Abstract: In this paper, I examine David Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness as a problem of “semantic indecision” and conclude that this position on vagueness is inconsistent with the metaphysics of his theory of modal realism, with specific regard for counterparthood and the counterpart relation. To reach this conclusion, I employ a thought experiment in which an exact counterpart of Lewis is subjected to a series of possible worlds treatments designed to satisfy Lewisʼ criteria for counterparthood, as well as to test the limits of semantic treatments of higher-order vagueness. In doing this, I find that Lewisʼ suggestions for dealing with vagueness fails to pick out counterparts at several points in this series, even when given a satisfactorily precisified set of criteria for the qua relation. Rather than a clear candidate for counterparthood, one encounters instead a problem of infinite regression that could destabilize the whole project of Lewisian de re modal realism. I conclude by noting that accepting metaphysical vagueness into the Lewisian theory of modal realism changes nothing in the overall theory, and may in fact be the only way to save the theory from its problem of infinite regression.

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I. Background

The sentence “All bachelors are unmarried.” and the sentence “The author of this paper is typing on a computer.” are both true. However, these two sentences are not true in the same way. To understand how they are different, let us examine how each sentence can be considered true. In the first example, truth appears to be a function of the meaning of the word “bachelor” in relation to the rest of the sentence. This is because the first example states a specific and important property of the concept of being a bachelor. It is almost a kind of definition, and its truth is derived from the relationship between its form (what kind of sentence it is) and its semantic content (what the sentence means). The first example sentence demonstrates that the relationship between the form and the content of a sentence is one way to measure the truth of a sentence. The second example presents an exception to this rule. The form of the second example sentence does not follow the pattern of the first, yet (much to the authorʼs chagrin as I watch the clock) it is still true.

So what does it mean to say that the two sentences are true in different ways? In this case, it means that they arrive at being true by taking two different routes. The first example must always be true; the word “bachelor” carries somewhere in its meaning the idea of being unmarried, and the property of being unmarried is a definitive property of the word “bachelor”. The second example need not be, but by all respects still is, true. Truths that must be true, like the first example, are called necessary truths. This means that there is some quality of the words of the sentence or the things being discussed by the words in that sentence which requires the sentence to be true. The second example illustrates what is called a contingent truth. Contingent truths are not true in virtue of structure or meaning per se, but rather are true with regard to a given situation. Another way to put this is to say that there is no quality about me that would require, as a matter of necessity, that I be sitting at my desk writing this paper. I could just as easily be sleeping, or going for a walk, or touring the country with my world famous band instead.

Hypothetical statements like the one above, which gives some examples of ways in which my life might have been different, are called “counterfactuals”. Counterfactuals are just what they sound like: statements that consider cases in which the facts are contrary to the way things actually are. Often stated in the form of conditionals (“If X then Y”), counterfactuals are aimed at examining the ways in which the world could (and could not) be different by positing alternate situations for conceptual analyses. Take the statement “If I werenʼt writing this paper, I would be asleep right now” as an example. The purpose is to assert that under specific circumstances that are contrary to the actual ones (“If I werenʼt writing this paper,”), a different set of statements about the world would turn out to be true, and I would be in bed.

What counterfactuals illustrate is called “modality”, or the measure of necessary or contingency. It would seem that in order to be able to evaluate modality correctly, and in doing so evaluate the truth-value of the sentence in question, there must be some properties, or kinds of properties, of the thing being discussed that remain true about that thing across all counterfactual statements. Here, I must bring up another distinction, one concerning interpretations of things about which the modalilty is in question. With regard to modality, there are two ways to gloss a given sentence. One such way is called a de re reading (from the Latin for ʻof the thingʼ). The other reading is a de dicto reading (meaning ʻof the wordʼ). De re readings of sentences are concerned with the modality of the actual physical thing(s) referred to by the terms of a sentence. De dicto readings are concerned with the modality of the words of the examined sentence itself. This differentiation is relevant to the ways by which the truth-value of a given sentence can be evaluated as necessary or contingent. To illustrate the difference between a de re and a de dicto reading, examine the sentence “The President of the United States could be a woman.” Under a de dicto reading, this sentence means that it is possible for a woman to become the President of the United States. Under a de re reading, this sentence means that the legal status of Barack Obamaʼs marriage is in serious jeopardy under current law.

In contemporary analytic philosophy, the truth-values regarding the modal properties of a sentence are often evaluated in terms of “possible worlds”. Though there is significant disagreement about the nature of these worlds, such as when it is appropriate to assign de re or de dicto readings to statements made about them, it must be the case that possible worlds are at minimum conceptual spaces in which one can run thought experiments to determine the necessity of a truth-value of a sentence. The classic examples used to illustrate this are “Aristotle is Aristotle” and “Aristotle is the teacher of Alexander”. Under a de re reading, it is simple to see that the first statement must always be true, because if there is an “Aristotle” about whom this statement can be made, then that Aristotle must be self-identical. However, there is no quality about such an Aristotle that necessitates that he be “the teacher of Alexander”. Rather, this is something that happened to be the case only as a matter of course and not as a matter
of the things involved those circumstances.

Note the inherent import here of a robust idea of identity. When employing possible worlds as a measure of modal properties, especially under a de re reading, identity is assumed as a most basic property. Generally, identity can be understood with the following two premises: (1) All things are self-identical and (2) no two things are identical to each other in all ways. Identity is a philosophical issue unto itself, however due to the limited scope of this paper it must suffice to say that identity is the metaphysical property of self-sameness. As such, an issue like metaphysical vagueness would appear to be an important area to explore when discussing de re modality, if only because in any dialogue that takes as its subject the modal properties of things must start first with an understanding of the thing about which modal properties are to be discussed. If one is to understand how a thing could have been different, as well as how it could not have been different, then one must first encounter that thingʼs identity. In this paper, I will contrast David Lewisʼ treatment of de re modality (Lewisian modal realism) against that of another philosopher, Saul Kripke. I argue that modal realism necessarily admits of metaphysical vagueness, and until that theory is modified to accept this fact, modal realism is not a feasible theory of modality.

II. De Re and Vagueness

Saul Kripke explores de re interpretations in his work Naming and Necessity. In this lecture series, Kripke abandons the skepticism of his predecessors such as Quine about de re readings. He argues that rigid designators, which are terms that pick out the same thing across all possible worlds (where that thing exists), are the appropriate means of evaluating claims de re. Examples of rigid designators are names, numbers, and natural kind terms such as “water” or “gold”. Under this treatment, possible worlds need be nothing more than hypothetical scenarios run in oneʼs mind. For Kripke, to exist is to be the extension of a term.

The Kripkean treatment of de re modality is what is called “ersatz” modality (ersatz meaning substitution) and is semantic in nature. This is to say that Kripkean possible worlds are constructs of meaning located in the mind, and are intended to exemplify counterfactual possibilities about actually extant things. Kripke does not assert that using possible worlds to evaluate modal claims has any ontological implications. As such, a Kripkean treatment de re allows for the existence of “transworld identity” which means that the singular identity of a thing being discussed can be distributed over all possible worlds. Another way to put this is to say that for Kripke, the “Aristotle” in any of the worlds in which Aristotle was not the teacher of Alexander is self-identical to the Aristotle in this world.

David Lewis accepted the premise of possible worlds re-introduced to analytic philosophy by Kripke. The function of possible worlds for Lewis is almost exactly the same as for Kripke; they measure the necessity of a claim. However, according to Lewis, possible worlds are real physical places—as real as our own world—in which real things exist. This is Lewisian modal realism. As Lewis discusses at great length in On The Plurality of Worlds, there are innumerable such real worlds, and the inhabitants of these worlds are the subjects of the counterfactual conditionals that possible world scenarios evaluate. Among other things, Lewis asserts that counterfactuals are evaluated by means of a relation of counterparts in possible worlds to things in the actual world. This means that when we say something could have been different in any way from the way it actually is (for example, to say that I might have been a concert violinist instead of a philosopher) is to say that there is some possible world in which the counterpart of that thing actually is that way (my counterpart is a concert violinist in some possible world).

In §4 of his book, Lewis argues that possible worlds are spatiotemporally isolated from each other. He also argues that spatiotemporal location is a necessary property of identity, and that the criteria of identity can only be sufficiently met by sharing exactly all the same qualities, including spatiotemporal location. From these two premises arise the need for the counterpart relation to take the place of transworld identity, because identity can only be granted to objects that are at least spatiotemporally identical, and also because in Lewisʼ theory individuals in different possible worlds are separated and thus anything in one world is spatiotemporally isolated from anything in another. What will eventually run Lewis aground here remains unproblematic for Kripke because Kripkeʼs specific theory of possible worlds has no ontological implications and all he needs to grant identity is that a termʼs extension be the same across all possible worlds. However, for Lewis it is clear that it is not possible to grant identities across possible worlds because their referents differ in spatiotemporal location, so he must create some new theory to take its place.

The counterpart relation is the theory that Lewis proposes for this purpose. It is the basis for being able to assess counterfactuals in Lewisʼ account. The counterpart relation is one of “relevant similarity”, or comparative similarity of desired properties between token-specific candidates for counterparts across possible worlds. That which makes an individual in another world a counterpart of an individual in the actual world is an overall comparison of similarity among all possible candidates in any given possible world. Counterparts are only counterparts to each other in virtue of a given “qua relation.” For example, if a counterfactual involving having a certain number of hairs on oneʼs head is being discussed, the proper way to assign counterparthood would be to say that person X in World 1 (W1) is a counterpart of person Y in W2 qua Xʼs and Yʼs number of head-hairs. Thus, one person can be a viable candidate for the counterpart of another person if and only if those two people, as Lewis states, “closely resemble [each other] in important aspects.”

There is no room in Kripkeʼs ersatz treatment of possible worlds for vagueness to arise as an issue. In virtue of the fact that there are no ontological assertions made by ersatz possible worlds, there can be no ontological vagueness. Furthermore, because rigid designators grant identity across possible worlds and the fact that to have an extension, as far as Kripke is concerned, is to exist, there can only be semantic vagueness in the evaluations of modal claims.

This is not the case for Lewisʼ theory of modal realism, though. Modal realism is a large and complex theory that leaves much room in which the problems of vagueness might take hold. Notably, however, Lewis famously decries the whole project of metaphysical vagueness:

The only intelligible account of vagueness locates it in our thought and language. The reason it’s vague where the outback begins is not that there’s this thing, the outback, with imprecise borders; rather there are many things, with different borders, and nobody has been fool enough to try to enforce a choice of one of them as the official referent of the word `outback.’ Vagueness is semantic indecision. (Lewis 1986, 212)

Many such quotes fill the pages of On The Plurality of Worlds. The idea is always the same: the world is not vague, but rather it is our representations of the world, our words, that are. That David Lewis, the famous metaphysician, is so vehemently opposed to metaphysical vagueness is a bit shocking at first. Why should someone so deeply involved in metaphysics, especially someone whose project is specifically a refutation of a larger semantic theory, seek the solution to the problem of vagueness in a semantictheory? If nothing else, this is strikingly counterintuitive.

Much like others who found vagueness to be a problem of language and not of the world, Lewis seeks to eliminate vagueness by precisifying problematic language:

If a sentence is true over an entire range, true no matter how we draw the line, surely we are entitled to treat it as simply true. But also we treat a sentence more or less as simply true, if it is true over a large enough part of the range of delineations of its vagueness. (For short: if it is true enough). (Lewis 1983, 244)

Here Lewisʼ position on how to deal with problems of vagueness is clear. Because vagueness is “semantic indecision,” the proper manner by which it should be dealt with is to look at the way sentences admit of vagueness and re-evaluate how they are interpreted. Vague sentences are “true enough” to be considered true when they are true over some sufficient range (the “large enough part of the range”) of precisifications. Lewis avoids dealing with the question of what counts as “true enough” by calling this itself a vague matter. This is for Lewis, however, not an important enough issue to pursue, as is evidenced in the next paragraph of the text:

When is a sentence “true enough”? Which are the large parts of the delineations of its vagueness? This itself is a vague matter. More important for our purposes, it is something that depends on context. What is true enough on one occasion is not true enough on another. The standards of precisions in force are different from one conversation to another. (Lewis 1983, 244-245)

One should assume, at risk of otherwise creating a straw man argument, that Lewis expects his own semantic prescription for handling vagueness should be sufficient to explain away the vagueness he himself admits is inherent in how he tells us to handle such problems. However, in at least one case, Lewisʼ account is not a sufficient method of explaining away vagueness as semantic indecision.

Consider the following scenario: there is a series of possible worlds in which at one end there is one and only one possible counterpart of Lewis, and he is a spitting image of Lewis in every single possible relevant manner. At the other end of the series, there is a world populated entirely by just one single rooster. This set-up is consistent with how Lewis assumes possible worlds work. Now, assign to this series, in the search for counterparts, the highly precisified set of criteria for counterparthood that is exactly and only the breadth of wingspan and the volume of caw. Lewis would acknowledge that his spitting image meets all the relevant criteria to be his counterpart. He would agree as well that he is not a counterpart of the rooster at the far end of this sequence, being that he meets no relevant criteria for being its counterpart and thus is not, in any way, a viable candidate of counterparthood.

If one observes the series of worlds that starts in the world of the lonely rooster and ends in the world in which there is an exact duplicate of Lewis illustrates a possible worlds sequence of a Lewis/rooster chimera that runs in reverse. Actual-world Lewis would admit that there is one world in this series in which the counterpart relation ceases to be sufficient enough under the relevant criteria for the thing in that world to count as a counterpart of the rooster. By extension, in virtue of the nature of the relevant criteria of this sequence, it is logically true (assuming that counterparthood is cardinal) that there is also some point in this sequence at which the Lewis/rooster chimera ceases to meet any relevant criteria for Lewis-counterparthood.

The problem that Lewis is forced to acknowledge, by his own justification of the counterpart relation, is that there remain penumbral cases of counterparthood in this series. Specifically, there are at least some worlds in which it is indeterminate whether or not the most Lewis-like thing in that world can be rightly called a counterpart of Lewis qua the relevant criteria, but are still, definitely, the counterparts of other non-Lewis counterparts in the series qua those same criteria. Every case in this series in which the chimera is more like a non- counterpart of Lewis, but is still a Lewis/rooster chimera, yields an indeterminate counterpart relation for Lewis. Each further attempt to create more precise semantic boundaries for vague predicates such as “is a counterpart of Lewis” serves only to shift the problem up by one degree of order; there is no way in Lewisʼ treatment of vagueness for there to be enough precisification to eliminate vagueness as a problem of semantics alone.

III. Saving Modal Realism

The basic premises Lewis works from are as follows:

1. The world is made of material things
2. Modal realism is true
3. All possible worlds are spatiotemporally and causally isolated
4. Spatiotemporal location is a necessary quality of identity
5. Counterpart theory is the means of measuring counterfactuals across spatiotemporally isolated worlds
6. Vagueness is semantic in nature

My thought-experiment shows that modal realism is philosophically unsound if Lewis accepts a theory that uses counterpart theory and eschews metaphysical vagueness, because his prescribed semantic treatment of vagueness results in an infinite regression. However, the counterpart relation is essential to Lewisʼ modal realism, and thus cannot be given up without losing the larger theory. It is the only way he can account for being able to assess counterfactuals. In the above example, I have shown that even under Lewisʼ strict semantic treatment of vagueness, there no precise cut off point at which a thing in the example series is still be enough like Lewis that, were there no other Lewis-like things in its world, it could be determined whether or not that thing would still be Lewisʼ counterpart.

Meeting all of Lewisʼ criteria for hyper-precisification of the relevant criteria fails to eliminate vagueness of the counterpart relation in the above example. I submit that this is the case because the notion of counterparthood and the counterpart relation are based in comparative overall similarity. The problem with such evaluations is that the terms of these evaluations are themselves vague predicates. Thus, we enter an infinitely reiterating argument that fails to address the issue at hand (that being the location of vagueness as being in language or the world). It is a necessary consequence of precisely this is that Lewisʼ system does not function to evaluate modal properties with any hope of being other than accidentally correct. As such, Lewisʼ theory of modal realism with vagueness as a semantic problem is less than a sufficient account of de re modality.

However, I propose that if Lewis were to add to Premise 6 that vagueness can be semantic and metaphysical, he would no longer face an issue of infinite regression. Lewis argues against metaphysical vagueness because he conceives of identity as a most basic property, which he effectively argues to be unique self-sameness, and his argument against vague objects is based on the fact that he assumes there is a finite answer to the question “how many objects are in the world?” Lewis is correct to state that if vagueness is metaphysical, then it would be a fact of the world that there is no finite number of objects in the world. However, why should it be assumed that there is a finite number of objects in the world? I can think of no compelling reason to assume this to be the case, and Lewis certainly fails to give a sufficient account supporting his personal predilection for there being a finite number of things in the world. At every opportunity, he fails to address the issue as he turns questions of metaphysical vagueness into questions of semantic vagueness.

For Lewis to accept vague objects, he is not required to give up any other part of modal realism. Revising Premise 6 as I have prescribed has no impact on the previous five premises. However, the real issue at hand here is that extending Premise 6 to acknowledge the existence of vague objects might be the only way for Lewisʼ modal realism to survive. Rather than supporting modal realism, his position on vagueness as a problem only of semantics actually undermines his project of modal realism. There is no sufficient argument provided as of yet that can semantically explain away problems of vagueness. The problem of infinite regression that Lewisʼ solution entails makes it unjustified and therefore philosophically unsatisfactory. The existence of vague objects is not only simply the more logical solution, but may possibly be the only way he can salvage modal realism from its problem of infinite regression.

Works Cited

1. Kripke, Saul. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1972, 1980
2. Lewis, David. On The Plurality of Worlds. Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing. 1986.
3. Lewis, David. “Counterparts of Persons and Their Bodies.” The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 68 (1971). 203-221.

Jaime Harrell (‘10) is a Philosophy major at University of Maryland College Park.

Art courtesy of gromyko.

ABSTRACT: The evolution of artistic expression is often understood to be co-productive with a certain apprehended teleology of culture: “progress”, a notion itself instantiated by false axiomatic assumptions concerning biological evolution. These meditations will seek to critically interrogate teleological assumptions by de-structively mapping the future evolution of artistic expression through a radically empirical attention to the flows of cultural raw materials, media-structures, mediums, memes and messages. By attending to processes associated with growing media digitzation, inter-connectedness and fragmenting attention span, these meditations will seek to illuminate a cultural milieu which is comprised of unprecedented structural homogeneity yet capable of equally unprecedented artistic diversity.

