator in (c) the space that the latter leaves “empty of law”.” 11Guastovo then summarizes Dworkin’s position, writing:
“There is an “open space” (corresponding to (c)...) of norms but not of law,
in the so-called hard cases ... The law governing hard cases consists of legal
principles (see (b), above) that are placed “above” the norms proposed by the
legislator, and it circumscribes the decisions of judges (see (a), above) by pointing
them in a certain direction. On this basis, the idea of judicial discretion [i.e. the
third principle of positivism] may be contested but only with the aid of an extensive
concept of law that transcends the “normative factors” (or in European parlance
the “sources of the law.” ...) formally grounded on what Hart calls the “rule of
recognition” or what others call “law of law” or “sources of the production of law.”
The refusal simply to consider the legal norms as written down in a public text of
official rules reveals the anti-positivistic nature of this theory and highlights its
reliance on a level of law lying deeper than the one carved out by any legislator.
It is within this deeper level of law, moreover, that judges can find the best answer
to legal questions left unsolved by the legislator’s law – though this does not mean
necessarily the clearest or most obvious answer.”12

An example will help clarify Dworkin’s position. When Dworkin speaks of “hard cases” he means “...those that cannot be decided by application of a recognized norm, either because such norm does not exist, or because it is unclear or not completely relevant, or in contradiction with other norms - bearing in mind that cases can end up “hard” while initially seeming “easy”, when social, ideological, or cultural conflicts muddy the waters in which rules are embedded, with the consequence that they become difficult to recognize.”13These seem correspond with areas of law in which judges are said to create new law.
Dworkin uses the U.S. cases Riggs v. Palmer and Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc. as examples of “hard” cases.14 In Henningsen v. Bloomfield Motors, Inc , a New Jersey court was asked to rule on a case in which the plaintiff, Henningsen, had bought a car, signing a contract which stated that the manufacture’s liability was limited to replacing defective parts. Henningsen argued that the manufacturer, in his case, should be also at least be responsible for the medical expenses suffered as a result of the car’s defects. While Henningsen had no standard practice or other legal position to refute the contract, the court ruled in his favor, sighting among other reasons “Is there any principle which is more familiar or more firmly embedded in the history of Anglo-American law than the basic doctrine that the courts will not permit themselves to be used as instruments of inequity and injustice?”15Dworkin takes remarks like these to show a judge’s decision in cases where no legal standard exists is not in fact at his discretion in the sense that he freely creates laws. Dworkin thinks that principles bind judges into making certain decisions, and that this is revealed by the practice of criticizing judges who ignore principles in their decisions. For example, if a judge allowed a criminal to profit from their crimes in a case where legal precedent is absent, then their decision can rightly be challenged, even though new law is supposedly created by the judge’s decision. Dworkin thinks that these principles should be treated as a sort of law.
Finally, Dworkin explains why principles are binding, and argues that his view undermines positivism. Dworkin thinks that principles obtain authority (in the same sense Hart uses) and become binding when they make the best moral justification for a society's legal practices considered as a whole. Kenneth Himma summarizes Dworkin’s view, writting “According to Dworkin, a legal principle maximally contributes to such a justification if and only if it satisfies two conditions: (1) the principle coheres with existing legal materials; and (2) the principle is the most morally attractive standard that satisfies (1). The correct legal principle is the one that makes the law the moral best it can be.”16From these considerations, Dworkin concludes that the pedigree and judicial discretion principles of Legal-Positivism should be rejected. This is because principles are to be considered law, and are not capable of being recognized by a rule of recognition, according to Dworkin. This is also because judges are not free to posit law, but are instead bound by principles. 17
Dworkin’s position has clear analogs in international law. In the Pinochet trial, judges faced a hard decision in that two conflicting principles existed: diplomatic sovereignty and the enforcement of human rights. If either principle were ignored in the creation of new law, criticisms of the judge’s decisions would seem unjustified. Also, international law generally favors principles over rules, as principles do not necessarily conflict with state’s sovereignty and allow for more flexibility in international relations. As such, Dworkin’s criticism seems particularly applicable to international law.
One way inclusive positivists such as Hart respond to Dworkin is by arguing that principles can be incorporated into the law when they are explicitly or implicitly included by rules of recognition. Recall that inclusive positivists allow for constitutional amendments such as the 14th amendment, which calls for an equality of voting rights, to be incorporated by judges in determining whether something is legally valid. In cases involving these amendments, judges are expressly commanded by the legislators to consider moral principles in determining legally validity in a case. Positivists also note that judges can incorporate principles in through their customary practice. For example, by having multiple judges refer to some principle in their cases decisions, such as the “people shouldn’t profit from their own crimes”, that principle can become law through customary practice. The key to this response is that the moral principles are not to be considered law on their own right, but because made so by the correct social force. 18
Some other problems with Dworkin’s theory exist. One consequence in Dworkin’s theory, which seems to motivate the inclusive positivists use of judges and social practices as the real sources of law, is that if principles are to be treated as laws before formally being created by judges or lawmakers, then ex post facto protection can justifiably be revoked. People are thus obligated and bound by principles before social forces recognize the principle as law, since the principles constitute law. Also, Dworkin seems to think that a “best” or “most morally attractive” principle always exists, such that all cases involving principles can be decided. Dworkin does not give a reason as to why this is the case, and it is not self-evident either. Dworkin may think, and suggests at places with his reference to a “Herculean” judge, that after examining all principles in every type of situation, a judge will be able to come up with some hierarchy of principles that proceeds over all cases. There is no evidence that such a hierarchy exists or that conflicts between certain principles can only be solved in one way, or even that moral conflicts can non-arbitrarily be solved.
Further, these problems with Dworkin’s theory would be especially troublesome on an international scale. It is unclear whether treating principles as law in international law would break down already tentative international relations or result in analysis of the principles. While it might seem nice to clarify internationally held principles through discussion in court, it seems unlikely that countries would treat principles that go against their policies as legally binding. Dworkin’s theory seems more suitable to national legal systems, as a common cultural background would make some principles seem better. On the international scale, Dworkin’s theory is subject to the very problems legal positivists seek to avoid with the seprability thesis; different cultures treat principles with different importance. For example, one culture could treat success as a higher goal than happiness, while another treats this vis-versa. While these differences might be worked out at a local level, Dworkin will need to assume that one correct model of the hierarchy of principles exists that is common to all people if law is to be dealt with in terms of principles at an international level. Again, there is no reason to believe that only one correct model exists; it is entirely possible that multiple orderings of principles exist, such that one cultures ordering is equally valid as another cultures. Dworkin’s model does have the benefit of allowing crimes against humanity be prosecuted by appeal to principle and not to a specific law, but this comes at the price of allowing any country to prosecute based on the principles they hold, which seems detrimental to international law. Thus, even if Dworkin’s model is correct, it would be prudent for the international community to wait for a recognized “best” or “most-moral” ordering of principles before changing its sources of law.
After researching Legal-Positivism thoroughly and looking at its responses to Dworkin, my initial criticisms and worries about positivism seem less problematic. One of my initial worries about Legal-Positivism was how, using only its custom recognizing function, positivism could deal with statistical anomalies in cases? For example, I worried that some abominable practice or doctrine, if upheld and practiced enough, could become law. For instance, if the majority of countries upheld the “preventive” attack doctrine, then it seems like it can become a lawful practice. My worry was that positivism would be incapable of developing a model such that law can reject certain practices, even though those practices might be culturally dominant or establish certain practices as legal, even though the majority of nations do not act accordingly.
This worry is partially diminished through Hart’s discussion of sources of law. Recall that for Hart, “It is not enough that the group simply conforms to a pattern of behavior: even though most Englishman may go to the movies on Saturday evening, they have not accepted a rule requiring that they do so.”19 This shows that Hart’s recognition of customary practice is not based entirely on statistical regularity, which is to say, does not strictly recognize a rule based on the percentage of people following it. This makes most statistical anomaly cases irrelevant. Hart’s conditions for acceptance do seem to allow for one of my problematic scenarios, though, since “A practice constitutes the acceptance of a rule only when those who follow the practice regard the rule as binding, and recognize the rule as a reason or justification for their own behavior and as a reason for criticizing the behavior of others who do not obey it.”20 Conceivably, a bad practice could be accepted as law, though this is unlikely.
My concerns are not so problematic to positivist theory however, since they simply show that Hart’s rule of recognition needs modification if they are to address these problems. Changing the rules of recognition would also be a solution to problems with customary law, such as to identifying factors for a general practice, sorting out single instances and “instant” customary law. Also, nations could incorporate moral principles not captured under custom through additions or changes to the rules of recognition. Finally, while I’m sympathetic to Dworkin’s criticisms of the seprability of law and morality, I think that philosophy should be the field for the investigation of an ordering of moral principles, not courts, since philosophers are free to work out their theories without the practical consequences that courts face. If philosophers find a “best” ordering of moral principles, then I agree with Dworkin that law should adopt it, and that law can be seen as derived from moral principles.

In conclusion, Legal-Positivism is adequate for the needs of international law. Their is some serious doubt as to whether the seprability thesis holds for the theory, as seen through Ronald Dworkin’s criticisms, but the rules of recognition seem flexible enough to include the moral considerations that influence law. A “best “ordering of moral principles may be possible if Dworkin is correct in his theory, though there is no reason to hold this view over a plurality of principles view, and in either case Dworkin is correct in that a “Herculean” effort will be needed to come up with an ordering. These concerns are worrisome to international law in that Dworkin’s theory shows that law based on positivist theories are an artifact of man and not deriving from what true law is based on, but for pragmatic reasons international law is better off continuing as is until a universally recognized correct ordering of principles exists.

Notes
1. Green, Legal-Positivism
2. Ibid
3. Himma, Legal-Positivism
4. Ibid
5. Influenced by Taking Rights Seriously, pg. 18
6. Ibid, pg. 19
7. Ibid, pg. 20
8. Akehurst’s Modern Introduction To International Law, pg 36 9. Himma, Legal-Positivism
10. Taking Rights Seriously, pg, 17
11. Ronald Dworkin's Principle Based Constitutionalism: An Italian Point of View, pg 624
12. Ibid, pg. 625
13. Ibid, pg. 625
14. Taking Rights Seriously, pg. 28
15. Ibid, pg. 24
16. Himma, Legal-Positivism
17. Taking Rights Seriously, pg. 44
18. This section is influenced by Green’s Legal-Positivism
19. Taking Rights Seriously, pg. 19
20. Ibid

Bibliography

Dworkin, Ronald. Taking Rights Seriously, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977

Green, Leslie. Legal-Positivism, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/legal-positivism/, 2003.

Hart, H.L.A. Law, Liberty And Morality, Stanford University Press, 1963

Himma, Kenneth. Legal-Positivism. http://www.iep.utm.edu/l/legalpos.htm, 2001

Legal Positivism as Normative Politics: International Society, Balance of Power and Lassa Oppenheim's Positive International Law
Kingsbury, Benedict ,European Journal of International Law, 2002, 13, 2, Apr, 401-436.

Legal Realism and Legal Positivism Reconsidered
Leiter, Brian ,Ethics, 2001, 111, 2, Jan, 278-301.

Malanczuk, Peter. Akenhurst’s Modern Introduction To International Law. Routeledge, 1997

Ronald Dworkin's Principle Based Constitutionalism: An Italian Point of View
Zagrebelsky, Gustavo ,International Journal of Constitutional Law, 2003, 1, 4, Oct, 621-650.

Responding To The External World Problem
Michael Vossen

The canonical argument against knowledge, first presented by Descartes in 1641, is still very much alive in contemporary epistemology. This is not to say that work in epistemology is stagnant, on the contrary, there has recently been much progress on the problem, and many responses have been put forward. In this paper, I will look at the response from content externalism, otherwise known as semantic externalism, and argue that it is currently the best response to the external world problem. Here, I take the best response to the external world problem to be the response that concedes as little as possible of our conception of ourselves as knowers and our beliefs about logic. This response also needs to be justified, and true or likely to be true. I will then analyze the problems with content externalism, suggest some possible revisions and responses to these problems, and mention how it compares with some of its competitors. First, though, I will clearly present the canonical argument as it appears today, along with the motivations for its premises.

The canonical argument claims that I don’t know that any beliefs based on my sense perceptions are true. Further, this undermines all knowledge I base on sense perceptions. This means that I don’t know that there is a glass of water in front of me, even though I am looking at one now. The reason I don’t know that their is a glass of water in front of me, the argument claims, is because I don’t know that it is not some sensory illusion, such as a hologram, a dream, or some image or sensation placed in my mind by a deceiver or scientist. Further, all of my perceptual experiences could be deceptive, not just my perception of a glass of water. And if I don’t know that my perceptions are not sensory illusions, then I don’t really know that my beliefs based on them are true. Thus, I don’t know that any of my sensory induced beliefs are true. This is the intuitive basis for the canonical argument. Contemporary epistemologists will put this argument into logical form as to elucidate its assumptions better. In logical form, the canonical argument looks like this:

C1. For a subject S to know some proposition P, S must know that they are not in
a skeptical scenario.
C2. S cannot know that they are not in a skeptical scenario.
C3. S cannot know that P2

Here, we can analyze the premises. The reasons for holding the first premise night not immediately apparent; why should anyone believe premise C1? Well, premise C1 is based on the principle of epistemic closure. It seems true that if a person knows that p and knows that p entails q, then that person knows q. For example, if a person knows what a bachelor is, and knows that being a bachelor entails being an unmarried man, then the person would know what an unmarried man is. With regards to my belief that there is a glass of water in front of me, if I know that p (there is a glass of water in front of me) and I know that p entails q (the glass of water is not a hologram), then I should know q (the glass of water is not a hologram.) If I don’t know that the glass of water is not a hologram, then I clearly don’t know that it is a glass of water. Thus, the epistemic closure principle, and the belief that something being B entails it not being a sensory illusion of B are the motivations for accepting premise C1. Finally, it should be noted that if the closure principle fails, then the current model of deductive thought is probably undermined as well. Problematic consequences with truth conditions seem to occur when this premise is rejected.

The details of premise C2 will vary comes from scenario to scenario to make the situation look more plausible, but the common theme behind this premise is to show that it is possible for all of a person’s sensory experiences to be illusions. In other words, her sensory experiences in a skeptical scenario would be identical and indistinguishable from her experiences in the real world. This premise is generally motivated by reference to real life counterparts, such as very explicit dreams, holograms, and scientist’s ability to reproduce sensory stimuli in the brain through chemicals. The skeptic will then use these to create a skeptical scenario that is or at least seems physically possible.

Finally, step C3 is the logical consequence of one and two, and if logic holds, then premise three is guaranteed to be true so long as premise C1 and two are true. Of course, if premise three is true, then we don’t know that any propositions based on our senses are true. Since our knowledge of the external world is based on these sensory perceptions, then if step C3 is correct, we do not have knowledge of the external world. As an aside, I think it’s interesting that the consequence of the canonical argument seems to deny its second premise. Take P to be the second step of the canonical argument. If the conclusion holds, then S cannot know that S cannot know that they are not in a skeptical scenario. This is only the case if premise C2 is not a-priori knowable, since the conclusion only challenges our knowledge based on sense experiences. However, we seem to use our knowledge about what is physically possible, which we obtain through sense experience, in affirming premise C2. If this consideration holds, then it seem like the canonical argument is self-refuting. 3

In addition to these considerations, it will also be helpful to keep Austin’s epistemic circularity considerations in mind for evaluating responses to the argument. Austin notes that you can’t use sense experiences or propositions based on sense experiences in responding to the skeptic, or you will beg the question against them. For example, a person could argue that we should accept our pre-skeptical model of perceptual beliefs because they somehow provide a better explanation for our beliefs than a skeptical scenario. Arguments of this form could take many shapes; they could argue that skeptical scenarios are in some way parasitic on our ordinary beliefs, that the skeptical scenarios assume more entities than our ordinary beliefs, that our ordinary beliefs are more likely to be physically possible, etc.

The problem with this type of response is that in arguing that one explanation is better than another, some explanations are considered more likely to be true. This is to say that theories that are simpler, have a lower number of entities, are physical possibility, etc are likely to correspond with our beliefs about the world. This seems to beg the question against the skeptic, for in favoring one theory over another it assumes that the world corresponds with our beliefs founded from sense perceptions. To put it another way, we think that some considerations are more likely to be true because we can deduce from our sensory founded beliefs that they are more likely. If we were in a skeptical scenario though, our sensory founded beliefs could lead us to deduce that different considerations are more likely to be true. Thus, we implicitly rely on our sensory beliefs to justify our response, and beg the question in responding to the skeptic.

