Philosophy Talk: The Blog

Why Self-Deception Research Hasn’t Made Much Progress

by Neil Van Leeuwen

I’d like to talk frankly about why research on the topic of self-deception hasn’t made much progress—as far as I can see—despite a steady-stream of on-going interest. There’s been some excellent work, but it doesn’t seem to me that the topic on the whole has moved forward all that much.

In both philosophy and psychology there has been a tendency to talk about self-deception as if it were one thing. If it’s one thing, we can just figure out what that is. Right?

 The philosopher’s approach is to try to solve the paradox of self-deception and come up with an analysis of self-deception in terms of necessary and/or sufficient conditions.

 The psychologist’s approach is to try to demonstrate experimentally that certain behaviors require positing a mental state of “self-deception.” (This approach is excellently illustrated by the classic 1979 article from Ruben Gur and Harold Sackheim, entitled “Self-Deception: a Concept in search of a Phenomenon.”)

 Neither approach is exactly wrong. But here’s the problem. “Self-deception” is a term that only loosely refers. If we were to survey all the psychological states that the term can aptly be applied to, we’d find vast differences within that set of perfectly real phenomena. There are, at least, what I would call classic self-deception, self-inflation bias, semi-pretense, and false emotion, all of which seem to me to be distinct—but all of which get loosely termed “self-deception.” I’ll turn to those shortly. For now, let’s stay focused on the methodological problem.

 The implicit assumption that self-deception is a unified phenomenon creates problems for philosophers and psychologists in different ways.

 For philosophers: any good analysis of one of the self-deceptive phenomena (which ends up being an “analysis of self-deception [full stop]”) is subject to apparent counterexamples from someone who points to one of the other self-deceptive phenomena. For example, theorist number 1 (who has classic self-deception in mind) may produce an “analysis of self-deception” that theorist number 2 (who has false emotion in mind) presents a “counterexample” to. The two theorists are in fact talking past each other without realizing it, because of this mistaken assumption of unity. They are both talking about “self-deception.”

 For psychologists: the problem is even simpler to describe. Bodies of data can seem to contradict when they in fact don’t, simply because a data set about one phenomenon is labeled under the same heading (“self-deception”) as a data set that’s in fact about a distinct phenomenon. Something like this may be what happened in the debate in the 1990s consisting of Shelley Taylor (and colleagues) versus Randy Colvin (and colleagues). The “self-deceptive” phenomena that Taylor found conducive to success and happiness are just not the same mental states as the “self-deceptive” phenomena that Colvin found detrimental to social well-being. (I do some untangling of that particular debate in “Self-Deception Won’t Make You Happy,” in case you’re interested.)

 This whole situation impresses upon me one thing that Robert Trivers told me once. He said that what I should be doing with my time and philosophical ability is logically analyzing and distinguishing different kinds of self-deception, which could be a benefit to everyone. I think he was implying that it was a mistake to look for one holy grail analysis of self-deception.

 So here I’d like to make some progress on his suggestion. The following four phenomena are distinct, although they could all (in some cases more loosely than others) be called “self-deception.”

 Classic self-deception. This is a phenomenon of motivated irrationality, in which motivational forces in the agent somehow drive him/her to form a belief that runs contrary to the wealth of evidence that she possesses. The mind is in some sense divided. Thus, classic self-deception is rightly said to involve some sort of epistemic tension. This is the phenomenon that philosophers are most focused on, since it seems paradoxical. But being focused on classic self-deception hasn’t saved us from accidentally labeling cases of the other phenomena as “self-deception.”

 Self-inflation bias. We often hear statistics along the following lines. “94% percent of college professors believe they are above average in their scholarly abilities.” “85% of people think they are above average at driving.” And so on. These statistics are evidence of a general tendency people have to think better of themselves than rigorous analysis of the evidence would warrant. Importantly, I don’t think this self-inflation bias needs to involve an epistemic tension like self-deception does. The self-inflator is wholehearted in her high opinion of herself. Furthermore, this general tendency isn’t motivated by specific desires and insecurities, as is the case in classic self-deception.

 Semi-pretense. Often we go about imitating others without any intention to imitate or pretend. Sartre’s waiter is a great example of this. We take on the trappings of a certain character, without even being aware that that’s what’s happening. If the character I’m unwittingly imitating is inappropriate to my actual circumstances, someone might say I’m deceiving myself. But I prefer to call this phenomenon semi-pretense, because it’s in between plain action and full pretending. (But note that semi-pretense can contribute to classic self-deception, if the agent goes on to form beliefs on the basis of the semi-pretense.)

 False emotion. As Robert Frank discusses in Passions within Reason, people often have emotions for strategic social reasons. Often that’s good. We may cry because we genuinely need help. But crying may well be disproportionate to the amount of genuine need—a way of manipulating other parties into doing one’s will. Importantly, such manipulative false emotion needn’t be (and perhaps usually isn’t) consciously planned. The agent is convinced by her own false emotion! This, again, may be loosely called self-deception, although it is rather different from the preceding three phenomena.

 There are other distinct phenomena, too, that pre-theoretically get thrown into the basket of “self-deception.” Progress will require greater precision going forward.

