Siobhan asked

What is the Philosophy of Time Travel?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

This reminds me of a story, Siobhan, of many stories I’ve read from centuries, millennia ago — Orpheus in the Underworld, Odysseus, Gilgamesh, the Pharaohs — Cheating death, cheating time, flying through the air with magical animals, descending into the bowels of the past, tearing off the dark cloak from the future… so many dreams that will not die. Now we have science fiction to drape them — Science! Wow!

Yes, there have been philosophers too, in the middle ages, who propped up these dreams and stories with cast-iron logic, but we don’t believe them any more because we found that some terms in their syllogisms, called ‘common notions’, were not common any more when the power of the Church began to wane. Today we have science. Science delivers; we believe in it. Nevertheless, doubts creep in sometimes. Just how much science is there in science fiction? I suspect: very little; though a plethora of fancies that could be so construed on the basis of superficial similarities.

On my understanding, we owe our current conceptions of time and space to Einstein. His theory is called Relativity. It does not make provision for time travel; but is on the contrary, totally and absolutely inimical to it. So you see the problem: Relativity has to be proved wrong before one can philosophise about time travel. No philosopher would risk reputation and career on such a fool’s errant.

What about quantum theory? Don’t experimenters sometimes find particles veering off the straight and narrow path into the future to jump into the past? Well, that’s one reason why empirical physics and particle physics don’t get on, why we don’t have a ‘unified field theory’. This ‘maybe time travel’ might be nothing more than a limitation on our observational powers. But even if particles truly bounce into the past sometimes, they are not ‘things’ and therefore we can’t get a ride on them. It doesn’t stop fiction writers and movie makers, of course. Our imagination is fuelled by such fancies.

Coming to the end, you would not expect to be the first person to put a question of this nature to the panel. So let me finally point you to a more detailed rendering of the problems of time travel that I wrote in these pages a few years ago and is still accessible from the archives of Pathways. Happy reading!

http://123infinity.com/time_travel.html

Samantha asked:

In the Apology, Socrates says, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’ (38a) Do you think that J.S. Mill would agree? More generally, do they agree about the nature of the good life? Explain why or why not.

Answer by Graham Hackett

I’ll start with a quote from JS Mill

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” (Utilitarianism)

Sometimes, when we read JS Mill today, we may form the impression that what is being said is glaringly obvious. This is because much of the matter discussed by him has now come to be regarded as settled and received opinion in the 20th century. We know that Socrates (through Plato) believed that everything, even the most taken-for granted concepts, such as courage, prudence, temperance etc should be subjected to the most rigorous questioning. Philosophic examination of this type, plus contemplation of ultimate questions of truth and justice constituted the “examined life” for Socrates. Famously, as you indicate in your question,  Socrates, at his trial  declared that he would choose death rather than live the unexamined life. Lest we get carried away with the nobility of his sentiment, we would have to admit that living the examined life was not something that Socrates thought was a road which should be taken by all. We know that, as described in The Republic, only a small privileged group would be able to do this, thus befitting them for just rule.

Although he may seem like a million miles distant from Socrates, J.S Mill also has a version of an “examined life”, although it is very much different from Socrates version. The source to read for this is “On Liberty”, published in 1859. Of course, the main aim of that essay is that the promotion of liberty and free speech is essential for a healthy body politic, but Mill is eager to argue that it also promotes happiness. 

There are several reasons for a permissive attitude to liberty of thought and speech. Mill says;

“Those who desire to suppress it (a controversial opinion), of course deny its truth; but they are not infallible. To refuse a hearing to an opinion, because they are sure that it is false, is to assume that their certainty is the same thing as absolute certainty. All silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”

In general, freedom of speech enables/ allows people to come to a clear and lively understanding of truths about the world. What amounts to the same thing, the silencing or censorship of expression prevents people from arriving at a clear and vivid understanding of true beliefs about the world. In addition to the promotion of free speech, Mill also has strong views on how science should progress,  Scientific theory should develop using inductive methods, and no theory should ever be regarded as the final word.

My understanding is that as well as being of instrumental significance for a healthy state, the liberties Mill describes, together with his robust views on science give us an alternative view to Socrates as to what might constitute an ‘examined’ life.

So JS Mill would certainly agree with Socrates that the examined life is a desirable one. However, there are points of difference to note between the two. What is it that constitutes the ‘examination’ in this examined life? For Socrates the process is based on theoretical analysis, abstraction  and contemplation. Concepts such as honesty, truth, courage and justice have a real unchangeable metaphysical existence; they can be discovered and known. In comparison, Mill eschews the metaphysical realm, and abandons any attempt to find a priori explanations for our concepts. Truth is a matter of empirical research, and discovering it is an ongoing eternal process. For example, liberty of speech and the resulting improvement in public living, is more than a set of governing practices. It is a culture or way of life of a community defined by equality of membership, reciprocal cooperation, and mutual respect and sympathy located in civic society. On Mill’s view, democratic participation is a way of life that unites two higher pleasures – sympathy and autonomy. 