Given that the canonical argument is a deductive argument to which the conclusion’s truth follows from the truth of its premises, and that an acceptance of the argument’s conclusion is incompatible with our intuitive self-conception and everyday experiences, we have three options in responding to it.4 We could either accept the conclusion, or deny one or two of the premises. If we deny premise C1, we loose the principal of epistemic closure, and thus must re-think our beliefs about logic. If we accept the conclusion, then our self-conception as knowing the external world is lost, as well as our beliefs about it. And the second premise seems obviously true to many people after reflection, such that there is doubt as to how we could reasonably reject it. We are thus faced with a dilemma as to how to minimize the loss of our intuitively held beliefs in responding to the skeptic. As mentioned earlier, I take the best response to external world skepticism to be the response in which the loss is minimized, the response is justified and true or likely to be true. Any response that can successfully challenge premise C2 would be the ideal response, as we would lose nothing in denying it. After that, responses which concede as little as possible are preferred, though they would still seem like a loss to the skeptic.

Content externalism is a response to skepticism that challenges premise C2. First developed by Hillary Putnam in his paper “Brains in Vats”, this response argues that by reflecting on the “...preconditions for thinking about, representing, referring to, etc” we can determine that skeptical scenarios, or at least the scenario presented by Putnam, are conceptually impossible.5In particular, Putnam thinks that the contents of a subject’s thoughts and utterances are determined, at least in part, by the relations they bear to circumstances in their environment.6 Putnam argues that beings who haven’t experienced trees before don’t really have the concept of trees; to obtain the concept Q, a subject must have in some way casually interacted with Q. Putnam leaves open how this is done, which leaves open the possibility for causal chains such as one subject transmitting a concept to another among other things. Putnam uses two thought experiments to motivate his claim.

In the first, Putnam asks us to imagine a planet with beings much like us, the difference being that the inhabitants of the planet have never experienced trees before. Putnam then has us imagine that a spaceship passing over the planet drops a piece of paper, on which paints have spilled in such a way as to form a perfect representation of a tree. Imagining that the planet’s inhabitants find the paper, Putnam asks whether the inhabitant’s mental image of the object represented by the picture represents a tree to him. Putnam answers that no, the mental image does not represent a tree to him, though it would to us. Similarly, Putnam asks us to imagine that a person is hypnotized such that they could speak fluent Japanese when they spoke, such that the person would correctly converse in Japanese when spoken to. Putnam thinks that this person, although he can speak correctly, does not know the meaning of his words. By combining the conclusions of these thought experiments, Putnam concludes that someone can think words which are in fact a description of X in some language and simultaneously have the appropriate mental image, but neither understand the words nor know what X is. Putnam is then able to derive his anti-skeptical argument.

Putnam’s argument against premise C2 of the canonical argument can formally be expressed thus:

P1. Either I am a brain in a vat, or I am not a brain in a vat
P2. If I am not a brain in a vat, then the thought I express by uttering ‘I am a brain
in a vat’ is false.
P3. If I am a brain in a vat, then the thought I express by uttering ‘I am a brain in
a vat’ is false.___________________________________________________
P4. The thought I express by uttering ‘I am not a brain in a vat’ is false.7

The law of the excluded middle justifies premise P1. Premise P2 seems correct on reflection; if I’m a person sitting in front of a computer, then it is false that I’m a brain in a vat, and any thought whose content expresses that I am a brain in a vat is false. Premise P3 is the most controversial premise of the argument, and the one most motivated by Putnam’s thought experiences. Premise P3 is justified because the thought ‘I am a brain in a vat’, thought by a brain in a vat, expresses a different content than the thought ‘I am a brain in a vat’ thought be the non-envated person. The thought expressed by the brain in a vat refers to the configuration of electronic impulses used by the vat system to simulate brains and vats. The thought expressed by the non-envated person refers to actual fleshy brains glassy, wiry, chemically vats. Since Putnam thinks that the words used by the brain in a vat and the non-envated person refer contingently, the brain in a vat and the non-envated person could use the same words in expressing the thought “I am a brain in a vat’, yet the sentence will have a different meaning depending on the speaker. In P3 the thought expressed is false, since the content of the thought uttered by the brain in a vat does not refers to actual fleshy brains and glassy, wiry, chemically vats, but to vat system stimulations. The conclusion P4 implies that whenever I assert that I am a brain in a vat, I am speaking a false statement. Thus, I can realize that it is true of me to think that I am not a brain in a vat. Thus I can know that premise C2 is false for any skeptical scenario in which I am a Putnamian brain in a vat.

There are some problems with the theory of content externalism, and this has lead to criticism of content externalism as a response to the canonical argument. One non-useful but strongly made criticism that underlies some criticism is that content externalism seems to simple, or is a semantic trick. For example, McGinn sarcastically writes “I can achieve the anti-skeptical result DesCartes needed God to vouchsafe by exploiting considerations about what determines content. Ah the wonders of analytical philosophy! It is an optimistic man who believes that Cartesian skepticism may be refuted in this way.”8One possible motive for this type of reply could be its target, premise C2. Some philosophers doubt that any a-priori argument cannot challenge premise C2, though the reasons for this doubt rely more on the failure of a-priori arguments thus far to produce a result rather than an explanation about the capacities of a-priori argumentation. If these philosopher’s intuitions are correct, then it might be useful in considering the canonical argument to know why such a-priori arguments must fail.

A more serious problem Putnam faces is that his conclusion as stands is somewhat limited in its scope. While his argument may refute the particular scenario he considers, in which everyone is a brain in a vat hooked up to a machine the simulates the world, some scenarios escape the argument. For example, the skeptic could argue that up until yesterday, I was in the real world perceiving objects normally. I thus would acquire all my concepts correctly; my thoughts about glasses of water that a glass would refer to the object that we treat as real. The skeptic will then argue that yesterday, governmental scientists kidnapped me while I was sleeping, removed my brain, and placed it in a vat filled with the necessary electrical equipment to reproduce all the experiences I have had since then. Thus, I might be deceived in thinking that I see my concept of water when I’m actually seeing a simulated version. This problem is potentially solved by investigating into more depth on how transferring concepts of one language to another really works; if proponents of content externalism are to respond to this criticism, they need to show that their is some noticeable change when a person’s concepts change.

Finally, the strongest criticism against Putnam’s argument is that it actually makes thinks worse, as a revised skeptical scenario could show that we don’t know the content of our own language. The skeptic could argue that I don’t know whether the thought I express when I utter ‘I am not a brain in a vat’ refers to the language of the brain in a vat, or the non-envated person. Formally, this results because in P2 and P3, Putnam has the thought ‘I’m not a brain in a vat’ refer to the language of the non-envated speaker. In evaluating this response, we should note that this reply does not refute Putnam’s view, but shows that the skeptical scenario is different if he is correct. In other words, the truth or falsity of this response does not alter the truth of Putnam’s argument. Some part of his theory of reference will need to be shown to be wrong if it is to be challenged. If Putnam’s theory holds though, he has changed the type of skepticism that we are responding to. As such, we should try to resolve skepticism with this revised argument in mind.

9One question we might ask about this new scenario is whether it needs to be resolved a priori; do responses beg the question in using sensory experiences. I think surprisingly, the answer might be no, we can use our sensory experiences in responding to this scenario. In the revised skeptical scenario, I don’t know whether I am a brain in a vat, and my language is vat language or if I am a non-envated being and my language is non-vat language. However, whatever I refer to in my language represents what it is I have experienced. For example, if I am a brain in a vat, and I think ‘there is a glass of water in front of me’, this thought refers to the vat system stimuli that I experience every time I have water. Likewise, if I’m not en-vated, my thought refers to the glass of water. In either case, my thought necessarily refers to whatever system caused it; I could not have the same thought in a different language without causally interacting with the sensory causing mechanisms in the right way. Then, I could know that a glass of water is in front of me in the same way that I think that I can know that a glass of water is in front of me without knowing what the glass is made of. The negative result of this thought is that does not do much to resolve the question of whether or not we are brains in vats. The positive result is that in a Putnam type scenario, my thoughts refer to the things that I think they do, though I still can learn about the thing’s nature. Thus, we might be justified in using empirical methods to investigate the nature of our words, though it’s not apparent that the investigation will be helpful in determining whether were are brains in vats or not as it would presumably come up with results using the same words in both languages. The main positive result of this is that we avoid the switching of realities the skeptic uses in undermining knowledge. In response to the skeptic who says that I am a brain in a vat, I could concede that the glass in front of me, in addition to having the perceptual properties I think it does, could also have the property of being produced by a vat system. This doesn’t mean that the glass is something other than what I have always thought it is; it just means that there could be more to learn about the glass.


Notes

1. I’m using all four of my extension days on this paper even though I only have three days to use them on, so imagine what one extra day would do in improving this paper when reading.
2. Taken From Class Notes
3. My apologies if there is something obviously wrong with this response that we covered, but I don’t recall anything like it, and I thought I’d throw it out there.
4. Or at least three responses in dealing with the argument’s logic.
5. Brains in Vats, pg.38
6. From Class Notes
7. Ibid
8. A Priori Knowledge of the World: Knowing the World by Knowing Our Minds, pg.76
9. I’m not convinced that this response works, but I thought it might be interesting to work out the details of this sort of reply to the revised skeptical scenario. Take this as explorative hypothesizing and not my definitive view.

Works Cited

Putnam, Hilary. Brains in Vats. In Skepticism A Contemporary Reader. Edited by Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Bruekner, Anthony. Semantic Answers to Skepticism. In Skepticism A Contemporary Reader. Edited by Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Forbes, Graeme. Realism and Skepticism: Brains in a Vat Revisited. In Skepticism A Contemporary Reader. Edited by Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Warfield, Ted. A Priori Knowledge of the World: Knowing the World by Knowing Our Minds. In Skepticism A Contemporary Reader. Edited by Keith DeRose and Ted Warfield, Oxford University Press, 1999.

Reflection, Habit And Freedom In Hegel’s Concept Of Ethical Life

Paul Franco and Allen Wood present different interpretations of reflection’s role in ethical life in Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Franco claims that “Hegel identifies ethical life in an important way with an unreflective and habitual ethical disposition on the part of the individual”, whereas Wood claims Hegel’s stance on habit and reflection is only the beginning of a more developed form of spirit. These interpretations conflict over the importance and necessity of reflection and habit for ethical life, as well as their portrayal of freedom in a Hegelian ethical society. In this essay I will examine what I take to be the reasons and motivation for Franco and Wood’s stances as a means to explicate the sources of conflict between them. I will then present a reading of Hegel that attempts to overcome this conflict by preserving the importance of unreflective action and habit while still valuing the necessity of reflection, all of which does not infringe upon a subject’s freedom. This reading holds that the unreflective and habitual ethical disposition of an individual leading a proper ethical life, which is the final stage of spirit’s development, can only can be achieved through reflection and reflective choice of action such that reflection plays a necessary role in the development of spirit up to this stage. Also, the concepts of willing and duty involved in this stage entail that the subject’s freedom is uninfringed.

Franco appears to have good reasons for thinking that ethical life is an unreflective ethical disposition. For one, Hegel writes that in individuals who are identical with the ethical, the ethical “...appears as custom; and the habit of the ethical appears as a second nature...”.1 This passage suggests that acting on custom and habit is all that is required for living an ethical life. Furthermore, to act on custom or habit seems unreflective analytically, as to act unreflectively is to act without considering the reasons for that action, and because habits and customs are patterns of behavior that one usually unconsciously upholds. For example, if Tim has a habit of dotting his ‘i’s, then Tim will dot his ‘i’s without thinking about why he is dotting them, or whether he should dot them. Thus, Franco’s position seems plausible.

Another reason Franco’s position seems correct is because Hegel claims “what the subject is, is the series of its actions”2. This claim separates a subject’s intentions from her actions, and holds the actions as the only important thing in determining the subject’s ethical value. Coupled with the claim that the Kantian system of morality is an empty formalism due to its mere subjectivity, this suggests that an action’s good exists only its actual outcome. For example, if a driver were to act with the intention of missing a pedestrian, and still hit him, then the action is still wrong despite the driver’s intentions. This supports Franco’s claim because it implies acting correctly is all that is required for ethical action. Thus, having or following habits and customs that lead to correct action is sufficient for a subject to be ethical. Whether the subject is reflective or unreflective is insignificant so long as they perform the correct action required by a circumstance. This is why Franco seems correct.

Wood’s reading of ethical life as the first stage in the development of spirit seems implausible. His developmental reading of the passage “the substance of spirit begins to exist as spirit”3 fails to explain why his reading is to be preferred over a reading in which the spirit’s existence through unreflective activity is the final stage of its development. Structurally, the Elements of the Philosophy of Right does not support Wood’s reading. Hegel’s work can be read as a progression of simple, logically and historically primary concepts to complex concepts that depend logically on the simpler concepts and occur later in history. Read this way, more complex and developed concepts occur later in the book. If there is a further development of spirit, then it is odd that Hegel neither gives an additional account of the spirit’s development nor suggests that his work is incomplete. It seems unreasonable and uncharitable to think that Hegel would not address further developments later in the book, and there seems to be no further development of spirit later in the book. Thus, Wood’s reading seems untenable.

Even if Wood’s account is untenable, this does not entail that his motivations for the account are wrong. Why would Wood think that a more developed form of spirit exists, and what would make it more developed? The problem with ethical life as interpreted by Franco is that it places no value on reflection, and reflection seems like a valuable thing, both intuitively and in Hegel’s writing. For example, Hegel defines ethical life as “the Idea of freedom as the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action”4 If ethical life is unreflective, then it is odd that Hegel emphasizes self-conscious action and thought in the definition, as this seems like a form of reflection. Wood’s account may be motivated by a desire to explain why reflection is important, because if the primitive form of spirit doesn’t require reflection and acts unreflectively on habit, then an advanced form of spirit may include reflection and reflective action. In this way the value of reflection would be preserved.

Another of Wood’s intentions may be to avoid a situation where a society could indoctrinate its subjects with the correct customs such that everyone must lead an ethical life by habit and custom, without the subject’s willing it. This seems to be permitted under Franco’s description, as the subject only needs to act correctly in order to be ethical. Thus, it does not matter whether a person acts a certain way because they reflectively choose to be or because they are indoctrinated, as long as that action is the correct action. This is at odds with Hegel’s emphasis on freedom, as the subject is precluded from subjectively willing what they please. If a more developed form of spirit exists, then it is possible that this state allows reflection to play an important role. This in turn might require enough reflection and action based on reflection in subjects such that indoctrination comes at odds with the developed ethical life; the subjects wouldn’t be able to reach the higher level without reflectively recognizing that the customs and habits they are indoctrinated with are correct. Thus, the motivations for Wood’s developmental reading conflict with the account given by Franco.

The conflict between Franco and Wood’s accounts arises primarily from their different valuations of reflection. This is also connected to the role freedom plays in an ethical society. If reflection is valuable, then habit and custom are less important to ethical life, as they are a lesser stage of a too be developed concept of spirit. By valuing reflection, indoctrination is precluded as an option for developing an ethical society, and the concept of freedom is preserved. If reflection is not valuable, then habits and customs that lead to ethical action are important, as they keep the subject focused on performing ethical action. These accounts appear as two extremes, one in which correct action is valued at the expense of freedom, and the other in which freedom is valued at the expense of habit and custom.

I think that Hegel manages to avoid a dichotomy of this sort, and any such tension is only apparent. Both views can be held without contradiction, as they are required at different stages in the account of ethical life. A subject necessarily needs to reflect in order to gain knowledge of ethical laws, however, once those laws and the subject’s relation to them are correctly identified, reflection becomes unnecessary and even problematic to acting ethically, and thus unreflective action becomes an important aspect of ethical life. This is what my reading will attempt to show.

Hegel defines ethical life as “the Idea of freedom as the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action”.5 By “living good” Hegel seems to mean actual or objective goodness, which exists outside the subjects, and continuously in time. This living good, or the ethical substance, is an object independent of subjects such that “Whether the individual exists or not is a matter of indifference to objective ethical life, which alone has permanence and is the power by which the lives of individuals are governed.”6

These passages suggest that ethical substance is an object independent of individuals. The ethical substance is most like an answer to a math problem in that its truth is independent of what subjects will it to be, and there are single, final answers to it. For example, the answer to the problem “2+2” does not depend on a subject’s subjective judgment of it and there is one true answer; the subject can’t objectively hold five to be the answer and there is no answer to be developed beyond four. Likewise, ethical laws exist whether subjects get them “right” or not, and there are no further laws beyond the laws that exist, just as there are no further answers beyond the correct answers. This is important because it shows that when the correct ethical laws are reached, the problem is done and no more cognition need take place.

While the ethical substance is an object outside the subject, “...it is not something alien to the subject...”, as “...the subject bears spiritual witness to them [ethical laws] as to its [the subject’s] own essence, in which it [the subject] has its self-awareness and lives in its element which is not distinct from itself...”7 This passage implies that ethical laws and a subject’s essence are closely related if not identical. It seems at this point that a subject must be reflective and capable of conceptual thought if they are to behave ethically as “...adequate cognition of this identity [between the subject’s essence and ethical laws] belongs to conceptual thought.”8 Thus, reflection is necessary for the identification of ethical laws and knowledge of the ethical life, as the laws are part of the subject’s essence and are discovered by self-reflection. Here, Wood’s valuing of reflection is correct, as reflection is a necessary step in discovering ethical laws. In this way, the concept of ethical life requires reflection.