I’d like to close this blog with a note to anyone who, like me, takes an interest in the evolutionary status of “self-deception.” I have argued in various places that self-deception is not an adaptation evolved by natural selection to serve some function. Rather, I have said self-deception is a spandrel, which means it’s a structural byproduct of other features of the human organism. My view has been that features of mind that are necessary for rational cognition in a finite being with urgent needs yield a capacity for self-deception as a byproduct. On this view, self-deception wasn’t selected for, but it also couldn’t be selected out, on pain of losing some of the beneficial features of which it’s a byproduct. This view seems opposed to the view of Robert Trivers, who maintains that self-deception is an adaptation to facilitate interpersonal deception. But it could be, in light of the foregoing distinctions, that Trivers and I were talking past each other.

I hereby wish to suggest the following. Self-inflation bias and false emotion are evolutionary adaptations that serve interpersonal deception, as Trivers has theorized. But classic self-deception and semi-pretense are in fact spandrels. Whether or not I am right in these particular hypotheses, I think the methodological point of this blog still stands.

Does Postmodernism Mean Moral Relativism?

For those not in the KALW Broadcast area, we will be re-airing our episode on Post-Modernism during this coming week. So we're moving an old blog post by our guest Gary Aylesworth, written when this episode originally aired, to the top of the blog.

posted by Gary Aylesworth

Toward the end of last Sunday’s broadcast of Philosophy Talk, a caller asked whether the “moral relativism” supposedly rampant in our time was part of postmodernism. While I would certainly agree that the current hysteria over moral relativism is a postmodern phenomenon, I don’t agree that postmodern thought takes an “anything goes” view of politics or ethics, or that it prevents us from saying that the terrorists of 9/11 committed mass murder. Instead, I see postmodern thought as a kind of moral humility, a humility that prevents us from assuming that the world divides neatly into “us” and “them” or that “others” are simply evil while “we,” by mere opposition, are assured to be in the right. Such absolutism, after all, has the same structure as the ideology of the terrorists. Several figures associated with philosophical postmodernism emphasize our obligation to the other as an other, that is, not as “one of us” but as one who marks the limit of our own identity or community. It is an obligation to receive the other as such and not to silence or eliminate her. We can agree that the 9/11 terrorists violated this obligation and that they are responsible for their actions, but it also forces us to examine our own sense of victimization. Nietzsche warned us against the moral righteousness of the victim; it is dangerous because it seeks to annihilate the other and tolerates no dissent.

The alarms against moral relativism we hear around us are, I think, the latest bellowings of the morality of ressentiment, a morality that looks for someone or something to blame for the insecurities and uncertainties of our age. Postmodern thought did not create this situation, but tries to explore its structures and its limits. It also upholds certain Enlightenment values, such as the freedom to dissent, social and political emancipation, the rights of individuals and minorities, etc., but it does so without claiming to know, once and for all, who individuals are or what ultimately constitutes a right. That these identities must remain open is itself a moral imperative, and one that obliges us to be humble in our judgments. Moral humility, not moral relativism, is the lesson of postmodern thinking.

Comment on Pornography by Rae Langton

We invited Rae to guest blog, and she graciously agreed.  And unlike many who agree to guest blog for us, she actually followed through on her intention.  But somehow the technology didn't work for her.   So we're posting this on her behalf --Philosophy Talk.  

John says, first, it's only fantasy, and second, outlawing is always 'a losing strategy'. 

Well yes, it might be fantasy or pretend: someone is being paid to pretend to be bound, and paid to pretend to enjoy it. The viewer is joining in with the pretence. 

But (i) note that even fictions are told and experienced against a backdrop of presupposed claims about the real world. For example, the Sherlock Holmes stories make claims about a fictional detective, against the backdrop of real world London. What does porn say or presuppose about the real world? That many real life women enjoy being bound and gagged, and that women who say no don't mean it. That's why, on the social science evidence, many consumers actually get their beliefs changed (see e.g. Donnerstein et al, the Question of Pornography). 

And (ii) as 'one of many' points out, even if consent is there, the woman's pleasure may not be; and rehearsing even pretend violence can 'stay in that man's mind' to shape how he looks at other women later. There is a lot of psychological literature now about how our 'off-line' imaginings and pretendings can influence our 'on-line' behaviour. This can be a good thing when it means that rehearsing your tennis strokes, just in imagination, can actually help you play better! But bad when it's shaping your responses to real people. 

Furthermore (iii) it's naive to assume that there is always consent, on the part of the actors, in the first place. Sara raises some excellent points about the real life conditions of many in the industry, for example in South East Asia, effectively the conditions of appalling sexual slavery. Consumers using pornography made in this way are effectively sex tourists, using virtual brothels in South East Asia. Possibly they are even the same consumers who would think twice about buying sneakers made with sweat shop labor.

Strategies: Why so pessimistic about the law? Most people think the law can and should be used to restrict or make actionable some sorts of pornography, for example, in the US, child porn; and in the UK now (legislation pending) 'extreme pornography',  that eroticizes life threatening attitudes and behaviours such as necrophilia and asphyxiation. (This follows the porn-inspired murder of a school teacher by Graham Coutts, who was addicted to this sort of porn.) 

 I also agree with Michael that other strategies should be pursued—I would say, 'as well', not 'instead'. Yes, more and better sex education please! Otherwise porn will be the default sex educator of the next generation. But also: education for us all about porn itself: the conditions under which it's made (thanks again Sara!), and what it can do to people—to women, and to men too. It's naive, though, to think it will go away because it will just fail in the marketplace of ideas. People don't have their truth filtering brains switched on when they consume porn: they aim for pleasure, not knowledge. But it changes their minds all the same, just like effective advertising does. 

And then in addition to education, a consumer boycott too. For the same reasons you might boycott sneakers made with sweat shop labour. Or for the same reason you might choose not to own a gun, even if you think you have a 'right to bear arms'. Why exercise that right, if it's more likely to damage you yourself—or those who are, or could be, closest to you?