You also mention, in your question whether Socrates and Mill would agree about what constitutes the good life.  I am a bit less secure about my answer here, but I would assume that, for Socrates, the good life would involve the search for truth and justice, and living in accordance with what one finds. The spirited, appetitive and rational elements of ones soul are in harmony. It is highly likely that Socrates felt that this good life would also deliver happiness.  Mill begins with happiness – his utilitarian approach involves that the goal of life is to maximize it. However, his writings indicate that for him, happiness (utility) is a richly nuanced concept, leading to a concept of the good life every bit as complex as the more metaphysical pursuit of Socrates.

Clara asked:

Can animals be considered persons?

What do philosophers supporting bodily continuity in terms of personal identity argue and how can I reject their arguments?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Clara, these are great questions, touching on the most fundamental issues that philosophy can deal with! However, in many ways both of them address the same underlying problem, and so I will deal with them together.

But I must begin with a caveat. Not all philosophers who wrote on these matters were au fait with biology. E.g. John Locke was a medico in an era of practically zero neurophysiological knowledge, so we must disqualify his pronouncements on two souls in one body and two bodies sharing a soul. Similarly some present day conjectures try to fit digital ideas onto living processes and let their fancies outrun biological capacities. I shall ignore them too.

The basics of this matter turn on the possession of language and a conceptual faculty. These two features enable human self-reflexivity, i.e. our consciousness of individuality and the ability to frame mental artefacts which we call ‘concepts’. Animals don’t have this capacity, even though all mammals (e.g. dogs, horses, apes, dolphins) possess a neocortex. This makes it doubtful whether or not they have a sense of individuality, or ‘personhood’. Many handlers of such animals believe it to be the case, as they feel that some forms of intimate communication between them is possible. However, there is no known method of clinching such arguments, in the main because animals have extremely limited resources of articulation.

On the other issue, matters are considerably more involved. The strongest arguments for the life-long persistence of personhood are Kant’s ‘Unity of Apperceptions’ and Schopenhauer’s ‘Principle of Individuation’. These and similar propositions can be questioned on the basis of pathological disruption of personality. E.g. someone may suffer coma, severe psychological trauma or complete memory loss and in some cases start a new life after the restoration of their personality. Whether these patients are identical with their former selves is perhaps debatable, but there are two main arguments against the supposition of a new identity.

The first is, that the notion of personhood is intrinsically ill-defined, as a five-year-old child is hardly a formed personality and must add character traits aplenty in their future life — in other words, personality is not a thing and cannot be pinned down to a single coherent phenomenology. Therefore loss or change of personality are undeniably possible.

The other objection is, that a person’s body and life form one indissoluble entity. The notion of personal identity is therefore bound up with the autonomy of living processes, in which all mental processes are included. Therefore a unique personhood is a subjective conscious self-reflectivity that can indeed change without annulling objective personhood.

In sum, the stronger battalions are on the side of the uniqueness and persistence of personhood in life. Disruption and change may alter its qualitative features, but not its intrinsic continuity. From a neurophysiological point of view, it can be said that much empirical evidence collected from brain damaged patients points to the brain’s capacity to restore its own integrity (in some cases despite catastrophic pathology), which seems to provide pretty conclusive evidence in favour of continuity.

Incidentally, the first empirical case study is the story of Phineas Gage, who survived a 4-foot-long iron rod being driven through his head. It changed his personality, but he remained the same ‘person’ for the 12 years of his post-trauma life. Look him up in the web!

Clara asks:

Can animals be considered persons?

Answer by Craig Skinner

Arguably, in some cases, yes.

Locke famously distinguishes between a person and a human being (a ‘man’ in his terminology). Thus a person is:

‘A thinking intelligent being, that has reason, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing, in different times and places, which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from thinking’ (Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , 2nd ed, 1694, 27.9).

This distinction raises the possibility that there might be:

(a) human beings that are not persons.

(b) persons that are not human beings.

As regards (a), fertilized eggs, embryos, foetuses and adults in a persistently vegetative state all fit the bill — eggs, embryos and foetuses are only potential persons, PVS-adults are former persons — but they are all human beings.

As regards (b), aliens, computers and animals are all candidates.

Science fiction is rife with alien persons, from little green men to Mr Spock, and they may well exist for real elsewhere in our universe.

As regards computers as persons, again this is a science fiction staple, but it may become a fact in the not too distant future.

And now to animals. Are there non-human animals that are not just conscious (like my cat and dog for instance) but are self-conscious and thus might be seen as persons? Yes, experiments suggest this in chimps and in some other species. A chimp, for instance,
recognizes its mirror image as itself — if the experimenter has daubed bright paint on the chimp’s forehead, on looking in the mirror the chimp will realize he has paint on his own forehead and will wipe it off. The celebrated philosopher Peter Singer notoriously suggests that adult chimps, and other relevant species, have a greater claim to be regarded as persons than newborn humans.