Once the person has reflected on what the ethical laws are, they must self-consciously will themselves to follow the laws of the ethical. By doing so, the subject recognizes these laws at their duties. This willing should be understood as choosing their moral duties to be the ethical laws that exist in reality, as Hegel writes “...but the objective system of these principles and duties and the union of subjective knowledge with this system are present only when the point of view of ethics has been reached”.9 These willing needs do be done of the subject’s free will, as it is what preserves the subject’s subjective determination of freedom. These individuals are thus still free in ethical life.

There still may be the objection at this point that only some individuals need to do the reflection required to know ethical laws, and others only need to act on them. Reflection would not be an important step in these people’s lives. There are a few ways to deal with this objection. One is to accept it, but note that unless the people following the ethical laws laid out by others reflected on them and chose them to be their duties, their right to a subjective determination of freedom would be infringed. In this case, a person could be both ethical and not free.

Another way is to hold that while a person can act ethically at times, this is not existing ethically, as “what the subject is, is the series of its actions”10 and “ If this or that particular action of a person is ethical, this does not exactly make him virtuous; it does so only if this mode of conduct is a constant feature of his character”.11 This responds to the objection by showing that a subject needs to know the ethical in order to continually and non-accidentally act ethical. Thus, people will not be able to recognize when a certain habit or custom is inappropriate to follow, and will fail to be ethical in this circumstance, if they are unable to determine the ethical themselves. Also, appropriate action might be partially determined by a subject’s particular characteristics-what masculine or feminine qualities they have, and thus the subject will have to reflect to know himself in order to know which actions are appropriate for him to make. In this way, the subjects can’t really be ethical as apposed to acting ethically unless they do the necessary reflection. In both cases though, reflection needs to be done at some point by someone to discover the ethical laws, and is still necessary.

Once the subject knows the ethical laws and wills herself to do them, the subject knows what the correct action to undertake in any circumstance is, and thus acts the same way in all circumstances requiring it. This is why Hegel writes “But if it [the ethical] is simply identical with the actuality of individuals, the ethical, as their general mode of behavior, appears as custom; and the habit of the ethical appears as a second nature which takes the place of the original and purely natural will...”12. As the subject behaves the same way in each circumstance, the right way, the subject’s actions appear to be habitual and customary. Furthermore, at this point the subject does not need to be reflective, as once they know how to act correctly in a given circumstance, they don’t need to re-think how to act, they just act. Extra reflection, doubt, and further subjective determination is only a hindrance to ethical action at this point, as an action is only ethical if it is completed, and further thought slows downs or prevents action from taking place. For example, if a person is drowning and a potential rescuer needs to reflect on whether saving them is an ethical action or not, there is a risk that the person will drown before the reflection is finished and the rescuer would not be able to perform an ethical action. The repetition of right action so that it becomes habit removes the obstacles doubting and subjective determination create.

Thus, there is a sense in which Franco’s claim that ethical life is importantly an unreflective and habitual ethical disposition of the individual is correct, because actions do not need to be further reflected and are in a sense habit at the final stage of ethical life. At this point, both Franco and Wood’s valuations of reflection are compatible with an account of ethical life, both can be held without contradiction, and a subject’s subjective determination of freedom is not imposed on.




__________________________________Notes_________________________________

1.(All notes are from Elements of the Philosophy of Right, and are section numbers.)
S. 151
2. S. 124
3. S. 151
4. S. 142
5. S. 142
6. S. 145 (in the addition)
7. S. 147, words in boxes are mine.
8. S. 147, again, words in boxes are mine.
9. S. 137
10. S. 124
11. S. 150 (in the addition)
12. S. 151 words in boxes are mine.

Works Cited

Hegel, G.W.F. Elements of the Philosophy of Right. Translated by Allen W. Wood, Cambridge University Press: 1991.

I’ve been thinking about how necessary the division between sexes is for Hegel and I think I have a novel way of avoiding any logical fallout from his potentially sexist remarks. By logical fallout I mean any invalidity to his further argument that comes from falsely assuming that men and women have different characteristics; that men are like animals and women are like plants, etc (I.E. passage 165). Here is my argument:

Assume for sake of argument that sexist critique of Hegel holds. What does this entail? Well, either there are different objective facts about differences between men and women listed (i.e. he characterized men and women wrong, but there is some objective characterization of men and women) or that their are no objective facts about differences between men and women listed (i.e. men and women can be like animals or plants, though presumably the traits are exclusive). The first case seem to be subject to the same sexist critique that presumably problematizes Hegel, so I’ll concentrate on the second case.(1)

If men and women can both realize plant and animal traits, and the traits are exclusive, then there will be a group of men and women with mixed traits. By this I mean that some men will be like plants, some women like animals, and perhaps some men/women will be like plants in some aspects and animals in others.

Now, Hegel’s concept of marriage seems to me to depend on a union of two individual’s unlike traits, which results in a family. (2) Marriage needs a union of unlike traits because, as Catherine wrote, “...if men and women were not essentially different, then their union would not, presumably, result in supersession (and hence new, 'better,' individuality)”. Here, if we replace the necessity of men and women being essentially different in general with the necessity of the individuals getting married being essentially different, I think we can preserve Hegel’s account of marriage. In other words, all that is required for marriage is that the individuals involved in the marriage have the right balance of animal and plant traits; if a man who is plant-like marries a woman who is animal-like, a marriage results. I think under Hegel’s account these traits will also necessitate a certain role in the family-persons with plant traits shouldn’t be the head of a government, but I think the role necessitated in the family is necessitated by having the trait rather than being a man or a woman. Thus, if there is the correct balance of traits in a marriage and the individuals with the traits play their proper roles, Hegel’s account seems to hold.

Furthermore, if this is added to Hegel’s account, then he will be able to explain why some marriages are better than others; if the two individuals being married don’t have the proper balance of plant and animal traits, then the supperession of individualities is imperfect and the resulting individuality is a defective version of the proper suppersession. This further explains why some roles are unfulfilled in the family-if neither individual has animal traits, then the governing role is imperfect. I’m unsure here if Hegel would say that one marriage is better than another here, or simply that no marriage results unless the proper balance occurs in the union.

Anyways, for me this seems prima facie to work. Are there any problems with this move that I am missing?

Thanks for your time,
Michael Vossen

Notes:

1. The reason the first case problematizes Hegel and the second does not is probably because all sets of men/women differences say “For all subjects x and some trait Y, there are no women(x) such that Y(x)” -I.e. There are no women who can philosophize, etc- and we can always find a person t such that women(t) and Y(t)-Kellyn is a women and Kellyn philosophizes. The second case simply denies that a set of differences of this kind exists, so it avoids the problem. Also, I think these traits and differences need to be somehow different than or not entailed by physical traits for my argument to work; I do not deny that women have different physical traits than men.

2. This seems very similar to the concept of love presented in Plato’s Symposium

3. This argument seems to be a version of Matthew’s weak revision.

Alienation, Human Nature, and Parallels between Marx and Hegel Methods

Michael Vossen

Marx takes himself to be presenting a fundamentally different view than Hegel. . To investigate how his view is different, I will analyze the concept of alienation put forth in The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 in an attempt to discover which assumptions and methods of Marx differ him from Hegel. In doing so, I will first examine the nature of alienation claims in general, and then show how Marx’s account fits the model. In doing so, I hope to clarify the concept of human nature used by Marx in his claim. Then, I will examine how his concept apparently differs from that of Hegel. By doing so, I’ll try to show that Marx’s account of alienation relies on a concept of human nature that tries to eliminate the abstract elements of Hegel’s account through a dismissal of spiritual and abstract entities, seemingly based on Marx’s materialism. This difference between accounts seems to be premised on reading Hegel as “mysteriously” positing an abstract man. Finally, this analysis will show that depending on how Marx arrives his concept of human nature, he is either actually not differing much from Hegel, or differing from Hegel in a way that is problematic for his account of alienated labor.

Since both Marx and Hegel claim that a subject can be alienated, an analysis of alienation claims in general will help identify the type of assumptions needed to make such claims, and thus provide a basis to compare the assumptions made by Marx and Hegel. Therefore, we should ask what makes alienation claims possible? There are two ways a subject is said to be alienated. The first way is when a subject feels alienated, the second when a subject is alienated. Both follow similar logic, except that the first is a subjective judgment made by the subject, and the second is an objective fact about the subject. In either case, in making an alienation claim there is a set of activities or states that constitutes for a subject being what it is. If the subject is prevented from partaking in this set, the subject is said to be alienated, and the thing that prevents him from partaking in the set is described as alienating. For instance, if in part being a human consists in being part of a group, then a human that is not part of a group due to, say a rule or custom is said to be alienated and that rule or custom is alienating. A subject can be alienated without feeling alienated if they don’t recognize that they are being prevented from partaking in the set, or if they don’t think the action or state is part of the set and are mistaken. A subject can also feel alienated without being alienated if they think that they are prevented from partaking in a part of the set that isn’t actually part of the set.

If this analysis of alienation is correct, then it provides insight about the assumptions needed to make an alienation claim. In order to say that a subject can objectively be alienated, a philosopher will have to claim that a certain set of actions or states constitutes subject hood for that subject. Marx seems to be using the second concept of alienation, for he holds that a person can be alienated without feeling alienated, and such a statement can only be made if an objective set exists and the person does not recognize it. Furthermore, Marx’s account of the alienation of labor also suggests he is using the second notion. Marx claims that the labor is alienating because “... labor is external to the worker, i.e. does not belong to his essential being...”1By this statement, Marx means that labor, at least the labor of capitalist societies, does not belong to the set of activities that constitute being human. This seems to be because the worker puts part of himself into the objects he works on, and must sell those objects for substances. This separates man from part of himself. Further, interacting with the objects of one’s labor seems to be necessary for consciousness for Marx, and consciousness is the action that separates man from animals; “Conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. It is just because of this that he is a species being. Or it is only because he is a species being that he is a Conscious being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him.”2 This explains why Marx thinks that while “... eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuinely human functions.”, the type of labor in capitalist society “separates them from the sphere of all other human activity and turns them into sole and ultimate ends, they are animals."3The activities listed are a part of the set of human actions, yet they leave out conscious life-activity, which is the particularly human activity. Conscious life-activity is missing from the set because the object’s of labor which contain part of the laborer do not belong to the laborer, and thus they can’t look be conscious of themselves since they can’t use the objects in the right way. Thus, the laborer only can participate in the set of actions that makes a thing an animal, so the laborer is in a sense an animal. Note that like for Hegel, consciousness is required to truly be free, so alienated laborers are also not free.

It may be thought that Marx is using the first notion of alienation, since he does emphasize that the worker will feel a certain way when alienated, and this feeling may constitute alienation for the worker. But if this is the case, then the alienation is purely a subjective judgment on the part of the worker, and the claim that labor, especially the forced labor of a capitalist system, is alienating does not carry the weight needed to criticize the system which produces such labor. If this alienation is only a subjective judgment made by the worker and there is no objective set of human actions, then changing the worker’s judgment, most likely through presenting him a view of human existence that sees his actions as falling within the set of human actions, can solve the problem of alienated labor. Marx recognizes this possibility, for he criticizes the capitalist for “...counting the lowest possible level of life (existence) as the standard, indeed as the general standard-general because it is applicable to the mass of men.”4 It is hard to see how this is a criticism unless there is some objective standard of life which is higher than that which the capitalist tricks the worker into believing is true. If there is no such standard, then it is hard to see why one subjective judgment is better than another, and thus why the capitalist’s judgment is too low.

Marx sees himself as differing from Hegel in that his concept of the set of human actions brings the idea of human species-the set of human actions- “from the heaven of abstraction to the real of earth.” 5 In characterizing abstraction as unreal and mysterious, Marx may be criticizing Hegel for how he arrives at his concept human nature. Marx often characterizes Hegel’s arguments as mysterious and abstract. One way that Hegel’s arguments seem mysterious is because they rely on premises about human nature that are posited without arguments. For example, Hegel states that there are certain feminine and masculine characteristics, yet does not derive these inductively from examples. In this way, Hegel’s arguments aren’t connected to facts about real subject.

This criticism is interesting in that it relates to a general problem with claiming that a certain set of activities constitutes a things nature: how does one determine which activities are part of the set? There are two general ways one might arrive at the set. The first is through statistical regularity and the second is through normative regularity.(see Meg) Statistical regularity determines the activities that constitute being a thing by looking at the average activities done by a population of those things. For example, given a population of men, if a high enough percentage eat, drink, procreate, read, jog, fence, etc then these activities in part constitute being human. Normative regularity is simply the pattern of actions preformed by a thing, that in part constitute its nature. Normative regularity is not derived from anything and is posited as true based on intuition, and it does not rely on facts about the world. While this may make the origin of sets derived by normative regularity seem abstract and mysterious, this lack of influence from statistical facts allows for sets derived by normative regularity to make claims that sets derived by statistical regularity can’t. Sets derived by normative regularity can say that an action is necessary for being a thing even when most or all things in the group do not do the action. For example, if most humans in the world were not self-conscious, a proponent of statistical regularity would have to conclude that self-consciousness is not an action required for being human, since the average human is not conscious. Whereas a proponent of normative regularity can hold that self-consciousness is required for being human even if most humans are not self-conscious. The proponent of normative regularity can then diagnose the non self-conscious humans as defective.

If Marx’s analysis of Hegel is correct, then Hegel seem to be using normative regularity to come to his set of human actions. If Marx is critical of the way Hegel arrives at his set, then Marx probably will try not to use the same method. It is unclear what method Marx uses, since Marx wants to make objective claims about worker’s alienation. If Marx differs from Hegel in method by abstracting from facts to human nature, then what human nature is is relative to the facts about humans. While this seems to fit with Marx’s philosophy well, as actually changing the world would then change facts about human nature, it seems problematic to his account of alienated labor, since Marx probably would say that even if most humans did not perform conscious life activity, conscious life activity would still be required for being human. Since Marx says that workers become animals when deprived of the ability to perform conscious life activity, he may simply not count their activity as human activity, but this would mean that the workers literally cease to be human, whereas it seems more plausible to say that the workers are still humans, simply defective humans. Finally, if it is not the case that Marx is using statistical regularity, then it seems seem as if like Hegel, he too is positing what human nature is-albeit a different picture than Hegel-yet still using the same method as Hegel. Thus, depending on how Marx arrives his concept of human nature, he is either actually not differing much from Hegel, or differing from Hegel in a way that is problematic for his account of alienated labor.


Notes

1. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 pg 74
2. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 pg 76
3. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 pg 76
4. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 pg 95
5. Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right pg 53
6. Normative Regularity is a concept developed by Margaret Scharle to explain part of Aristotle’s Physics, and is used in her presumably unpublished paper “Elemental Teleology and the Role of Nature”. I borrow the concept from her, and in no way claim credit for it.


Works Cited

Marx, Karl. The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. From “The Marx-Engels Reader”, edited by Robert C. Tucker. W.W. Norton & Company, 1972.

Nietzsche's Death of God
Michael Vossen

108. New battles. After Buddha was dead, they still showed his shadow in a cave for centuries- a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way people are, there may still for millennia be caves in which they show his shadow. –And we- we must still defeat his shadow as well!
-Fredrick Nietzsche, The Gay Science

209. A way of asking for reasons. There is a way of asking us for our reasons that not only makes us forget our best reasons but also awakens in us a defiance and resistance towards reasons in general- a very stultifying mode of asking and a trick used by tyrannical people!
-Fredrick Nietzsche, The Gay Science

God is dead. This statement, asserted in various places of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, is never directly explained. This absence of explanation and justification functions as to “awaken defiance and resistance” in readers towards the claim, in such a manner that it forces them to engage with it. Indeed, the shock value, boldness, and perhaps blasphemy of the claim are necessary for it to function as it does; as a way of asking for reasons. Further, once the more defensive “What do you mean and how do you know” questions are accounted for, the ‘is dead’ relation invites questions of a more mundane sort-gay in their incongruence with the claim’s gravity- questions whose playfulness obscures their importance. Examples of such questions are:

How did he die? What size is his coffin? Where shall we bury him? What (if any) eulogies should we give? How does one mourn the death of a god? Who will take his place; come Monday, we’ll all have to go back to work again, and we’ll need someone do his job? What was his job again? Who is qualified to replace him? Who is even arrogant enough to suggest a fitting replacement now that God is dead! Or can we get by without him...? Who or what killed him? Man, you say man killed him? Why did man kill him? How did man kill him? Was it voluntary or involuntary god-slaughter? What punishment fits this crime? Or perhaps, what was the price on his head?