Is Online Social Networking Changing the Way People Relate to Each Other?

note - This post was written by our guest Malcolm Parks at the time that we initially recorded the episode which is airing this week. 

Greetings.  My name is Malcolm Parks and I'll be joining John and Ken to discuss this topic at an event at Pacific University on April 17th.  I'm a communication researcher at the University of Washington, where I've been looking into online and offline social networks and relationships for some time.

Facebook, now the world's largest online social networking site, enrolled its 200 millionth member earlier this month.  Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, Twitter, and many others have become so successful that we forget they are all less than 5-6 years old.  It's far too soon to have definitive answers, but we do know social networking sites (SNS) raise some intriguing questions about the nature of social relationships and how it might be changing.  Here are a few ideas to get us thinking...

Does Facebook Change the Way People Relate to Each Other?   When researchers like me think about the social impact of communication technologies like Facebook, we try to look beyond simple things like saving time or money.  Instead we ask four questions about SNS like Facebook and MySpace: 

Too soon to know for sure, but here are some of the things we might consider.  Right off the top, let's ask what it means to be a "friend" in an online setting like Facebook.  Research shows that most people list 2-20 friends in offline settings.  But the average number of "Facebook friends" is typically 300-500.  So who are all these people?  Acquaintances?  Friends of friends?  Lapsed friends? 

Thanks to everything from personal profiles to google searches, it is possible to learn more about people before first meeting them.  Some have suggested that this might make us more critical-- more quickly sorting down to those few people who match some preset criterion.  Perhaps we harshly winnow out people who might be turn out to be more interesting if they had more of a chance.  Also, SNS make others' social connections more clearly visible to us than ever before.  What is the impact of that?  Does the old adage about judging people by the company they keep take on extra weight?  We think it might.  We also think that discovering that your friends have friends who belong to groups you don't like might have an impact on how prejudiced your are.  If nothing else, SNS and the internet generally have greatly increased contact among members of extended families (yes, that's right-- the net is pro-family!).  It also greatly increases access to social support for people dealing with diseases or difficult life changes. 

Does Facebook Change What it Means to "Know" Someone?  This is one of the more engaging questions for me-- and one that confronts us with basic philosophical questions about what we mean when we say we know another person.  Is "knowing" just having information about others?  If so, what kinds of information have the greatest knowledge value?  Or does true "knowing" unfold in a process of mutual revelation?  If so, does having all that additional information from someone's Facebook profile disrupt the process or does it just mean that we start farther along?  And what about the information itself?  Deception is a universal human behavior, but the internet makes it easier than ever to craft the image one wishes others to have.  So do we have more "information" but less real knowledge of others?  Are we beginning to assume that all online presentations are somewhat deceptive or, putting a less judgmental spin on it, playful or ironic?  These are important questions, but there are two more subtle questions that also interest me.  When so much information about us is public, what remains of the private or personal?  I'm always surprised that people don't worry more about all the personal information they put up online.  Finally, shouldn't we be worrying at least a little about the fact that Facebook and MySpace and many other SNS encourage us to describe ourselves in terms of standardized categories?  Are we commodifying ourselves?  Maybe we always have, but I'm particularly concerned when I see MySpace users present themselves in terms of product logos and symbols.  Do I really "know" you if I know what products and services you consume?  If so, what does that say about the nature of what we have become?

Good stuff to think about.  I'm looking forward to hearing what others think about these questions. 

Two Skeptical Arguments

Since We're repeating this show this week, I thought I'd move this post to the top. Jim was one our rare guests to actually both accept our invitation to guest blog and then to follow through. Enjoy --KT

I’ve been claiming that there are some really powerful skeptical arguments (on the show and in response to Ken's previous post).  I have also been claiming that one aspect of their force is that they do not depend on setting the standards for knowledge very high.   Here are two such arguments. 

1.  Hume’s argument.
The first is inspired by David Hume.  The argument begins with the assumption that our beliefs about the external world are at least partly based on how things appear.  For example, I believe that I am presently seated at my desk at least partly because that is the way things visually appear to me.  But that can’t be the whole story, the argument continues.  I must also be assuming, at least implicitly, that the way things appear is a good indication of the way things really are.  If I were not relying on that assumption, Hume argues, then the fact that things appear to me a certain way would not be a reason to think that they are that way.  But now how am I to justify this assumption about the reliability of appearances?  How can I know that the way things appear is a good indication of the way things really are?  According to Hume, there is no way to justify that assumption.  For example, suppose I were to rely on appearances, reasoning that, as far as I can tell, the way things appear to me appear to be a reliable indication of the way things really are.  This, of course, would be to argue in a circle, taking for granted the very thing at issue.   Here is Hume’s argument put more formally.

(H)

1.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on both a) the way things appear to me, and b) an assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things really are.
2.    But the assumption in question can’t be justified.
Therefore,
3.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on an unjustifiable assumption. (1, 2)
4.    Beliefs that depend for their evidence on an unjustifiable assumption do not count as knowledge.
Therefore,
5. None of my beliefs about the external world count as knowledge.  I don’t know anything about the external world.  (3,4)

Clearly, a linchpin of this argument is premise (2): that an assumption regarding the reliability of appearances cannot be justified.  In support of premise (2), Hume considers various possibilities for justifying the assumption in question.  One consideration that Hume emphasizes is that the assumption is itself a contingent claim about the external world.  That is, the assumption claims that sensory appearances are, as a matter of contingent fact, related to the way things are in a particular way.  This suggests that the assumption can be justified, if at all, only in the way that contingent claims about the external world are justified in general—i.e. by relying on the way things appear!  But this, of course, would be to argue in a circle, taking for granted the very thing at issue.  Here again is the reasoning in support of (2).