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I. A Biology of Art

The evolution of artistic expression is much like the evolution of biological species. In both cases, the raw material is a product of mutant variation—in biology that variation appears random, in the case of art it is attributed to creativity and, increasingly, strategic deviation from established convention. Across the field of this variation, certain selection pressures determine whether or not certain mutations survive. In biology, those mutants with advantages over previous versions of the organism are apt to proliferate, and that mutation becomes more prevalent in the variation. In artistic expression, different mutations enjoy widespread acclaim and are rewarded by the market, which in turn creates incentives for other artists to produce in a similar vein, or in other words, to embody their own artwork with this new mutation. I will here reflect on the quixotic nature of these mutations in an attempt to circumvent the rigid trajectory so often imposed by historians and social theorists, which assemble the historically constructed chronological assemblages into an artificial linear teleology. Whether this then becomes understood as progress away from barbarism or corruption of a prior Golden Age cannot redeem its arbitrariness. The attribution of some defining purpose of history or Spirit of an Age to ritual, formulaic and aesthetic representation has long characterized critical response to art of all different stripes, and must be resisted. These reflections will hopefully serve as a futurist’s de-structive genealogy[1], which seeks to expose the arbitrary construction of such grand narratives and the bricolage nature of historical condensations of aesthetic culture, as well as suggesting how the cultural raw materials of media structure, medium, meme and message might more forcefully manifest and as these expressive trajectories proceed apace.

The change of creatures, languages and memes over time is often referred to through the language of evolution. However, such language carries unfortunate teleological baggage which requires critical interrogation. One crucial misunderstanding of evolutionary theory can be epitomized in the axiomatic phrase: ‘survival of the fittest.’ This phrase is extremely un-useful, because people who use it almost always define ‘fittest’ as ‘those that are apt to survive’ and empiricists define ‘those that are apt to survive’ based on ‘those that have survived in the past’. Therefore the expression is converted into the tautology: ‘those that survived survived.’ In practice, whatever is meant by ‘fittest’ need not have a central role in determining survival. A meteor descending surprisingly out of a cloudless blue sky can destroy the world’s smartest and strongest man as surely as it can destroy a paraplegic infant. The millions dead of earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes on the one hand and colonialist violence, structural starvation, modern genocides, and terrorist attacks on the other, were unlucky, not unfit. The high propensity of events to happen unexpectedly or for a reason entirely un-related to so-called ‘fitness’ increases the corresponding likelihood that even if there were some ideal organism or some ideal artwork, neither organic nor artistic evolutionary course would veer in that direction.

This misunderstanding, in biology referred to as determinism (or the idea that biology can determine an organism’s superiority independent of an assessment of that organism’s environment) is behind some of the most misguided political actions of the twentieth century. In reality, an entity is only fit relative to its environment. Since an entity’s environment is always operating under changing conditions and is always being partially re-composed through the mutation of other entities, the definition of “fitness” must also be in constant flux. In biological evolution, rising temperature may make thick fur a draw-back when it had once been an advantage, and if those animals have trouble surviving than maybe other animal’s sharp teeth and carnivorous digestive systems will be forced to subsist on vegetable matter, as in the case of the panda which must consume huge quantities of bamboo for it’s meat-designed digestive system to extract sufficient nutrients. In artistic evolution, if a large-scale war is in the making, such political foreshadowing may make impressionistic paintings of bucolic rural pleasantries seem naïve or overly sentimental, disconnected from the current mood or even propagandistic. This was the case among the artists of the ill-fated Weinmar Republic as the approach of the second world war neared. If the government intervenes in the artistic sphere, as in the case of socialist countries, then that will function as powerful selection pressure determining what mutations  actually succeed (although censorship itself is a selection pressure on the population of subversives that ensures that only the most insidiously subversive works become popular). These are examples of the ways in which selection pressures, both market and non-market, determine what forms of artistic expression become prevalent, both drawing on and informing the culture that intertwines them, and give inspiration to new artists to carry on and strategically depart from their work.

A momentary linguistic note: I am using the general term of ‘artistic expression’ to be inclusive of anything that the reader properly deems to be art. While small libraries could be filled with the books that have been written over the question ‘what is art?’ I submit that while it is relatively difficult (and somewhat fruitless) to arrive at a precise (or concise) definition of art, we can amusingly reverse Justice Stewart’s quip concerning the definition of pornography by saying that at least you can know it when you see it. In some ways the process of questioning the boundaries of its own social definition is an intrinsic element of the artistic process, manifest in objects, persons, performances, happenings and so on. Definitions here are not answers to questions that anyone should be asking. Or, as one of my college professors put it: “Art inspires. What’s inspiration? Exactly.”

II. Contemporary Selection Pressures

If we are interested in the future of artistic expression, we must first begin by asking what selection pressures exist, and whether they are primarily directed at artist, art-object, art-buyer or general art consumer. My observations here are not meant to be exhaustive, but primarily to address one particular trend which I feel is unique to our time-period and will have more to do with influencing the future of artistic expression than any other. That trend is the increasing demands placed upon the human attention span. We live during a historical epoch where everyone is expected to be a multi-tasker. Many of the people I know regularly do 4-5 things at once, whether they are working or relaxing. Those activities include: listening to music, checking email, writing email, reading news, checking a social networking service such as Facebook, sending messages through that social networking service, reading a blog or blog-aggregator such as Digg, searching for random cultural factoids and background on Wikipedia, playing some type of internet-based computer game, looking through collections of bizarre or cute images, text-messaging, and watching television, to name a few of the ones that jump most quickly to mind. For those who prefer to focus on labor as the locus of social behavior, it is easy to see how this trend is co-productive with a efficiency-oriented attempt to socialize white collar workers for constant multi-tasking by managers who correctly believed that in the short-term this strategy would increase worker productivity.[2] This multi-tasking socialization effort has proved almost disastrously successful.

This selection pressure is unique for a number of reasons. It exists in a category of persistent and unplanned mass social trends that has few historical precedents. Unlike a war or an economic crash which historically seem to come and go and operate somewhat cyclically, the trend of increasing use of computers throughout the economy shows no signs of calling it quits. And as that computing use becomes more integrated into economic, and subsequently, social life, it is rapidly becoming more sophisticated. Moore’s Law, named for Intel cofounder Gordon Moore, is an observation that the number of transistor on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every eighteen months, making the increases in emerging hi-tech capacity literally exponential.[3] Can you imagine someone a decade ago contemplating the possibility of youtube? Blogs that generate enough revenue that anyone can start one for free? Now youtube videos have become something of a sub-genre unto themselves and blogs of publications like Time magazine and Foreign Policy are outpacing the readership of their print editions. To many, this phenomenal acceleration of high technology seems more enduring even than the governments that may preside over them. One need only to look at the frequent failures and inconsistencies of Chinese internet censorship to see how the conceptual technology and memes that allow information to be organized are outpacing their antiquated opponents by leaps and bounds.

Another element to consider is the target. Of these more enduring forms of pressure, such as censorship or market demand, previous pressures have targeted the production rather than consumption of artistic expression. Censorship targets the writer more than the reader, the artist who can’t sell her paintings suffers more than the patron who can’t buy them, at least materially. The hi-tech pressure on the human attention span affects everyone, but as a selection pressure on artistic expression, the consumer is the focus. Focusing on the consumer has historically not been easy, because of the large numbers of consumers and their de-centralized location relative to artists who have gallery representation and must connect with the art market in order to become profitable. I should note that when I say consumers, I am referring to a new sort of consumer that high technology has made possible, a consumer that consumes without expense, that allows artists to produce money through popularity alone that generates revenue through advertising. This consumer of artistic expression need only view an image or a film in order to have participated in the act of consumption, as opposed to the traditional mechanism of consumer participation; spending money. In this, these new consumers can be juxtaposed against traditional art buyers who are also easier for previous selection pressures to reach, through attendance of gallery openings and art auctions and consumption of a specific sub-genre designed for art buyers. New consumers can be anyone, interested in the professionalized “art world” or not. They vote with their feet (or hands, on their keyboard) instead of their purses and increasingly in is those votes that have come to signify artistic success, along with the traditional markers of critical acclaim and premium market price.

III. Future Mutations

Just as the selection pressure of increasing demands placed on the attention span target the consumer, the consumer transfers that pressure onto the art object. If most consumption of artistic expression in the future occurs at the same time as a number of other activities, then it is reasonable to assume that artistic expression will rise to meet that need. If you are listening to music while you watch TV with the sound off (or on low volume) and write emails to people, you will want to listen to music that is more like a soundtrack rather than a discrete art-object unto itself. You will want that television program, let’s say the news, to communicate its message wordlessly. You will want your form of communication with others to be short and direct. Already, we can observe patterns in music, network news and communication which complement the needs of a consumer base which spends its time doing many things at once.

It is easy to decry the consumer-culture influences as leading only to the pointless and ugly simplifying of artistic expression into uninspiring and repetitive drivel. There are certainly many examples to point to of musicians that sound almost exactly the same as other musicians, television shows with characters that look and act like characters on other television shows, clothing that is designed to blend in with the clothing that others are wearing and so on. It is hard to doubt that the fragmenting of attention span is having a homogenizing influence on artistic expression.

Take the music industry as a good example. Radio disc jockeys have in large part been replaced as music selectors with the Scott SS32 radio automation suite[4], a program developed by Google which shuffles a playlist of 4-500 tracks and tells the DJ when to talk and when to break for ads. These playlists are assembled by market research companies which study the reactions of demographically homogenous groups to hundreds of 7-second song clips. Each member of the market group votes up or down whether or not to add the song to the playlist.[5] Because of this vetting process, music producers are increasingly using digital technology to polish songs to elide anything that sounds like an error, and add elements that make them sound like recognizable hits. This process is becoming an industry standard if it isn’t already.[6] We could blame greedy music producers or soul-less corporatism for this tendency, but the reality is that they are responding to the same selections pressures of a culture that increasingly does many things at once and therefore has less attention to understand a more complicated or non-conforming art object when it comes in over the radio. Next time you listen to the radio (which will probably be while you are driving) think about how long it takes you to decide whether or not to stay with a station that’s playing a certain song, and then think about whether or not you are making that decision primarily based on how innovative or how familiar that song seems to you. The fact of the matter is that the fragmenting of attention has created a market in which it is profitable to conform.

The music industry is an extreme example, however, and we can look at many forms of new media which form new parameters that encourage both homogenization and deviance. youtube is one of the best example of this formula: the medium homogenizes all content to the format of a short, several minutes-long streaming video, but the content is remarkably varied. In the evolution of artistic expression, just like biology, every homogenization along selective traits both decreases the likelihood of variance outside of those traits while increasing the propensity for specialization within them. Once all birds have evolved beaks, different groups of birds will evolve beaks more adept at eating certain foods, such as nuts, creating evolutionary niches. The same principle applies here. Once the pressure of fragmenting attention has concentrated mass-consumed artistic expression in selective mediums, innovation in content and specialization can occur within those mediums and at their periphery.

To continue with the youtube example, at the periphery of the genre of free, short, web-based videos, one might look at the evolution of internet pornography into parallel fragmented search engines such as eskimotube, which in turn organizes sub-genre videos based on viewer predilection into separate, linked search engines and then streams those videos in the same way that youtube does. I should note that I use the word “periphery” only to describe social acceptability and the question of whether or not such productions are legitimately ‘artistic’. If, however, we looked at actual web traffic one would find that internet pornography swamps most other forms of hi-tech consumption of images and video by astounding magnitudes. As this genre and its manifold accompaniments have become more readily accessible through the exact same medium as youtube, they have created separate user-communities viewing different content based on fetishistic and racialized viewing preferences which, in turn, continues the process of internal specialization into different sub-genres that are organized and presented in different electronic fora.

The example of internet pornography is an important case study because it is an instance where numerical superiority of consumer preferences has yet to make a real impact on the social culture of consumption in terms of acceptability. According to the Internet Filter Review’s statistical information for 2006, 70 per cent of all internet pornography access occurs between the 9-5 workday, 20 per cent of men admit to accessing pornography at work, 1 in 3 companies has had to terminate employees for inappropriate web activity and 10 percent of men surveyed admit that they have an addiction to internet pornography. These statistics indicate that internet pornography has not merely a fact but a way of life for literally millions of American workers. While this may be surprising, it shouldn’t be, given that the internet pornography industry currently outpaces the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink combined.[7] This is a prime example of the way in which an aesthetic environment, widely considered deviant, becomes integrated into an overlapping series of such environments within the workplace as people seek everyday ways to satisfy their need to see sexual images. While such a need may be sexually motivated, like it or not, it may also be many workers dominant interaction with any sort of creative production outside of advertising. As this trend and others like it continue to grow and permeate the cultural milieu, they will in turn form a profound selection pressure which will provide the criteria for success or failure of future aesthetic mutations.

Here we can talk about art as not an art-object but as a series of overlapping components: content, medium, and media-structure. For a youtube video of a puppy chasing its tail, the tail-chasing would be the content, the short streaming video would be the medium and the network of youtube.com would be the media structure. While Marshall McLuhan’s quip that the medium is the message may at one point have been true, increasingly it is the media-structure that is dominating the medium which in turn reflects upon the content. Art objects are homogenized, hollowed out, shortened, stripped; the messages are apparent, explicit, easy-to-grasp; the presentation is designed to get attention, to shock and to titillate. These goals will form the principles that the market will use to designate the evolutionary winners in the new highly fragmented field of artistic expression, and it is those winners that will inspire artistic progeny.

For those who will say that the field of so-called “high art” (painting and sculpture) are immune from such influences, I would point to the meteoric ascendancy in the art world of the neo-Warholian Takashi Murakami whose work both thrives under and embodies the aforementioned selection pressures. His art alternates between dividing and combining the abstractly innocent and explicitly sexual, featuring sugary, bright colors and a surplus of cartoon eyes. There are now many artists like him, and increasingly this “high art” is virtually indistinguishable from the “graphic designs” which now appear on custom t-shirts or album covers. Both exemplify the type of eye-catching, provocative artistic expression which was once only a peripheral mutation and now is becoming dominant. This is the type of artistic expression that can catch a person’s attention when that attention is divided between many things. This is the visual equivalent of the type of song that you don’t change the station on because you want to see where it goes, what it does, even though it is not familiar. The challenge of new art will be increasingly to innovate along the lines that they can get enough attention from enough distracted consumers that they will be able to tell a story, represent an idea, or simply be beautiful. In the merging of communications technology through the connected artistic-economic spheres, it is too often this last criteria, subjective to begin with, that gets completely left out. Hopefully, it will be possible for a talented artist to develop new strategies in this difficult environment, to clear a space in which to reclaim it.

IV. Mutations Adapt

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise? Probably. If an artist creates an art-object and no other person experiences it, is it art? Perhaps. If yes, the drug addict is the highest and most prolific form of artist. If no, then it implies that art is not located in the artist or the art object, but rather occurs in the space of the encounter between the consumer, whether viewer, listener, feeler or so on, and the art object. Just as all art-objects appear to become more simplified as a result of the proliferation of high technology and the increasing demands placed on the human attention span, the artistic experience itself is becoming more varied and complex. Consider a music producer who is putting together a song with a rock band. Many of the component parts will be quite simple, a simple base line, a steady rhythm, a guitar player, a singer. Recorded separately each track of each instrument may seem mundane and even boring. If there is improvisation, it will likely be done only by one instrument at a time. Yet when the finished song is assembled, it sounds professional and innovative even though that innovation is distributed to only one instrument at a time. The artistic experience is increasingly being accomplished more by the consumer than the work of art, and it being assembled by the consumer at the site of consumption from various component parts, in the same way that a single song is assembled out of different tracks of instruments. The person who listens to music while watching television has assembled, for the moment of experience, a different artistic encounter than either medium would be absent the other. In this way, the rich bricolage artistic experience is accomplished through strategies that we are only just beginning to realize. For now, this assemblage and process of assemblage is not considered art. I would wager that before long, it will be.

The future of artistic expression is with the consumer, not the artist. After decades of killing the author and burying the artist, they really may be dead. New artists will create raw materials for the consumers to assemble artistic experiences with. Perhaps centers will open that will combine mixed media for individual or group performances. We are already beginning to see something like that through artistic collaboration which makes use of high technology, such as those of the poet Anne Carson with choreographer Robert Curry. Commercially, companies will be able to profit by contracting with inter-media artists to produce aesthetic environments that combine complementary assortments of music, film, news media, television, and reading material along with appropriate lighting, temperature and perhaps even scents.

For now, the consumer, often unknowingly fashions these aesthetic environs from surrounding mediums willy-nilly. This will become more planned as more people understand how acclimated consumers have become to a mixed-media environment. It has become increasingly common for bands to pair their performances with film clips in addition to lighting shows, and to experiment even further with projection technology, integrating action in the film with a chorus or climax of their music, such as in the case of RJD2 or Black Moth Super Rainbow. That is one of the beginnings of the new media integration that will occur as people increasingly don’t have the patience to experience any art-object in quantity, but find the jarring over-lap of different incongruous elements to be aesthetically unpleasant. New art will not have a center but will exist as experiences occurring at the intersection of many different mediums and content, where the content will sometimes jump from medium to medium. Some of it will be planned and organized, much of it will simply happen. New forms of planning will generate new genres as well as new mediums for new forms of composure, which will in turn demand new strategies for integration into these new aesthetic environs. Cultural nay-sayers and pushers of cheap nostalgia and sentimentality may continue whining about the virtualization of aesthetic experience, wishing for the “reality” of the ‘60s to return. Such critics do a disservice to themselves by making their criticism irrelevant, much like Adorno’s reactionary complaints about jazz. This future of artistic expression offers possibilities of variance and mutation greater than ever before in the history of humanity. As consumers, it is ours to synthesize.

Endnotes

[1] Marzec, Robert P. An Anatomy of Empire symploke – Volume 9, Numbers 1-2, 2001, pp. 165-168

[2] Butcher, David R. “National Productivity, Multitasking Efficiency, Individual Engagement” Industrial News Room, July 5, 2006

[3] Wolf, Gary “Futurist Ray Kurzweil Pulls Out All the Stops (and Pills) to Live to Witness the Singularity” Wired Magazine, 3/24/08

[4] see “Radio Automation” information at http://www.google.com/radioautomation/products.html

[5] The Word “Why records DO all sound the same” February 26,2008

[6] Ibid.