Given The Gay Science’s playful yet serious style, it is neither unreasonable nor inappropriate to hold that these more playful questions invoked should be read as the more serious questions posed by the work. This essay, after dealing with the more defensive questions, will attempt to answer questions of the mundane sort.

The questions “What do you mean by ‘God is dead’ and how do you know” are defensive in that they are generally made in reaction to the claim, and perhaps seek to refute or rebut it; in asking for an explanation and proof, the asker seeks some erroneous premise that has led to the false claim. For example, it is easy to see how a philosopher or theologian might view the claim that “God is dead” as false and even contradictory, as it naturally can be read as an ontological claim. However, taking the claim as such misses Nietzsche’s point. The claim can be taken ontologically in that it seems to concern the existence of God-he is dead, existing no more- and appears false and contradictory in that it takes God to be the sort of being that can die. Note that this claim is different than a flat out proclamation of atheism- the denial of God’s existence- in that in relating God to a living thing, Nietzsche suggests God existed for a period of time, and then ceased to exist, which is different than saying God does not exist. Latching on to the ‘existed, now cease to exists’ difference, a philosopher or theologian might press Nietzsche on his claim:

“Nietzsche”, says the philosophogian, “You might not realize it, but you are committed to a controversial metaphysical claim. You say that God is dead, however, the death of God implies that he was living at some point, for to die is to cease to live. Thus you must hold that God existed at some point in time, for that which lives exists. But who is this god that can die? For if you mean God, that which nothing greater can possibly be conceived, that who’s essence is existence, then you falsely eulogize. For if you can conceive of a god who dies, then you can conceive of a greater being, a god who’s death is impossible; greater than this even, inconceivable, beyond human thought. And we hold that God is that which nothing greater can possibly be conceived, so this corpse you have can’t be our God. And anyone who knows the nature of God couldn’t make the error in identifying that John Doe, you have there, so you must not have known. Now that you have this knowledge you should recognize that your claim was in error, and you can avoid this mistake in the future. Or perhaps you mean something different? Are you an atheist? Are you trying to say that God doesn’t exist? If so, then you’ve chosen a poor way in which to say this!”

It is easy to imagine Nietzsche sitting, listening to such an account with a hidden grin, as an expert politely listens to the passionate and proud criticism of an initiate who has mistaken him for a novice. Unless Nietzsche is taken as dense enough not to recognize the contradiction present in his assertion, a characterization that any careful reader of The Gay Science would be apt to avoid, the assertion should not be taken as simply a metaphysical claim.

Further reading in The Gay Science suggests two ways that Nietzsche could respond to this metaphysical objection. The first way is suggested by passage 335, where Nietzsche says of Kant “Yet it had been his strength and cleverness that had broken open the cage!” Here, the cage that is broken open is the use of concepts such as ‘God’, ‘soul’, ‘freedom’, and ‘immortality’. Nietzsche may be assuming that Kant had destroyed any rational position that makes use of such concepts, as they are beyond a human capacity to know. The breaking of the cage is the writing of The Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant refutes the type of ontological proof given by the philosophogian, and separates these concepts from good metaphysics. This line of response is weak in that it commits Nietzsche to a- at least- Kant like metaphysical position, and thus leaves him vulnerable to attacks on this position. Further, Nietzsche does not seem interested in giving metaphysical arguments, so while this is a possible way for Nietzsche to reply to the metaphysical objection, it is not the best reply he can give.

The second way of responding is stronger. Here, the claim that God is dead is taken as a claim on the use of the concept of God in giving lives meaning. The ontological status of God is irrelevant on such an account; God may exist, but belief in God no longer fulfills the same role it once did; as a matter of historical fact, the world is moving away from using God as a source of meaning. This account is suggested through consideration of his earlier work, The Birth of Tragedy. In this work, Nietzsche examines different ways of dealing with the “wisdom of Silenus”; that life is not worth living and we are better off dead. The concept of God deals with such wisdom as by connecting man to the absolute; this world may be imperfect and not worth living, but humans are connected to God, and via good action and belief, humans can become part of an eternal realm of happiness. In this way, human life has meaning, alibi from a certain mythological perspective. While this may be a useful way of deceiving oneself, and worked for a period of time, man has moved away from such mythologies, and the modern man must now make do without this deception.

If Nietzsche is responding along this line, the fact that the madman in passage 125 speaks to atheists and not believers is partially explained. The death of God may, at first, only impact the lives of atheists; there are still some people who believe in God that have not yet heard of the death of God, and Nietzsche seems reluctant to disturb them, most likely because they are still deceiving themselves well. The death impacts the atheists for they would be among the first to deal with the loss of God. Interestingly, the atheists in passage 125 have not been affected by the death of God in the same way the madman has. The madman’s explanation, that “...deeds need time, even after they are done, in order to be seen and heard...” fits the model of the death of God as a historic event. While God is dead-modern society needs him no longer-, it may take some time for people to realize this. Further, there may still be “shadows of God”(passage108) that must be recognized and overcome before society can move on. Thus, while the atheists do not understand the madman yet-the news hasn’t reached them-, they are presumably some of the first people positioned to see and recognize this event.

This line of response may also help explain the cause of God’s death. If the concept of God is needed only in so far as it is a useful self-deception, then when the concept is no longer useful or deceptive, the concept of God will not be needed. Given that the madman claims “We have killed him -you and I!”, suggesting that man is the cause of God’s death, God’s death may be caused by man no longer needing the idea of God to play a certain role in life, or through man pursuing reason to its ends and discovering that he is no longer able to deceive himself. If this is the case, then God’s death should be thought of as caused by a trend in thought across time rather than the result of a single event; there may be many events that helped make the idea un-useful or implausible- many causes of God’s death.

Finally, the model of God’s death as an inability of the concept to fulfill its role in human life helps explain why the more mundane questions arising from the statement “God is dead” are the most interesting. Since the concept of God “is gone”, its absence leaves a void in the lives of people that needs to be filled; God is dead, what do we do now, how do we go on living? Again, the madman provides the beginning of an answer: “Do we not ourselves have to become gods merely to appear worthy of it?” This suggestion, coupled with the claim in passage 108 that we must fight off the shadows of God, suggests that the answer to such questions is to take up the job of God ourselves; it is also a mistake to try to replace God with a shadow of him or some other metaphysical placebo. Explaining what taking up the job of God entails is a bigger question than can be taken up in this essay- “Even less may one suppose many to know at all what this event really means...”(passage 343)- however, in a general sense it seems safe to say that the job will require strong judgment and responsibility of one’s self. In this way, we can see why Nietzsche might write at passage 275 “What is the seal of having become free?-No longer to be ashamed before oneself.”






Works Cited:

Nietzsche, Fredrick. The Birth of Tragedy. Edited by Raymond Geuss, Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Nietzsche, Fredrick. The Gay Science. Edited by Bernard Williams, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Qual

Abortion And Special Responsibilities
Michael Vossen

Are there any “special responsibilities” that would prevent a woman from having an abortion, assuming the fetus is a child? Judith Thomson, in her essay “A Defense of Abortion”, argues that there are not. Thomson claims, “Surely we do not have any such “special responsibility” for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly.”1In this essay, I will consider whether this claim is correct, and whether abortion opponents could use such “special responsibilities”, which I take to be those responsibilities towards a child that come from standing in a certain relation to the child2, to establish their claim that “... the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.”3In doing so, I will show that special responsibilities towards a child allows for a stronger argument against abortion than Thomson recognizes. First though, I will look closer at the abortion opponent’s conclusion to determine what constitutes successfully establishing it, and consider the extent to which Thomson has defended against it.

In outlining the basic argument against abortion, Thomson writes that the conclusion to the abortion opponent’s argument is “So the fetus may not be killed; an abortion may not be performed.” 4As stated, the conclusion is unclear as to the sense in which abortion may not be performed. Does it hold that abortion may not be performed in the sense that it is impossible to perform an abortion? Surely not, since the opponent seeks to prevent women from having abortions, and it is silly to talk of preventing something from happening that can’t happen. So the conclusion is weaker than this.

As just suggested, the “may not” could be taken to mean that abortions should be prevented. While this is clarifies things, it still leaves unclear what should prevent abortions; is it the agent’s ethical motivations that should prevent her from having an abortion, or is it something outside the agent’s motivation that should prevent her from having an abortion? The former consideration falls under what is morally required or permissible for the agent. Call an action morally required if the action ought to be done insofar as the agent is a good person; it is the action that a good person needs to take in a situation to become or remain a good person. Likewise, call an action morally permissible if it is an action available to the agent in the situation given that she aims at being a good person.5 The later consideration falls under what is civically required or permissible for the agent; what actions an agent is required or permitted to do as a citizen under a nation’s laws. While Thomson does not seem to clearly distinguish between moral and civic requirements, such a distinction helps clarify her position.
Given this distinction, Thomson can be seen as holding that an abortion opponent must establish that an abortion is civically impermissible, and not merely morally impermissible.

One of Thomson’s central claims is that a child’s right to life does not entail the child’s right to use a woman’s body to live. While Thomson seems to establish this claim, she seems wrong to further conclude from it that “Except in such cases as the unborn person has a right to demand it [use of a woman’s body]-and we were leaving open the possibility that there may be such cases-nobody is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, of all other interests and concerns, of all other duties and commitments, for nine years, or even for nine months, in order to keep another person alive.”6 Given that this principle is supposed to hold even in cases where all a person has to do to save a life is walk across a room and place their hand on another’s forehead, it is clearly false. There is a difference between a child having no right to share the woman’s body and morality not demanding of the woman that the sharing be done. While it may be true that a child has no right to demand that the woman let it live in her, the child has no claim to her body, given situations where the demand has little threat to the agent, such as simply walking across a room and touching another person, the agent ought to walk across the room and touch the forehead in so far as they are trying to be a good person.7 A person who knowingly allows another to die given that a minimal amount of action would save the other person is not acting as a good person would, and is probably acting immorally. Thus, the action is morally required, not because the child has a right, but because failing to perform the action is inconsistent with what the agent ought to do as a good person.

All this shows is that a woman who refuses a child use of her body in circumstances where the child’s life depends on that use and the use neither hinders her health nor sovereignty is not acting as morally as she could. As Thomson points out, there is nothing legally preventing people from not behaving as morally as possible. As such, Thomson should have claimed that while in certain situations abortion is morally impermissible; a woman who is trying to behave morally ought to help the child out, not out of any right of the child, but of her conscience, the moral impermissibility does not entail that abortion should then be civically impermissible too. While the women who choose to help the children are acting excellently, it is not civically required that they do so.

Thomson may have recognized this, but failed to state it clearly, for her discussion of a Good Samaritan and Good Samaritan laws recognizes that a person is acting less excellently when they do nothing to prevent someone from dying than when they help that person. 8Thomson seems to be arguing here that there should be Minimally Descent Samaritan laws-laws that set standards for how minimally moral a person must act- even though there currently are none, although this is not clear from the text. If she is making such an argument, it would explain why she takes herself to have shown that “There may well be cases in which carrying the child to term requires only Minimally Decent Samaritanism of the mother, and this is a standard we must not fall below.”9, and abortion should not be allowed in these cases.

These considerations show that the conclusion of the abortion opponent’s argument needs to show that abortion is civically impermissible, and not merely morally impermissible for the argument to be successful.10 Thus, to meet Thomson’s demands, an argument based on “special responsibility” needs to establish that abortion is civically impermissible. Is there an argument that can do this?

Thomson seems to think that there is not, for she holds that “Surely we do not have any such “special responsibility” for a person unless we have assumed it, explicitly or implicitly”.11 Thomson motivates her claim with the example of a burglar climbing into a woman’s house through an open window as a metaphor for a woman becoming pregnant because she chose to have intercourse. Thomson considers whether the woman has any special responsibility for the burglar, given he has entered her house against her will. Thomson concludes from this analogy that women who don’t want the burglar in their house don’t have any responsibility for the burglar, as the women are not opening the windows for the sake of burglars, but for a more pleasurable house.12 In other words, women who do not desire children are not responsible for children resulting from intercourse.

There are two problems with this claim. The first is that it appears false that the only responsibilities a person has are the responsibilities that he assumes. The second problem is that it focuses too much on the special responsibilities of the woman involved to the child, and not on special responsibilities anyone else might have to the child; it is not the case that the woman’s lack of desire for responsibility towards the child is the only desire that counts.
Regarding the first problem, sometimes people have responsibilities due to what they are despite their desires. For example, the argument that “I didn’t choose to be born” is not a defense against having the moral responsibilities that a human has. True, you may not care to have those responsibilities, but you have them nonetheless, and you are a good human or not depending on how you meet them, independent of your desires. In this case, responsibilities cannot be denied simply because the agent wants the world to be another way, because the responsibilities are demanded of the agent through what he is, not how he wants the world to be. The agent can certainly choose to ignore his responsibilities, but this does not prevent him from being judged as a bad human.

In a similar vein, sometimes people are entered into certain relations despite their desires. For example, a child sometimes says when told to share with their sibling “I don’t want him to be my brother, I wish he wasn’t born.” We might say that despite the child’s wishes, he is his sibling’s brother, and as a brother, he might have certain responsibilities towards his sibling. Whether this scenario is possible and what his responsibilities are depends on what it is to be a brother; if a person is a brother merely through a biological relation, than it is possible, and if sharing is constitutive of being a good brother, the brother qua brother should share.13

Such considerations present problems for Thomson’s burglar analogy. In Thomson’s example, suppose the burglar is not just some random person, but an uncle of yours. Although you don’t want that uncle in your house, do you still have no responsibility whatsoever to allowing him use? Perhaps more than the burglar, at least, for the uncle is family. Further, suppose it is a more immediate family member. Your mother has taken ill, and needs to spend twelve months in your house to recover, during which you’ll have to take care of her. Do you still have no responsibility towards this person, even though they have come over uninvited and unwanted? The burglar analogy seems less intuitively appealing when the person in the house is family.
Does being a mother give a woman any special responsibilities towards a child? To answer this, it should be asked what it is to be a mother. What makes a person the mother of a child? Well, it seems minimally true that a person is the mother of a child if they nurture and raise the child as it ages. Here, nurturing consists in part of providing for the child’s welfare. While this can be done better or worse, it is surely inconsistent with providing for the child’s welfare to knowingly let the child die when it is possible to prevent this. Further, a person is a good mother if she does the things that make her a mother well, and a bad mother if she does not. As letting a child die when it is possible to prevent this is a failure in nurturing the child, if a mother allows this to happen, she is not mothering well, and hence is not a good mother.14 Thus, if a person is the mother of child, they have a responsibility towards the child insofar as they are trying to be a good mother.

Thomson would probably agree with this analysis, but may disagree if it was added that a woman is mother in virtue of her biological relationship to the child. A biological relationship may not be essential to being a mother; a person may have to choose to be a mother to be a mother.15 Further, a pregnant woman may chose not to be a mother; after all, she took precautions against this. To this argument an abortion opponent might reply that not all responsibilities are chosen; it may very well be that the woman who is with child is still a mother despite her wishes. If this argument is motivating, then an abortion opponent has room to argue that a woman has responsibilities as a mother to avoid the abortion. Also, if mothers are civically required to provide for their children to a certain extent, then there is reason to hold that some abortions may not be performed. Given that the biological relation establishes motherhood, this would preclude abortions due to rape.

Let us grant Thomson’s argument for the moment though. Even if a woman is not a mother unless she chooses to be, special responsibilities still present a problem for the defender of abortion. This is due to the second problem with Thomson’s claim; a mother is not the only person who new special responsibilities come about with the existence of the child. A man may also have special responsibilities to the child as its father. These at least include the same responsibilities of the mother; the father is responsible for the child’s welfare too. Thus, the father of the child will want to prevent the abortion insofar as he is a good father, and ought to do what is in his power to prevent it. Further, by the child’s very existence, mothers become grandmothers, fathers’ grandfathers, brothers’ uncles and sisters’ aunts. All of these people now have a relation to the child, and they may gain special responsibilities towards the child’s welfare that may demand of them that they do what is in their power protect the child. While kidnapping is probably inconsistent with these people’s moral responsibilities, putting pressure on civic leaders to enact laws to prevent abortion is not.

Finally, there is still one other entity with a special responsibility to the child: the state. If protecting the welfare of citizens is constitutive of being a good state, and fetus is a citizen of the state, then it is the responsibility of a good state to protect the welfare of its unborn children. And unlike Thomson’s moral requirements, the state can demand that a person make large sacrifices of health, interest and concerns, other duties and commitments for a long period of time. The state regularly asks of citizens that they submit themselves to draft where in the case of war they are required give up commitments, interests, concerns, other duties, and possibly health. If the state is justified in asking that citizens suited for war go to war in order to protect the welfare of its citizens, it would also be justified in asking woman to allow children to use their bodies for a period of time, in the interest of protecting the new citizens.
So, even if a woman who does not desire a child has nothing morally requiring her not to have an abortion, a state that desires the child will have responsibilities towards it, and this may require the state to take measures to prevent the women from having an abortion. True, the woman is not required to accede to the state’s demands, but the woman’s refusal does not give her any special status; she is as any other person who refuses the state’s demands. The state requires people to be good citizens of the state, not good human beings, and people are bad citizens in failing to meet the demands of the state, and bad people in failing to meet the demands of morality.

