Iris asked:

1. Is there a view from somewhere?

2. How many angels can dance at the tip of the needle?

3. If I have a pen right now prove to me it does not exist or it does exist.

4. If two boxers pray at night before their fight, whom will God hear?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Very good, Iris.

1. Thomas Nagel’s book The View From Nowhere (1989) makes the case that there is such a thing as a ‘view from nowhere’. He assumes, without argument, that there is a ‘view from somewhere’. No human being occupies the view from nowhere, but we can conceive, in the abstract, what that would be like. So it would be turning the tables to raise the question whether, in fact, there IS a view from somewhere. You and I assume that there is. I have a perspective or view on the world, so do you. Those views are ‘real’ so far as you and I are concerned. Could we be wrong? how? Maybe you and I don’t really ‘exist’ as separate subjects of experience. All we are, is manifestations of IT, the singular consciousness and ultimate reality of the universe. — That would take some proving.

2. If you look at the tip of a needle under a microscope, it looks quite large. So it all seemingly depends on how small angels are. They could be tiny. Or does it? The point made in the original question (posed in the Middle Ages) is that, according to Thomistic metaphysics, unlike human beings each angel possesses a unique Aristotelian form. By contrast, you and I share the same Aristotelian form, the form of ‘human’. Objects that share the same form cannot exist in the same place at the same time. Objects that have different forms (e.g. ‘statue’ and ‘lump of bronze’) can. So unlike humans, a potentially infinite number of angels can exist in the same physical place. — If you believe in angels.

3. If your statement, ‘I have a pen right now’ is true then it follows, as a matter of logic, that the ‘pen I have right now’ exists. If it is true, as a matter of logic, that your pen exists, then it is false, as a matter of logic, that your pen does not exist. Of course, you could be lying, but that possibility isn’t relevant to the question you raised.

4. If both boxers are good Jews, or Christians, or Muslims (or, insert your favourite religion) then God hears both their prayers and decides for the best. It might be ‘for the best’ that you lose a fight, because if you had won, you would have put off your retirement from boxing, which would have led to your early death from injury. But then, of course, when you pray (If you are a good… whatever) you don’t pray to win, you pray that the outcome should be ‘for the best’. You don’t ask God for favours at the expense of someone else — do you?

 

Lovely asked:

If the old woman lives affluently do you think the Brahmin will not want the life of the old woman?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

Voltaire’s story of the Good Brahmin raises a deeper, and to me more interesting question than John Stuart Mill’s ‘Why is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied?’ (from Utilitarianism 1861).

The Brahmin has been seeking all his life for the joy that the old lady gets from her religion — a joy for whose loss no material comforts can compensate. He has sought, as philosophers do, the way of understanding. Yet as philosophers know well, the search for understanding brings dissatisfaction and pain.

So we are not comparing human happiness or pleasure with that of a non-human animal. These are two paradigmatically human lives. (See Gideon Smith-Jones’ answer to Canton Not all pleasures are the same.)

On my interpretation, the Brahmin has set his heart on ‘finding the answer’, and now, too late, he realizes his all-too-human limitations. (Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry would have something to say about that.) And yet he would not trade places with the old woman.

Why?

You have to know why a person would choose to pursue a life in philosophy. This is something I have been explaining to my Pathways students for over two decades. They have not chosen the ‘life of a philosopher,’ but merely to study the subject for pleasure or the other rewards that study brings. Yet they understand.

The way of philosophy does not promise enlightenment. That wasn’t part of the deal. There is nothing in this or any other world that is worth trading for the understanding a philosopher seeks. That’s what you believe. To survive disappointments, battle scarred, and still press on is your badge of honour.

‘My pain is mine: I will not give it up.’

Something must also be said about Voltaire’s jaundiced view of philosophy — the same Voltaire who satirized the philosopher Leibniz in his novel Candide. Voltaire was a brilliant writer but a great philosopher he was not. I would hazard a guess (only a guess) that the pain he describes is his own secret pain. Not good enough to reach the heights of philosophy, he settled for ‘brilliant writing’ instead.

He would have been better off with a yacht and a Lamborghini and pad in St Tropez.

Whom would you prefer to be: Leibniz or Voltaire? or take the money?!

It’s a question I ask myself on occasion.

Jurgis asked:

What do you think of Merab Mamardashvili’s motto, ‘The Devil is playing with us, when we are not thinking precisely’?

Answer by Gideon Smith-Jones

Talk about ‘precision’ is like waving a red flag to a bull when you’re in conversation with an analytic philosopher. The English language is no longer enough — algebraic symbolism is now the norm in articles published in the major journals. The idea goes back to the 18th century philosopher Leibniz and his ‘characteristica universalis’:

“All our reasoning is nothing but the joining and substituting of characters, whether these characters be words or symbols or pictures… if we could find characters or signs appropriate for expressing all our thoughts as definitely and as exactly as arithmetic expresses numbers or geometric analysis expresses lines, we could in all subjects insofar as they are amenable to reasoning, accomplish what is done in Arithmetic and Geometry.”

(For a longer quote, see http://follydiddledah.com/image_and_quote_7.html.)

The ‘scab of symboles’ as Hobbes called it affects some areas of philosophy more than others. Some parts are still relatively free of it. Yet even then one finds points explained with irritating overkill, as if clarity can be achieved only by the philosophic equivalent of legalese, allowing no possible room for misinterpretation.

This kind of stuff bores me senseless — I’m not ashamed to admit, I won’t even make the attempt to read it even there are reasons to think there is something good buried down there. I don’t care. Let it stay buried. Academic philosophers should talk like normal human beings or shut up — because no-one outside their tiny circle is listening.