[7] Jerry Ropelato, “Internet Pornography Statistics” Internet Filter Review, 2006 [http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html]

Edmund Zagorin (‘11) is a Philosophy and International Affairs major at University of Michigan Ann Arbor.

Art courtesy of larkie

ABSTRACT: Many commentators are extremely critical of Heidegger’s ambiguous conflation of Being-with and das Man in Being and Time. The text of Division One, Chapter Four shifts between an ethically neutral and ontologically necessary account of Dasein’s Being-with-others and an ethically saturated and contingent account of the same phenomenon, leaving the reader confused as to whether Heidegger is accepting sociality as a necessary and inexorable condition of human existence or a pervasive yet ultimately contingent impediment to authentic existence. In this paper I identify the point of confusion in Heidegger’s text and survey the dominant exegetical treatment of the text, which usually only takes one of Heidegger’s two contradictory claims as true. I then posit an alternative hybrid reading of the text in which the two dominant readings are integrated. I argue that, though Heidegger’s text is confused, the underlying idea is consistent, and what manifests as a logical contradiction in the text masks what is evidently Heidegger’s actual claim that the human condition is inherently contradictory. Dasein is then necessarily fallen, yet necessarily strives for authenticity.

—

“And so I believe in improvisation and I fight for improvisation.

But always with the belief that it’s impossible.”

-Jacques Derrida.¹

Bracketing any differences between Derrida and Heidegger, and focusing on their similarities, Derrida’s claim about improvisation aphoristically captures the internal tension in Heidegger’s das Man quite nicely. In its open and clear contradiction it plainly demonstrates the internal tension stemming from the struggle between social existence and improvisation, and yet Derrida’s willingness to express this internal tension seriously suggests that the concept at hand is not entirely unstable, though in considerable tension. For Heidegger, this tension stems from the seemingly unintentional equivocation within the text of an existential/ontological das Man that structures intelligibility and communication, and an existentiell/ethical das Man that acts as a barrier to becoming an authentic Dasein. The reader is left unsure as to whether to interpret das Man as a necessary, positive condition of Dasein, or as a contingent and undesirable hindrance to authentic existence. Are we to condemn or embrace das Man?

I do not deny that the writing of chapter IV of Being and Time on Being-with and das Man is unmistakably confused, and even contradictory as it stands; nevertheless I do believe that a consistent theory of das Man can be extracted from the text which incorporates both the existential/ontological reading of das Man and the existentiell/ethical reading. The resulting picture of Dasein illustrates a kind secular fallenness² in the human condition, a necessary characteristic of Dasein against which it must fight aggressively in order to exist authentically, though this is a task it can never fully complete. For Heidegger, the human condition is fundamentally sick, though salvation paradoxically presents itself as a possibility.

Heidegger writes Chapter IV in order to flesh out more fully the character of Dasein, his stand-in term for human existence. The provisional characteristics that Dasein (1) is able to question its own Being and (2) that it exhibits ‘in each case mineness’ were only provisional indicators of a general familiarity we had with Dasein, and now that Being-in-the-world has been phenomenologically described in greater detail, a fuller account of the “who?” of Dasein can emerge.

But how are we to begin to ask the question of the ‘who?’ of everyday Dasein? What preestablished and uncontroversial knowledge can we import? Heidegger initially entertains a Cartesian approach, positing the givenness of the ego in self-reflection. Surely this is indubitable? But the problem Heidegger finds with this approach is that in its everydayness, Dasein-qua-ego is far from indubitable; in fact, it is almost absent to awareness: “In clarifying Being-in-the-world we have shown that a bare subject without a world never ‘is’ proximally, nor is it ever given. And so in the end an isolated “I” without Others is just as far from being proximally given.” (BT 152/116)

Having discarded any kind of isolated Cartesian ego as a starting point for discovering the ‘who of everyday Dasein,’ Heidegger has taken one step backward; another potential starting point has been discarded. Where to begin? Heidegger suggests that the foregoing phenomenological account of the equipmental totality may provide us a clue: “In our ‘description’ of that environment which is closest to us—the work-world of the craftsman for example—the outcome was that along with the equipment to be found when one is at work, those ‘Others’ for whom the ‘work’ is destined are encountered too.” (BT 153/117) If this equipmental totality is so basic that it establishes the very framework of significance for Dasein³, then it seems that this ready-to-hand network is a fundamental, inextricable structure of the Being of Dasein. To bracket out the ready-to-hand from an account of Dasein would be to bracket the very source of significance and intelligibility. The remaining ‘Dasein’ would be beyond recognition. So Dasein is inextricably bound with its existential network of ready-to-hand equipment, as it coordinates the very topology of intelligibility.

But Heidegger recognizes that even prior to this network of ready-to-hand equipment, there is a concept of Others: “The Others who are thus ‘encountered’ in a ready-to-hand environmental context of equipment, are not somehow added on in thought to some thing which is proximally just present-at-hand; such ‘Things’ are encountered from out of the world in which they are ready-to-hand for Others [emphasis added].” (BT 154/118). For every piece of equipment, there is an antecedent undifferentiated Other, as its creator, as its user, as its designer, etc.. The ready-to-hand cannot be understood independent of Others. It follows then, that if the network of ready-to-hand entities, the existentiale source of significance and intelligibility, is equiprimordial with Being-with, then Being-with is an inextricable existentiale structure of the Being of Dasein. Dasein is necessarily a public being; it is always already with Others. Phenomenally, ‘Others’ manifest a presence more loudly than any isolated ‘ego’ of Dasein itself. The ‘Others’ are prior to Dasein’s reflective self in everyday comportment.

But since we form a part of the ready-to-hand totality, and since the roles Daseins play in this network are interchangeable, ‘Others’ are not differentiated from each other nor ourselves: “By ‘Others’ we do not mean everyone else but me—those over and against whom the “I” stands out. They are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself—those among whom one is too.” (BT 154/118) In fact, rather than some indubitable ego, the who of everyday Dasein is “encountered proximally and for the most part in terms of the with-world with which we are environmentally concerned. When Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern—that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards Others—it is not itself.” (BT 163/125). Later on Heidegger reveals that “the Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self…In terms of the “they” and as the “they”, I am ‘given’ proximally to ‘myself.’” (BT 167/129) Heidegger is claiming that in everyday coping we understand ourselves from the point of view of society, as an undifferentiated constituent, rather than a unique ‘I’. We act, view ourselves, and judge our actions based on the perspective of the ‘they’, rather than a selfsame ‘me’.

Heidegger describes three interesting phenomena that illustrate Dasein’s discovery of itself in its everydayness as das Man: distantiality, averageness, and levelling-down. Together they are called ‘publicness.’ ‘Distiantiality’ is a constant, impulsive, and unconscious reference to the norms of das Man that Dasein uses to gauge the propriety of its actions: “In one’s concern with what one has taken hold of, whether with, for, or against, the Others, there is constant care as to the way one differs from them…The care about this distance between them is disturbing to Being-with-one-another, though this disturbance is one that is hidden from it.” (BT 164/126) ‘Averageness’ results from distantiality, and is its ultimate goal: “The “they” has its own ways in which to be. That tendency of Being-with which we have called “distantiality” is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another concerns itself as such with averageness, which is an existential characteristic of the “they”.” (BT 164/127) These first two are presented as value-neutral existentiale by Heidegger. For Heidegger they are neither to be celebrated nor condemned.

Levelling-down is the outlier in this laundry list of existentiale of das Man. Whereas distantiality and avergeness were described in value-neutral language, Heidegger’s tone promptly switches to poetic sorrow and even disgust in describing leveling-down:

In this averageness with which it prescribes what can and may be ventured, [das Man] keeps watch over everything exceptional and thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been well known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes just something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force. This care of avergeness reveals in turn an essential tendency of Dasein which we call the “levelling down” of all possibilities of Being. (BT 165/127)

There is an unmistakeable ethical import here. Das Man is not value-neutral in Heidegger’s eyes with respect to leveling-down. Individual human excellence is reduced to mediocrity, and true improvisation is reduced to mimicry of the norms inscribed by hegemonic das Man. Levelling-down renders human potential uninteresting, superficial, and pre-choreographed.

This lament of leveling-down prompts Heidegger to introduce ‘authenticity’ and ‘inautheticity’ into the text as ethical modes for Dasein to relate to das Man. Dasein is diffused into das Man and lost to itself in its everydayness.

In these [diffused] modes one’s way of Being is that of inauthenticity and failure to stand by one’s Self…The Self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the authentic Self—that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way…If Dasein discovers the world in its own way and brings it close, if it discloses to itself its own authentic Being, then this discovery of the ‘world’ and this disclosure of Dasein are always accomplished as a clearing-away of concealments and obscurities. [emphasis added] (BT 166/128-167/129)

Here it is clear that Heidegger advises ‘clearing-away of the concealments and obscurities’ imposed by das Man, and an autonomous discovery of the world ‘in its own way’ independent of das Man’s hegemony. But what are we to make of Heidegger’s earlier efforts to show that das Man is a necessary and inexorable existentiale of Dasein? How could we claim independence from a necessary structure of Dasein? How are we to treat this advice?

The traditional reading of das Man is an ‘existentialist,’ ethical reading. This reading highlights the Kierkeggardian influence in Being and Time. Das Man becomes an elaboration on Kierkegaard’s “the truth is never in the crowd.”⁴ This reading takes seriously the strong ethical language Heidegger uses to describe levelling-down, and they adopt Heidegger’s advice to actively resist the conformist leveling that das Man enforces, and to independently and authentically ‘take hold’ of their Being ‘in their own way’. Advocates of this reading, such as Frederick Olafson, recognize that this reading cannot be maintained if Heidegger’s claim is taken seriously that das Man is an inextricable existentiale of Dasein which governs all intelligibility. To solve this, Olafson seeks to undermine Heidegger’s argument for the equiprimordiality of ready-to-hand and Being-with. He claims that Heidegger has not shown that Being-with is an existentiale:

“[Heidegger’s claim] would have to take into account such facts as that what I uncover as a hammer, say, has been previously used (and thus uncovered) as hammer by others and it is normally from these others that I have learned what a hammer is and how to use one” ⁵

In the phenomena Olafson is raising, the individual exists prior to the socialization of practices, and so Being-with das Man must be added on later, rather than a necessary existentiale of Dasein. But this is a bad example. Olafson’s criticism cannot undermine the primordial social practices that are not explicitly taught, such as gender performativity and distance standing. Olafson’s critique of the primacy of Being-with is unsatisfactory.

Recent exegetical work of Hubert Dreyfus and Taylor Carman seeks to question the purely negative and ethical reading of das Man. In contrast, they choose to preserve Being-with as an existentiale, and abandon its link to inauthenticity. Dreyfus in particular sees das Man as dictating and negotiating the shared social practices that Dasein is unconsciously socialized into. Dreyfus focuses on the numerous passages in which Heidegger emphasizes that authenticity has no ethical import⁶. He sees strong textual evidence that das Man is the ultimate source of meaning and intelligibility, focusing on passages such as “The “they”, as the “nobody”, is by no means nothing at all. On the contrary, in this kind of Being, Dasein is an ens realissimum, if by ‘Reality’ we understand a Being that has the character of Dasein.” (BT 166/128) Here Heidegger is identifying the social phenomena of God with the reification of das Man, with a similar idea to Durkeim’s “God is society, writ large.” In other words, das Man, as the outgrowth of Being-with, governs and writes the highest-order of truth available to Dasein (or any Being). Dreyfus sees passages like this making the same claim that Wittgenstein makes when he posits the ultimate grounding of knowledge on shared practices.⁷ Dreyfus advocates the abandonment of the existentiell/ethical component of das Man as the reading most charitable to Heidegger’s initial project as an existential analytic of Dasein.

Whereas Dreyfus acknowledges that there are some undeniably negative consequences of das Man, Carman attempts to suggests that das Man is ethically harmless and impeccable. He suggests “Being “lost” in the one and not being able to find oneself and grasp one’s self as one’s own sound like inauthenticity, and indeed it sounds like something bad. But in fact, as we have seen, in normative contexts Heidegger draws not a twofold but a threefold distinction between authenticity, inauthenticity, and an “undifferentiated” average everydayness.” Carman here claims that das Man has no ethical content, that the hegemony of das Man has no impact on one’s authenticity. However, he goes on to say with regard to the ‘leveling’ and loss-of-Self in das Man, “we might say civilization is founded on an act of violence—in this case the mundane violence involved in fitting my own self-understanding into the, as it were, “one-size-fits-all” concept of personhood.” So clearly even on Carman’s value-neutral reading of das Man, there is some lamentable impact on Dasein’s freedom of expression and individuality. Neither reading, the existential/intelligible nor the existentiell/ethical, has been able to fully distance itself from the other, and thus the contradiction remains. It seems as though Heidegger is making a claim that can only be read as Dasein expressing a necessary contradiction.

It seems to me that the best that we can do with this contradictory text is to step in for Heidegger and suggest a hybrid of his two conflicting das Mans, preserving as much from both as we can. Hopefully, this will reduce the contradictions in the text to carelessness and reveal what Heidegger actually believed, and would have said in moments of greater clarity. I suggest the following:

Olafson, Dreyfus and Carman claim that neither reading of das Man can incorporate the other without contradiction, but it seems to me that these interpreters are dogmatically unwilling to entertain the idea that the human condition may be internally contradictory. A distinction should be made between a logically contradictory theory and an observation that Dasein’s condition is in conflict with itself. Perhaps we can reduce the former in the text to the latter. One desires to smoke despite desiring to be healthy, one desires to eat more than ones fill, and one desires recreation more than a productive work schedule allows. Could it not also be true that one chases the specter of authenticity even though the human condition necessarily denies complete access to it? This would suggest that Dasein is born fallen, and can only marginally save itself, though not completely.

Das Man is the source of inauthenticity, but not the essential characteristic of it. Conformity, a natural quality we inevitably exhibit as social creatures, is the source of conformism, a dogmatic and panicked unreflective and unconscious adherence to the contingent expression of das Man in our particular society. However, becoming authentic, it seems Heidegger believes, is not to overthrow the fetters of essential conformity, but contingent conformism. We can never step out of the background of shared social practices that structure intelligibility and significance. What we can do is recognize the contingency of the particular form that das Man takes within our social world, instead of taking it as dogmatically and unreflectively correct. This makes the most sense of Heidegger’s closing claim that “Authentic Being-one’s-Self does not rest upon an exceptional condition of the subject, a condition that has been detached from the “they”; it is rather an existentiell modification of the “they”—of the “they as an essential existentiale” (BT 168/130). This would mean that authentic Dasein stays within the realm of conformity, and thus Being-with, significance and intelligibility, but actively resists its tendency to solidify into dogmatic conformism, continually recognizing the contingency of shared social practices, and thus allowing Dasein some space for potential relative uniqueness and relative improvisation; though to completely overthrow shared social practices and to purely improvise from scratch would be ultimately impossible. One can only press against that limit inscribed by das Man.

As I have shown, Heidegger’s text on das Man is internally contradictory as it stands. Heidegger posits Being-with as a necessary existentiale of Dasein’s existence, and then asks authentic Dasein to step outside of it. Both the existentiell/ethical and the existentiale/intelligibility readings have not been able to eliminate this contradiction. I suggest that we make a distinction between conformity to das Man and dogmatic conformism as an attitude toward das Man. Heidegger recognizes the necessity of the former, but condemns the latter, though he does not make this adequately clear in the text. Recognizing this deflated claim, we can reduce Heidegger’s contradictory claim to a claim about the internal tension in Dasein’s condition.

References

Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World Div. I : A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I. New York: MIT P, 1991.

Carman, T. ‘Autneticity.’ in Dreyfus, Hubert L., and Mark A. Wrathall, eds. A Companion to Heidegger. Grand Rapids: Blackwell Limited, 2008.

Dreyfus, H. ‘Interpreting Heidegger on “Das Man”’, in Inquiry, 37 (1995) pp. 423-30

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper San Francisco, 1962.

Mulhall, Stephen. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Polt, Richard. Heidegger. New York: Cornell UP, 1999.

Joseph N. Rees (‘10) is a Philosophy major at American University.

Photo courtesy of silvestru

John Stuart Mill, one of the most prominent British philosophers of the 19^th century, has had a tremendous influence on political philosophy, ethical theory, and much of the liberal thought which has dominated contemporary Western culture. His libertarian viewpoints are espoused in his essay On Liberty, which is an unwavering defense of individual liberty and freedom from limitations imposed by society. A few years later, Mill published his essay Utilitarianism, in which he argues that utility is the fundamental principle of morality. The principle of utility, or the greatest happiness principle, states that right actions are those which produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people, and wrong actions are those that produce the greatest unhappiness. Mill’s advocacy of the concepts of happiness, freedom, and individual liberty, serves as the groundwork for his Utilitarian theory of ethics, and the two works Utilitarianism and On Liberty are perhaps the two most important essays which express his viewpoints.

However, when comparing the two texts, one cannot help noticing an inherent tension between them. Mill’s discourse in On Liberty, is supposed to be written in a Utilitarian spirit. Can Mill truly provide an adequate defense of the protection of individual liberty and freedom, while approaching the issue from a Utilitarian standpoint, which emphasizes the promotion of society’s utility at the cost of individual happiness? Mill’s fundamental principle of utility presupposes that happiness is the only thing to be valued as a goal, and for its own sake. In order to remain consistent with Utilitarianism, the notions of individual liberty and freedom can only be valued as vehicles toward that same goal. In other words, freedom can only be valued instrumentally, because it promotes happiness. It cannot be valued in and of itself as a natural right. This apparent tension between the two texts also manifests itself within On Liberty as Mill himself struggles with reconciling the two notions of freedom and utility. It will be necessary first to analyze the tension within On Liberty, before delving into the relation between Utilitarianism and On Liberty. In this paper, I will argue that Mill contradicts the principle of utility through his arguments for the protection of liberty, because he yields to the fact that liberty should be pursued for its own sake.