(H2)

1.    All my beliefs about the external world depend for their evidence on both a) the way things appear to me, and b) an assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things really are.
2.    The assumption in question is itself a belief about the external world.
Therefore,
3.    The assumption depends on itself for its evidence. (1, 2)
4.    Beliefs that that depend on themselves for their evidence can’t be justified.
Therefore,
5.    The assumption in question can’t be justified.  (3, 4)

    A natural thought is that the assumption that appearances are a reliable guide to reality can be justified in some other way, perhaps by some sort of a priori reflection that proceeds independently of appearances.  But Hume thinks that this line of reasoning is a dead end.  This is because the assumption in question makes a contingent claim about the way things are—it is a matter of contingent fact, and not a matter of necessity, that appearances do or do not reflect the way things really are.  But that sort of fact cannot be known through a priori reflection.  In short, a priori reflection gives us knowledge of necessary truths rather than contingent truths. 

2.  Descartes’s argument.
The second skeptical argument is inspired by Descartes’s Meditation One, and in particular by Barry Stroud’s reading of that meditation.  To understand the argument, consider the claim that one sees a goldfinch in the garden, based on one’s observation that the bird is of a particular size and color, and with a tail of a particular shape.  Suppose now that a friend challenges one’s claim to know, pointing out that woodpeckers also are of that size and color, and also have tails with that shape.  As Stroud points out, this seems to be a legitimate challenge to one’s claim to know that the bird is a goldfinch.  More generally, if one’s evidence for one’s belief that the bird is a goldfinch is consistent with the possibility that it is in fact a woodpecker, then one does not know on the basis of that evidence that it is a goldfinch. Based on this sort of reasoning, the skeptic proposes the following plausible principle:

1.         A person knows that p on the basis of evidence E, only if E rules out alternative possibilities to p. 

Further support for this sort of principle comes from reflection on scientific enquiry.  Suppose that there are several competing hypotheses for explaining some phenomenon, and suppose that these various hypotheses are “live” in the sense that current evidence does not rule them out as possibilities.  It would seem that one cannot know that one of the hypotheses is true until further evidence rules out the remaining ones.  Again, principle (1) above looks plausible.
    The second step in the skeptical argument is to point out that there are various possibilities that are inconsistent with what we claim to know about the external world.  For example, it is possible that things appear to me visually just as they do now, but that I am actually lying in my bed asleep rather than sitting at my desk awake.  It is possible that things appear to Descartes’s just as they do, but that he is actually the victim of an evil demon, a disembodied spirit who only dreams that he inhabits a material world and is presently seated by the fire.  To be clear, it is no part of the skeptical argument that such alternative possibilities are true, or even that they are somewhat likely.  The point is only that they are possibilities, and so undermine our knowledge if our evidence does not rule them out. 
  The third step in the skeptical argument is to claim that our evidence does not in fact rule these possibilities out.  The gist of the present claim is something like this:  These possibilities are consistent with all the evidence that we have or could have at our disposal.  Even if, practically speaking, we don’t usually give such possibilities a thought, upon reflection we have no evidence available to us that counts against them, and in favor of our preferred beliefs.
  If we put these three claims together we have the materials for a powerful skeptical argument.  Here is the argument stated more formally.

(D)

1.    A person knows that p on the basis of evidence E, only if E rules out alternative possibilities to p.  (Principle 1 from above.)
2.    It is a possibility that I am not sitting at my desk awake, but merely dreaming that I am.
Therefore,
3.     I know that I am sitting at my desk only if my evidence rules out the possibility that I am merely dreaming. (1, 2)
4.    But my evidence does not rule out this possibility.
Therefore,
5.    I do not know that I am sitting at my desk. (3, 4)

And of course the skeptical argument is supposed to generalize. That is, it is supposed to apply to beliefs about the external world in general.  We therefore have:

6.    The same line of reasoning can be brought to bear against any belief about the external world.
    Therefore,
7.    No one knows anything about the external world.  (5, 6)

    One way to understand the notion of “ruling out” a possibility is as follows:  A body of evidence E rules out a possibility q if and only if E supports not-q in a non-circular way.  Here we can understand support as a semantic notion:  Evidence E supports propositions p, in the relevant sense, just in case E entails p or E makes p probable.  Putting these ideas together, we get the following interpretation of premise (4) of argument (D).

4a.  My evidence for my belief that I am sitting at my desk neither entails nor makes probable (in a non-circular way) the proposition that I am not dreaming.

