Jessica asked:

What do you think of Mill’s ‘pig and Socrates’ argument for the difference between sensual and intellectual pleasures?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

J.S. Mill in Utilitarianism asserted that it is ‘better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.’ This is an excellent topic for classroom discussion, especially if the instructor takes the side of the pig and challenges the class to prove him/her wrong.

Mill’s point is one that seems fairly intuitive. There are ‘better’ and ‘worse’ pleasures. Other things being equal, you would prefer the better pleasures to the worse. In fact, when it comes to doing philosophy or pigging out at a burger bar, the pleasure of philosophy is SO much better that you would prefer the not inconsiderable pain of exercising your thinking muscle to the pleasure of a Happy Meal.

In making this point Mill is arguing against Jeremy Bentham who held the view that ALL pleasures should be counted the same in the ‘hedonic calculus’ that we use to determine the morally right course of action. The only difference between the pleasure of poetry and the pleasure of pushpin (a popular bar game at the time) was that poetry is more ‘fecund’ because it has the potential to produce pleasure in a lot more people who read and enjoy the poet’s work.

The problem is that once you discriminate between pleasures in the Mill wants to do you spoil any possibility of calculating ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. How do you quantify the pleasures of philosophizing and eating, for example? Do all foods count the same? Or all philosophy?

There’s a book by a French writer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, La Physiologie du Goût 1848 (Published by Penguin as The Philosopher in the Kitchen) which has inspired generations of master chefs. Brillat-Savarin makes the case that cooking is one of the high arts, as well as being a science. If you don’t care about the best way to fry a fish, or how to bring out the flavour of a truffle, there’s no hope for you. You are not a civilized human being.

Where I live in Sheffield, most people appreciate a well fried fish. You’d have to go further afield to find fresh truffles. The sober point is that human beings are not pigs, nor should human enjoyment of food be denigrated in the way that Mill wants to do.

In the pantheon of great achievements of human culture, great chefs and their works will be up there along with great artists, poets, and philosophers – even if they are not necessarily standing on the top row.

http://www.philosophypathways.com/vita.html

 

Karan asked:

A) If we treat the ‘cosmic Egg’ state of the Universe as being at time=0 (that is when no time existed), do we have a negative direction of time in which events unfold in a very different way? That is, if we treat time to be like the number line with the ‘positive time’ that we experience leading to the rising entropy of the universe from its birth to its current state and further; could there also be ‘negative time’ in which we did not exist and neither did our universe?

B) Could time be a more fundamental dimension which contains the space dimensions? That is, could time have been there before the formation of the universe, with a value equal to zero at its formation (leading us to think that time started with the Big Bang), and increasing values ever after?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Time is not a number, nor a dimension, nor a direction. Time does not move. What you need to appreciate in the context of your question is that science employs a rigorous theoretical conception which has nothing to do with your and my experience of time. In the framework of this theory, you can play with numbers, dimensions etc., but you cannot simply conclude from the numbers and the games you play with them, that there is a ‘thing’ or ‘state’ or actual ‘dimension’ that does something independently of your theory.

Yes, you can give time a number, like we do with our clocks. But consider this: You can also draw a map of the world, but that’s not the world. Someone once said, ‘don’t confuse the map with the terrain’, and that’s exactly what you are doing here.

In many countries in the world daylight saving is introduced in summer. We all turn our clocks back. Does it change anything about time? Of course not. The time is still the same. We just change the number on the clock. Time is not ‘moving backward’ or anything of the sort. Time is doing nothing. And none of us grows a day younger or older just because we changed a number on our clocks.

In the theory of relativity, where events seems to change time (maybe this is what you are alluding to?), time is relative to an observer. It is not much different from the example of daylight saving. Observer A observes an event relative to his/her self, while to another observer who is watching the same events pass much more quickly. But this has to do with the physical dimension in which both observers are enclosed. You can understand this better if just stay on earth and think about you and flies. The reason why they’re so hard to catch, is because for them, the time it takes for your hand to approach is much slower than for for yourself. Because they are so small and short-lived, their sense of time is different from yours.

What this boils down to is this. Don’t confuse the scientific conception of time with real time. In science, there are exact and unambiguous instrumental and operational definitions. In science, time is treated as an independent existent, which can then be manipulated mathematically. In some circumstances, e.g. in quantum mechanics, this involves time moving forward and backward relative to the events which are being timed. But once again this depends on the observer. A particle which – mathematically – is moving backward in time, does not move backward in its own time, only in that of the observer or the equation.

So to come to a conclusion: ‘Real time’ is objective and constant; it does not move, bend, twist or anything of the sort. All these are human ideas. Time is nothing you can grasp with your hand, only with your mind. If you don’t have life, then time is not a meaningful word. Time is something that arises from a consciousness that needs to organise its own processes into past, present and future. Things like rocks and water and stars don’t have time, because they cannot be aware of it. So the universe does not give birth to time, nor time to the universe. Remove consciousness from the world and time disappear.