There are several examples within On Liberty, which portray the concept of liberty[1] as valuable only as a vehicle toward the end goal of promoting happiness. These examples prove Mill’s consistency with Utilitarianism, because only happiness is valued in and of itself. In the first example of the instrumental value of liberty, Mill says, “In proportion to the development of his individuality, each person becomes more valuable to himself, and is, therefore, capable of being more valuable to others. There is a greater fullness of life about his own existence, and when there is more life in the units there is more in the mass which is composed of them.”(On Liberty 60) In essence, this is an argument based on the principle of utility. According to the quote, individuality is valued because it promotes happiness for the individual, which, in turn, promotes happiness for society as a whole. Later in the text, Mill also points out that “originality is a valuable element in human affairs” and that “it is necessary further to show that these developed human beings[2] are of some use to the undeveloped.”(Ibid., 61) He also supports “mental freedom”(Ibid., 33) on the grounds that it allows for the development of an intellectually active society. These quotes serve to illustrate that part of Mill’s argument for the defense of liberty does seem to include extrinsic value, which is consistent with Utilitarianism. As long as liberty is valued as a means to the end of happiness, the principle of utility is not undermined.

On the other hand, there are also many instances where Mill appears to be accepting the inherent value of liberty as a goal in itself, rather than as a vehicle toward the end goal of happiness. In the first chapter of On Liberty, Mill begins by introducing “one very simple principle.”(Ibid., 9) This is very dangerous for Mill, because according to Utilitarianism, the sole fundamental principle for human beings is the principle of utility. Furthermore, he goes on to describe this principle and states that “the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection.”⁶ This principle is regarded as the “harm principle” and serves as one of the major arguments within the text. An individual can act with absolute and complete liberty as long he or she does not cause harm to another. With this statement, Mill seems to be placing liberty in a protected position, regardless of whether the recognition of liberty would promote utility. There are several examples in which Mill seems to express liberty as being inherently valuable. For instance, chapter three begins with the title, “Of Individuality, As One of The Elements of Well-Being.”(Ibid., 53) This title is very important, because it does not define individuality as a means to well-being, or happiness, but as part of well-being. If the notion of individuality were included within the principle of utility by definition as part of happiness, then such a statement would not be contradictory. Since the principle of utility is defined as simply pleasure and absence of pain, there is no indication that individuality has any inherent good according to Utilitarianism.

At this point, it is noticeable that there is a clear internal contradiction within Mill’s argument in On Liberty. He seems to be insisting that his “harm principle”, is a protected principle distinct from utility, while at the same time insisting that liberty is only defended because of the principle of utility. The “harm principle” espoused in the text allows the individual to act with absolute freedom as long as no one else is affected by his actions. This seems to imply that the principle of utility has no jurisdiction within the personal sphere of the individual as long has the individual’s actions are “self-regarding.”(Ibid., 74) However, if the individual’s freedom was recognized only instrumentally, then even this personal “self-regarding” sphere could be interfered with in order to promote utility.

Although Utilitarianism and On Liberty are not directly related or in dialogue with each other, Mill’s ideas on “public utility” and “private utility” in his later work help explain the tension in his earlier work. Mill explains this distinction in Utilitarianism. He says private utility is “the interest or happiness of some few persons” (Utilitarianism 19) and public utility means to promote utility “on an extended scale.”⁹ When viewing On Liberty through the lens of private versus public utility, it becomes clear what Mill is actually saying. He is arguing for the protection of liberty, for its own sake, only at the level of private utility. In contrast, liberty is valued instrumentally, in terms of public utility. For instance, Mill says an action “which neither violates any specific duty to the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any assignable individual except himself, the inconvenience is one which society can afford to bear, for the sake of the greater good of human freedom.”(On Liberty 80) Mill is saying that in cases where freedom and utility conflict, freedom will be valued regardless of the private utility that would be promoted by stripping away that freedom. However, by valuing freedom for its own sake, regardless of its private utility, the greater public utility will be promoted. In essence, Mill seems to insist on the inherent value of freedom, but uses the promotion of public utility at a larger scale in order to cover this flaw and remain consistent with Utilitarianism. This viewpoint is also made clear at the very beginning of the essay when Mill explains his intentions for On Liberty. In the introduction, he says “I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of man as a progressive being.”(On Liberty 10) Mill must have anticipated the apparent tension that readers would recognize in his work, and with this statement explains that he will protect liberty at the private level, but will also remain faithful to Utilitarianism by valuing liberty as a means of promoting utility on a larger scale.

The reconciliation of the two notions of freedom and utility is so difficult, that Mill’s argument, an attempt to solve this tension, is bound to raise many questions. Is Mill entitled to make such a claim? Is it consistent to accept the principle of utility as fundamental at an extended scale, but place limits on it at the private level? Can liberty be valued intrinsically when viewed through one lens, but extrinsically in another?

The following quote from Mill’s response to an objection in Utilitarianism, may make the answer to this question clearer. The response is to the objection that Utilitarianism is too demanding by asking an individual to promote happiness for an entire society. He says “private utility, the interest or happiness of some few persons, is all he has to attend to.”(Utilitarianism 19) With this statement, Mill is making it clear that cases of public utility are only “exceptional”, and in general, individuals should only be considered with private utility. If each individual is only concerned with private utility, the level at which liberty is protected and valued for its own sake, then the realm of public utility or the “greater good” seems irrelevant at a subjective level. If an individual’s morality is defined strictly in terms of private utility, then it would make no difference whether liberty would be valued intrinsically or extrinsically at a larger scale, because the realm of public utility would not be a factor. In this sense, from the subjective standpoint of individuals, Mill accepts that liberty is inherently valuable, pursued for its own sake, and protected from the influence of utility. The instrumental value of liberty at the level of public utility cannot be argued for on Utilitarian grounds, because it has no practical significance for the individual in Utilitarianism.

In this sense, Mill ends up unintentionally yielding that liberty is inherently valuable in On Liberty. His argument for its value as a vehicle to promote happiness in terms of greater public utility, is inconsistent with Utilitarian principles and results in a principle of liberty that is protected and independent from the principle of utility. As a result, Mill cannot solve the apparent tension between On Liberty and Utilitarianism, because his defense of liberty leads to the undermining of the principle of utility. Furthermore, it would be necessarily impossible for him to reconcile both positions, because a true defense of liberty and freedom cannot rest on extrinsic value in the Utilitarian sense, but only on intrinsic value. If the notion of liberty is valued only as a means to an end, its very nature would be different depending on what the end may require. The very concept of liberty seems to escape this notion, and insists on being defended as a natural right to be recognized in and of itself. This is made evident through Mill’s failure in his argument. Ultimately, Mill is placed in a position where he can either defend liberty while renouncing the principle of utility, or he can maintain the principle of utility at the expense of a defense of true liberty.

Endnotes

[1] It is important to note that the term “liberty” is used by Mill as an umbrella term throughout the essay, and includes the concepts of freedom, individuality, and originality.

[2] The developed human beings Mill refers to are those people who have fully developed their faculties freely and openly through the exercise of their freedom of individuality and originality. These people are regarded as those who have attained a very high level of happiness because they have satisfied their utmost intellectual desires. Through this development, these human beings would be useful to society in countless ways by exercising their faculties for the benefit of society.

Works Cited

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978.

Mill, John Stuart. Utilitarianism. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001

Raafay Syed (‘12) is a Philosophy and Public Health Studies major at The Johns Hopkins University.

Art courtesy of =drezdany.

Abstract: Ever since Plato described knowledge in the Theaetetus and the Meno, three criteria, namely justification, truth, and belief (JTB), have composed the traditional philosophical definition of knowledge. In his 1963 paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier attempts to disestablish the traditional definition of knowledge. He utilizes a thought experiment in which a person appears to meet the knowledge criteria yet still does not seem to have knowledge. In this paper we clarify and specify the definition of knowledge, breaking the justification criterion down into three separate criteria, saving the common sense intuition and the traditional definition of knowledge from The Gettier Problem. All the while this new understanding of knowledge and justification still allows us to consider many everyday knowledge claims to be knowledge (i.e., it is parsimonious but not too restrictive).

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In his 1963 paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier claims justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge because “it is possible for a person to be justified in believing a proposition that is in fact false” 1. Gettier demonstrates how chance events can turn a seemingly justified false belief into a seemingly justified true belief using a thought experiment about Smith, a man applying for a job. Smith has “strong evidence”2 that the other applicant, Jones, will get the job (maybe the boss told Smith) and that Jones has ten coins in his pocket (maybe Smith saw Jones counting them). Accordingly, Smith believes that “(e) the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket”3. Yet, Smith gets the job, not Jones, and unbeknownst to Smith, he, too, has ten coins in his pocket. According to Gettier, although Smith thought Jones would get the job, events just so happened to make his belief (e) true and justified. Therefore, Gettier claims one can have justified true belief while “it is equally clear”4 that the belief is not sufficient for knowledge. It is unclear what Gettier meant by “clear”; he seems to be referring tosome kind of intuitive notion of knowledge or the practical everyday layman’s conception. The intuitive or practical notions, while rough, appear to be a useful guide toward a more complete understanding of knowledge.

In order to make sense of the intuitive notion of knowledge Gettier refers to, one needs a new conception of justification. Gettier’s description of justification unintentionally and merely illustrates apparent justification. Only apparent justifications can lead to belief in “a proposition that is in fact false”5. If one has enough information and uses it correctly, one no longer treats apparent justification, which can lead to falsity, as actual justification. For example, if Smith only allowed reliable evidence to justify his beliefs and Smith knew that the boss’ statement about hiring Jones was unreliable, then it would no longer appear to justify Smith’s belief. In Gettier’s conception of the traditional knowledge criteria he does not distinguish between apparent and actual justification.

The traditional requirements for knowledge, according to Gettier, are as follows:

S knows that P IFF

(i) P is true,
(ii) S believes that P, and
(iii) S is justified in believing that P.6

To prevent a misinterpretation, like Gettier’s assumption that justification can lead to false belief, it is beneficial to understand the traditional justification requirement, (iii), as a shortened version of the following:

(iii)   S’s believing that Q makes S believe that P,
(iv)    If Q is false or if Q has no impact on the truth of P then Q will not make S believe that P and
(v)     Were S to have perfect information about everything, (iii) would still be true.

Such an understanding eliminates S’s ability to confuse apparent justification with actual justification. Smith’s knowledge claim in Gettier’s thought experiment violates (v) when P is “the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket,” and Q is “the boss said that Jones will get the job and Smith saw Jones count ten coins in his pocket.”7 Smith’s claim violates (v) because if Smith had the whole story the boss’ statement would no longer make him believe P so long as (iv) is true. Smith would realize that it is possible that despite Q, P could be false because the boss’ statement is unreliable. The statement merely appears to be justification if S does not have access to the information that the boss is unreliable. In other words, (v) guarantees that there is no further information that S could attain that would render Q false or show it not to have an impact on the truth of P.

A consequence of (v) is that S would probably have many reasons to believe P. Generally, not all reasons are created equal (i.e., some reasons are better than others). For example, in the court of law, DNA evidence linking someone to a crime is better than eyewitness testimony because DNA evidence is more reliable. However, with perfect information all reasons become equally good. For example, eyewitness testimony is just as reliable as DNA evidence if one can be certain of what the witness observed and that he or she is telling the truth. Criterion (iii) will still be upheld even if, given perfect information, one has what is generally considered to be reasons better than Q. If one has perfect information then reliability issues vanish, making all true and relevant reasons equally trustworthy.

Meeting the five criteria prevent a knowledge claim from falling victim to Gettier-style chance. The criteria distinguish between apparent and actual justification. Skeptical arguments can arise when attempting to ascertain whether a claim meets criteria (i), (iv), and (v). Like in Gettier’s “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” the difficulty will remain unaddressed here. This new conception of knowledge and justification is a good first step in figuring out when someone has knowledge. They allow for a continuum of confidence about whether a particular claim is knowledge. The more one learns about the world, the more confident one can be that a particular claim is knowledge. So, as long as one has the correct understanding of justification, yes Gettier, justified true belief is knowledge.

Endnotes

1 qtd. in Huemer 444

2 qtd. in Huemer 445

3 qtd. in Huemer 445

4 qtd. in Huemer 445

5 qtd. in Huemer 444

6 qtd. in Huemer 444

7 qtd. in Huemer 445

Works Cited

Gettier, Edmund. Epistemology : Contemporary Readings. Ed. Michael Huemer. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Alex Ehrlich (‘09) is a Accounting and Taxation major at Hofstra University.

AJ Durwin (‘10) is a Philosophy major at Hofstra University.

Photo courtesy of jolian.

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“Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are ‘da’ and ‘ja’, in some order. You do not know which word means which.”

Here’s a few clarifications about the puzzle.

1. It could be that some god gets asked more than one question (and hence that some god is not asked any question at all).

2. What the second question is, and to which god it is put, may depend on the answer to the first question. (And of course similarly for the third question.)

3. Whether Random speaks truly or not should be thought of as depending on the flip of a coin hidden in his brain: if the coin comes down heads, he speaks truly; if tails, falsely.

4. Random will answer ‘da’ or ‘ja’ when asked any yes-no question.

—

The first approach I took here was to find a god that I could be certain is not Random which would make that god either True or False.  This is quite difficult though because you do not know what ‘da’ or ‘ja’ means.  All you know is that each of them either means yes or no.

To get to the appropriate answer then, I thought about forming the question using logical connectives such as:

“Does ja mean no if and only if you are true if and only if B is random?” (p ≡ q ≡ r)

p = ja means no

q = you (the god) is true

r = B is random

As you can see from above I used a biconditional to construct my question.  A logical biconditional is a logical operator that connects two statements to assert the statement p if and only if q (or p ≡ q).  The different between a biconditional and a material conditional (if-then statements) is only seen when the hypothesis (p) is false and the consequent (q) is true.  In the case of the material condition that statement is true, but in the biconditional that result is false.  Here is a truth table to show this:

.

.

.

You could actually formulate many different questions to found out which god is for certain not random.  The similarity between all these different questions that involve biconditionals is that there are three statements being made and we are asking if an odd number of the following statements are true.

This approach can be a bit difficult if someone doesn’t have a background in basic formal logic.  Another way to solve the puzzle is by using counterfactuals.  A counterfactual is a “if-then” statement that indicated what would be the case if its antecedent were true.  If you are using counterfactuals, the goal is to formulate a yes/no question (Q) for either True or False that asks the following: If I asked you Q, would you say ‘ja’?

By doing so, you get an answer to the question that results in the answer ‘ja’ if the truthful answer to Q is yes, and ‘da’ if the truthful answer to Q is no.

You might be asking, “Why can we assume that the answer would be ‘ja’ if the truthful answer to Q is yes and ‘da’ if the truthful answer to Q is no?”  The simple is that this question covers every situation possible and leaves no unanswered questions in figuring out which god is True, False, and Random.  There are eight possible situations within two different circumstances in this puzzle and this question covers all of them.  Let’s look at them.

Let’s assume the answer ‘ja’ means yes and ‘da’ means no.

1. True is asked Q and answers with ‘ja’.  Since she can only tell the truth, the truthful answer to Q is ‘ja’ which means yes.
2. True is asked Q and answers with ‘da’.  Since she can only tell the truth, the truthful answer to Q is ‘da’ which means no.
3. False is asked Q and answers with ‘ja’. Since she can only tell lies, it follows that if you asked her Q she would instead answer ‘da’.  Because she’s lying, the truthful answer to Q is ‘ja’ which means yes.
4. False is asked Q and answers with ‘da’. Since she can only tell lies, it follows that if you asked her Q she would instead answer ‘ja’.  Because she’s lying, the truthful answer to Q is ‘da’ which means no.

Now let’s assume the answer ‘ja’ means no and ‘da’ means yes.

1. True is asked Q and answers with ‘ja’.  Since she can only tell the truth, the truthful answer to Q is ‘da’ which means yes.
2. True is asked Q and answers with ‘da’.  Since she can only tell the truth, the truthful answer to Q is ‘ja’ which means no.
3. False is asked Q and answers with ‘ja’. Since she can only tell lies, it follows that if you asked her Q she would instead answer ‘ja’.  Because she’s lying, the truthful answer to Q is ‘da’ which means yes.
4. False is asked Q and answers with ‘da’. Since she can only tell lies, it follows that if you asked her Q she would instead answer ‘da’.  Because she’s lying, the truthful answer to Q is ‘ja’ which means no.

As you can see, this makes the puzzle relatively simple.  From this we can finally attack the puzzle and ask the three gods our three questions. (These three steps were taken from Brian Rabern and Landon Rabern’s solution to the logic puzzle which can be found at the bottom of this article.  My solution to the puzzle was quite similar to theirs, but they have written a clear explanation of their solution that is more eloquently written than I could ever conjure up.)

1. Ask god B, “If I asked you ‘Is A Random?’, would you say ‘ja’?”. If B answers ‘ja’, then either B is Random (and is answering randomly), or B is not Random and the answer indicates that A is indeed Random. Either way, C is not Random. If B answers ‘da’, then either B is Random (and is answering randomly), or B is not Random and the answer indicates that A is not Random. Either way, A is not Random.
2. Go to the god who was identified as not being Random by the previous question (either A or C), and ask him: “If I asked you ‘Are you True?’, would you say ‘ja’?”. Since he is not Random, an answer of ‘ja’ indicates that he is True and an answer of ‘da’ indicates that he is False.
3. Ask the same god the question: “If I asked you ‘Is B Random?’, would you say ‘ja’?”. If the answer is ‘ja’ then B is Random; if the answer is ‘da’ then the god you have not yet spoken to is Random. The remaining god can be identified by elimination

Thus, you have supposedly solved the hardest logic puzzle ever.  I believe you can formulate Q in a number of ways in the same fashion that can successfully cover all eight possible situations within the two different circumstances of ‘ja’ and ‘da’.  The goal is to nevertheless

—

For those who found this puzzle relatively easy, there are ways to make this puzzle a bit more difficult.  Try to solve the puzzle in two questions or less.  It’s entirely possible to do so and people have done it before!

Are there harder ones?  Of course there are.  Unfortunately the new puzzle will be posted in the next issue of the online edition of Prometheus.

—

If you want to look at a different take to the logic puzzle, please look at George Boolos’s solution here.

If you have any questions about my solution, please check out Brian and Landon Rabern’s solution here.

If you have specific questions not answered in any of these philosopher’s solutions or a different solution to the puzzle that you want to be verified, please feel free to e-mail me at editors@prometheus-journal.com.  I always look forward to reader’s e-mails.