My view of precision is much more practical. It’s about having your mind on the job, something Robert Pirsig talks about in his Zen and the Art. It’s not a new idea: Aristotle was there first. You have to have the eye, or the ear, or the feel for what you are doing — whether it is making a brush mark on a canvas, tightening a nut on a motorcycle engine, selecting the right word, or choosing one of innumerable ways of casting an argument.

Mamardashvili was a Georgian philosopher, working under the Soviet regime. (See his profile in the ISFP Gallery of Russian Thinkers http://isfp.co.uk/russian_thinkers/merab_mamardashvili.html.) In his book Philosophizer, Geoffrey Klempner states:

“I have a theory that Russian intellectual life is afflicted by chronic bad conscience, which will take many generations to overcome. Under the Communists, ‘intellectuals’ and ‘philosophers’ (so-called) debated apparently weighty problems, all the time aware of the vast weight of censorship bearing down, silencing any genuinely significant idea. They pretended concern for the pursuit of truth while all the time hopelessly mired in lies. Those who refused to bend ended up in the Gulags. A lucky few escaped to the West.” (Chapter 9, ‘A touch of poshlust’)

This is somewhat unkind. Despite the restrictions on freedom of thought, Russian thinkers succeeded in producing a welter of original ideas, that have no counterpart either in the analytic or continental traditions. Yet there is a point to be made here. When a thinker protests, ‘At all costs, I am trying to think precisely,’ there is always a suspicion that the motivation for philosophy — the pursuit of truth at all costs, regardless of the outcome — has taken second place. This applies as much to analytic philosophy as it does to those Russian thinkers (I suspect Mamardashvili was not one of them)  who allowed themselves to be cowed by the the fascist bullies of the Soviet regime.

 

Angelica asked:

Do you believe that the origin of people was a monkey?

Answer by Geoffrey Klempner

I don’t ‘believe’ any scientific theory — that’s not what theories are for. Science is not religion. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is the best theory on the table, which means that it is there to discuss, to use, to test (to destruction, if necessary) but above all to guide research. And that is something the theory of evolution has done magnificently.

Darwin aroused a storm of controversy when he asserted, on the evidence he had gathered, that human beings were descended from apes. More precisely, humans, apes, and monkeys are divergent evolutionary paths from a common primate ancestor. (We are closer to apes than to monkeys.)

Would there have been the same fuss if Darwin had claimed that humans were descended from an a more noble species, such as the lion? I’m sure some of the protestors would be mollified — quite happy to think of themselves as having lion ancestors!

How about you? Do you have a favourite animal species that you would like to have descended from?

As much as one might like to believe it, the evidence doesn’t support the theory of human lion ancestry. It is not on the table. To the best of my knowledge, there’s no empirical basis for the view that human beings are lions under the skin — except perhaps in a metaphorical sense.

That’s the thing about science. You don’t go by what you would like to believe, you go by the evidence.

 

Hooshmand asked:

Could you please tell me what is the meaning of Sartre saying:”freedom alone can account for a person in his totality”?

Answer by Gideon Smith-Jones

I had to do a search in Google for your Sartre quote which apparently is in a work by Jean Paul Sartre that I have not read: his biography of Jean Genet, Saint Genet. (David Bowie’s ‘Jean Genie’ according to Wikipedia.)

Now, I could borrow or buy the book and read it and then give you an answer, but you might be waiting rather a long time. As I have read other books by Sartre, including Being and Nothingness that will have to do.

It seems to me that I understand what Sartre meant and I think I agree with it. Let’s take a topic that might have interested Sartre: Adolf Hitler. The accepted view is that Hitler was an evil man. He hated the Jews and wanted the Jewish people to be gone, permanently, and was willing to resort to mass murder to achieve his objective.

Biographies of Hitler try to explain the particular circumstances in which Hitler formed his beliefs and attitudes — the circumstances that ‘made’ him the monster that he was, et cetera. What would Sartre say about that? Impossible. It cannot be true that Hitler was ‘made’ because each person — as a ‘totality’ — makes him or herself.

It’s true that we can take a partial view, where we view an individual person as merely an example of a ‘type’. Statistics don’t always lie. Like who was most likely to vote for Brexit, who was most likely to vote against. But it is also a truism that individuals don’t always conform to type, and each person is uniquely different.

An individual can either act ‘authentically’ or in ‘bad faith’. Either way, that is something that person has freely (but not always with fully self-conscious knowledge) chosen to do.

But how can someone who is not intrinsically evil or mentally deformed in some way choose evil? Surely, there is something intrinsically wrong with you if you prefer evil, if you find it attractive as an option. What is good about evil, is the question one has to ask. Feeding Christians to the lions is good for entertainment (if you happen to not like Christians), reduces the number of Christians and also takes care of the lions.

Anyone, and I mean absolutely anyone, can knowingly commit an evil act. Pick your favourite hero or saint, it makes no difference. Take Mahatma Gandhi at the age of 18. He still has most of his life choices ahead of him, choices that will make it more and more difficult (but still not impossible) to choose evil over good. But, at 18, he is still half-formed, there is a wide range of alternative possible lives. I don’t think it would be too difficult to write a novel in which Mahatma Gandhi took the place of Hitler as a dictator intent on world conquest.

Gandhi notoriously argued that the British should not attempt to oppose Hitler because the way of violence can never be right. With the passage of time, evil dictators and empires pass. Some would argue that that view — the doctrine of passive resistance — is evil because it permits evil to flourish. I wouldn’t say that. The point is that Gandhi knew perfectly well what would happen as a result of allowing Hitler to triumph and made the mental calculation that the cost was acceptable, in order to uphold a principle.

Make of that what you will.