    Why might one accept premise (4a)?  One reason for accepting (4a) is the considerations put forward by Hume’s argument above.  That is, one might think that my evidence for believing that I am sitting at my desk is the way things appear to me, together with my assumption that the way things appear to me is a reliable indication of the way things are.  But as Hume’s reasoning shows, there is no non-circular way to justify the assumption in question, and therefore no good evidence for either that assumption or further beliefs that are based on it.  In particular, my evidence cannot entail or even make probable (in a non-circular way) the proposition that I am not dreaming. Insofar as this is the reasoning behind (4a), argument (D) is parasitic on argument (H).
    There is, however, another way to understand the notion of evidence ruling out alternative possibilities.  On this understanding, a body of evidence E rules out alternative possibilities to p just in case E discriminates the state of affairs represented by p from alternative states of affairs.  For example, hearing my wife coming in the door from work, my auditory experience rules out the possibility that it is my children coming home from school or a burglar coming in through a window.  In effect, I have the capacity to “tell the difference,” so to speak, and this is what allows me to know that it is my wife who has just come in the house. On this understanding of “ruling out”, it does seem plausible that my evidence must rule out alternative possibilities in order to ground knowledge.  For example, how could I know that my wife has just come home, on the basis of hearing her come through the door, if I could not discriminate that state of affairs from my daughter’s coming through the door? Moreover, premise (4) of argument (D) becomes plausible on this understanding of “ruling out.”  We now have

4b.  My evidence does not discriminate my sitting at my desk from my merely dreaming that I am sitting at my desk.

One might think that this claim is obviously right.  To be clear-- I assume that the skeptical argument must be wrong somewhere.  My point here is that it isn't obvious where, or that the argument is invoking some very high standard for knowledge.

Poetry, Philosophy, Truth

Howdy folks; Troy Jollimore here. Ken and John were kind enough to invite me to be their guest for the “Love, Poetry, Philosophy” show they taped at Powell’s City of Books in June. And now that the show is being broadcast, they were kind enough to invite me to blog for the show as well. I’m happy to take them up on it—keeping in mind that blogging is a very informal medium, and that what I have to offer may turn out to be no more than a few fairly random thoughts.

 

One of the relations between poetry and philosophy that we didn’t really get to discuss on the show, as I recall it at least, has to do with their respective conceptions of truth. I’m really generalizing here, but I’m going to make the claim that analytic philosophy, at least as traditionally practiced, is dominated by a conception of truth that has (at least) two significant features. First, it is propositional: it takes the proposition to be the primary entity that truth attaches to. And second, it is unitary: it tends to take it that there is one truth about any given subject matter. Thus philosophers are always looking for THE truth about something—THE proper analysis, THE correct understanding.

 

Poets tend not to think like that, partly because their understanding of truth tends to have more to do with metaphor, and poets tend naturally to be pluralists. If I have a philosophical analysis of x, and you come along with a philosophical analysis of x that isn’t the same as mine, then it seems like, as philosophers, we’re obliged to try to figure out which one is right; but again, they can’t both be right. But if I have a metaphor for y, and you come along and offer another metaphor for y, I can accept that your metaphor is a good one without feeling obliged either to (i) reject the validity of the metaphor I had already offered, or (ii) showing that at a deep level, the metaphors are really the same. So philosophers tend to view truths the way most people view spouses: you only get one at a time, so accepting them is a matter of replacement. Whereas poets tend to view truths, a lot of the time at least, more as friends: you can accumulate them, and you don’t need to get rid of the earlier ones.

 

In a related way, poets put more emphasis on the role of pictures than on the role of propositions. After all, a set of true propositions about z need not constitute an adequate picture of z. The propositions may all be trivial and uninteresting and leave out what is truly interesting or distinctive about z. So poets, on the whole (again, I am generalizing terribly) are more interested in truth as it attaches to pictures, than truth as it attaches to propositions. Thinking about truth in terms of propositions makes us more inclined to believe in the ONE truth since, after all, any proposition must either be true or false, and so there can only be one complete set of true propositions about the world. But thinking in terms of pictures reminds us that any human grasp of this one complete truth is partial, and that in human terms, the idea of multiple distinct but not necessarily incompatible truths may in fact be one that makes a certain sense.

 

Admittedly there is, among many poets, the idea of a ‘more complete’ understanding; as we add more metaphors to our mental stock, we form a deeper, richer, more adequate picture of the world, and so understand it better. We learn to see things from different angles, to appreciate them in a different light; to come to understand how something that doesn’t attract you can nonetheless appear attractive to someone else; and so forth. On the other hand, I think many poets think that there is no such thing as a complete or total understanding—there is always the possibility of coming to understand something better, of adding another metaphor.

 

Some philosophers have held views something like this. Nietzsche, for instance, may seem to have had something very much like this in mind with his “perspectivism.” And like Nietzsche (at least in some of his moods), some poets may want to take this sort of thing too far, and give up talking about truth at all. This, I think, is an overreaction to the valid recognition that it is always perilous, and very often misleading, to talk about the ONE truth about anything. But on the whole, it seems to me that poets—even those who tend to feel nervous when the word ‘truth’ is bandied about—do believe in truth; it’s precisely what they are striving for when they search for good  metaphors.

Where Does Morality Come From?

posted by Alex Miller

During the program on Sunday July 1st I drew a distinction between two ways in which this question might be taken. First, we could take it as a question about the *causal origin* of morality: how does it originate? (Compare: where did Stonehenge come from? This would be answered by telling a story about how those prehistoric people managed to get those huge stones from the west of Wales to Salisbury Plain). This is an interesting question, but I suspect that it is not quite the question that philosophers have in mind when they discuss the issue. The answer about causal origin is presumably that morality comes from *us*, or from the way we have evolved through history, or something roughly along those lines. However, philosophers are interested less in the empirical-cum-anthropological question about the causal origins of morality (which is not to say that it is uninteresting) and more in the question about the source of the *authority* of morality. Given that morally right actions are the actions that we ought to perform, what grounds this “ought”? One answer would be that the authority of morality stems from the fact that right actions are, by definition, the acts that God approves of. If being kind to Granny Smith is approved of by God, then it is no wonder that I ought to be kind to Granny Smith, no wonder, in other words, that the prescription to be kind to Granny Smith is authoritative. God, the supreme authority, approves of it, so what more could you want by way of a ground for the authority of the claim that you ought to help her?