Editor-in-Chief

Cuong Q. Nguyen

Abbreviations for Heidegger and other works cited:

QT – The Question Concerning Technology

Ister – Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister”

WAPF – What Are Poets For?

SR – Science and Reflection

OWA – The Origin of the Work of Art

PLT – Hofstadter’s Introduction to Poetry, Language, Thought

Zimmerman – Michael Zimmerman’s Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity

Ferry and Renaut – Heidegger and Modernity trans. Franklin Philip

—

Here the question of the saving power potential of art against technology’s worlding as the standing-reserve will be addressed. Section I will provide a grounding analysis of Heidegger’s notions of technology and art and their danger and saving potential, respectively. For the sake of brevity and to avoid pedantry, familiarity with the concepts of technology and art will be assumed allowing focus on technology’s danger, art’s saving power, and Heidegger’s expectations. Section II demonstrates that art cannot play the role of the saving power, primarily due to technology being inescapable as the culmination of western metaphysics and its progress in mastering the world over the past 50 years. The thesis, if you will, posited here is that the conceiving of art as the saving power would be the ultimate victory of technology, having formed humans into thinking of art as a mere means. Section III, following and expanding upon Michael Zimmerman’s work, concludes by tentatively allowing for a ‘way out’ of the metaphysical age through technology ‘taking lessons’ from art to set techne as the primary mode of production-revealing, a unison of production and art.

Why any of this is important might come to mind, and to this I respond that it is absolutely essential to ensure that art is not used as a means. It is our highest dignity, to use Heidegger’s phrase in The Question Concerning Technology, to watch over the unconcealed and pay attention to technology’s revealing. To lose art and poetry to technology would be the final forgetting of Being and our complete transformation into will-to-power automatons, unaware of any world or Being other than the technological ‘one-ness’ we believe we control but are enslaved to. This will be discussed further throughout the following.

I. Technology is not a set of tools. It is not a mere means to further human ends for human benefit. Thinking of technology and science in this way, as a neutral mode of producing, only makes one blind to the essence of technology and its existential effect on us and our worlding (QT 4). Technology is a revealing of the world, humans, and things in the world; it is a mode of truth. However, it is not a revealing of ‘bringing-forth’ from concealment into presence, the process of aletheia as truth, the poiesis that is characteristic of art, techne, and anything that allows entities to reveal themselves on their own terms as one possibility of their being. No, technology is a revealing that orders, challenges, and gathers entities into a specific, exclusive mode of being Heidegger calls the standing-reserve (QT 17). As such, technology takes hold of things and nature in a specific way: As ordered to be ready for use at any time, as energy to be unlocked, stored, and utilized for further extraction and manipulation. This is accomplished through man, by setting-upon him this task of ordering. Thus man is compelled by the essence of technology to view nature and things in it as what technology reveals them to be, namely as resources to be extracted and things as equally substitutable. This whole process is the Ge-stell, the enframing, which calls man forth to order and assemble nature as ready-at-hand in a very restricted sense (QT 19). Enframing is the essence of technology and a useful word for thinking about how technology forms our worlding: It places upon us a framework of ordering-as-revealing that claims to contain within it all that is, and all that will ever be. Such is characteristic of technology, making it a revealing ‘one’ that reveals all Being in its own terms, unconcealing everything the world has to offer as standing-reserve, as truth. This is a very powerful and compelling kind of revealing, which explains why technology has gained so much power over the world, and why people eagerly adopt Ge-stell in their attempts to ease life and their anxiety in the face of the flight of the gods.

It begins to be clear in The Question Concerning Technology that Heidegger has a strong distaste for technology, especially in the passage regarding the technological renaming of the Rhine from its poetic name to one concerned merely with the production of hydro-electrical power. Even earlier in his thought this theme emerges, where in der Ister lectures technology is characterized not as a means but purely as a domineering, conquering kind of unfolding (revealing) that determines the possibilities of human comportment and the actuality of what is and what can be (Ister 53). Strongly influenced by past and contemporary anti-modern romantics such as his famous and controversial friend Ernst Jünger, Heidegger after the rectorship displayed consistent and penetrating insights into the ills of modernity and the problems of technology. The reasons for his disgust of the modern and the technological are manifold and complex.

Technology distorts man, his world, and presents the supreme danger. The Ge-stell of technology, rephrased but with the same meaning in many of Heidegger’s works, poses a great danger to man in that by viewing the world and entities as standing-reserve ready to be ordered, it is but a small and easy step to view man himself in this way; man as standing-reserve, as material, as a function of objectification, as a slave, losing his essence and fundamental relation to Being while encroaching upon nature a disrespectful ‘securedness’ (QT 27; WAPF 113, 115; SR 168; Zimmerman 199). Perhaps even worse than the transformation of the possible authentic man into the necessary inauthentic technological man is this transfiguration’s self-concealment and hiddenness. Heidegger’s discussions are threaded through by technology’s characteristic self-ignorance, a being-concealed of its method and workings that it is not aware of. This is one of the major problems of technology, that it claims to reveal everything but is unaware and passes over its own concealing/revealing, a lack of the understanding of the duality of concealing/revealing paradox that art has a grasp of (as we will see later). So not only does technology cover over the misery it causes, it is unaware of it’s doing so and of the basic Heideggarian notion that whenever something is revealed, something other is necessarily concealed (Ister 44). Closely related to this is another ‘monstrous’ characteristic of technology and science (which are mutually dependent), that of blocking all possibility except the one they reveal as truth. As mentioned above, the technological mode of revealing is extremely exclusive. All other ways of revealing, of aletheia, are dismissed as ‘pointless’, ‘useless’, or ‘without worth’, each accusation being imbedded in the sphere of technological-type revealing. By Ge-stell’s setting the standard for all that can be in terms of the standing-reserve, any other possibility of being is blocked and precluded from truth: Specifically, enframing conceals poiesis-revealing, blocking the ‘shine and hold’ of primordial, original truth and the possibility of its uncovering (QT 26, 28). This is perhaps an even greater danger than the misunderstanding of man himself mentioned above, for it would disfigure all things in nature, not just man. Not only is technology an (in Husserl’s words) ‘empty passing-though’ entities, but also is a doing violence to the very possibility of possibility, entities’ being and presencing.

As if this were not enough to make anyone an anti-technology romantic, let alone the man who thought it up, these aspects of technology’s hold over the world result in what Heidegger names in What Are Poets For? the ‘darkening of the world’ (PLT xv; Zimmerman 26). Having been transfigured into the technological, man loses authentic being and completes the forgetfulness of Being. The earth is destroyed in man’s quest for self-fulfilling power, the gods take flight and God dies as everything sacred (including life itself) loses meaning. Anxiety and unheimlichkeit become the predominant moods of humanity torn from its origins, and the spirit of the West declines as men become a mass fearful of the free and creative (there seem to be strong Nietzschean undertones here). This is modernity; this is the destitute time of the world that Heidegger so clearly despises. A change towards an authentic world must come from art, from poetry, that which still says what is in an appropriate, respectful way (WAPF 92). Clearly, the world is in a crisis from the domination of technology, and the only way out seems through art, poetry.

The world now in its deepest night, the night of destitution and ontological darkness, abandoned by the gods and wanting of poiesis, needs ‘saving’. It needs to be brought to the morning again, when the sun comes to bring light to entities in their own being. In the time of the destitution of the world, the ‘Now’ of the first line of der Ister calls for the time of poets to poetize, to tell something new and begin a new time, the post-technological poetical era (Ister 8). Thus Heidegger places poetry, and art more generally, as that which will bring the world back to the light, out of the night of the global domination of technology and productionist metaphysics. This is something he arrives at repeatedly in his writings, with different argumentation but the same conclusion. Most explicitly seen at the end of The Question Concerning Technology when he famously finds the ‘saving power’ to grow out of the greatest danger of technology, Heidegger clearly calls for poetry and the arts to confront technology and bring poiesis and aletheia back as the primal modes of revealing (QT 29, 35). Because it cannot grow out of nothing, the saving power does exist in a minimal form during the destitute time. Even with the night at its darkest, remnants of the holy stay behind the fleeing gods. The poet is he who attends to these remnants, giving them room to reveal themselves and caring for them against the darkness. This is what poets ‘are for’; the recognition of the traces of the flight of the gods, tracking and attending to them without doing violence, allowing the holy, the sacred, all that which has been covered over by technology, to show us the path out of the night towards the dawn (WAPF 92).

Anyone who reads Heidegger’s later works will appreciate his romanticism, his desire to escape the alien world of modernity to a world defined by art and the letting-be of entities to reveal themselves freely and poetically. This is manifest even in his own physical comportment, as he adopted whenever possible the rural lifestyle, dress, and parlance of the Black Forest folk. His translators and interpreters take this romanticism to town, making it abundantly clear that the saving power is meant to be art, the poetry that attunes man to the curse of technology and opens up the possibility of authentic revealing, aletheia (PLT xv; Zimmerman xx, 77, 93). However clear this might be, we would do well to briefly compare the revealing of art and poetry with the restricted and concealing revealing of technology discussed above to fully show why Heidegger is such a romantic.

The way of revealing of the work of art is well typified by the Greek temple in The Origin of the Work of Art. As opposed to technological revealing which forces upon all things the requirements of the standing-reserve and usefulness, the temple reveals entities in an open and respectful manner. By gathering around and in it the different aspects that make up human experience and life, it gives a relation and context to entities around it by interacting with them, on their own terms, so that they are allowed a space in the context of and in relation to the temple in which they can emerge and appear in themselves as they are (OWA 41). This kind of artistic revealing has one major advantage over technological revealing, other than the fact that it does not exclude other modes besides itself: The understanding of the revealing/concealing duality. As is recurring in Heidegger’s thought, the nature of revealing necessarily entails concealment of something other. One cannot cast light upon something without throwing something else into shadow. Technology does not understand this, so when it casts light and reveals everything as standing-reserve, it ends up concealing itself and its own workings. Art, on the other hand, is ‘aware’ of the paradox of revealing/concealing because its kind of revealing contains within it and reveals both earth and world. It is not necessary to go over all the dynamics of earth and world and their interaction with each other in the rift, for what is important here is that earth is the dimension of concealment, while world is the disclosing openness (OWA 47; Zimmerman 121). Because the revealing of art consists in the duality of earth and world, of concealing and revealing, it has an understanding of its own revealing that technology completely lacks. This is what allows art to ‘let things be’ to reveal themselves self-emergently, the essence of aletheia as truth ‘happening’ in a work of art that refers what the work is ‘about’ in a contextual wholeness that gives it a great breadth of meaning and significance (OWA 54). The ‘letting-be’ and aletheia of art’s revealing is in direct opposition to the kind of revealing of technology, and this is what makes it so attractive to Heidegger, especially since art-revealing is oppositional in the exact ways (open and respectful revealing, awareness of own revealing/concealing) that make technology dangerous, as seen above.

It should be clear by now how and why Heidegger despised technology so, and why art as poetry was his answer to the ills of modernity. He was so strongly invested in his own blend of romanticism and anti-modernism that he was reported to become physically ill when approaching a big city, disturbed by the social displacement and pollution modernity had wrought (Zimmerman, 210). This raises the question of whether his distaste of the modern was a real result of his phenomenology into the essence of technology and art, or whether these were motivated by his own thrownness, his own personal tastes and being-in post-industrial Germany saturated by war, political strife, economic hardship, social unrest and displacement, and all the other problems that rapid, late industrialization brings. This would explain a lot, and would give an explanation for his romanticism and association with conservatives such as Jünger and the early National Socialist movement.

II. Be that as it may, Heidegger clearly posits art and poetry as the saving power against the domination of technology. But this cannot be so. Art cannot ‘play the role’ of the saving power; the reasons why come from Heidegger’s own philosophy of technology and art. First, technology is absolutely global and inescapable, a necessary part of our existential being and how we put the world before ourselves. Secondly, as the culmination of western productionist metaphysics, the essence of technology is an inevitable result of history, one that requires history to be ‘started over’ if we are to escape it. Thirdly and perhaps most powerfully demonstrating technology’s hold over us is that as a kind of revealing, no matter what kind, technology is truth, truth as aletheia, uncovering. All around us and throughout the history of the 20^th century we see the gradual strengthening of technology, its rapid ascension to global domination, which combined with the preceding aspects totally forms humanity in to technological beings. Because we have been distorted so, art cannot be the saving power; for we, as Heidegger does with his nostalgic romanticism, would invoke it as such, as a saving power, which in our technological age and mindset would amount to using it as a mere means for the romantic goal of turning-past technology.

Here it is accepted as established that willing, as a futurally oriented projection of personal plans and projects upon the world (thus constituting the world, ‘worlding’), is a primordial and defining characteristic of man. Willing in the modern age is the will to power, the willing of a pure will over and against the world that is taken to exist for the will’s purposes. The essence of technology is inherent in our average everyday being towards the world, in das Man, in all existentiality except authenticity, which technology has basically excluded the possibility of. Both deriving from and necessarily containing the technological attitude, human willing is the objectification of that which is before us, forcing it under our control and into our supposed dominion; willing, in an act of will, has always already put forward and assumed the world as a realm of producible and manipulable objects (WAPF 108). This kind of attitude is basically inauthentic being-towards the ready-to-hand, which having been man’s predominant mindset was taken by western metaphysics as the ultimate way of being human, most powerfully exemplified by Nietzsche’s will to power.

Heidegger takes Nietzsche, with the will to power, to complete western metaphysics begun by the Greeks (WAPF 111). Technology, as the manifestation of this metaphysics, determines the way we interpret the world. Beginning with the Greeks, metaphysics has gradually identified what is with what is produced. In their conception of truth from whence we get aletheia and their ‘producing’ that freed and released entities, the underlying assumption was that these processes, however closer to Being they are compared to ours, were ultimately something useful for human ends: Plato’s idea of forms was based on blueprints and plans of physical, produced things. (Zimmerman xv, 157). When they looked at things in the world, in their more respectful ‘letting-be’ of entities, the Greeks nonetheless projected a framework upon nature. As this is just the way humans encounter and put themselves in the world, they can hardly be blamed. The thesis-experiencing of the Greeks was a fixing-into-place of entities, making them understandable and approachable, is the origin of the Ge-stell of technology as the founding mode of perception that Plato and Aristotle used in their metaphysics (OWA 83). From there, due to a lack of insight for millennia until Heidegger came along, philosophers built off this productionist metaphysics to gradually, continuously, and more compellingly see all the things in the world and nature itself as ordered and produced for consumption. In Roman and Medieval philosophy the things of the world were seen as ‘objects’ for a ‘subject’, conforming to a principle of rationality that brought them under the control of and existing for a will, epitomized by Kant’s ‘will to will’ (Ferry and Renaut 58-9). This will is concerned only with itself and the categories it ultimately creates (however a priori Kant thinks them to be) that it throws upon the world, supposedly making any experience possible, setting the stage for a fully technological interpretation of the world. Finally Nietzsche comes along and nails the Ge-stell into place with the will to power. Just this phrase ‘the will to power’ alone gives one the sense of the intensely utilitarian, dominating, conquering attitude that Nietzsche elevated to the highest of human virtues, the human telos even, that would inevitably lead to viewing the world as a mere means and material for meeting selfish ends and further propagating power. As this slowly got ingrained into popular and philosophical consciousness, western productionist metaphysics and its embodiment as the essence of technology was completed, as was the Cartesian project of the ownership and control of nature (Ferry and Renaut 59). As the end of metaphysics, technology becomes an inescapable withdrawal from Being that in itself is Being: For Being itself is self-concealing, constantly withdrawing when it reveals beings. Technology is just an ‘artificial’, extreme way of the forgetting of Being over beings. Technology is Being for modern man, the unavoidable consequence of our history, the ultimate framework pulled over our eyes by millennia of intellectual tradition gone awry. Thus technology is inescapable, even with art’s proper revealing on our side, for we always fall back into technological Being: Such is our Being.

There is no thwarting of or rebellion against technology. Because it is the result of completed productionist metaphysics and is the natural way of Being for modern man as a result of this frame of thought, technology is truth. Simply put, technology as a revealing (although in a certain restricted way) has the same characteristics of revealing that aletheia as revealing-truth does. Hence, in its own restricted way, technology is truth. Because technology is the primary mode of Being for man, it is the primary, and sole in our age, mode of truth. When it determines the essence of everything as standing-reserve, technology acts as truth, and when there is no alternative it is truth. Furthermore, man has no control over the unconcealment of technology (QT 18). It is the result of processes wholly outside of mankind’s control: The inevitability of productionist metaphysical history and our own way of being-in-the-world. Unfortunately, decades after Heidegger wrote on technology, we see his worst fears have been realized. Inattentiveness to the unconcealed and the lack of artistic, primal revealing have led to a world where technology dictates the coming of total truth (QT 35). Americanism and the annihilation of the foreign as the way to arrive authentically at oneself have secured the global domination of technology.

Given during the height of the Second World War, Heidegger in der Ister lectures somewhat randomly mentions the entrance of America into the war as the ultimate ‘ahistorical’ act as the intended destruction of Europe, the commencement of western culture and its ‘foreign’ (Ister 54-5). America is presented, perhaps for political and personal security purposes, as the ultimate evil, that which seeks to destroy all roots and origins. However radical this may sound, Americanism is only the reflection of the culmination of European metaphysics in the will to power (WAPF 111). Following the destruction of Germany, the best chance for an authentic artistic era to arise, America was free to spread its ideology and its worship of technology across the globe. The communism of the U.S.S.R., being on an ideological level metaphysically the same as capitalism, did the same in its own geopolitical sphere of influence. Having destroyed Germany, the two technological giants were free to grapple for the technological domination of the earth (Zimmerman 91). Little did they realize that technology was dominating them, turning us into slaves of production and utilitarianism. Today, the specifically American brand of Ge-stell has won out and been cemented by globalization, the final tearing down of all boundaries, traditions, originality and dissent before technology and leveled-down ‘culture’.

Heidegger’s worst nightmare has come true, exemplified by a campus newspaper Macbook advertisement I saw while researching this paper. I was immediately seized by the desire for power (albeit in a limited, cyber sense) it claimed to offer, using the language of the will to power to coax me into a lust for the heightened abilities and capabilities it would give me. Why bother interpreting a poem, or gazing upon a painting, or taking a walk in the woods (whatever ‘nature’ is left in the world) when you can access all the world’s art works and natural locales via a screen connected to millions of other screens across the earth? In our day, with the advent of the internet (which my grammar checker demands be capitalized!), technology has truly become global and dominant, framing our every thought and general being. Because of this art can no longer, if it could have anyway, be the saving power: Our thinking on art will inherently be technologized, we will conceive of it as a means.