In one word: Time is the human idea of time. There is nothing you can find anywhere in the universe that answers to the clause ‘time in itself’.

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

 

Bryan asked:

Hey, I’ve been reading and researching a lot on Descartes and his views on the mind and the body. I’m have a bit of trouble differentiating how he feels about the mind and the body though. My questions are ‘Why does Descartes think you can never divide the mind?’ and ‘Why does he think you can ALWAYS divide the body?’ I would really appreciate if someone can clear these 2 things up regarding Descartes. Thanks!

Answer by Craig Skinner

Descartes wishes to convince us that there is a ‘real’ distinction between body and mind. Here, ‘real’ is a technical term of mediaeval philosophy meaning that body and mind are distinct substances. Furthermore, he thinks body and mind are not just distinct substances of the same kind (like two chairs for instance), but of different kinds having no properties in common (apart from those needed for existing, like duration). Thus the body is made of matter (substance extended in space, ‘res extensa’, which cant think), the mind is immaterial (thinking substance, ‘res cogitans’, which has no extension).

He has three arguments to support his position (none good).

1. Argument from doubt (Discourse on the Method; 2nd Meditation).

2. Argument from clear and distinct separation (6th Meditation).

3. Divisibility argument (6th Meditation).

I won’t deal here with 1. and 2. except to say that 1. is nicely rebutted by Arnauld in the 4th Set of Objections to the Meditations, using, aptly for Descartes, a geometric example.

As regards 3., the subject of your questions, Descartes is brief, and we can quote him pretty well in full:

‘…there is a great difference between mind and body, inasmuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible. …when I consider the mind, that is to say, myself inasmuch as I am only a thinking thing, I cannot distinguish…any parts…and although the whole mind seems to be united to the whole body, yet if a foot, or an arm, or some other part, is separated from my body, I am aware that nothing has been taken away from my mind. And the faculties of willing, feeling, conceiving, etc. cannot be…said to be its parts, for it is one and the same mind which employs itself in willing and in feeling and understanding.’

So, to your questions.

Why does he think you can ALWAYS divide the body?

He says it is ‘by nature always divisible’. Clearly he means its extended nature, which obviously allows cutting it at any point or points along its extension thereby dividing it. I think ‘always’ simply means that any and all extended bodies can be divided. We could speculate that by ‘always’ he implies that you can keep on dividing a part, and then a subpart, indefinitely, so long as the subsubpart has finite size, at least in imagination (eg dividing an atom into its left and right halves), if not in practice. I think we can accept that bodies are divisible. Whether indefinitely divisible maybe depends on whether space is quantized or continuous, but that’s another story that starts with Zeno and still runs.

Why does he think you can never divide the mind?

Clearly the mind, unlike the body, cant be divided in the physical sense. This is true whether we think,with Descartes, that the mind is an immaterial substance, or we think, as I do, along with many others, that the mind is the mental activity of the brain.

So, if the mind is to be divisible, this would have to be in the way that, say, 12 is divisible into 7 and 5, or philosophy divides into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.

But Descartes thinks the mind is not divisible in any sense.

He has two reasons:

1. Although the whole mind seems united to the whole body, we can remove a bit of the body (a foot, say) without removing anything from the mind.

2. His mind feels whole to him, faculties being features of the whole mind rather than being mind parts.

Certainly a foot could be removed with little or no effect on the mind, but removing half a brain would remove a lot from the mind. Indeed, Descartes’ argument implies, absurdly, that the whole brain could be removed without removing anything from the mind.

As regards faculties being features of the whole mind, not parts, this may just be a verbal dispute. But there is no doubt that targeted brain damage can cause selective loss of a faculty, or even more strange changes to the mind, that I feel can count as showing mind as divisible.

Examples:

Hippocampal damage destroying existing long-term memories and the laying down of new ones.

Speech centre damage leading to lack of (understanding and/or producing) speech. Common in stroke.

Commisurectomy (cutting the connection between left and right brain halves, a treatment for intractable epilepsy) leading to each half having its own semi-autonomous self, truly a mind divided.

Schizophrenia where, among other features, emotion is cut off from cognition, again a mind divided in a different way.

In summary, Descartes’ arguments for mind/body real distinction (Cartesian dualism), including the Divisibility Argument, are implausible. And that’s without going into his (and every body else’s) failure to explain how mind and body could interact if they were distinct substances.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

 

Chap X asked:

What is difference between reality and illusion?

Answer by Helier Robinson

Illusions are either contradictions between the senses, as in the half-immersed stick which is bent to the sight and straight to the touch, or between what is perceived and well established belief, as in the railway lines seeming to meet in the distance. A contradiction cannot be true, so illusions must be false perceptions and so unreal.