This is the kind of story about the source of morality’s authority that many philosophers consider to have been destroyed by the argument that Socrates gives in Plato’s dialogue *Euthyphro*. In that dialogue, Euthyphro claims that the rightness of right acts consists in the fact that they are approved by God: by definition, an act is right if and only if it is approved by God. I take it that an updated version of the argument Plato has Socrates deliver against this suggestion goes something like this. God is supposed to be omnibenevolent as well as omniscient and omnipotent: in other words, he’s supposed to be infinitely good in addition to being infinitely knowledgeable and infinitely powerful. But what is it for an agent to be good? An agent is good if they do the right thing *because* it is right: if you are kind to Granny Smith because you want to be left a large sum of money in her will, that is not the action of a good person. A good person, therefore, is a person who performs right acts for the right sorts of reasons. And now for the killer blow against Euthyphro. If being right consists in being approved by God, if being right is by definition a matter of being approved by God, then the claim that e.g.

(*) God approves of kindness because it is right

becomes empty of all content. Since being right consists in being approved by God (*) turns out to be an empty truism along the lines of

(**) God approves of kindness because God approves of kindness.

On Euthyphro’s position we thus lose the capacity to hold on to claims like (*). And if we lose the capacity to hold on to claims like (*) we lose the idea that God is good, because being good is a matter of doing the right things (or at least approving of the right things) because they are right. And if we lose the claim that God is good, we lose the claim that God is omnibenevolent, or infinitely good. So, in conclusion, in order to retain Ethyphro’s theory according to which being good consists in being approved by God, we would have to see God as an essentially *amoral* agent, an agent who may well approve of the tings that are right, but not *because* they are right.

So, God is of no help to us if we are seeking to answer the question “Where Does Morality Come From?” construed as a question about the source of morality’s authority. If we are to make a serious attempt at accounting for the authority of morality we have to jettison God, and for all intents and purposes restrict ourselves to the sorts of materials that would be acceptable to an atheist.

How about this. Right actions are those that tend to promote the well-being of sentient creatures, taking into account values such as integrity, veracity, impartiality, and so on.

Suppose that if I’m kind to Granny Smith her well being will be promoted: she’ll feel less lonely, for example. Suppose also, that my being kind to Granny Smith does not involve my lying to her or to anyone else, does not involve any violation of anyone’s integrity, and is not performed at the expense of anyone else’s well-being, and so on.

So being kind to Granny Smith promotes her well being in an acceptable sort of way. That’s why I ought to be kind to her. No God involved there. So why isn’t this a plausible story about the source of morality’s authority?

Note that the authority of morality doesn’t depend on us, in the sense that whether being kind to Granny promotes her well being and so on is independent of whether I *think* that it promotes her well being (and probably also independent of whether *she* thinks that it promotes her well being).

So, as far as questions of causal origin are concerned, morality at least partially depends on us. As far as questions of authority are concerned, the authority of morality is tied up with the effects things have on us, because the effects things have on us can crucially affect our well being. But this doesn’t mean that it is up to us whether a particular act or course of action is right or wrong, because it isn’t just up to us whether a particular act or course of action affects our well being.

Some good introductory level books on related themes:

Simon Blackburn *Being Good* (Oxford: OUP 1999).

Russ Schafer-Landau *Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?* (New York: OUP 2004).

Michael Parenti *The Culture Struggle* (Seven Stories Press 2006)

Parenti’s book is more on politics than philosophy, but his chapters on cultural relativism and ethnocentrism are excellent. He'd be a great guy to have on Philosophy Talk!

My summer reading

posted by Ian Shoales

I don't really have anything to recommend, per se, but the weird assortment of matter through which I am wading may be of interest to those of you who have an interest in that sort of thing.

I don't have the disposable income I once did, so most of my reading comes from second hand stores, garage sales, the Internet, and the library - once I replace the paperback the library claims I lost (GREAT PLAINS, by Ian Frazier). 

My wife and I went to the Fair Oaks annual yard sale last  Saturday (five blocks of bargains and cheap tamales).  I found a copy of EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED, the novel by Jonathan Saffran Foer.  I'd wanted to read it, sort of, but certainly didn't want to pay good money for it.  Two bucks seemed right.  The reviews made it sound like something I'd like, but I was a little put off by the knowledge that the author of the book gave the main character of the book his own name.  I don't know why that irritates me.  I guess I think that privilege is reserved for Borges alone.  Unless you're writing your memoirs.  I don't really like memoirs (unless they're by Borges).

We also picked up ten trashy Hollywood biographies, which my wife and I both love - the trashier the better.  We even found my favorite, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RAINBOW, by Mel Torme.  I first read this more than thirty years ago.  It purports to be about his experience working with Judy Garland, but is mainly about how awful his ex-wife is.  I have never read a book with more of a "disconnect" (as they wonks say) between what the author thinks he is telling us and what we are actually being told.  If you ever wanted to teach that sort of thing, it could be used as a textbook.

(BTW:  Trashy Hollywood biographies are NOT memoirs.)

Among the other bios were SCHNOZZOLA, a biography of Jimmy Durante, and a biography of William Holden, which I bought mainlyto see if there were any good Sam Peckinpah horror stories.  All I've read of that so far are the appropriate pages pointed out in the index.  (Sam Peckinpah was a difficult  man, so the bio says (how shocking!).  I found out that Peckinpah originally wanted Lee Marvin to play Pike Bishop in THE WILD BUNCH.  What a movie that would have been!  Not to diminish the power of the movie that exists, which I've seen, oh god, umpty-leven times.)