A means that might very well serve to deliver us out from technology, but that will only be a superficial freedom. The underlying metaphysical attitude will hold even stronger, only fooling and bringing us further away from Being. The above has shown that people these days are completely technologized, with perhaps a select few (the good folk in our conference, at least) barely poking out of the cloudy mass of Ge-stell, the majority of their being still submerged. Subsumed into the essence of technology, the notion of art as the saving power would collapse in our average everyday understanding, how we normally exist, to just a means by which we can achieve our desire for a more artistic, respectful, primal world. Thus technology achieves its ultimate triumph; the domination of art, the transformation of the poetic from the open letting-happen of truth to a mere method by which people can serve their interests be it self-expression or supposed liberation from modernity. This is clear from modern art, the abstract nonsense Heidegger abhorred, in its celebration of subjectivism and servitude to commercialism (Zimmerman 237). At best, we seem to be doomed to an existence of vicious self-willing and doing-violence, ending in the eventual destruction of the earth some decades from now.

III. Humanity has become irreversibly disfigured as the result of technology. However this does not mean we cannot hope for a better world. While technology’s global domination is for all practical purposes permanent, we can change our attitudes towards it, shielding our essence and dignity from technological revealing. The best we could hope for is that said revealing ‘takes lessons’ from artistic revealing, learning its own limits and respecting (as much as it can) the coming-to-presence of entities.

As a revealing, technology is truth, aletheia. Aletheia is the unconcealing act of bringing that which is concealed into the light, into appearance. The problem with technology is that the being, the appearance, that it brings things into is constrained and disrespectful; the standing-reserve. Originally, with the Greeks, all human creating be it art or craft was called techne. Techne was not just a mode of creation or production, but it was a way of knowing; an episteme that consisted in aletheia, an open revealing of the concealedness of entities (OWA 57). Here the respectful ‘letting-happen’ of revealing by allowing a space for beings to reveal themselves as themselves of art was combined with the power of technology, and here we must return. Modern technology wholly lacks the ‘knowing’ of aletheia aspect of techne, only containing the power and usefulness aspect. What technology as a bringing-forth needs to learn from art is the aletheia-knowledge: The knowing of the concealing/revealing dichotomy, the ability to set entities free into their own presencing (QT 9). So while art itself is not the saving power, it can help us light the way to the combination of production and art. It can allow us the distance and perspective necessary to ‘step back’ from technology to realize its meaninglessness and arbitrariness (perhaps a connection between ‘arbeit’ and ‘arbitrary’ is not so unfathomable), its being as just another historical world that is fundamentally unjustified (Zimmerman 235-6). Indeed, techne is the saving power if there is to be one at all; the fusion of art and production is best for it combines allowance for entities’ own coming-to-presence with truthful disclosure of ourselves, ‘letting ourselves be’ as the necessarily technological and inauthentic beings we are. Here Zimmerman and I are in complete agreement, although he places less stress on our total and permanent domination under technology.

Although I do not see the coming of a ‘post-metaphysical’ artistic age that Heidegger called forth and Zimmerman thinks as possible unless we can convince every person on earth to radically change their metaphysical attitudes or travel back in time to correct every major philosopher with a copy of The Question Concerning Technology, nonetheless great works of art such as Hölderlin’s poetry can still allow us a certain critical distance from technology. Hopefully, while not the saving power itself, art and poetry can allow us the chance to save ourselves from the nihilism of the now near-eternal technological age.

Some personal concluding remarks on Heidegger and technology seem appropriate. While I see where he is coming from and its appeal to the displaced and unassimilated among us, one cannot help but feel an elitist, almost übermensch, mentality behind Heidegger’s romanticism. The desire for a poetic post-metaphysical age marked by the poiesis of art is intimately connected to the rejection of the popular and the easy, technological way of life the majority of us lead. Such rejection of the mass of humanity was clear enough in Being and Time when Heidegger explains and criticizes das Man. This is a major point of contention I have with Heidegger’s philosophy; that it is not really universalizable, and offers ‘salvation’ to only a few. Of these few I have met, many often carry a smug attitude. Furthermore, as Heidegger himself taught us (as well as Fichte’s ‘no I without ‘thou’ critical philosophy), Dasein is never without mit Sein, the self is never without the other. Das Man is an existential and unavoidable mode of being for man. So Heidegger himself was not completely outside his ‘others’, the romantic anti-modernists such as Jünger and poets like Hölderlin that his thought follows closely from. It is important to take philosophies with a grain of salt when their thinkers do not fully apply it to themselves and subscribe to the ‘sometimes a cigar is just a cigar’ attitude.

Nestor Bailly (‘09) is a Philosophy major at McGill University.

Abstract: While there is significant variation in the theist’s description of God, there are nonetheless a set of attributes upon which there is general (but certainly not universal) agreement. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and is capable of interacting in the lives of humans. My purpose in this paper is to provide an account of God’s relation to time given an assumption of these three divine attributes. I will show that the task is unsuccessful for an eternal God (one that exists outside of time), and succeeds in a modified version of an everlasting God that exists with an open future.

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To the believing theist, God has many attributes. Most will agree (although with considerable variation in the details) that God is omnipotent (it is in his power to do anything that can be done) and God is omniscient (he knows everything that can be known). Additionally, many believe that God is a being that acts in the lives of humans. He is not an impassive observer, but rather an active agent who listens to prayer and doles out reward and punishment. Despite God’s considerable strengths, many believe that he is nonetheless limited by human free will. God has given humans the freedom to determine their actions, and therefore for free decisions he cannot cause humans to act in one manner rather than another. These properties of God and man, although all certainly debatable, I will assume as true. This assumption is acceptable in that I believe it is a set that is held by many believers in God.

Given these assumptions, I wish to consider how to formulate a consistent theory of the relationship between God and time. Throughout the history of philosophy, various theories have developed. One school of thought, espoused by thinkers such as Boethius, Augustine and Aquinas argues that God must be eternal. A being that is eternal exists apart from or outside of time. I will begin the paper with a description of the motivation for defining God in this perhaps unnatural manner. Many contemporary philosophers have argued against an eternal God in favor of one that is everlasting – one that is within time, but without beginning or end. I will consider the implications of both conceptions, and ultimately argue for a strain of the everlasting theory as the only consistent theory of God’s relationship to time that allows for all of the divine attributes described above.

The Problem of God’s Omniscience and Human Free Will

For my entire existence, I cannot escape the effects of time. All around me I am struck by the products of temporality – what once was the future soon passes into the present and then rapidly becomes the past. While I have control over my place in space, I am helpless in my passage through time. Indeed, I struggle to imagine myself or anything else existing in a world without time. Therefore, it might seem at first natural to conclude that God too exists in a world defined by the rules of time, and is therefore everlasting.

Nelson Pike argues that if God is everlasting and he is omniscient (as was assumed for this paper), then human free will is impossible.¹ He provides the following example:

“Last Saturday afternoon, Jones mowed his lawn. Assuming that God exists and is (essentially) omniscient, it follows that (let us say) eighty years prior to last Saturday afternoon, God knew (and thus believed) that Jones would mow his lawn at that time. But from this it follows, I think, that at the time of action (last Saturday afternoon) Jones was not able – that is, it was not within Jones’s power – to refrain from mowing his lawn.”²

Before I analyze this example, first I will provide some comments on Pike’s definitions of divine omniscience and human freedom. As stated in the introduction, omniscience is the ability to know anything that can be known. For Pike, God’s knowledge includes complete true belief regarding events of the past, present, and future. He states this in two premises. First: “God existed at t₁” entails “If Jones did X at t₂, God believed at t₁ that Jones would do X at t₂.” Second: “God believes X” entails “‘X’ is true”.

Pike’s notion of human freedom is one of complete spontaneity of action. For all of my conscious actions that I take, I could choose to act differently. I always have the ability or power to do other than that which I actually do. Certainly, many of my behaviors are highly predictable, but nonetheless there is no fundamental restriction (such as God’s omniscience) that prevents me from doing otherwise. I am inclined to agree with this definition, and will argue in favor of it against an alternative later in this section.

Give these two definitions, the contradiction in Pike’s example is readily apparent. God knows eighty years ago that Jones will mow his lawn on Saturday. However, Jones has the freedom to not mow the lawn on Saturday. If he exercises this freedom then God was wrong eighty years ago. This contradicts God’s omniscience as stated above because God’s belief in Jones mowing his lawn on Saturday entails the truth of the proposition. Jones could not have chosen to do other than to mow the lawn on Saturday because God is everlasting (he existed without beginning) and so always believed that Jones would mow the lawn on Saturday. The same limitation on free will would develop if God believed eighty years ago that Jones does not mow the lawn on Saturday, in which case it would not be within Jones’ power to mow the lawn on Saturday.

It can be objected that it was not God’s knowledge that caused (and forced) Jones to mow the lawn, but rather it was Jones’ mowing of the lawn that caused God to know. In other words, God’s knowledge is contingent on Jones’ free will decision. However, this account is unacceptable given the assumption of an everlasting God. This God exists with the rest of the world in the present and progresses with it from the past to the present to the future. For this account to succeed, Jones’ actions in the present must determine beliefs in the past. Pike writes that this is an a priori impossibility – no action performed at a given time can alter the fact that a given person held a certain belief at a time prior to the time in question. Such an occurrence would be an example of retrocausation, and Alan Padgett gives a more thorough argument of why it is impossible, as it results in an arbitrariness of time and a breakdown of the definitions of the past, present and future.³

To resolve the contradiction, we might therefore reconsider the three assumed propositions: humans are free, God is omniscient, and God is everlasting. First, perhaps Pike’s definition of free will is too broad. As stated earlier, many of the decisions one makes are highly predictable. Research in psychology and neuroscience has enabled us to predict many human actions and explain many seemingly free, conscious decisions in terms of subconscious inclinations. Given the success of limited human knowledge to predict with high accuracy many free decisions, certainly God in his complete knowledge can predict with complete accuracy all free will decisions. Free will then is not the ability to act with complete indifference in a given situation, but rather the ability to act according to one’s predominant desire in a given situation.

However, this is not at all in line with the intuitive feel of free will. It is true that human behavior is highly predictable, but this is because of expected goals for human actions, such as survival or positive social interaction. If I choose not to adhere to these goals and take up others, my choice of actions may change entirely. It is entirely within my ability to alter these goals, and furthermore entirely within my ability to alter my actions. Pike’s description of free will survives the objection.

Let us consider his definition of omniscience. This too seems to hold because God ought to have full knowledge of all events. This knowledge would be infringed if it is possible for God to hold false beliefs (false beliefs are by definition not knowledge). The main difficulty arises regarding God’s knowledge of the human future. Later in the paper I will revisit this point, and argue that it is a premise that the future is unknowable that ultimately resolves the contradiction. More must be developed before that conclusion can be reached.

Finally, could it be that God is not temporal in nature? If God is not within time, then perhaps we can escape the difficulty of an action in the present determining a belief in the past by removing the belief from the past entirely. This is the direction taken by many classical philosophers, and will be further considered in the next section.

Boethius, Augustine and an Eternal God

Boethius argues that God must be eternal, where eternality is “the complete possession of an endless life enjoyed as one simultaneous whole.”⁴ God is removed from the passage of time, and therefore observes all events occurring in an “eternal Now”. In this sense, God lives all moments simultaneously, and thereby transcends the temporal life, which is nothing more than a fleeting, transitory moment: “whatever is living in time proceeds in the present from times past to times future; and nothing existing in time is so constituted as to embrace the whole span of its life at once, but it has not yet grasped tomorrow, while it has already lost yesterday.”

Augustine similarly argues that God must be eternal, that a God that is everlasting is limited in his divine fullness. He writes of God:

“Thy years neither go nor come; but ours both go and come in order that all separate moments may come to pass. All thy years stand together as one, since they are abiding. Nor do thy years past exclude the years to come because thy years do not pass away. All these years of ours shall be with thee, when all of them shall have ceased to be. Thy years are but a day, and thy day is not recurrent, but always today. Thy “today” yields not to tomorrow and does not follow yesterday. Thy “today” is eternity.”⁵

An eternal God solves Pike’s problem of omniscience and free will. No longer does God know in the past what I will choose to do in the future. Rather, God knows both simultaneously and so there is no case of backwards causation. This simultaneity renders it impossible for me to ‘change my mind’ after God has formed a belief on my action, because the belief and action occur as one from the perspective of God. Boethius writes, “God is the ever prescient spectator of all things, and the eternity of His vision, which is ever present, runs in unison with the future nature of our acts, dispensing rewards to the good, punishments to the evil.”⁶

While the Boethian eternal God solves one problem, it creates another. How exactly does an eternal God view the events that occur in my temporal life and the temporal life of the universe? For Boethius, the answer is that all parts of the life of the universe are grasped simultaneously. This, I believe, is problematic. An essential part of knowledge of the universe is the ability to grasp the order in which events occur. To understand an object is to know what caused it – to understand what came before the object that led to its existence. A viewpoint of the world that presents cause and effect simultaneously eliminates this important element of knowledge, and this would be an odd limitation on God’s omniscience. If an eternal God is to be viable, the description must be changed, or at least refined. To do this, I will use J. Ellis McTaggart’s two conceptions of time.

McTaggart and the B-Series Conception of Divine Eternality

McTaggart writes that there are two ways in which we distinguish between positions in time.⁷ The first class describes events as past, present or future (where events are equivalent to positions in time). This class is called the A-series and describes time as “the series of positions running from the far past through the near past to the present, and then from the present to the near future and the far future”. The B-series, on the other hand, is the description of events as occurring earlier than, simultaneous with, or later than other events. Distinctions in the B-series are permanent because an event that is earlier than another event will always be earlier, and an event that is later than another event will always be later. Distinctions in the A-series are never permanent because all events are at one time the past, at another time the present, and at another time the future.

McTaggart argues that real time requires an A-series ordering.⁸ Real time requires change, and even when things do not change they are only perceived in relation to other things that are changing. Because the B-series of events is permanent and thus unchanging it is insufficient to explain time, and so time as change necessitates an A-series. That which is temporal has an A-series ordering of time. An eternal God, however, is atemporal and thus could not be part of an A-series conception of time. This agrees with the Boethian view that God does not perceive events occurring in the past, present and future. The B-series, because it does not involve change, is insufficient for an account of time, and can therefore be attributed to an eternal God.⁹ In doing so, the objection to Boethius presented above can be resolved.

An eternal God who perceives a B-series but not an A-series does not experience events occurring as tensed events in the past, present and future. Rather, events are perceived in a static ordering, observed all at once. While the A-series elevates the present because it is the only point of direct experience (while the past and future are perceived only through memory and prediction, respectively), the B-series views all events equally without a temporal reference point. Events in a B-series nonetheless have a definite order and so, as McTaggart observes, if events are in the order M, N, O, P then they are not in the order M, O, N, P or O, N, M, P or any other possible order.

Given that God observes events in a B-series, it must be refined what is meant when it is said that he observes all events simultaneously. In one sense, it is simultaneous because God can see all of the events at once, just as I see at once all the books lined up on a bookshelf. However, and more importantly, the events are not simultaneous (stretching somewhat the definition of simultaneity) because the events have a defined order. There is a definite order to the books lined up on a shelf. This account allows an eternal God to view the causal chain between events because he views them in their temporal order, but not occurring in their temporal order. In doing so, God’s omniscience is not limited as it was in the Boethian theory. Furthermore, human freedom is still maintained because God views the entire bookshelf of events at once, and included on this shelf are books of choices on human freedom. Omniscience, free will and eternality are reconciled.

The Problem of God’s Eternality and Divine Action

I stated at the outset of this paper that my goal was to provide a consistent account of human free will with divine omniscience and divine action. To this point I have done this with the first two, but can divine action be included in this account of an eternal God? By divine action, I mean a God who serves as an agent of change in the lives of humans. This conception of God explains the primary function of prayer. One prays to God because he believes that God is capable of hearing his prayer and, based on the act of prayer, God will take action. There is not a guarantee of divine action based on prayer, but there is certainly a belief that prayer encourages divine action.

I will consider two examples of divine action. These events need not have actually occurred, only that they might possibly have occurred. First, Moses prays to God as he is leading the Israelites out of Egypt. God hears Moses’ prayer and acts in the form of parting the Red Sea and the Israelites cross to safety. Second, a boy afflicted with cancer prays a month ago to be cured. God hears the boy’s prayer, acts to ensure a successful chemotherapy treatment, and a week later it is found that the cancer is in remission.

Let us assume that for both examples God’s action was what I will call a true divine action, which has two characteristics. First, in a true divine action God does not act unless he receives the proper prayer. If Moses had not prayed to God, then God would not have parted the Red Sea. Second, a true divine action is one in which the actual outcome would not have occurred if God had not acted. If God had not intervened in the chemotherapy treatment, then the boy would not have been cured.

From a human perspective, there is a definite temporal ordering of the two events. Moses’ prayer occurred thousands of years before the boy’s prayer. God’s action in response to Moses’ prayer likewise occurred thousands of years before God’s action in response to the boy’s prayer. Does this require God’s action, from the divine perspective, to be temporal as well?

The working description of God is a being that is eternal but views the events of the world in a B-series ordering as though looking at the books arranged on a bookshelf. One such book is Moses praying to God, followed by a book on God parting the Red Sea. Another book further along the shelf is a book on the boy praying to be cured, followed by a book on the successful chemotherapy treatment. However, the acts of prayer were free will decisions by Moses and the boy. Certainly, it was in their interest to pray given the dire circumstances they faced, but it was entirely within their power to opt not to pray if they so chose. To deny this is to deny their meaningful freedom as defined earlier. Additionally, because God’s actions in the two examples were true divine actions, God acted only because the two people prayed.

Because the actions of Moses and the boy were free will actions, God could not have acted until they prayed. His action was contingent on the act of prayer. In other words, God had to wait until Moses prayed before he chose to part the Red Sea. God’s decision could not have been predetermined because he would not have chosen to part the sea if Moses had not chosen freely to pray. But the act of waiting requires temporality because one action cannot occur until a time following another action. Therefore, God’s action in answering prayer is necessarily temporal.