Reality has a number of definitions: it is all that we perceive around us which is not illusory; it is all that exists regardless of whether it is perceived or not; it is what makes statements true or false; and it is the genuine, as in real leather, real flowers, etc. These definitions are not necessarily equivalent, and careless use of them can lead to confusion through equivocation: for example, an argument I once heard was that illusions are real (genuine) illusions and therefore part of reality and so should not be distinguished from reality.

A further difficulty is that empirical objects are made up of sensations (colours, tactile sensations, etc.) and these exist only as long as they are perceived, so do not exist independently of being perceived, so are unreal. Philosophers have argued about such difficulties with perception throughout history. The almost universal view these days is that philosophy should conform to common sense, but this is a view that I deplore: philosophy exists just because of the inability of common sense to solve various problems.

Helier Robinson is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy, University of Guelph. His books are available from http://SharebooksPublishing.com.

 

Zach asked:

If evolution is making adaptions to your body to better suit your environment then shouldn’t conscious life i.e. humans be the peak of evolution? Since we can think we don’t have to adapt to the environment anymore we can just change it. Example would be we no longer have to compete with other animals for our food, or compete with weather we have houses and cars and heating and air conditioning.

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

You’re making a fundamental mistake here. Evolution does not ‘make’ adaptations. In fact, evolution ‘makes’ nothing. Evolution is the History of Creatures on Earth, just as a book on The History of the English Speaking Peoples is a history of people who speak English. So you must immediately rid yourself of the misconception that there is some ‘power’ active on Earth that did all the evolutioning. It is nothing but a manner of speaking.

Also, you badly misjudge what competition for survival is all about. We have been doing all the things you think will improve our lot on Earth. We’ve already built millions of cars and houses, got rid of thousands of other life forms and changed millions of square miles of the habitat etc. The result is that we are in process of destroying the habitat and if we keep going this way, we will soon become extinct. This is because we are not clever enough to understand that all the other life forms – animal and vegetation – are our life support systems. Take them away and bingo! You can say good bye to humans. I suggest you need some information on evolution to help you understand better what this is all about.

Jürgen Lawrenz at PhiloSophos.com

 

Answer by Craig Skinner

It’s true that we change the world more than do birds with their nests and bowers, beavers with their dams, or ants and termites with their colonies and mounds.

But it hasn’t been very successful. On two counts. First, huge numbers of people live in abject poverty – try talking about housing, cars, heating, air conditioning and no need to compete with weather to flood victims in Bangladesh, slum dwellers in Mumbai, tsunami survivors or those starving due to drought. Secondly, our efforts at changing the world have led to current unsolved problems with global warming, overpopulation, species extinction, desertification and pollution.

Yes, we occupy the cognitive niche in the world’s ecology. And our direct competitors for that spot, other homo species, are long extinct, to be followed soon I fear by our cousins the gorillas, chimps, bonobos and orang-utans. But in evolutionary terms we have been around for a mere eyeblink (150,000 years, give or take, depending on what counts as homo sapiens sapiens as opposed to an ancestral homo species), so that it is far too soon to know whether the cognitive niche, or at least our occupancy of it, is stable long term.

In evolutionary terms, success is measured by how widespread a species is, and for how long. Among the winners are species of bacteria, ferns and insects which have been around for many millions, even billions, of years. And if humans went extinct tomorrow, these species wouldn’t even notice the difference.

The plight of homo sapiens can be summed up in four words: tribal species, global habitat. And until we can reconcile these two aspects, strife and environmental degradation will continue indefinitely, and our long-term survival is far from assured. It is certainly far too early for talk of humans being the peak of evolution. On the contrary, it may turn out we were a mere blip.

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com

 

Cecile asked:

‘If there are more trees in the world than there are leaves on any one tree, and no trees have no leaves, then there are at least two trees with the same number of leaves.’

Is this statement true or false. Explain in one sentence.

Answer by Craig Skinner

It’s true.

One-sentence explanation:

If every tree has a different, whole-number of leaves, then the trees can be listed in order of leaf number, and there is a one-to-one correspondence between tree number and leaf number so that the number of trees always equals the number of leaves on the leafiest tree.

Elucidation:

Tree 1 has one leaf
Tree 2 has two leaves
…
Tree x has x leaves

Number of trees(x) always equals number of leaves (x) on leafiest tree. To get more trees than leaves, we need at least one tree with no leaves, or at least two trees with the same number of leaves.

I’m not sure whether such puzzles aid philosophical thinking, but they are entertaining. A compendium of maths puzzles, factoids, formulas and more is

Pickover C A (2005) A Passion for Mathematics: numbers, puzzles, madness, religion, and the meaning of life Wiley, New Jersey

Craig Skinner at PhiloSophos.com