Thus, I have argued that “special responsibility” considerations provide a stronger argument for abortion opponents than Thomson acknowledges. An abortion defender dissatisfied with this argument would need to consider what is constitutive of a good state and show that there is a conflict between the state’s responsibility to both the child’s welfare and the woman’s autonomy, and that the conflict should be resolved by in favor of the woman. Further, they might consider whether the state is justified in demanding citizens make sacrifices, and what responsibility a citizen has towards state. Finally, as Thomson’s notes, all this is under the assumption that a fetus is a child, and abortion defenders still can deny this.16

Notes

1. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 65.

2. I take special responsibilities to be those responsibilities towards a child that come from standing in some relation to the child, such as being the child’s mother. See pg 64 for support, esp. “...but that it (the child) is a person for whom the woman has a special kind of responsibility issuing from the fact that she is its mother.”

3. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 48.

4. Ibid, pg. 48.

5. Thomson sometimes talks as if it is the event that is morally permissible, and not an action an agent. I think it is clearer to talk about the actions of the agents involved in the event, as it seems awkward to think of an event having permission to happen.

6. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 61-62.

7. Thomson even seems to agree with this claim, for she writes that in an analogous situation with a violinist“...you ought to let the violinist use your kidneys for the one hour he needs...”Pg. 61. It is unclear in what sense you ought to do this other than a morally required ought.


8. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 62-63.

9. Ibid, pg. 62-63.

10. At least by Thomson’s standards. Thomson’s defense of abortion would not work against a modest abortion opponent, who is trying to show that abortion is merely morally impermissible.

11. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 65.

12. Ibid, pg. 59.

13. It should be noted that in these cases, conclusions about people’s actions as brothers do not necessarily tell against them as humans, unless it is constitutive of being a good human to be a good brother.

14. Given that it may be easier or harder to provide for the child’s welfare, in circumstances of great difficulty-such as putting the mother’s life at risk, it may not be that much of a failure, as there is not much that the mother is safely able to do; the mother can fail in varying degrees, and this may make her more or less of a bad mother. Likewise, circumstances beyond her control do not affect her status as a mother.

15. A Defense of Abortion, pg. 64: “But if they have taken all reasonable precautions against having a child, they do not simply by virtue of their biological relationship to the child who comes into existence have a special responsibility for it.

16. Ibid, pg. 66.

Works Cited

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “A Defense of Abortion”. Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1. (Autumn, 1971), pp. 47-66.

ON NATUS SOLIS
Michael Vossen
May 7, 2006

What is it about a sun that makes it bright? What traits must a person have to become a sun? How does natus solis occurs? This essay will attempt to answer such questions in its analysis of Nietzsche’s claims on nobility. The essay will first look at Nietzsche’s praise of Greek nobility and criticism of Christian morality as to isolate the traits that characterize a noble person. The essay will then suggest an interpretation of Nietzsche in which it is shown how a commitment to intellectual integrity about oneself and worldview drives people capable of dealing with truth to "create" a self-affirming perspective on the world, which in turn functions like the value-creation ability that Nietzsche praises. This account will also look at ways a person can drop such a commitment, and argue that the result of which can be considered Nietzsche’s main target of criticism. Further, this account will also help to clarify some of Nietzsche’s remarks about truth and argumentation.

WHAT IS NOBILITY?

To begin, let it be asked, “What is noble about the noble? In what ways are they bright?” In answering this question, it is the traits that Nietzsche seems to find intrinsically praiseworthy about noble people that are sought. An improper answer to the question would be to look at the utility of nobility for some purpose, for this would be to evaluate the nobility insofar as they enable the purpose, not for what is distinctive about the nobility itself. Thus, the answer to the question should look for distinctive traits or capacities that noble persons have that distinguishes them from non-noble people.

Nietzsche’s The Genealogy Of Morals is a useful place to begin to answer the question. One trait that seems to be distinctively noble here is the ability of nobility to create values. Nietzsche’s discussion of the origin of good from Greek nobility’s word for “the Truthful” provides an account for how value creation works. (BGE 205 & GOM 29) In Nietzsche’s account, the Greek nobility look to themselves and find “...one who is, who possesses reality, who is actual, who is true...”(GOM 29) Here, a Greek noble looks to himself, discovers that he is strong, fast, and skilled, and then affirms the characteristics he finds in himself, giving them value and naming them good. This self-affirmation also serves to create new values for others; when the noble surveys the populace, he honors those and only those who are like him. As Nietzsche writes “...every star is such an egoist-it honors itself in them and in the rights it cedes to them;...”(BGE 265) Values are created in that a self-affirming person’s creation of a positive attitude towards his traits and capacities can be applied to other people with similar capacities, such that those traits in general can be seen as valuable. As such, nobles create a perspective in which certain phenomena have value, so a noble person can be described as a value-creator. In this way, a noble person fits the metaphor of a sun, as he sheds light on the world in a way as to make certain perspectives knowable, and his light is valuable to some objects he shines on.

One mistake in reading Nietzsche here is to infer from his praise of Greek nobility that Nietzsche simply sees as noble those values that Greek nobility sees as noble. Nietzsche praise of Greek aristocracy’s ‘strength’ should not be thought of as praising the set of attributes hardiness, speed, and skill, etc that they find valuable, for Nietzsche allows for those with an apposing set of attributes to be noble as well. For example, Nietzsche seems to allow for noble Jews, who have an inverted set of values to the Greek aristocracy. Nietzsche portrays the Jews as claiming “...the wretched alone are the good; the poor, impotent, lowly alone are the good; the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly alone are blessed by God, blessedness is for them alone...”(GOM 34) The Jew’s ability to maintain such a perspective should be considered noble, as “...every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself...”(GOM 36)As such, strength for Nietzsche seems to come from an honest affirmation of oneself and one’s conditions. So, the Jews who are suffering, sickly, ugly, wretched and impotent are noble in that there affirmation of self serves to give value to the conditions that lead. This helps explain why Nietzsche claims “The Jews, however, are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest and purest race now living in Europe; they know how to prevail even under the worst conditions (even better than under favorable conditions)...”(BGE 187)

The confusion in reading Nietzsche may occur because the target of Nietzsche’s criticism, Christianity, adopts many values of the Jewish people. Christianity, however, violates multiple conditions for nobility that Judaism does not. Again, this seems to suggest that is not the valuing of a certain set of attributes that Nietzsche praises, but rather the method in which a person or group comes to value something. One problem with Christianity as Nietzsche characterizes it is that Christianity’s values emerge from ressintement as apposed to self-affirmation.

One important aspect of self-affirmation is that it allows for a pathos of distance. Pathos of distance occurs when a self-affirming person notices that others are not like himself; they do not have the ability to do the things he does, be it running fast, or living as a sickly person. As such, the other people do not posses attributes valued by the self-affirming person, and are thus judged as not good, for they do not measure up to the self-affirming person’s standard. The judgment ‘not good’ is then termed ‘bad’. Ressintement effectively reverses the process. A man of ressintement creates the value ‘evil’ from his hatred and anger at people he takes to have wronged him. Rather than a self-afirmation, the man of ressentment wills a sort of other-negation. The man of ressentment values himself insofar as he is not evil, so creates his conception of good as the negation of evil. This creation of value lacks the self-affirming aspect.
Further, while Christianity seems to value wretchedness, poorness, and lowliness like Judaism, Christianity is dishonest with itself, as it values these characteristics as a means to what it really wants, power. If Christianity were self-affirming, if it did value its conditions of existence, then it would have no need for a kingdom of heaven, in which those currently powerful are made low, and made to suffer. As partaking in such a kingdom is the goal of Christianity, Christians are dishonest about the characteristics it values; Christians do not really affirm their own conditions, their poverty, humility and lowliness, for what they really want is to have the power to inflict harm onto those they are resentful against. Given this dishonesty and dissatisfaction with itself, it is clear that Christianity is apposed to the traits Nietzche finds noble; “While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself..., the man of ressintement is neither upright, nor naive, nor honest and straightforward with himself.”(GOM38)

To summarize: people who are noble are characterized by value creation, self-affirmation, and being honest about themselves. These traits are related to one another, and are also related to truth; being true about oneself, being true in reality, and being true with one’s words. The absence of nobility occurs because one or more of these conditions are violated.

HOW DOES NOBILITY ARISE?

Thus far elements of Nietzsche’s concept of nobility have been identified and characterized. While this sheds some light on Nietzsche’s concept, an account of how nobility arises in a person seems much more illuminating than a description of a noble person. So, an explanation of the Natus Solis will be attempted. Such an account will show that the possession of and adherence with an intellectual conscience leads a person to become noble. That this account can be attributed to Nietzsche is shown through the coherence of some of Nietzsche’s claims with it, and the interpretive power the account has on such claims. Further, given Nietzsche’s claim “We, however, want to become who we are-human beings who are new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves!...we must become physicists in order to be creators in this sense...So, long live physics! And even more long live what compels us to it-our honesty!”(GS, 335), such an account explains why Nietzsche sees honesty compelling us to “want to become who we are”, to be self-legislating, which seems equivalent to being self-affirmers, and to be value creators.

What an intellectual conscience is should first be explained, While Nietzsche does not give an explicit explanation of intellectual conscience, the concept can be broadly taken to capture a person’s willingness to be completely honest with himself. As such, a person with an intellectual conscience tries to find justification for his practices, habits, and beliefs. So, when Nietzsche writes “While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself... the man of ressintement is neither upright, nor naive, nor honest and straightforward with himself.” trust and openness with oneself can be seen as aspects of having an intellectual conscience, along with those aspects the man of ressintement fails to posses. (GOM38)

If the requirements of an intellectual conscience are taken seriously, then a problem arises. A commitment to intellectual integrity is not a trivial commitment for Nietzsche. The commitment is hard to maintain, for Nietzsche holds that truth is not pleasant, nor often life or action enabling. Insofar as a person honestly analyzes his beliefs and situations, many of the facts he discovers will probably disturb him. If a person is entirely honest with himself, he will know hard truths about himself, such as that he is not as handsome as others, or not as smart, or not as strong or some other apparent deficiency. The person will probably realize that he understands the world less than he might initially think, that many practices and actions of his are unjustified, and that the world is not a pleasant place. Some places where Nietzsche seems to have this view are in his discussion of the wisdom of Silenus, and of Hamlet. Thus, truth can be seen as a problem for those committed to intellectual integrity, a fact that is perhaps obscured by Socrates’ influence on western culture.

A person’s response to the problem of truth can be seen as a measure of strength, of both integrity and fortitude. The weak reaction to dealing with the pain and hardness of truth is to drop the commitment to intellectual integrity. This can conceivably occur in various ways, but usually involves needing to halt the process of being critical and questioning oneself. One such reaction is for a person to believe that he has discovered something that is “certain”, that one has discovered “the truth”. Appeals to the certainty of a discovery are a way to avoid the hardship involved in analyzing something further. This explains some of Nietzsche’s claims. For example, the claim “Believers and their need to believe.-The extent to which one needs a faith in order to flourish, how much that is ‘firm’ and that one does not want shaken because one clings to it-that is a measure of one’s strength (or, to speak more clearly, one’s weakness).”(GS, 347) should be taken to diagnose the need for faith and certainty as a need to abandon an intellectual conscience, for adherence to an intellectual conscience requires a person to ‘shake’ up his beliefs in being self-critical. This can also be seen in the statement “How much truth does a spirit endure, how much truth does it dare? More and more that became for me the real measure of value. Error (faith in the ideal) is not blindness, error is cowardice.”(EC 218) Here, it is important to note that error’s being cowardice, rather then blindness, treats error as the inability to undergo the hardships required by an intellectual conscience, not as the inability to discover something.

This account help to explain Nietzsche’s hostility to supposed absolute and objective truths. These truths both seem unjustified, for the appeal to some experience outside of man’s possible experience, and are often used as definitive answers to questions. As such, they attempt to escape the commitment to analysis required by an intellectual conscience. It seems like for this reason, Nietzsche writes “God is a gross answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a gross prohibition for us: you shall not think!”(EC 237)

The desire for certainty can also be seen as a desire to be commanded, for in searching for certainty in action, a weak willed person needs a lasting set of rules on how to behave that are objectively right, as otherwise he may discover that his action are unjustified. This is deceptive in that it ignores the particularity of certain situations; rules ignore context of the situation. As Nietzsche writes “...Your judgment ‘that is right’ has a prehistory in your drives, inclinations, aversions, experiences, and what you have failed to experience; you have to ask, ‘how did it emerge there? And then also, ‘what is really impelling me to listen to it?’”(GS 335)

The account so far has dealt with the weak response to the problem of truth’s hardness. How do people who remain committed to intellectual conscience deal with the problem? The intellectual conscience person is restrained in the following ways:

Commitment to intellectual conscience forces a person to preserve the truth of certain facts about life, such as I’m constantly ill, my books do not sell well, women avoid me, etc.

Commitment to intellectual conscience also forces one not to posit any metaphysical entities that do not have good justification to believe in, or a “certain” truth.

Intellectual conscience requires a person not to be a self-deceiver, as beliefs can be about the self, and self-deception is having a false belief about oneself. Finally, insofar as beliefs are about the world, intellectual conscience requires that we do not posit non-existing entities; that we have good reasons for believing facts about the world

So, in dealing with hard truths, the intellectually conscience person has limited options. As such, the intellectually conscience person needs to create a “perspective” in which facts about oneself are viewed positively: to be self-affirming, despite hard truths about one’s circumstances. This requires ones attitude toward facts to change, while the content of the facts remain. In this way, a “gay science” is needed; an attitude that enables those strong enough to laugh at hard facts. This change in attitude seems to be done through taking oneself to be of highest value; by honestly affirming one’s self and the condition for this self. This is somewhat like being able to respond positively to Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence demon; to judge that all the facts about oneself are good, because one judges himself as good.
The demand of intellectual conscience for coherence in world-view makes the positive interpretation of self and world an ongoing process. New facts must be assimilated in justification for the account created by to meet the analytic demands of an intellectual conscience. This seems to make for a process of interpretation/analysis/re-interpretation/analysis/..., in views of the self, or of explanation/analysis/re-explain/analysis/... when examining the world. Given Nietzsche’s claims on the perspectival nature of truth, this process can be thought of as unending, since the more perspectives that are brought to bear on a set of facts, the heartier the knowledge is gained from such viewing. Since it seems like Nietzsche suggests infinite perspectives can be given, then the process is unending. Again, the process is not viciously unending, for perspectives are maintained when they are overcome.

Nietzsche’s claim that we must be Physicists makes sense under this analysis, as a similar process can be though of as occurring in physics. For example, consider the competition between wave and particle theories of light. There were two accounts of the nature of light that explain some phenomena; two “interpretations” of a set of facts. The facts are simple things such as “mirrors reflect the sun”, “light spreads when put through a slit, etc”. Over time, difficulties arise in the accounts as new facts are discovered that an account cannot explain, or the account doesn’t predict correctly. The difficulties are then resolved with the introduction of a new theory of light, a new “perspective” on a phenomenon. The old account is still preserved-not contradicted or refuted, in that something of the old accounts perspective remains under the new account.

Thus, the resolution given by theories performs something like a sublation: a new theory on how to understand old phenomena is built like a temple out of the rubble of old theories. Again though, the commitment to truth does not allow such a new theory to be uncritized for long; “Every attainment, every step forward in knowledge, follows from courage, from hardness against oneself, from cleanliness in relation to oneself.”(EC 218)

This new criticism should be thought of as being looked forward to by noble people, as new problems are something to triumph over. The self-affirming person is able to handle these new problems as his self-love makes him value his capacity to deal with the hardships of analysis. Dealing with such problems has become a condition for his flourishing once the self affirmation occurs; strength is “...a desire to overcome, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs...”(GoM 45) Finally, this process of addressing and overcoming valid problems serves to strengthen theory, such that it can be truly said that “Will to truth is a making firm, a making true durable, an abolition of the false character of things, a reinterpretation of it into beings. ‘Truth’ is therefore not something there, that might be found or discovered-but something that must be created and that gives a name to the process”(WP 552)

CONCLUDING REMARKS

While I generally avoid such a section in my essays, some concluding remarks seem appropriate here. While I doubt that this essay has provided a definitive argument for the view sketched, given its coherence with many of Nietzsche’s claims, it is probably onto something. A clearer account would need to fit Nietzsche’s views on perspectival truth in more, as well as explain the apparent analytic process that a person committed to his intellectual conscience undergoes in more detail. The merit of my account is that its explanation of truth as a problem for Neitzsche, a problem of maintaining analysis, seems truer to Neitzsche’s writings than other explanations.