Nicholas Wolterstorff argues this same point in a slightly different fashion.¹⁰ In order to act in the temporal world, God must have a certain kind of knowledge that goes beyond that which would be afforded from a B-series ordering of time. God must be able to know of some temporal events that they are occurring (that they are present), of other temporal events that they were occurring (that they are past), and of still other temporal events that they will be occurring (that they are future). The B-series ordering gives God knowledge only of the order in which events occur, but no knowledge of tenses – those events that have occurred, are occurring, or will occur. A God that acts according to free will decisions learns what happens when they happen, and thus must act according to knowledge of the time in which events occur. In order to allow for divine action, God must exist in an A-series ordering (one that includes tenses of past, present and future) in addition to a B-series ordering. As a result, God cannot be eternal.

God Acting According to Divine Action Conditionals

It can be objected that it is not the case that God waits for humans to make free decisions, and only then does he determine the proper divine action. God, given his omniscience, can surely grasp the full range of all possible free will decisions in all possible situations. Therefore, perhaps God has established a set of conditionals defining his actions given all free decisions. For example, when the wheels of the universe and time were put in motion, God established the conditional “If Moses prays to me while fleeing from the Egyptians, then I will part the Red Sea”. Additionally, he established the conditional “If Moses does not pray to me while fleeing from the Egyptians, then I will not part the Red Sea”.

Given these conditionals, God no longer needs to locate the moment in time when Moses chooses freely to pray for the Red Sea to be parted. He does not wait for prayer and then chooses to act, but rather there is a rule that is automatically applied if a sufficient condition is met. God can remain outside of time as he inspects the many books of time (which now includes some of his actions), but he is still capable of answering prayers in the sense that prayers bring about divine response, while the absence of prayer brings about an absence of response.

I believe that this conception would limit God in a critical way, and for this reason is not acceptable. Throughout this paper, I have assumed that humans posses free will. When presented with a conscious decision, it is within human power to choose the response. The decision is not predetermined and there is never a necessary result given a set of conditions. If humans possess this amount of freedom, surely God should possess it as well. But if he acts according to conditionals, then his actions are predetermined – it is not within his power to act other than how a conditional dictates. It is true that God himself determined the conditionals, and is free in the sense that he determined the rules of his actions. However, I find the existence of rules at all to be fundamentally limiting, and therefore result in a type of freedom less than that of human freedom. Accordingly, the objection fails and we are left with the problem that a God that exhibits divine action cannot be eternal and must be temporal.

Open Theism and a Revised Conception of an Everlasting God

I wrote earlier in the paper that I would consider a possible revision on God’s omniscience to reconcile divine omniscience and free will. Given that the attempt to revise God’s relationship to time (by making him eternal) was unsuccessful, I will now consider this alternate option. In doing so I will preserve the definition of omniscience as knowing everything that can be known, but with a significant limitation on what can be known.

An open theist holds that because the future has not yet occurred, it is entirely open and therefore completely unknowable. In fact, this move is entirely rational. The present as we experience it, and only the present, is completely real, and therefore we can have knowledge of it. The past, because it was once the present, is also real and so we can have knowledge of it as well. The future, however, cannot make this claim to reality. An open future is a future in which no one, including God, can have any knowledge of because there is nothing to be known of that which is not real. Knowledge of the future is akin to knowledge of square circles; both are logical impossibilities that cannot be known. Therefore, a claim that God does not know the future is completely consistent with his omniscience – he knows only that which can be known. Additionally, an open future requires that God be temporal because the future fundamentally differs from the past and present in that the latter two are known completely by God, while God cannot know the former. God can readily distinguish between the past, present and future and so exists in an A-series order of time.

God’s relationship to time for an open theist is better understood by way of analogy, as described by J.R. Lucas¹¹: “Instead of thinking of God’s providence as a sort of blue-print, we should liken it to the Persian rug-maker, who lets his children work at one end while he does the other.” Rather than being predetermined as a blueprint and unknown only to the extent that it cannot be properly read, the future ought to be conceived as an unwoven rug. As the rug is woven the future becomes known as the present and past, in a limited capacity to humans and in its completeness to an everlasting and omniscient God.

An open future also allows for full human free will. Choices are made in the present and determine the future. God does not know what choice I will make until I make it because there is no knowledge of my future. Upon my making a free choice, God, as a temporal being, acts according to what he deems to be proper reward or punishment. Open theism allows for the desired reconciliation of omniscience, free will and divine action.

It might be objected that open theism poses too severe a limitation on God’s omniscience and therefore departs too radically from the general theist’s understanding of omniscience. However, on closer inspection the limitation is not nearly as significant as might first be thought. While God cannot know the future, there are many elements of it that he can be very well justified in believing. For example, given humanity’s finite but extensive scientific knowledge of the past, we have been able to make fantastically accurate predictions about future events. God, as possessor of complete knowledge of the past, will be remarkably better at predicting the future than any human theory. To the extent that physical laws of the past hold in the future, God’s ability to predict the future is limited only by free will decisions, and so his ability to predict the future is quite extensive and successful. A God who possesses complete knowledge of the past is still one that ought to be revered because this knowledge is readily extended into a future that has yet to be realized.

In sum, it should be noted that while I believe I have shown that a temporal description of God under open theism reconciles several commonly held divine attributes, I do not claim that it reconciles all of the commonly held divine attributes. For example, many believe that God is a necessary being. If time is contingent and God is a part of time, then it would seem that God too is contingent. This question will require considerably more exploration, with one possible route being Garrett DeWeese’s argument for God existing necessarily in metaphysical time rather than contingently in physical time.¹² Nonetheless, the task accomplished in this paper is considerable and demonstrates how, in addition to considering the challenges of describing any single divine attribute, it is equally if not more challenging to describe how many attributes can coexist in a single being.

Endnotes

I. Introduction

The debate on the role of neuroscience in the context of the law has crucial repercussions for the notion of legal responsibility. Legal responsibility and moral responsibility are not necessarily analogous; however, there is a strong correlation. Moral responsibility often informs our sense of legal responsibility, but the latter is best understood as a subset of the former. Legal responsibility is less demanding than moral responsibility mainly due to the context of its function: the courtroom. In the courtroom, evidence is the focus of judgments, whereas moral responsibility adjudicates in cases that are purely internal to an agent and transcend evidence. For example, when dealing with virtuous actions, a person probably upholds their legal responsibility when she works in a soup kitchen to feed those in need. If she would be doing so, only for personal benefit (e.g. to look virtuous or solely for economic gain) we would mostly only judge this act deplorable on moral grounds. Conversely, if a person shoots and kills another person, both legally and morally we are interested in the internal workings of the agent. Exculpatory factors derived from impairment of mental faculties, specifically in the legal domain, suggest that committing an act alone is not adequate for justifying the attribution of guilt and responsibility. These are some common conceptions of legal and moral responsibility, many of which rely on some conception of an intentional moral agent that has a will. In this paper, I first examine the text of Greene & Cohen and their conclusion that a shift to a consequentialist justification of punishment follows from a new understanding gained by neuroscience. After criticising their conclusion, I look at an article by Joel Feinberg where he outlines the differences between legal and moral responsibility. This will prepare the ground for considering Levy & Bayne as well as Ryan & Deci who argue that the will is an essential part of our understanding of responsibility and self-determination respectively. Finally, I consider Levy & Bayne’s characterological account and the plausibility it gains in direct balance to the implausibility of Greene & Cohen’s conclusion.

Greene & Cohen describe the dialectic that neuroscience encroaches on in the field of philosophy of law. There are two recourses, (1) discoveries and understanding gained through neuroscience will transform our legal attitude or (2) such a new understanding would only provide details that the current legal framework is adequately able to accommodate. They advocate the latter and take the position that neuroscience will have a transformative effect, “not by undermining [the law’s] current assumptions, but by transforming people’s moral intuitions about free will and responsibility” (Greene and Cohen 1775). They further state that our current legal principles owe their veracity to our intuitive sense of justice. It is this sense of justice that they believe will be transformed by neuroscientific discoveries. To this effect, they conclude our intuition of justice should shift from the use of punishment for retribution to punishment for consequentialist reasons. I will reject the claim that a change in our sense of justice as they describe it would not also affect current legal principles. I will attempt to expose a fundamental intuition that underlies both the current law and our intuitions of justice such that they are interdependent. Further, the arguments of Levy & Bayne 2004 about the indispensability of the will and its role within legal responsibility will add on to this discussion. I will also evaluate the potential of characterological accounts of “will” to pose a viable alternative to switching to the consequentialist solution Green & Cohen suggest to be necessary.

The interest in neuroscience for questions of law follows naturally from the dual component for legal conviction in criminal cases. The defendant must not only be proved to have committed an illegal act, but mens rea must also be established. Greene & Cohen suggest mens rea can be understood narrowly and loosely: Narrowly, Intention and on the other hand loosely as “all mental states consistent with moral and/or legal blame,” (Greene and Cohen 1775). An interest in mental states is evidence of a main assumption inherent in our legal system. This crucial connection is where our dialogue of will is most important. However, I will first outline Greene & Cohen’s theory in more detail before illustrating this point.

II. Legal Principles and Moral Intuitions

Amongst others, there are two premises that the arguments of Greene & Cohen rely upon. First, that science, specifically neuroscience will undermine the common libertarian convictions of free will and take with it the retributivist justification that depends on these convictions. This appears to be an assumption because such a move assumes we can eliminate the will. This is something Adina Roskies (2006) believes neuroscience alone is unable to do. The second premise is that a rejection of common-sense free will and retributivism “[ensues] a shift towards a consequentialist approach to punishment’ (Greene and Cohen 1776). Is this the only other option? Could the characterological approach of Levy & Bayne be plausible and thereby still preserve a notion of will? If so this would weaken Greene & Cohen‘s argument.

With these questions in mind, I will now explicate Greene & Cohen’s position. The conceptual playing field takes shape by contrasting consequentialist and retributivist justifications for punishment. Retributivist justifications of punishment according to Greene & Cohen suffer from an internal tension: compatibilism and incompatibilism of free will with determinism. They argue incompatibilist libertarian intuitions underlie the current law. This is evident, say Green & Cohen, because there is often a gap between moral intuitions and what the law deems relevant (Greene and Cohen 1776).

Greene & Cohen provide critiques of both justifications. Consequentialist justifications are forward-looking. Their aim is to insure future societal welfare but they are susceptible to objections as are most other utilitarian type theories. For many it may appear that utilitarian type theories allow the justification of anything as long as there is a greater benefit to the whole. In the case of legal responsibility, Greene & Cohen admit that “consequentialist theories fail to capture something central to common-sense intuitions about legitimate punishment” (Greene and Cohen 1776). Retributivist justifications are backward-looking and are less concerned with the welfare of society as a whole. Retributivist punishment functions more to remedy a debt that has been incurred by a criminal whether to society or another individual. Their critique of the retributivist justifications focuses on the scepticism of free will in a deterministic world.

What of this deterministic world? On the subject of determinism, they reference Peter van Inwagan (1982): “determinism is true if the world is such that its current state is completely determined by (i) the laws of physics and (ii) past states of the world” (Greene and Cohen 1777). They admit free will is often conceived as the ability to do otherwise, but note that Frankfurt (1966) questions this assumption. Later in the paper, we will consider those implications, which I believe Greene & Cohen have neglected to do. In the end, say Greene & Cohen, there are three main solutions to the problem of free will: hard determinism, libertarianism and compatibilism. They argue for a consequentialist justification for punishment since it is plausible with all three options, whereas retributivist justifications necessitate a stance on free will. They continue to expand their argument by assuming punishment can reasonably only be carried out for actions that are freely willed. Since hard determinism would undermine justification for any punishment and, according to a previous claim, libertarian views are “scientifically suspect” (Greene and Cohen 1778) they conclude that retributivism requires a compatibilist view. However, Green & Cohen believe that neuroscience will increase the tension between the “compatibilist legal principles and libertarian moral intuitions” beyond its breaking point (Ibid.), ending with an inability to support retributivist claims.

An argument that states neuroscience will not change the law (Green & Cohen refer to Morse 2004), maintains the law only requires “a general capacity for rational behaviour” to deem people legally responsible. This means a neurological explanation may well provide better and more detailed evidence of rationality, but it will not fundamentally change the law “unless it shows that people in general fail to meet the law’s very minimal requirements for rationality” (Greene and Cohen 1778). This point will be instrumental in undermining Greene & Cohen’s argument. Proponents of the fact that neuroscience will change the law, says Morse, are often committing the fundamental psycholegal error. If neuroscience provides us with a neuronal explanation of acts committed then one who commits this fallacy would argue that this fact is exculpatory for legal responsibility. However, under the assumption of physicalism, every action is caused in some way by the brain. Thus, establishing a causal relation between brain states and action is not sufficient to bring into play any legal ramifications except perhaps in the case where some brain state sufficiently impairs minimal rationality.

For this reason, Morse believes neuroscience does not pose a challenge to the law, as we currently know it. Greene & Cohen agree in principle with the subtle notion the psycholegal error elucidates but add a distinctive appeal to the moral intuitions and commitments of society. According to Greene & Cohen, “The legitimacy of the law itself depends on its adequately reflecting the moral intuitions and commitments of society. If neuroscience can change those intuitions, then neuroscience can change the law” (Greene and Cohen 1778). To circumscribe these intuitions they say what really matters for responsibility for most people is evidenced by the kinds of disjunctive questions they ask in these situations. Questions such as “was it him, or was it his genes? … Was it him, or was it his brain?” (Greene and Cohen 1778-9)

The example of Mr. Puppet highlights these intuitions. The example also accentuates the disparity between what the law’s interests are and what we intuitively hold to be true about responsibility. The law is interested in establishing minimal rationality as a prerequisite for legal responsibility, but since we can construct hypothetical situations such as Mr. Puppet, where outside control does not come at the cost of impairing rationality it appears that in the face of a deterministic worldview, which precisely postulates outside control, the law seems inadequate in separating these cases. Greene & Cohen put it this way, “rationality is just a presumed correlate of what most people really care about” (Greene and Cohen 1780). This is what underlies the fundamental psycholegal error. We are intuitively opposed to any outside forces that exert control over us, that we are quick to exculpate in any situation where that is the case. Greene & Cohen conclude that we are all similar to Mr. Puppet since determinism is true at least to some degree because of physical laws. Further, free will seems to require actions that are independent of external forces and thus requires us to reject determinism. Since determinism is true to some degree a libertarian free will is a misunderstanding and incompatible with determinism. In principle, I agree with Greene & Cohen that Mr. Puppet brings forth some vital questions about our intuitions, but I believe they have not gone deep enough in investigating a fundamental assumption that both the law and the case of Mr. Puppet share.

They believe that as we discover more about the mechanistic processes about the brain the plausibility of “dualist and libertarian intuitions” will decrease. In this respect, they compare the brain to a bottleneck through which every influence on our behaviour must flow. Neuroscience will provide us with the tools to discover what is going through this bottleneck. In a reflection on how this may play out in the future Greene & Cohen see a time where the dichotomy between the questions of being truly guilty and simply a victim of neuronal and external forces will become obsolete. For this to happen there must be an intermediate step. We need first accept that being a victim of neuronal and external forces is still sufficient for legal responsibility of any kind. Is it possible to preserve a notion of will (whatever its status) and is this perhaps required to justify any sense of being responsible for ones actions? Greene & Cohen themselves sate that “it is possible that we will never be able to fully talk ourselves out of [our intuitive sense of free will]”. (Greene and Cohen 1781). It seems plausible to say that neuroscience may inform and fine-tune our intuitions to some degree in this area. However, the central question for this paper investigates whether its elimination altogether would leave sufficient grounds for the law’s current assumptions.

III. The Case for the Law’s Dependence on Intuitions About Justice

At this point I present an intermittent argument to challenge Greene & Cohen’s conclusion that neuroscience will change our moral intuition but not change the law’s current assumptions. We pick up on the idea of rationality in a setting such as Mr. Puppet. I believe just because neuroscience may show a one-to-one correlation between brain states and actions this does not mean that our actions can be sufficiently explained at the level of a deterministic world. If the functioning within the brain does adhere to some physical laws and even if the outside world has the same physical laws this is not in principle sufficient to conclude that our environment determines our actions. This detail is putatively dismissed by Green & Cohen with the example of Mr. Puppet, and means that their conclusion makes certain implicit assumptions about the phenomenon of will.

Let us be more concrete with some examples. There are two options both in respect to the world and to our brain/mind. Either the world is (1a) determined (knowing the beginning state and all the physical laws that regulate movement to future states) or (1b) it is indetermined. On the other hand, the will could be (2a) libertarian in nature (the possibility of doing otherwise) or (2b) the will could be an illusion (where we at least appear to have the possibility of choosing otherwise) or (2c) there is no will (no moral responsibility). Greene & Cohen believe a determined world eliminates both 2a and 2b. I believe 2b is still a viable option.

To consider this, let us look at external versus internal factors. Feinberg mentions that an external factor (e.g. dust in the eye) can interfere with internal workings such as intentions, but I propose this “interference” only makes sense if the internal processes are viewed as self-contained and not just an extension of the external (determined or indetermined) world.

Thus, if neuroscience were to reveal that our will can be reduced to determined brain states we would still be interested in one person’s specific brain state for questions of moral or legal responsibility. It would not make sense to ask what the state of the world is in our attempt to discover what this person’s particular role was in the deterministic world and from this make an inference about responsibility. This illuminates a fundamental assumption, precisely, that looking at a particular part of the causal network (e.g. the individual’s brain) has more moral significance than the world at large. I believe this is a fundamental assumption the law makes. However, the kind of justice that Greene & Cohen support when they suggest that consequentialist justifications for punishment are the only plausible ones in face of a deterministic worldview undermines this assumption. Thus, they are presupposing that we would accept such a view of justice to argue that neuroscience will lead us to change our intuitions in precisely that direction. It is also possible that our intuitions about justice and more specifically our intuitions about individuality prevent us from conceiving of ourselves as simply a physical extension of the world, even if this world were to be physically determined.

The fact that the current law is interested in the internal as exemplified in the individual brain precludes such a conception of justice. Specifically, on Greene & Cohen’s account, the law’s assumptions center on the question of rationality. Recall, Morse’s statement about minimal rationality. I propose that this rationality is a question of the internal and individual brain state as opposed to a question about the world at large. Therefore, if Greene & Cohen were to suggest that our sense of justice were to change in the way they propose then this would mean “we all lack minimal rationality.” On the other hand, if we would like to argue that the law’s current assumptions are unaffected, then we must be able to maintain individuality, which has the correlate of will despite an externally determined world.