Clara asked:

What are the strengths and weaknesses for Gilbert Ryle`s answer on cartesian dualism?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

Ryle combatted the notion that ‘mind’ indicates an immaterial substance in opposition to physical substances. He termed this concept ‘the ghost in the machine’ and its elaboration a ‘category error’. His target was Descartes and the academic industry devoted to the dual substance doctrine, both labouring under the handicap of their inability to account for the co-operation of these disparate substances in humans.

Its strength is, that the arguments are convincing exemplifications of Occam’s Razor. Don’t propose the existence of an entity superadded to our faculties which can handle all our sensory and intellectual capacities on their own. It is (he says) like asking for a torch to shine on things for us to see, and then for another torch that enables us to recognise them.

Hence his analogy to the university, which is an entity comprising many colleges; meanwhile the word ‘university’ does not denote an additional entity, but is simply the collective noun that embraces them all. If we wish to know what ‘the university’ does, we must visit each college in turn; and similarly with the mind, which can only be spoken of intelligibly if we attend to the capacity of each of its faculties. Accordingly Ryle devotes most of his book to their discussion.

So far so good. The more general problem is, however, that our capacity to sense and think does not receive a better, but merely an alternative explanation. A ready-made counter to Ryle is his own emphasis on the behavioural phenomenology which, possibly unperceived by him, demands the coordination of facultative activity for the purpose of enabling consciousness. We are well enough cognisant of the fact that a huge percentage of neuronal activity is never transmitted to our conscious states. It seems therefore, that we need a second torch after all — namely a torch that shines on the conclusions of neuronal activity and consigns all intermittent, suggestive and half-baked results to the garbage bin. As if, in Ryle’s example, a dozen labs run the same experiment, but on comparing results, two or three achieve promising part-conclusions that can be dovetailed to produce one paper.

Further objections to Ryle offer themselves readily. The first is, that pointing the finger at Descartes simply makes him the scapegoat for a universal belief among the overwhelming bulk of mankind since time immemorial. Moreover, as the current (philosophical as well as neurophysiological) literature shows, the Cartesian idea is not passe, but still widely accepted. Indeed, the Nobelist John Eccles believed that he had discovered a site in the brain where the conversion of ‘spiritual’ into ‘physical’ energy is enacted, and quite a number of writers still seek to explain the mind in Cartesian terms, even when they eschew the dual substance doctrine. None of them would agree that they are in pursuit of a category error.

Indeed it could be argued from AI principles that a computer’s CPU is nothing other than Ryle’s ghost. In parallel computing systems, the facultative neuronal activity is replicated which, as mentioned above, must be coordinated. The difference here is, that the CPU does not represent a conscious state that enables an intentional decision, but only the merger of digital streams in which the decision is already part of the conclusion.

Effectively therefore, Ryle got rid of a name that served us to identify a specific mental capacity; but his explanations related to the capacities themselves lack the last ounce of conviction, because the name was only ever a crutch for philosophers to debate its merits and for Everyman to lean on. Meanwhile his own leanings towards behaviourism have long ago reached their use-by date; and whether the functionalism that grew out of it constitutes an improvement or the final cul-de-sac of this line of thinking, will have to be seen.

Desmond asked:

Avicenna is well known as the author of an important and influential proof for the existence of God. This proof is a good example of a philosopher’s intellect being deployed for a theological purpose, as was common in medieval philosophy. The argument runs as follows:

There is existence, or rather our phenomenal experience of the world confirms that things exist, and that their existence is non-necessary because we notice that things come into existence and pass out of it. Contingent existence cannot arise unless it is made necessary by a cause. A causal chain in reality must culminate in one un-caused cause because one cannot posit an actual infinite regress of causes (a basic axiom of Aristotelian science). Therefore, the chain of contingent existents must culminate in and find its causal principle in a sole, self-subsistent existent that is Necessary.

This, of course, is the same as the God of religion. Which is the premise in this statement?

Answer by Jürgen Lawrenz

The Muslims of Avicenna’s era had Aristotle’s writings to work with; and this whole proof is simply lifted from him. However, it is not conclusive, as the monotheist Avicenna (and the Christian Aquinas in his footsteps) took on board the ‘infinite chain of locomotive causes’ which seems compellingly to end in an atemporal uncaused cause, but ignored that the latter is not ‘locomotive’.

These two words, gently reminding us of the need for an interface, comprise the cardinal hinge… it’s the same issue we encounter in several other problematic ultimate principles, such as the incompatibility between life and non-life, between mind and muscles. But unlike a theologian, an honest philosopher will keep talking until he’s blue in the face, seeking a viable resolution to an irresolvable dilemma. Avicenna, Aquinas & Co. had only to say ‘yes’ to authoritarian dogma and their case (and their life) was safe.

So the premise behind these and all other ontological proofs is, indeed, the concept of an infinite and timeless entity (‘God’) being charged with creating finite and temporal existents. Moreover ex nihilo, simply on the strength of uttering the words ‘Let there be X’. What kind of an entity this ‘God’ might be, is not up for discussion. The more vague, the better. Which is why, in my view, neither Avicenna nor Aquinas are philosophers, though admittedly endowed with philosophical intellect.