Acorn Books on Polk Street is closing (as is Cody's in Berkely, and maybe A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books here in San Francisco), and I found a novel that I'd never heard of, THE CHESS GARDEN, by Brooks Hansen.  It is both unlikely and wonderful, incorporating a flood in Dayton, Ohio, the Boer War, and a trip to the Antipodes, an imaginary land populated by game pieces. 
I got about a third through it, and then got very busy, and have been away from it for two weeks.  I  will probably have to start over, an activity I don't mind.   In fact, I often treasure it.

My wife went to the Mother's Day Sale at A Clean Well Lighted Place For Books, and got me the most recent biography of George Orwell (ORWELL: THE LIFE,  by D.J. Taylor).  I'm also reading a memoir of Frank O'Hara, a poet I love, by his former lover/roommate, Joe LeSueur.  (Wait, I thought I HATED memoirs.)

Having come across many references to it, in the course of researching other things, I realized I'd never read F. Scott Fitsgerald's last book (unfinished), THE LAST TYCOON.  So I bought that, and read it.  It's a roman a clef, based on the life of Irving Thalberg, the head of production at MGM in the 20's and 30's.  It is very good.  I bought the authorized text (full price, at BORDERS, because I couldn't find it anywhere else) by Matthew J. Broccoli, with its new title, THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON. 

I am also doing research (for various writing projects) on Cabeza da Vaca, toxins that cause short term memory loss, and sedition.  Don't ask.  Or do. 

For the record, I re-read every few years:

The ghost stories of M.R. James.  They are so Victorian and dry.  They make me swoon and shiver.
Sherlock Holmes.
The Continental Op stories.
PALE FIRE
LOLITA
V.
Grimm's Tales. 
MYTHOLOGIES (Roland Barthes)
Borges. 

As for books that contain actual, you know, philosophy, I recently read, after many years of procrastination, Guy DuBord's SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE.  He was one of the hoo-has behind the French "revolution" in the 60's.  (The book can be found online, by the way.)   I found that it was full of French obfuscation, high horse blow hardness, and insight in pretty much equal measure.

I have taken one of his sentences as a personal motto:  "The true is a moment of the false."  Whether that's insight, obfuscation, or high horse blow hardness, I will leave you, gentle reader, to judge. 

Educated Insolence

by Tony Veale

Stand-up comics often bemoan the fact that "everyone's a f**king
comedian!", and its true: every one appreciates humor (to some degree)
and most are capable of generating some form of spontaneous humor.  But
this very ubiquity makes humor harder, rather than easier, to understand
formally, since humor assumes many guises and operates with subtle
differences in myriad contexts. A whole host of philosophers and other
thinkers have proposed theories of humor throughout history, though none
are wholly successful, since each tends to emphasise one favored aspect
of humor over others. My favorite perspective is offered by Aristotle,
who views humor as a form of "educated insolence". Of course, you have
to overlook the dry details of Aristotle's schoolmasterish analyses, and
his love of dividing every topic into seven types of this and five
sub-types of that. When considering a theory of humour, look past the
details (they are often extremely sketchy, anyway), and try to distil
the essence to see if it does justice to the phenomenon.

What does it mean to say that "humour is educated insolence"? Well, in
two key-words, Aristotle says it all. The first, "educated", does not
mean that humor can only arise from a formal education, rather that
humor is a knowledge-based process. To make fun of the world or its
occupants, one needs to exploit knowledge, and the richer this
knowledge, the more nuanced and sophisticated the humor can be. To a
computationalist, this means that knowledge-representation is a
foundational element of a theory of humor. Theorists in Artificial
Intelligence have studied this problem for five decades now, to produce
a host of representation schemes and reasoning mechanisms for those
schemes. Some ambitious projects, like the Cyc project in Austin, aim to
use these schemes and mechanisms to represent the totality of
common-sense knowledge possessed by a typical human. While I have my
doubts about Cyc as a representation for computational humor (I worked
on the project for a year) I believe that the "knowledge-bottleneck", as
Cyc's guiding svengali Doug Lenat describes it, is a crucial issue in
humor research: no knowledge, no humor, and no humor generation.

The second word, "insolence", is just as important, as it describes how
one should use all this knowledge to understand and produce humor. One
might be tempted here to see insolence as a form of insulting behavior,
and thus view humor as an expression of superiority on the part of the
comic. This general theory, called the superiority theory of humor,
views humor as aggressively directional, so that every joke has a target
or a butt. However, insolence is a more general idea, and refers to a
subversive attitude not just toward other people (as some humor is
overtly aggressive) but toward situations, beliefs and knowledge itself.
Personally, I am inclined to see in humor the same kind of subversive
behavior we see in scientific Gedanken or thought experiments. In such
experiments, a scientist proposes a simple experiment that requires no
apparatus, but which can instead be performed in the laboratory of the
mind. Galileo and Einstein were both masters of the Gedanken experiment,
using them to devastating effect to persuade people of the folly of
believing in conventional scientific wisdom. Once this wisdom is shown
by the experiment to lead to ridiculous situations, the stage is cleared
for a new theory to arise.  As such, I see many jokes as having the
character of a compressed thought experiment. Try this one on for size:

"If God wanted us to be vegetarians, he wouldn't have made animals out
of meat!".