Notes

GoM: The Genealogy of Morals. Citations are by page.
GS: The Gay Science. Citations are by section.
BGE: Beyond Good and Evil. Citations are by section.
EC: Ecce Homo. Citations are by page.
WP: Will to Power. Citations are by section.


Works Cited

Gemes, Ken. “Nietzsche’s critique of truth”. In Nietzsche. Oxford University Press. 2001.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. Random House, Inc. 1967.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Ecce Homo. Random House, Inc. 1967.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil. Random House, Inc. 1966.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Cambridge University Press. 2001.

Story Thoughts

Title: Asgard’s Discord?
Timeline:
Pre-Discovery
Chapter 1: Duel with Garic (hm, should I title this)

Stop thinking about attacking and attack. Ok, he’s extending his bla... Damn.
Tyr barely felt the bruise from Garic’s training sword as he donned his formal garb, throwing the blue tabard over his head. The white star on his chest seemed to radiate with moonlight. Leaning against the cool stone rampart of the lake wall, he waited for Roy to show up so he could get his rounds over with.
“Roy is going to give it to me about leaving the training hall early” he thought, grinning. In all the time he had known Roy, he had never seen Roy simply let an event go by without giving his opinion about it. In a way, he was glad for Roy’s extraversion, as he never had to struggle with making conversation when Roy was around.
“I can just say what is needed and Roy will fill in the rest.” He laughed at the thought.
“Hey, loony, is the moon getting to you or did Garic just hit you in the head too hard?” Tyr turned his head to see Roy’s large frame bounding towards him. Roy was grinning like he had just made the wittiest remark ever. “Loony?” he replied.
“Yah, you were laughing by yourself out there. So, did Garic hit your head when I wasn’t looking? He might of, he’s damn quick that one. Surprising for a man of his age, he’s been around since before the crossing. He told me about it once.” Roy stiffened his gait and spoke deeper. “Roy, cut it with the complaining, he said. When I was just a boy, I was moving crates twice this size across the deck of the Shrike in the rain. Have you ever tried pushing crates in the rain? Your fingers are stiff and swollen, so you can’t get a firm grip, and your feet slide out from you every two steps. And you know what? No one said one word in complaint the whole crossing. Now, get moving, and I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.”
“That does sound like Garic, alright.”
“So, why do you still do it anyways? You’ve been dueling Garic every week for about two months now, and while I still put my money on you every time, I’m starting to miss my pocket change.”
“Garic’s the only one I haven’t beat yet. I need only three actions at most to win a duel against anyone else on the island. Besides, I learn a lot from sparring with him.”
“So, what happens if you win?”
“I don’t know.”
Roy started to say something, but thought better of it. They began walking along the wall,Walking along the wall, as they

It was unlikely that he would need his armor on tonight, as an assault on Asylia by water would be suicide for an attacking force. The cliffs around the island’s edge formed a natural rampart that remained, as some would say, unnaturally smooth. Still, raiding ships were known to try Asylia’s walls, perhaps with the mad hope that such a great barrier garded an even greater treasure. He smiled at the thought. They would be rather disapointed if they ever did breach the walls, as Asylia did not have much wealth in terms of iron or other metals of war. Garic would often say that freedom from the constant wars of ascesion that the Asylians escaped from was the treasure that Asylia’s Blades garded, though Roy claimed it was the vast quantiies of rocks scattered about the island.
“I could have hit you this time, you know. I was ready for your riposte.”
“Ha, you could egh? Then why didn’t you?”
“You hit me while I was thinking about it.”
“Well, then you weren’t ready then, were you? Next time, only...”
“I know, only think about getting by your opponent’s defense at a safe distance. Its not knowing what to do that I’m having trouble with, its doing it.”
Garic smiled and

Riz is Roy’s brother.

Tyr is to train Lord Martin’s son- William is complacent, satisfied, non-ambitious, shy. Secretly likes ______, another Noble’s Daughter.

Discovery of a sealed ragnarok weapon
The Fall of Asilia
Voyage: Discussion of Garic’s fall, of current political standings...
Landing in Veldenfelt Woods
Diplomacy with the Veldenfolk
The Asilian Mercenaries

?Discovery of Lab
? Battle with ...other kingdom
? Encounter with righteousness
? The Skerii-Notes: Civil war between Skerii tribes loyal to deity-fallen entity and independent Skerii tribes.
? The Wyrmtooth tower’s function
(...there called Wyrmtooth towers because they resemble the fangs of a dragon jutting from the ground.

Ragnarok Weapons:
Justice/Righteousness/Revenge: Big Double Edged Sword
Desire/Drive/Ambition/Hunger (objectless): Gauntlets, mace?
Laughter/Positive Outlook
Anger/Rage/Fury: Claws
Sadness/Loss/Woe/Misery
Empathy/Compassion/Selflessness
Pride/Confidence/Headstrong/Ego
Fear/Dread/Terror
Love?

On Kant’s Refutation of Idealism and Descartes
Michael Vossen

I will discuss the extent to which Kant’s refutation of idealism undermines Descartes’ position in this paper. Further, I will ignore the question of what it means to be a transcendental idealist, and the question of how Kant’s refutation undermines Berkley’s position. I will argue that while Kant has given an argument that provides sufficient proof to believe in the existence of objects in space outside of us, his argument appears too strong when combined with one of Descartes’ arguments for the doubtfulness of objects of outer experience. I will then suggest that Kant appears committed to the denial of epistemic closure given his other commitments, and that the reasons for which he denies epistemic closure ought to be made explicit in his refutation.

What is idealism? Kant writes, “Idealism - by which I mean material idealism - is a theory about the existence of objects in space outside us.” Kant characterizes two forms of idealism, one form associated with Descartes’ view, and one form associated with Berkley’s view. Kant calls Descartes’ idealism “unproblematic idealism”, and writes that unproblematic idealism “ … holds that the existence of objects in space outside us is doubtful and indemonstrable (as with Descartes’ view that only one empirical assertion is indubitably certain, namely ‘I am’)”.
Unproblematic idealism is weaker than “dogmatic idealism”, which holds that “…space, along with all the things that couldn’t exist without space, is in itself impossible (as with Berkeley’s view that the things in space are merely imaginary entities).” for “It doesn’t assert that space and its contents are unreal; it merely says that through our immediate experience we can’t prove the existence of anything except ourselves.”

Kant seems somewhat sympathetic to unproblematic idealism, writing that unproblematic idealism is based on a “…sound principle of philosophizing, namely: don’t make your mind up about something for which you don’t have sufficient proof.” Kant’s strategy in refuting the unproblematic idealist is to show that there is sufficient proof to believe in the existence of objects in space outside of us. Kant writes:

“But we can give ‘sufficient proof’ of the reality of space and things
in it·. The proof the idealist demands comes from showing that we have
experience of outer things, rather than merely imagining them; and the
only way to prove this is to show that even our inner experience is possible
only on the assumption of outer experience. ·That should be enough to
refute Descartes, who regards inner experience as indubitable.”

Given this outline, Kant’s refutation of unproblematic idealism assumedly is of the following form:

1. Inner experience is possible only on the (To be proved)
assumption of outer experience.
2. Inner experience is possible. Assumption
\ 3. We have outer experience. 1, 2 Modus Ponens

Here, premise two is either an assumption, or follow from the claim that we have inner experience, and the principle that P implies possibly P. Given that Kant claims, “My consciousness of my own existence and of details about myself proves the existence of objects in space outside me.” I take Kant to be committed the claim that we have inner experience, and to some claim about how actually having inner experience implies inner experience is possible. Further, I take “consciousness of my own existence” to be a form of inner experience.

Kant’s argument for premise one of the previous forms the bulk of his refutation of idealism. Kant argues for premise one as follows. Kant takes it as an assumption that “I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time, ·i.e. I am conscious of myself as being in various states at various times.” Further, from his transcendental aesthetic presumably, Kant has shown that “All knowledge of temporal details presupposes knowledge of something persistent in perception.” From these claims, I assume Kant gets the claim that there is something persistent in perception. For if all knowledge of temporal details presupposes knowledge of something persistent in perception, then if I am conscious of myself as being in various states at various times, then there is something persistent in perception. Since Kant holds that “I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time”, he can conclude that there is something persistent in perception by modus ponens. So there is some persistent thing.

The next part of Kant’s argument appears to have the form of “or elimination”, as Kant denies that the persistent thing is an intuition or a representation, and then goes on to conclude that the persistent thing can only be a thing outside me. Kant writes

But this persistent thing can’t be an intuition in me. For the only
grounds there are in me for any account of my various states are
representations; and as representations they themselves require
a persistent thing distinct from them, in relation to which their
change, and so my existence through the time in which they change,
can be determined.

This is presumably based on Kant’s model of conceptualization, which he has already proved presumably. Given that Kant wants to conclude from the previous claim that “Thus perception of this persistent thing is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me” I assume Kant has the hidden premise “The persistent thing is either an intuition in me or a thing outside me or a representation of a thing outside me” as well. So Kant is justified in drawing the conditional conclusion that “…. consequently my sense of the details of my existence in time is possible only through the existence of actual things that I perceive outside me.”, which is just premise one of the sketched argument.

I would like to grant Kant his argument at this point. Kant does reach a conclusion that is incompatible with Descartes’ doubts about the existence of objects of outer experience. What I am tempted to deny is that Kant has thus refuted Descartes. Descartes’ doubts about the existence of objects of outer experience appear as the conclusion of an assumingly valid argument of his. Further, while Kant’s argument contradicts Descartes’ conclusion, I’m not sure that it thereby refutes Descartes’ argument. For if Descartes’ argument leads to a contradiction, then if it is valid, at least one premise is false. Further, Kant does not seem to explain which premise is false. Since both premises of Descartes’ skeptical argument may appear true for good reason, Kant ought to give an explenation for why his theory shows one of these reasons to be bad. So, while Kant has given an argument that provides sufficient proof to believe in the existence of objects in space outside of us, his argument appears too strong when combined with one of Descartes’ arguments for the doubtfulness of objects of outer experience. I will now discuss and motivate Descartes’ argument.

In his Meditations, Descartes reflects that his dream-experiences are sometimes identical in experience to his waking-experiences. This means, for some experiences “...there are never any sure signs by means of which being awake can be distinguished from being asleep.” From these considerations, Descartes would like to conclude “...that physics, astronomy, medicine and all other disciplines which depend on the study of composite things, are doubtful...” A plausible reconstruction of Descartes’ argument towards this conclusion is:

1. I don’t know that I’m not dreaming. Assumption
2. If I don’t know that I’m not dreaming, Assumption
then I don’t know that I have some
outer experience.
\3. I don’t know that I am having some 1, 2 Modus Ponens
outer experience.

Premise one comes from Descartes’ reflection that his dream-experiences are sometimes identical in experience to his waking-experiences. Descartes really only needs us to grant that some non-outer experiences can be identical in experience to outer experience, so evil demons, mad scientists, sickness, or anything else that might produce experiences that are of the same quality as outer experiences will work in place of dreams.

Premise two is based on the principle of epistemic closure, which holds that if a person knows p, and p entails q, then that person knows q. In Descartes’ case, if a person knows that what he sees is a house, and being a house perception is to not be a house delusion, then if a person knows that what he sees is a house, he knows that what he sees is not a house delusion.
Finally, the form of Descartes’ argument is modus ponens. Unless Kant denies this form of inference, Descartes’ argument is valid. Kant uses modus ponens in his own arguments, and thinks logic is basically complete, so it is unlikely that Kant denies this inference.

Kant’s refutation seems to attack the conclusion of Descartes’ argument, and thus generates a contradiction when the arguments are combined. Consider the following outline of how Kant and Descartes arguments combine:

1. I don’t know that I’m not dreaming. Assumption
2. If I don’t know that I’m not dreaming, Assumption
then I don’t know that I have some
outer experience.
3. I don’t know that I have some 1, 2 Modus Ponens
outer experience .
4. Inner experience is possible only on the Refutation
assumption of outer experience
5. I have inner experience. Assumption
6. If I have inner experience, then inner Principle: P’‡P
experience is possible
7. Inner experience is possible. 5, 6 Modus Ponens
8. I have outer experience. 4, 7 Modus Ponens
9. I know that I have some outer experience 8 or Assumption
10. It’s not the case that I don’t know that 9, 2, Modus Tollens
I’m not dreaming.
11. ^ 1, 10 Absurd Introduction

From this contradiction, Kant must deny some assumption, or hold that some inference is invalid. I will assume that Kant will not deny his own argument, so really only premise one, premise two, and the inference from lines eight to nine are up for denial.

Kant would probably not deny the move from lines eight to nine, for his refutation is meant to prove that we have outer experience. Since Kant takes Descartes to doubt that we have outer experience, and refutes him by showing that we have sufficient proof for outer experience, it would be odd and somewhat unexplained to then deny that we do not know that we have outer experience. For then we have outer experience, and we can prove that we have outer experience, yet we do not know that we have some outer experience. An explanation of why proving something is insufficient for knowledge seems needed if Kant takes this route. Further, even if Kant could give an explanation given his epistemic claims, his “proof” of outer objects would then still seem doubtful if it did not provide knowledge, as Descartes doubts that we can know that outer objects exist, not that we can give a non-knowledge providing proof. So Kant probably would not deny the move from lines eight to nine.

Kant does not appear to deny premise one, and even appears to recognize something like this argument when he writes:

“From the fact that the existence of outer things is required for the
possibility of a determinate consciousness of myself, it doesn’t follow
that every intuitive representation of outer things involves their really
existing; for a representation of them may well be the product merely
of the imagination (as in dreams and delusions).”

So Kant does not seem to deny the possibility of being deceived by a dream, which seems to entail that he would not reject premise one of the argument. Kant goes on to write:

“But this doesn’t weaken the thesis I have been defending against
problematic idealism, because such a representation merely reproduces
previous outer perceptions, which I have shown to be possible only
through the actuality of outer objects. That’s all I need. All I have been
trying to prove is that inner experience in general is possible [279] only
through outer experience in general. To show that any individual experience
is veridical rather than imaginary, one has to look into the details of the
case to see how well they fit with the criteria for all real experience.

How does one look into the details of the case to see how well they fit with the criteria for all real experience this? Kant writes:

“To decide which of my given intuitions correspond to actual objects
outside me - i.e. which of them belong to outer sense and not to
imagination - I must go by the rules according to which any experience
(even inner experience) is distinguished from imagination – always
presupposing that there is such a thing as outer experience.”

Since Kant seems committed to premise one and the inference from lines eight to nine. appears committed to the denial of epistemic closure given his other commitments, and that the reasons for which he denies epistemic closure ought to be made explicit in his refutation.



Works Cited.

Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated and Edited by John Cottingham. Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Jonathan Bennett, http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdfbits/kcpr.html 2007.

Kant. Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith, St Martin’s press, 1956.

A Further Counter Example To Grice’s Analysis Of Speaker Meaning
Michael Vossen

Paul Grice, in his essay “Meaning”, presents roughly the following criteria for a speaker’s utterance to have meaning. Subject S meant something by uttering x if and only if S uttered x with the intentions that (a) S’s utterance of x produce reaction r in audience A, that (b) A recognize S’s intention to produce r in A, and that (c) A’s recognition of S’s intention to produce r in A shall function as at least part of A’s reason for r. Grice’s criteria for speaker meaning is insufficient, as the following counter example will show.

Suppose that on a certain island, all islanders believe that when a pair finds a certain rare wild flower while walking together, the finding indicates that each member of the pair loves the other member. R and J are islanders, and R loves J but is too shy to tell J this. So, R intends to induce in J the belief that he loves her through an elaborate scheme. R obtains the rare wild flower through a shady transaction, and asks J to go for a walk with him. At some point on the walk, R comes up with an excuse to walk ahead, takes out a spade, and waits for J to catch up. He begins to plant the rare wildflower in the ground. R knows that J is watching him plant the flower, and he further knows that J does not know that he knows J is watching him plant the flower. He knows that J will not take the finding of the flower as a genuine finding of the flower, and hence that J will not take the finding of the flower to mean that he loves her. However, R intends that J will take his planting the evidence as grounds for thinking that he intends to induce in her the belief that he loves her. R knows that J knows that he wouldn’t try to deceive her with the planted wildflower unless it was really true that he loves her, and so her recognition of his intention to get her to believe that he loves her will be grounds for her believing that he loves her. This is just what he planned; R intended that J’s recognition of his intention to induce in her the belief that he loves her by means of allowing her to catch him planting the wild flower function as part of J’s reason for believing that he loves her.

This case meets all of Grice’s criteria, yet is not a case of speaker meaning. The case thus serves as a counterexample to the sufficiency of Grice’s criteria. Condition (a) of Grice’s criteria is met in that the subject R intends that his utterance x, the allowing of himself to be caught planting the flower, produce in the audience J a reaction, namely, belief that R loves J. Condition (b) is met in that J recognizes R’s intention to produce the belief that R loves J. This occurs when J sees R planting the flower, and recognizes that R intends to get her to believe that he loves her through their finding of the flower. Finally, condition (c) is met as J’s recognition of R’s intention to produce in J the belief that R loves J functions as part of J’s reasons for believing that R loves J. This is met when J takes her knowledge that R intends to produce in her the belief that he loves her through the flower deception as a reason for believing that he loves her. Her reasoning is that R wouldn’t go through such an elaborate deception unless he really did love her. Thus, all of Grice’s criteria are met.

This case is not a case of speaker meaning though, for J does not recognize that it is R’s intention to get J to recognize that it is his intention that he loves her. In other words, J does not recognize that R planned his false planting to be seen, so J will not suppose R let her know that he loves her; J might think that she discovered this fact about R, not that R communicated this fact to her. What Grice’s criteria lacks in this case is a clause (b*), such that a case is a case of speaker meaning if and only if S utters x with intention that (b*) A recognize S’s intention for A to recognize S’s intention to produce r in A, and clauses (a-c) hold. Clause (b*) would entail that J must recognize that it is R’s intention to get J to recognize that it is his intention that he loves her for the case to be an example of speaker meaning.

While clause (b*) would eliminate this case as a counterexample, it still seems possible that more complicated cases can be constructed in which a (b**) clause is needed. As such, it would be nice if clause (b) could be generalized such that additional clauses would not be needed. For example, if clause (b) said something like “all intentions given."

Handout for: Love As Valuing A Relationship

Thesis: One’s reasons for loving another is one’s relationship to the ongoing history that one shares with him or her.

One does not decide to love on the basis of considering reasons, and one should not be blamed for loving or fail- ing to love. This much follows from the fact that one cannot decide to love at all. Love is nonvoluntary.6 But it does not follow that there can-
not be normative reasons for love, that love cannot be assessed as appropriate or inappropriate to its object. (Pg 4)

“love consists, in part, in believing that one’s relationship is a reason for action.”

Advantages

Avoids Substitution Problem

Identifies distinctive reasons for love

Three reasons to think reasons for love.
1. First, from the first-person perspective of someone who loves, the constitutive emotions and motivations of love make reflexive sense. (Pg 3)
2. Second, from the third-person perspective of an adviser or critic, we often find love or its absence inappropriate. (Pg 3)
3. Third, it is plausible that love consists in certain kinds of psychological states, and there may be reasons to believe that states of those kinds are, in general, responses to reasons. (Pg 3)

Three problems

One is not in a friendship or romantic relationship unless one has non-
instrumental concern for the other person and this concern is recipro-
cated.

The reason why friendship and romantic love, in particular, are vulnerable to the loss of
respect has something to do with the fact that friendship and romantic love involve viewing one’s friend or lover as someone with equal standing.(Pg 31)

Love and friendship, insofar as they are responsive to their reasons, are
resilient to changes in the personal qualities, such as beauty and wit,
that initially made the prospect of certain activities with that person
appealing. This is because to love someone is to view her as more than
simply an accomplice in those activities. (Pg 33)

The reasons for the noninstrumental concern that first establishes
friendships are therefore much like the reasons for the noninstrumen-
tal concern that characterizes already established friendships. In both
cases, the reasons are, in part, backward looking—a response to a past
pattern of interaction—and, in part, forward looking—a response to
the prospect of continuing or developing that pattern. (Pg 35)

Attraction to a person often is a reason to pursue and sustain the relevant kind of inter-
action with that person, and attraction to a person often is partly constitutive of the relevant kind of interaction. (Pg. 38)

“This seems clear enough with sexual attraction. You not only recognize that the person has certain charms, as one might in a mood of disinterested appraisal, but also view his or her charms as (not to put too fine a point on it) making sex with him or her seem appealing.” (Pg. 38)

In sum, the relationship theory may appear to succeed in finding a place for partiality within practical reason only by undermining its claim to be part of morality.

Insistent Vs Non-insistent

Quality Theory:

According to the quality theory, the features that constitute reasons for loving a person are that person’s lovable qualities, such as beauty, wit, or vivacity. (pg 4)

Advantages:

First, one is typically attracted to particular people as potential lovers in response to such qualities.(pg 4)

Second, love involves a disposition to appreciate certain personal qualities of one’s beloved.(pg 4)

Disadvantages

No-Reason Theory (Frankfurt)
Advantages
Disadvantages

Velleman’s Theory

Love, in his view, is the “optional maximum response to one and the same value” to which Kantian respect is the “required minimum” response (366), namely, the value of a person as a “rational nature” or “capacity of appreciation or valuation—a capacity to care about things in that reflective way which is distinctive of self-conscious creatures like us” (365). (pg 39)

On his view, specific qualities of particular people, which serve as “expression[s] or symbol[s] or reminders of [their] value as [people]” (371), lead us to recognize their rational nature, and this recognition, in turn, “arrests our tendencies toward emotional
self-protection from [them], tendencies to draw ourselves in and close ourselves off from being affected by [them]” (361). In sum, love is an emotional vulnerability produced by an arresting awareness of rational personhood, an awareness that is produced by an appreciation of specific personal qualities. (Pg 39)


Advantages

responds to the “focus” objection to the quality theory. (pg 39)

He explicitly warns against over intellectualizing the rational nature that one comes to value, as well as the way in which one recognizes its expression in empirical qualities. (pg 40)

Disadvantages

the etiology of familial [,friendship and romantic] love entailed by Velleman’s account is implausible. (pg 40)

It is mysterious, for example, how someone’s “gait” might be “an expression or symbol or reminder of his value as a person” (371). It seems more a reflection of his physiology or unreflective habit than of anything to do with choice or valuation. (Pg 40)

Suggestions of this kind [i.e warning about over-intellectualizing would not suffice to explain why some apprehensions of expressions of rational nature “arrest” our emotional defenses, whereas others do not. (Pg 41)

How can Velleman claim that it is appropriate to love only some people and not others, in light of the fact that all people share the rational nature that is supposed to make love appropriate? (pg 41)

It does not follow that loving some people and not others is ever an appropriate response to the rational nature that all of them have. (Pg. 42)

Even if Velleman accepts the undefended principle that:

“whenever one cannot equally distribute scarce, indivisible
resources among several people, an appropriate response to the ratio-
nal nature that all of those people possess is to allocate, by means of a
suitably arbitrary procedure, the resources only to some and, of neces-
sity, not to others.” (pg 43)

Then

“he would still fail to explain why loving certain people in particular is an appropriate response, whereas loving others may not be. This is the main shortcoming of his account. Velleman gives a causal explanation of how, in fact, one comes to love certain people and not others, but not a normative reason for loving them and not others.” (pg 43)

the problem is not simply that one ought to love certain people in particular, but also that one ought to love those people in particular ways. (Pg 45-Problem of Modes)

Value Judgments and Possible Worlds
Michael Vossen

"The laws of nature are laws according to which everything does happen; the laws of morality are laws according to which everything ought to happen; they allow for conditions under which what ought to happen doesn’t happen."
-Immanuel Kant

Robert Adams, in his paper "Theories of Actuality", argues that value judgments reflect the belief "...that the actual is, absolutely considered, more real than the merely possible." In arguing for this claim, Adams is suggesting that a possiblist theory of modality is at odds with our intuitions about moral worth. If Adams' claim is true, and we are to preserve our intuitions, then our value judgments provide reason to avoid adapting such a theory, for a possibilist theory would be incompatible with them. This essay will consider arguments for Adams' claim, and replies that his possiblist target might make to them. The replies that David Lewis, a leading proponent of possiblism, does or might make will be focused on especially.

Adams' claim appears to rely on two relatively unexplained points. The first of these is that the possiblist will not have an adequate reply to the question "What is wrong with actualizing evils, since they will occur in some other possible world anyways if they don't occur in this one?" This claim will be considered shortly. The second point Adams' claim relies on is that "We also normally suppose that there are many future acts which it is at least logically possible for me to either perform or fail to perform. These suppositions may be rather important to us; they seem to be involved in many of our attitudes and beliefs about moral rights and wrongs and responsibility." Again, Adams' point is unexplained, and needs to be drawn out.

Looking at an ethical scenario in light of a possiblist view about possible worlds helps illuminate Adam's remarks. Consider the following situation: A friend of mine is drowning in quicksand before me, and holds a rope that is within my reach. Here, I can either pull her out with little effort, or let her drown. I believe it will be agreed that our common sense intuitions about morality suggest that I should pull her out; it would be wrong of me to not pull the rope and let her drown, reasons why it is wrong aside. Let us consider how various actions I take in this scenario reflect upon me under a possiblist conception of possible worlds.

The possiblist's modal account holds that all possible worlds are equally real, and either I exist at multiple possible worlds, or that I exist at one world, and have counterparts at other possible worlds who are like me but ultimately not me. While the latter is Lewis' position, since Adams is responding to possiblist theories in general, and not Lewis's theory in particular, to be fair Adams' criticism we should consider both. We will consider the former position, the position in which I exist at multiple equally real worlds, first.

Further, it will be helpful to distinguish between an "absolute" moral perspective, and a "world-relative" moral perspective. These perspectives correspond to the scope of actions that are considered in evaluating an agent's moral value. A narrow scope would look at a few of an agent's actions, while a broad scope looks many or all. An absolute moral perspective is one in which a person's moral worth is given by all the real actions he does, including actions done in other possible worlds. A world-relative moral perspective is one in which a person's moral worth is given by all the real actions a person does in a particular world. Note that I use the term 'action' broadly, and take it to cover mental activities as well, such as intending or wanting something to happen.

Let's consider the quicksand scenario from an absolute moral perspective, under a possiblist theory under which I exist at multiple possible worlds. Suppose, in the world this essay is being read, I save friend from drowning. What is my absolute moral worth? Well, although I really save my friend in this world, I also really let her drown in another world. Depending on how you calculate moral worth, I might be morally neutral, if the moral value of actions cancels each other out, and both actions are worth about the same number of moral points. Or, perhaps, under a strict moral weighing, I'm morally bad, as I performed even one impermissible action. Further, if it is agreed that there are a more ways a person can act wrongly in a moral situation than rightly, it seems that all people, even those who do much good in this world, are very much morally bad, as they do fewer right actions in the scheme of possible worlds than wrong.

I think this is way in which Adam's question, "What is wrong with actualizing evils, since they will occur in some other possible world anyways if they don't occur in this one?” has weight. Lewis's reply to this, that "If you actualize evils, you will be an evil doer, a causal source of evil." , does not seem particularly responsive to Adam's problem understood this way, as he might respond "So what? If you don't actualize evils in this world, you'll still actualize evils in another, so you'll still be an evil doer". This might be taken as a basis for a theory of immoralism, of the form Dostoevsky’ character Pavel Smerdyakov, from The Brothers Karamazov acts upon. "Everything is permitted" declares Pavel; there is no moral basis for why you should or should not do a certain action, as you'll do it anyway in some possible world. Thus, there is no moral basis for performing an immoral action rather than a moral one. So, act however you would like. Worse still is the fact that even if you wanted your possible selves to be good rather than bad, there seems to be nothing you can do to prevent them from acting immorally. Acting morally thus appears pointless.

Now let's consider the quicksand scenario from an absolute moral perspective, under a possiblist theory where I have counterparts existing at other possible worlds. Suppose that I save my friend from drowning. What is my absolute moral worth? Well, although I have counterparts in other worlds, they are not me, but the person most like me in that world. This is drawn from Lewis' claim "Your counterparts resemble you in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do other things in their worlds. But they are not really you." So, if we are calculating my moral worth, and not the moral worth of Michael*, the Michael who lets his friend drown, we should only calculate the moral worth based on actions I do, and not actions my counterpart takes. Since I perform a good action, and my performing a bad action in another possible world does not shadow the worth of this, as I don't exist there, Lewis' account does appear to link up moral worth to agents in the right manner. Interestingly, my worth under the absolute moral perspective will collapse into my worth under the world-relative perspective with regards to Lewis' theory, as I only exist in one of the many possible worlds. Lewis' form of possiblism thus does not appear to generate a moral problem regarding my actions being actualized in other worlds.

In this manner, the reply "If you actualize evils, you will be an evil doer, a causal source of evil." is responsive to Adam's question, as the further response "So what? If you don't actualize evils in this world, you'll still actualize evils in another, so you'll still be an evil doer" is false. I do not actualize evils in another world, although another person, my counterpart, does. Lewis is still not in the clear though, for Adams' criticism had a second part. Recall that Adams writes, "We also normally suppose that there are many future acts which it is at least logically possible for me to either perform or fail to perform. These suppositions may be rather important to us; they seem to be involved in many of our attitudes and beliefs about moral rights and wrongs and responsibility." Does Lewis' account conflict with this supposition?

Lets consider the quicksand scenario again, but this time I let my friend drown. Perhaps another person, our guide, has been tied to a tree the whole time and forced to watch. The guide would, correctly I take us to believe, be appalled with me for letting my friend drown. "What are you doing?" the guide might ask, "You let her drown when you could have saved her!". To this I might respond "No, that's not true. Strictly speaking, I could not have saved her, although somebody like me could have saved someone like her in another world." If the guide, who happens to know enough philosophy to find my response intelligible, rather than think me a madman, argues that because I have a counterpart in another world who performs a saving, I'm just as responsible, I could point out that he too has a counterpart in another world who performs a saving as well. What is the difference between the guide and I in that respect?

Exasperated, the guide might point out that he is tied up, and I am not. Yet might not I reply that I too, was incapable of saving her? I exist in a world where I did not save her. While it may seem like there are other worlds where I do save her, this is to confuse me with my counterparts. Since I only exist in one world, it appears to be a matter of luck whether I exist in the world where I save her, or I exist in a world where I do not. As the guide can't physically save her because he is bound from movement by ropes, it appears likewise I can't modally save her because the possibility of actions that I might take is bound by what actions I do happen to perform.

These reflections suggest that there is something to Adams point that our thoughts about responsibility conflict with the possiblist view of worlds. If I am only responsible for doing actions that are possible for me to perform, then the same fact about counterpart theory that blocks Adams' initial thrust, i.e. that my counterpart is not me, seems to abjure my responsibility for any immoral action I do perform. This seems to reflect the observation by Kant that the conditions for morality require cases in which what does happen also might not happen. Again, Lewis' theory does not allow for it; what does happen regarding me could not have not happened.

In this final section of the paper, I will consider various replies a possiblist can make to the arguments thus outlined. One way Lewis might respond is by appeal to mental actions. This might hold that what matters for value judgments of an agent, it is not the actions a person in fact does that get weighed, but what actions the person wills. In this manner, if I willed myself to save my friend, yet I did not save her, I would still be morally worthy. This would require that what attitudes a person adopts toward an action not be a matter fixed by possible worlds though, which means the possiblist needs to explain how possible attitudes are not explained in terms of possible worlds. In other words, the possiblist would need explain how we have control over our willings while we do not have control over our actions.

Another way a possiblist might respond is by challenging the requirement that moral value be determined from an absolute perspective. Lewis' egoist objection can be thought of as doing just this. The question then is whether we care about the absolute moral worth perspective, or the world-relative moral worth perspective, or perhaps some even narrower perspective. Note that this question seems responsive to Adams' first point, rather than his second. As such, even if the perspective is narrowed, Lewis will still face problems with the second of Adams' points.

In some sense, answering this question is like asking about the extent to which past actions play into current judgments of moral worth. While Augustine may have stolen a pear in his youth, we might wonder if that really matters now that he is forty-two. This might suggest a principle of temporal moral distance: in judging a person's moral worth now, look only at recent actions. Likewise, in possible worlds talk, in judging a person's moral worth look only at close worlds, or only at the world the person is at.

A problem for this reply is that worlds where I do not pull the rope in the quicksand case seem prima facia to be as close worlds where I do. So this narrowing should perhaps be thought of as world-relative. While such a line of response does seem promising for the possiblist, a further worry seems relevant. The possiblist seems committed to the temporal analog of judging a person’s worth based on a part of his life, and not the whole. While the Augustine’s situation does seem to suggest a moral distance between current actions and past, this may merely be because we are thinking about Augustine’s life as a whole, and noting that his childhood actions are but a small part of the whole. If this is the cause of our feelings of distance, then it seems like the absolute moral perspective is more appropriate than the world-relative view. As such, the weight seems to be on the possiblist to explain how world-relative perspectives of moral worth are the perspectives that ought to be adopted.

Works Cited

Adams, Robert. "Theories of Actuality". In The Possible And The Actual, edited by Michael J. Loux, Cornell University Press, 1979.

Lewis, David. On The Plurality Of Worlds. Blackwell Publishing, 1986.

Lewis, David. "Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic". In The Possible And The Actual, edited by Michael J. Loux, Cornell University Press, 1979.