Which ideas are subverted here, Vegetarian, Animal or Meat? The answer
appears to be all three, for we seem to be presented with three quite
exceptional objects that simultaneously subvert three different
categories. First we are directed to imagine an exceptional member of
the Animal category, the animal as meat machine, from which all
non-utilitarian aspects are divorced; if such an animal were not
sentient, there could be no moral basis for vegetarianism. Secondly, we
are asked to imagine an exceptional kind of meat, one that possesses all
the biological properties of conventional meat yet one that may not
derive from an animal source. Thirdly, we are directed to imagine an
exceptional kind of Vegetarian, one that would eat meat if did not
derive from an animal source. All three subversions together lead to a
subversion of the category Vegetarianism, for what moral force would
this lifestyle preserve if vegetarians could freely eat meat yet remain
a vegetarian? The above joke really is a highly compressed thought
experiment, since it attempts to undermine the conventional wisdom that
vegetarianism is a morally superior way of life, while justifying a
moral laissez faire on the part of the meat-eaters. Some of the most
effective uses of subversion aim for a more visceral effect, as in
"Eating is over-rated. Remember, food is just sh*t waiting to happen".

When most people hear that computer scientists are trying to model humor
processes on  a computer, their reactions typically range from the "why
bother" (or "don't expect tenure") to "it's clearly impossible". As a
topic of computational research, humor seems both wasteful and futile;
even it succeeds, do we really need a computer with a sense of humor?
Those people that already believe that computers are too smart for them
would surely not be pleased to think that their computers are also
laughing at them. It doesn't help, of course, that the archetype of
intelligent computers in pop-culture is HAL from 2001, who murdered his
crew. When I worked at Cyc, my boss looked forward to the day that Cyc
would exhibit language capabilities like HAL, but presumably (and I
can't be sure) he wasn't looking forward to Cyc murdering me and my
co-workers.

More seriously, few computer scientists work on humor as their main
topic of research, and for most, like myself, it is an interesting (but
relevant) side-line. For one, is not an entirely wise career choice.
I've met graduate students at humor conferences (yes, they exist, but
they can be very dry indeed) who are there against the advice of their
supervisors, who suggest it is better to study these topics after tenure
has been secured (this places humor research in the same scientific
category as paranormal studies!). Second, and more realistically, there
are so many problems to do with general human intelligence and language
competence that must be solved first before we can even begin to think
about genuinely humorous computers. The state of the art in
computer-generated humor is still in the school-yard, intellectually
speaking. Computers can do a very good job of generating puns, and even
humorous acronyms (such as CIA = Central Incompetence Agency, to pick
one at random). To understand and generate truly conceptual humor, where
ideas rather than just words are manipulated, requires that we first
understand other aspects of creative language use. To my mind, the most
important aspect of human language is metaphor. This is the primary
focus of my research (though its only slightly more respectable than
humor in computer science circles), since metaphor underpins our ability
to stretch the conventions of language and describe people and ideas in
strikingly novel ways. You don't need to read poetry to encounter the
need to process metaphors. Almost all natural language texts are
permeated with metaphors, from the Bible to the Wall Street Journal, so
there is a real financial imperative to make substantial engineering
progress on this topic. Once our computers can understand and produce
metaphors, they will possess the educational requirement of Aristotle's
theory. Then it will be a matter of using this education for insolent
purposes. Choice insults like "Baldrick, your family tree has Dutch Elm
disease" are just around the corner.

For those readers interested in knowing more about computational
approaches to metaphor, and indirectly, humor, please do visit my
group's research web-site at: afflatus.ucd.ie. (btw: "Afflatus" is not a
bowel-complaint, but a pretentious term for the "creative urge" foisted
upon our server by a departing graduate student). Alternatively, you can
contact me directly at tony.veale@UCD.ie.

Tony Veale is a computer scientist at University College Dublin. He's also our guest on today's show on humor.

Confucianism: Intelligent kindness

The Master said, “At fifteen, I set my mind on learning. At thirty, I took my stand. At forty, I was free of doubts. At fifty, I understand heaven’s command. And at seventy, I could follow my heart’s desire without crossing the line.” (Analects 2.4)

To begin with, I am forty-one and this is my first time blogging. So I trust people will forgive me if I cross any lines. I tried to post this before the show but evidently blogged it up. So let me start by summarizing what I think are the outlines of the Confucian view of education.

Usually when we think of an education, we think of it as the accumulation of information. While information plays an important role, a Confucian education is more a process of self-cultivation. Specifically, it is a process of becoming intelligently kind.

Like liberal education, Confucian education is not directed toward any particular form of employment. But as with a liberal education, one could use almost any form of employment to act kindly. Though he also sees kindness as an end in itself, Confucius also thinks that people who approach the task this way will ultimately be the most effective.

What does it mean to be “intelligently kind”? People can be kind without being intelligent and intelligent without being kind. Success for Confucius was learning to be both at the same time. Obviously by “kindness” here we mean something more than just being nice all the time since sometimes you have to be if not cruel to be kind, at least sanguine.

We tend to think of kindness as a feeling or a passion. Etymologically, a passion is something that happens to you, as opposed to an action, which is something you do. But Confucius, along with Aristotle and others in the West, think of at least some feelings as things we can cultivate, practice, and strengthen.

I’ll stop there for the moment. The Master said, “To study and have a chance to practice what you’ve learned—isn’t that a joy? To have friends come from far away places—isn’t that a pleasure?” (Analects 1.1) I look forward to the discussion.