Smart, J.J.C. Ethics, Persuasion and Truth. Rouledge and Kegan, 1984.

Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited by Jonathon Bennet. www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/kantgw.pdf, 1995.

On Hume’s Theory of The Independent Existence of Objects
Michael Vossen

Hume, in his A Treatise of Human Nature, attempts to explain the belief that we experience objects that exist continuously and distinct from ourselves. In this paper I will reconstruct Hume’s argument, while critically discussing elements of which that are problematic. In particular, I will argue that Hume needs a more complete argument for the impossibility of reason to arrive at the belief in the continued existence of objects, and that we should be critical of Hume’s use of the idea of coherence.

First, I will explain why Hume even needs to give an explenation of our beliefs in objects. Hume acknowledges that most people believe in the independent existence of external objects, and in the persistence of objects over time. Hume knows that if his theory of ideas commits us to ideas that go against common sense, such as the denial of our beliefs about objects, then there is reason to abandon his theory of ideas. This is because Hume’s theory of ideas holds that all ideas come from impressions.(4) Further, Hume claims “An opinion, therefore, or belief may most accurately be defin’d, A LIVELY IDEA RELATED TO OR ASSOCIATED WITH A PRESENT IMPRESSION.”(96) So given that a belief is a kind of idea, and all ideas come from impressions, it follows that all meaningful beliefs come from impressions. Thus explaining how our beliefs in objects come arise from some association with impressions is an important task for Hume, as such an explanation is needed to maintain his theory of ideas.
Hume maintains that the belief in the independent existence of external objects, and the belief about the persistence of objects over time can captured by the beliefs that objects exist continuously, and that objects exist distinctly. This is why Hume asks his reader to consider “Why we attribute a CONTINU’D existence to objects, even when they are not present to the senses; and why we suppose them to have an existence DISTINCT from the mind and perception”.(188) Hume thinks answering these questions will explain our beliefs about objects, When Hume says that objects have a continued existence, he can be taken to mean that objects exist even when not perceived. Likewise, the claim that objects have a distinct existence means that the objects are distinct from the mind; external objects are not mental entities.

Hume thinks the ideas of being distinct and of being continuous are related such that “…the decision of the one question decides the other…”(188) As such, Hume appears to hold that an object is distinct if and only if an object is continuous. An argument for this claim might go as such. Suppose some objects exist continuously. Does it follow that they exist distinctly? Yes, for if an object exists continuously, it exists even when the mind is not focused on it, and even if the mind were to disappear completely. Since to be distinct is to not be a mental entity, and continuously existing objects exist apart from the mind, then continuously existing objects are not mental entities. So, continuously existing objects also exist distinctly, and therefore if an object exists continuously, then an object exists distinctly.

This is to establish one half of the bi-conditional. Now let us consider the other half. Suppose some objects are distinct. Does it follow that the objects are also continuous? No, for while the objects might exist independently of the mind, they might go out of existence when not perceived and come into existence right before being perceived. Since to exist continuously is to exist even when not perceived, and some objects might exist distinctly yet not exist when not perceived, some objects can be exist distinctly but not continuously. So it is not the case that if an object is distinct then the object is continuous.

Despite Hume being incorrect about the relation between being continuous and being distinct, his arguments from an object being continuous to the object being distinct are still valid. So, in examining Hume’s arguments, I will focus solely on those that regard the belief that objects have a continuous existence.

Hume uses an argument by elimination to establish which human faculty produces the belief in continuous existence. Hume asks “…whether it be the senses, reason, or the imagination that produces the opinions of continu’d, or of distinct existence”(188)Logically speaking however, the possibilities include belief arising from sense, reason, imagination, or neither of the three. If the latter possibility holds, then there is a belief that arises from none of these faculties. And since to believe is just to have a lively idea, and Hume’s theory of ideas holds that “all ideas come from impressions”, Hume’s theory holds that if there is a belief, then there is some impression from which the belief arose from. So, if the latter possibility holds, then there is a belief that came from no impression, so by modus tolluns on the claim “ if there is a belief, then there is some impression from which the belief arose from”, there should be no such belief. Since there would be a belief that did not come from some impression, and Hume’s theory holds that there is no such belief, by this contradiction we might reject Hume’s theory of ideas. Having established the form of Hume’s argument, I will now examine Hume’s arguments for each supposition.

The first supposition is that sense produces the belief in an object’s continued existence. Hume quickly rejects this supposition, writing “For that is a contradiction in terms, and supposes that the senses continue to operate, even after they have ceas’d all manner of operation.”(188) Hume’s argument might be drawn out more. Suppose the sense produce the belief in continued existence. Then the sense produce the belief that an object exists even when not perceived. Since all beliefs arise from impressions, this particular belief must arise from an impression, namely, the impression of an object existing when not perceived. But to have such an impression is to perceive an object existing when not perceived. Since the object cannot be both perceived and not perceived, the supposition that sense produces the belief in continued existence leads to a contradiction. Thus, it is not by sense that we have the belief in continued existence.

As argued, distinct existence does not imply continued existence, so I will ignore Hume’s arguments regarding distinctness. For even if we establish that distinctness arises from the senses, we will still have the belief in the continued existence of objects, whose origin must be explained for Hume’s account to succeed. So I will move on to the next faculty.
Does the belief in an object’s continued existence come from reason? Hume writes that “…we can attribute a distinct continu’d existence to objects without ever consulting REASON, or weighing our opinions by any philosophical principle.”(193) and that “…these arguments [about object’s continued existence] are known but to very few, and that ‘tis not by them, that children, peasants, and the greater part of mankind are induc’d to attribute objects by some impression, and deny them to others.”(193) While Hume is no doubt correct that the belief in the continued existence of objects arises before we consider arguments towards it, Hume’s claim might strike us as controversial in that it apparently assumes reasons or arguments for a belief must be known to us before we can be said to have the belief by those arguments. In other words, we might question why we have beliefs that come from an unconscious use of reason on other of our ideas or impressions.

Hume might avoid this objection if he can establish that no possible use of reason could give us the belief in an object’s continuous existence. For if this is the case, then even an unconscious use of reason could not establish such a belief. Hume appears to think that no possible use of reason can lead to the belief in an object’s continuous existence, for he writes “So that upon the whole our reason neither does, nor is it possible that it ever shou’d, upon any supposition, give us an assurance of the continu’d and distinct existence of body”(193) To hold that no supposition can possibly be reasoned from to the conclusion that object’s exist continuously is a rather strong claim, and we should be skeptical of it without a good argument. Further, the claim strangely clashes with his statement “…these arguments [about object’s continued existence] are known but to very few”(193) Hume must regard these arguments as false then.
Hume’s argument appears to rely on two claims. The first is that “…as long as we take our perceptions and objects to be the same, we can never infer the existence of one from that of the other…”(193) Further, the second is that “Even after we distinguish our perceptions from our objects, ‘twill appear presently, that we are still incapable of reasoning from the existence of one to that of the other…”(193) These claims do nothing to establish his conclusion however, and appear to merely hold that it is impossible reason from our perceptions to the existence of an object, whether the perceptions be the object, or the perceptions to be distinguished from the objects, which seems to be just a restatement of his conclusion.

Hume’s claim would be better argued for if he reminded us the powers he ascribes to reason. Hume seems to think that reason cannot give us any new ideas, and is only an ability to make distinctions about the ideas we are given.(164, 124) Further, Hume thinks it a mistake of the vulgar to think that the objects presented to them are anything more than impressions.(193) So, Hume might think that reason cannot give us the idea of continued existence, for the idea of continued existence would have to be part of some complex idea that could be separated off, and Hume has already argued that the idea of continued existence could not arise from a simple idea. This argument does rely on Hume’s conception of reason however, and we might doubt whether reason only has the powers Hume ascribes to it.

Having eliminated the other capacities, and needing to maintain his theory of ideas, Hume writes “That opinion [of continu’d existence] must be entirely owing to the IMAGINATION”(193) By imagination, Hume means the capacity to present ourselves with thoughts. Other than allowing us to combine thoughts in our head, as when we day dream about unicorns and dragons, the imagination also presents us with a lively connection between thoughts, as when a thump is expected after repeated droppings of a book. In particular, Hume thinks “…the continu’d existence of body depends on the COHERENCE and CONSTANCY of certain impressions…”(195) The belief in the continued existence of objects can thus be thought of as an involuntary belief needed to make the world coherent. We fill in the gaps of our experience of the world using reasonable causal hypothesis, one of which is the belief that object’s exist continuously.

This explanation might seem more plausible if we recall that for Hume, having a belief is a natural matter, of habit or instinct. So, the hold of a belief is not rational, and after pondering skeptical arguments that make us doubt the existence of necessary connections in the world, such as the thought that a billiard ball might actually turn into a bird upon strike of cue, or that I will not fall through the ground upon my next step, Hume thinks our beliefs that these events won’t occur will thankfully come back to us. Thus it makes sense under Hume’s theory that beliefs be a certain instinct.

We might object to Hume account at this point insofar as he brings in the idea of coherence. Using Hume’s method of argument, we might ask where we ever get the idea of coherence? For to have an idea of coherence seems to be to think of the parts of one’s experience as consistent with the other parts within the whole of experience. So, in order to have the idea of coherence, we need the idea of something as a whole, and of consistent. But since our experience is always of many particular indivisible impressions, which impression is the impression of a whole?(38) Further, if we invoke the notion of a complex idea to try to explain the origin of the idea of wholeness, we appear to assume the idea of wholeness, for complex ideas are simply those which can be distinguished into parts, and we might ask what the parts are of.(2) To answer that they are parts of a whole is to use the idea of wholeness in forming the idea of a complex idea. Finally, since simple ideas have no parts, they cannot be the origin of the idea of a whole, for a whole is something with parts. So Hume needs a better account of where we get the idea of coherence to answer to such objections.


Works Cited

Hume, David. A Treatise Of Human Nature. Eddited by L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford University Press, 1978.

On “Love as Valuing a Relationship”

Niko Kolodny’s thesis in his essay “Love as Valuing a Relationship”, is that “…one’s reason for loving a person is one’s relationship to her…” . Given the length of Kolodny’s article, there is not time to examine all of his claims in detail, so I will focus on his own theory, and not his various criticisms of other theories of love. I will argue that while Kolodny’s thesis has genuine problems as a theory of what constitutes love, due to certain “bootstrapping” problems, his thesis avoids these problems as a theory of what gives reasons for love.

What is love, according to Kolodny? Kolodny claims “Love is both a final valuation of a relationship, from the perspective of a participant in that relationship, and a non-final, non-instrumental valuation of one’s “relative” (the covering term I will use for the other participant).” He further writes “love consists (a) in seeing a relationship in which one is involved as a reason for valuing both one’s relationship and the person with whom one has that relationship, and (b) in valuing that relationship and person accordingly.” Kolodny is inconsistent between saying that relationships provide reasons for love, and that valuing a relationship constitutes love. So while he here seems to be giving conditions for the existence of love, in other places he argues that having a relationship given these conditions provides reasons for love.

Love, for Kolodny, does not consist in just any relationship. The relationships Kolodny is interested in are further characterized by persisting over time, being between non-substitutable entities, and being dependent on facts about the past. These characteristics are still insufficient for love, as Kolodny admits, “Not every interpersonal relationship, even in the narrower sense of a relation that satisfies these three conditions, provides reasons for love.” Finally, the relationships Kolodny is interested in can be had independent of one’s attitudes. Kolodny writes: “Whether Ivan is my brother does not depend on how we feel about one another; it depends on a biological tie, or a fact about our upbringing. Any plausible account of familial love must view its grounds as being independent of one’s caring.”

Given the insufficiency of these characteristics, we might wonder if Kolodny has said enough to isolate the kinds of relationships he is interested in. One question we might ask is which historical facts are these relationships dependent on? While Kolodny writes “Kevin is my friend only if there has been a historical pattern of attitudes and actions between us. Sarah is my mother only if she raised me, gave birth to me, or supplied the egg from which I developed.”, he does not seem to account for the possibility that a historical fact a relationship can depend on is love itself. Further, some relationships seem constituted by the fact that one or more members of the relationship love the other member. While a historical pattern of attitudes and actions might exist between Billy and Sue, an actual romantic relationship does not seem to exist between them unless they love each other. If such a situation is plausible, then there is reason to think that for some relationships, if there is no love, then there is no relationship of that kind. I will describe such relationships as “constituted by love”.

Whether there are relationships constituted by love matters, for if there are, then love cannot be constituted by the relationship. Suppose some relationships are constituted by love. Then by definition, if there is no love, then there is no relationship. Under Kolodny’s theory, only when there exists a relationship is there something for love to consist in, since love consists in valuing a relationship in the right way. So, if there is a relationship constituted for love, then only when there is love is there a relationship, and there is love only when the relationship is valued in the right way. Assuming a relationship cannot be valued until it exists, then a love-constituted relationship cannot be valued until it exists. The relationship can never arise to be valued though, for the relationship is constituted by love, which consists in valuing the relationship. So Kolodny’s theory is committed to denying that there are relationships constituted by love, or to denying that a relationship cannot be valued until it exists. If there is good reason to think some relationships are constituted by love and that a relationship cannot be valued until it exists, then there is reason to deny Kolodny’s theory.

There is reason to think we cannot value a relationship until it exists, for whether what we are valuing before the relationship exists is the relationship or some imagined relationship is unclear. Further, supposing the relationship does not exist, if we valued the relationship, then we either value some non-existent thing, which seems absurd, or we do value some existing thing, which contradicts our supposition. So there is at least prima facia reason to think we cannot value a relationship until it exists.

Reflecting on the nature of certain relationships seems to provide some motivation for thinking love constitutes some relationships. While Kolodny writes “For the time being, I will focus on friendship, romantic relationships, and family relationships as paradigm cases.”, the former two relationships seem good candidates for relationships constituted by love. For we might wonder why a relation between two people is a romantic relationship if there is no love between the two people, as seen in the Billy and Sue case.

Further, a supposedly romantic relationship seems to change depending on whether love is reciprocal or not. If Billy loves Sue, but Sue does not love Billy, the relationship between the two seems more of a crush than that of a romantic relationship. Why a romantic relationship would not change into a crush, or even drop away when who loves whom in a relationship changes seems unexplained by Kolodny’s theory. The lack of explanation seems to weaken Kolodny’s position, for if we thought love constitutes certain relationships, then we would be inclined to deny that a romantic relationship persists despite changes in loving, and Kolodny has not provided a good reason to deny this.

Kolodny somewhat address these concerns in reply to the objection of “bootstrapping” he considers. The objection of bootstrapping holds that “Relationships cannot be reasons for falling in love, because they do not exist until one has fallen in love.” to which Kolodny conciliatorily replies “Nevertheless, I believe that there are reasons for acquiring the emotional vulnerability that first establishes a friendship or romantic relationship, and that these reasons are remarkably similar to the reasons for the emotional vulnerabilities that perpetuate the relationship, once established.”

In his reply, Kolodny seems to take “emotional vulnerability” as the feature that establishes friendships and romantic relationships. If we thought these kinds of relationships are constituted by love however, then this reply does not avoid the charge of “bootstrapping”, for unless love consists in these emotional vulnerabilities, we might deny that the relationships established by emotional vulnerability are friendships or romantic relationships. Further, someone who thought some relationships are constituted by love might additionally hold that, in some circumstances, you are emotionally vulnerable because you are in love. The “remarkable similarity” between reasons for emotional vulnerability before and after the relationship is established could then be easily explained, for the advocate could hold that the reasons are remarkably similar because they are the same; loving a person makes you emotionally vulnerable to them before and after a relationship is established. So as a theory of what love consists in, Kolodny’s position seems to have genuine problems.

The problem of bootstrapping considered so far arises from taking Kolodny’s theory to account for what love consists in. If Kolodny’s theory is considered more as an account for when there are reasons for love, then it is unclear to me that the problem of bootstrapping even arises. For if relationships are reasons for love, rather than love consisting in valuing relationships, nothing seems to prevent reasonless love from arising. Such love might then establish a relationship constituted by love, which then could serve as a reason for the love. Kolodny need not deny the existence of relationships constituted by love then. As such, the problem of bootstrapping is only a problem for Kolodny if he takes love to consist in valuing a relationship, or if he thinks all love must be based on reason.

Given his general emphasis on providing reasons for love, Kolodny’s position would be stronger if he focused more on arguing what reasons for love are, rather than trying to articulate what love consists in. Kolodny might then simply ignore the problem of bootstrapping, accepting that some love is reasonless, yet still maintaining that relationships provide reasons for certain kinds of love. By recognizing it as an objection, Kolodny’s theory seems to concern itself with what love consists in, a burden not needed to be taken up in arguing for his thesis. Cutting the section on what love consists in, and shortening his response to the problem of bootstrapping could then focus his essay.

Works Cited
Kolodny, Niko. “Love as Valuing a Relationship”. In The Philosophical Review, Vol. 112., No 2. 2003