Rationality in the abstract is behaviour or reasoning that is precisely not just based on external influences. Can nature be rational? Would an earthquake be morally responsible for the deaths it caused? These two questions alone illustrate the intuitions we have about justice. If the law establishes a difference between nature at large and us as people (moral agents, who are rational) this distinction itself is witness that at least in principle there is a separate standard that we apply in the case of assumed intentional agents in both the areas of moral and legal responsibility. Using this terminology, I believe Greene & Cohen wish to say that neuroscience will demonstrate that there are no moral agents therefore we need consequentialist justifications for punishment. Does this then not change the fundamental assumptions underlying current law?

It may be possible that neuroscience reveals that we are just an extension of a determined environment. We can then either continue with an illusion to maintain our intuitions (N.J. Block (1971) makes an argument for the compatibility of mechanistic and teleological explanations of behaviour), or we can change our intuitions, but then we will also affect the law’s current assumptions. More so, because of the interconnectedness of rationality, individuality and moral agency it appears implausible to change our notion of justice without also fundamentally challenging the law’s current assumptions.

IV. Eliminating the Will

To bring forth the complexity that underlies our intuitive sense of free will Greene & Cohen delve into a psychological analysis of our perceptions of inanimate objects versus those that appear to move around at will. To make sense of the behaviour of different objects in the world our minds, say Greene & Cohen have developed two distinct cognitive systems. In this fundamental folk psychological intuition, we find the grounds for the psycholegal error. A moral agent must necessarily be seen as having a mind that acts as its own cause. Determinism would clearly undermine our attribution of such minds and thus challenge our attribution of responsibility. Greene & Cohen themselves on the topic of eliminating the will include this passage:

“many compatibilists sceptically ask what would it mean to give up on free will. Were we to give it up, wouldn’t we have to immediately reinvent it? Does not every decision involve an implicit commitment to the idea of free will? And how else would we distinguish between ordinary rational adults and other individuals, such as young children and the mentally ill, whose will – or whatever you want to call it – is clearly compromised? Free will, compatibilists argue, is here to stay, and the challenge for science is to figure out how exactly it works and not to peddle silly arguments that deny the undeniable (Dennett 2003)” (Greene and Cohen 1777)

For Greene & Cohen, the compromise that allows responsibility despite a lack of free will is exemplified with a consequentialist justification for punishment. They conclude that neuroscience will not change the law, because the law’s concerns lay elsewhere, but that the underlying intuitions or moral responsibility will change by what neuroscience can bring to the table. Free will is an illusion and our intuitions will ultimately have to change from retributivist to consequentialist justifications for punishment.

I have already made a case for a dependency of the law on our moral intuitions. Now that we have analyzed Greene & Cohen’s argument in depth, and argued against a change of intuitions that still preserves the current law, we can address the claims they have made with regard to the will. The heart of their argument depends on challenging the conception of free will. At this point, it is helpful to consider the difference between free will and will proper. Greene & Cohen’s dialectic focuses on free will since they wish to pin this against a deterministic worldview. Do they also mean to eliminate a psychological understanding of action in terms of will? Are free will and will proper synonymous, or can we derive an explanation of action in terms of will that is compatible with determinism? These questions force us to ask what it is about will that is so important in our conception of moral agency. A firm stand on this issue will help us gage the extent of influence neuroscientific discoveries may have. To help in elucidating this issue we must certainly consider the contribution of Harry Frankfurt. I believe it is plausible to take the view of Frankfurt with respect to free will combined with neurological explanations to preserve a sense of will. We shall also consider the option of replacing will with a characterological account.

First, we delineate moral responsibility by considering Feinberg; in Problematic Responsibility in Law and Morals, he provides a detailed discussion. The greatest factor separating legal and moral responsibility according to Feinberg is that “judgments of legal responsibility are strongly influenced by ulterior practical purposes” (Feinberg 341). These practical concerns deal with the inherent vagueness in judging “how … losses can best be distributed and whether certain kinds of risk-taking are to be encouraged or deterred” (Feinberg 343). Punishment and compensation are further practical concerns that a legal system must deal with (Feinberg 343). Moral responsibility according to Feinberg has many unique aspects. At large, it is “liability to charges and credits on some ideal record” (Feinberg 345). The exactness that legal questions demand such as the year and a day rule (to determine if an act contributed to a death) is inappropriate when considering moral responsibility. However moral responsibility is in principal precisely decidable as it must be read off facts and deduced from them. Further, moral judgments are “absolute” in contrast to legal judgments. Legal judgments are not as strong, since they only say the agent had an “‘important’ contribution for the purpose of the law” (Feinberg 345). Finally, moral responsibility must deliver regular and predictable judgments that are not subject to luck (Feinberg 346).

Feinberg asserts that in many situations it may be impossible to make moral judgments, since actions are not the only contributor to the outcome. Being “at fault” and moral responsibility are not identical. “A person can well be morally at fault in what he does without being morally responsible for some given harm” (Feinberg 347). Our intuition about morality is that “moral responsibility for external harm makes no sense, … moral responsibility is therefore restricted to the inner world of the mind, where the agent rules supreme and luck has no place” (Ibid.). He further mentions that this is where volition is undertaken and intentions formed where an agent “govern[s] those inner thoughts and volitions which are completely subject to [her] control” (Ibid.)

Even though moral responsibility primarily looks towards the inner workings Feinberg continues and shows how even moral responsibility can be susceptible to an outside influence (e.g. luck) such as a speck of dust in one’s eye that interrupts someone’s rage from progressing (Feinberg 349). Feinberg notices it is odd to speak of responsibility for one’s intentions, but: “having a character of a certain sort is often a necessary condition for the forming of any particular intention” (Ibid.). By hypothesizing two agents with similar character but different intentions formed (due to external influence), Feinberg concludes that responsibility is not derived from character alone, but rather from how important of a contributor the character was in the particular situation (Feinberg 350). By making a list of possible contributors towards forming a certain intention despite character Feinberg points out that some of these contributing factors are external in nature (ie. Upset stomach, rude remarks, hyperactive adrenal gland). In this sense, we arrive at the same problem as with legal responsibility; (Feinberg 350-1) the problem of exactness and balancing factors that have contributed to the intention. Feinberg’s final and central claim is that it is a “mistake to think that by restricting responsibility to an inner jurisdiction we can thereby make precise its vaguenesses [sic]and eliminate its contingencies [sic]” (Feinberg 351). This illustrates some of the similarities between legal and moral responsibility.

What of the balance between internal and external factors? What Morse calls the fundamental psycholegal error is summed up by “regard[ing] actions only as fully free when those actions are seen as robust against determination by external forces” (Greene and Cohen 1780). This is evidence to their anti-compatibilist tendencies. Most of their discussion looks at the role of free will. They believe libertarian conceptions of free will are in contradiction with neuroscience. (Ibid.) Ryan & Deci hash out what kind of understanding of will can stand in the face of neuroscience. They agree that the understanding of Descartes postulating a force that tilts the mechanical processes in the brain is such a version of the will that cannot stand up to neuroscience (Ryan and Deci 1571). In their discussion on autonomy, Ryan & Deci explore several philosophical notions to define autonomy. Both from a phenomenological perspective and modern analytical approaches we see that independence from external influences or constraints is not necessary to have autonomy. In both cases, assent or consent to these influences is sufficient for autonomy (Ryan and Deci 1560-2). The self-determination theory (SDT) of autonomy is used in discussions of psychological aspects relevant to autonomy. In this context the opposite of autonomy, heteronomy, is defined as “regulation…by forces experienced as alien or pressuring, be they inner impulses or demands, or external contingencies” (Ryan and Deci 1562). Ryan & Deci bring further depth to an understanding of autonomy. Instead of an all or nothing autonomy, they propose that “within SDT, autonomy for any given action is a matter of degree” (Ryan and Deci 1563). If this is the case, it makes the dispute between proponents of will-talk and those that maintain it to be an illusion more complex.

Both the notions that Feinberg and Ryan & Deci bring forth show that despite external influences (even inner workings of the brain) our intuitions still support an investigation of intention. Even though Feinberg admits our character can be influenced by alien forces it is a determination of the degree of influence that has a bearing on responsibility. The term “will” can thus be understood as an overarching term, a mental place holder, that bears testimony to a fundamental assumption underlying our intuitions about responsibility.

V. The Charaterological Account

Levy & Bayne bring to the table examples of pathologies of the will. Since it is our purpose to argue for behaviour with the aid of the notion of will it would be begging the question to speak of pathologies of the “will”. Thus, we will consider the example of Levy & Bayne as pathologies of the common notion of agency. If we succeed in showing that these pathologies indispensably require the notion of will to make them intelligible then we would succeeded in opening the way for the indispensability of the will. Evaluating this claim, however, is not within the scope of this paper, rather, if we can show that the characterological account of the will, which Levy & Bayne provide is sufficient for maintaining a retributivist justification of punishment we have still weakened the claim of Greene & Cohen.

We begin by looking at the argument of Levy & Bayne. A very helpful distinction they make is to separate the notion of will into three senses of the notion: genesis of action, phenomenology of agency and degree of effort. For responsibility Levy & Bayne maintain that an agent must “exercise a certain form (or degree) of control” (Levy and Bayne 465). They then discuss the situation of loss of control. If rational control is required for responsibility there can be two “disorders of control” namely failures of authority and failures of inhibition. Failures of authority: “call[s] into question the ascription of the action to the agent” (Ibid.). Failures of inhibition: the action is ascribed to the agent, but the agent “has lost rational control over their actions” (Ibid.). They also note that there is a parallel between the depletion of rationality in delusional persons and the impaired agency at the root of pathologies of the will.

Since much rests on the ability of control Levy & Bayne, strongly link this capacity with responsibility. They then continue to offer another possibility in the form of a characterological account that maintains a notion of responsibility despite a lack of traditional control over one’s actions. Frankfurt is instrumental in providing an example where this would be desired. Levy & Bayne summarize this contribution of Frankfurt by saying “rather than identify an agent’s character with the mechanisms that underlie the normal control of their actions….agents are fully responsible for their actions only if they are the product of desires that they endorse” (Levy and Bayne 467). On this account, the notion of will could simply correspond to an endorsement of actions. This would be similar to Ryan & Deci’s self-determination theory. Hereby we rescue retributivist justifications by appeal to character. This only leaves the problem of adjudicating between a lack of the capacities of self-control and the degree to which they have been exercised to determine whether an agent endorses an action (Levy and Bayne 468).

VI. Conclusion

I thus conclude that elimination of will may not prevent a model of legal/moral responsibility, but doing so would change the current intuitions about moral responsibility quite extremely. The discoveries of neuroscience will not be sufficient to change our moral intuitions to such a degree, especially because we have other alternative ways of conceiving will that preserve the underlying libertarian intuitions. Even in the case where alien influences on our will challenge our libertarian intuitions, Frankfurt and Levy & Bayne offer responsibility grounded in character. Inclusion of will is a prima facie requirement for legal responsibility, but even if a libertarian will cannot be supported it is not necessary to adopt a consequentialist justification for punishment. Finally, if this strong conclusion is unconvincing I propose that the will is at minimum a critical notion that functions as a mental placeholder to make discussions of legal/moral responsibility intelligible, since moral responsibility conceptually requires an intentional agent. Thus, even in a consequentialist justification we would need to acknowledge moral agents if we want to have a conception of what is best for a society of intentional agents.

References

Feinberg, Joel. “Problematic Responsibility in Law and Morals.” The Philosophical Review July 1962: 340-351.

Frankfurt, Harry G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” The Journal of Philosophy (1969): 829-839.

Golding, Martin P. “Responsibility.” The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory. Ed. M. Golding and W. Edmunson. 2006. 236-247.

Greene, Joshua and Jonathan Cohen. “For the law, neuroscience changes nothing and everything.” The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (2004): 1775-1785.

Levy, Neil and Tim Bayne. “A will of one’s own: Consciousness, control, and character.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry (2004): 459-470.

Morse, Stephen J. “Moral and legal responsibility and the new neuroscience.” Neuroethics. Defining the issues in theory, practice and policy. Oxford University Press, 2006. 33-49.

Roskies, Adina. “Neuroscientific Challenges to Free Will and Responsibility.” TRENDS in Cognitive Science 10.9 (2006): 419-423.

Ryan, Richard M. and Edward L. Deci. “Self-Regulation and the Problem of Human Autonomy: Does Psychology Need Choice, Self-Determination, and Will?” Journal of Personality (2006): 1557-1585.

Markus Prinz (‘09) is a Philosophy Major at McGill University.

Abstract: This paper discusses the central argument of A World of States of Affairs by David Armstrong, which is intended to posit states of affairs as fundamental ontological entities. This ‘truth-maker’ argument is intended to conclude that states of affairs are what make propositions true; I explore this position and the response by David Lewis, which is a tentative rejection of Armstrong’s position in favour of a supremely permissive combinatorialism.

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The sentence “the sun is bright” expresses a true proposition. What, if anything, makes it true? The tentative answer by D.M. Armstrong, which may be found in his fine A World of States of Affairs is that some state of affairs (a technical term which will be defined), some constituent of a state of affairs, or some combination of these makes such propositions true (assuming that brightness is a property which does not depend on a relation between two or more things). This hypothesis and a response to it by David Lewis will be considered.

Armstrong considers those propositions which have been thought about or stated. Truth attaches to some of these propositions (he does not elaborate this attachment.) It is these truths which states of affairs and their constituents correspond to in the ‘truth-making’¹ process. For clarity, truth-makers will be spoken of as corresponding to propositions rather than truths.

Armstrong’s general hypothesis is that states of affairs and their constituents are ontologically exhaustive-there is nothing else. The constituents of states of affairs are particulars (individual things with their properties mentally abstracted from them, as far as this is possible), properties, external relations, and, in the case of higher-order states of affairs, lower-order states of affairs.

‘Constituent’ is used here rather abstractly. For example, properties and relations are types of states of affairs, or universals. The nature of universals will be discussed when we contrast them with particular properties, or tropes. External relations are distinguished from internal relations: those things which are externally related do not necessitate their relationship. ‘The Morning Star’ having the same referent as ‘the Evening Star’ is an external relation; the Morning Star’s identity to the Evening Star is an internal relation.

The necessary and sufficient condition for a state of affairs can now be given: either a particular has a property or, alternatively, there is an external relation between particulars. Every state of affairs and constituent thereof is an actual and contingent part of this world. This is to say that none are merely possible, yet the existence of any is not necessary.

Armstrong seems to assume that truths require something which makes them true. The proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” is not true simpliciter. It will be seen that a state of affairs-the sun’s being bright-is the most probable candidate for making it so. Why does Armstrong perceive this connection between the proposition and this state of affairs? It must be kept in mind that he is, in A World of States of Affairs, influenced by philosophers such as Wittgenstein (in his earlier philosophy) and John Anderson. They held that reality has a propositional structure.

Some propositions require truth-makers; some constituents of states of affairs require an ‘instantiation’:

We are making the venture that the world contains both particulars and universals. It would certainly seem that if this is so, then something is needed to weld them together (Armstrong 114-115)

In the present example, the particular is the sun and the universal which is ‘welded’ to it-which it instantiates-is the property of brightness. This state of affairs does not make the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” true by a causal process; it is a process unlike making a light turn on by flipping a switch.

The truth-making relation is internal. The necessity of the relation is evident from the proposition “a truth-maker makes its corresponding proposition true.” This proposition is analytic: it cannot be false due to the meaning of its words. Armstrong makes the point in terms of possible worlds. If there is a particular truth-maker for a proposition, then there is no possible world in which the truth-maker exists but the proposition is false.

Armstrong arrives at his hypothesis of states of affairs as truth-makers by evaluating and rejecting less viable candidates. Corresponding to his scheme, we will consider the sun, the pair of the sun and brightness, and a version of trope theory as potential truth-makers of the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright.”

First of all, it is plainly absurd for the sun without any of its properties to be the ontological ground for the sun’s having a property. Secondly, the sun and the property of brightness are not necessarily tied together on Armstrong’s view. There is some possible world in which the pair exists but the sun does not instantiate brightness. Because of this world, it is not necessary-it is not the case in all possible worlds-that the proposition expressed by “the sun is bright” to be made true by the pair of the sun and brightness.

Armstrong is less dismissive of the trope view. Properties and relations have so far been treated as universals. Theories which hold that universals are real may acknowledge their abstract nature in some sense. The sun, a powered light bulb, and any other bright thing have brightness, so we can conceptually abstract this property from these things. But as a universal, brightness exists au)to_n e)n th~ au(tou~ xw&ra as a type of state of affairs. Universals-properties and relations-are entirely present in anything which instantiates them. Furthermore, the brightness of some particular thing is identical to the brightness of something else. The sense of identity which I use is no less strict than self-identity.

The reality of universals can reasonably be denied by a trope theorist. A trope is an instance of a property or relation-the particular brightness of a lamp or the distance between the sun and me at some instant.² The brightness of a lamp is not identical to the brightness of the sun; they are two different properties.

There are many variants of trope theory. If a pair consisting of a particular and a universal cannot be a truth-maker, can a pair consisting of a particular and an instance of a property? Armstrong immediately rejects those theories which hold that things have tropes contingently. If lamp L₁ has brightness B₁ contingently, there is a possible world in which they exist independently. The proposition expressed by “L₁ has B₁” cannot, then, hold an internal relation with the pair L₁ and B₁.

Trope theories which posit a necessary tie between particulars and their tropes are somewhat reluctantly rejected. Armstrong dislikes the amount of necessity in the world which follows from these theories. If every instance of a property (and, perhaps, every instance of a relation) exists necessarily where it does, we have a world view quite different from Armstrong’s thoroughly contingent-though tentative-ontology.

Armstrong also rejects those trope theories which deny the existence of particulars. Such theories are known as ‘bundle’ theories because particulars are postulated as mere bundles of tropes. The principal problem Armstrong has with such theories is that states of affairs are not purported to be any ontological addition to bundles of tropes. He even considers tropes to be constituents of states of affairs in such circumstances.

States of affairs and their constituents are thus the most likely truth-makers for contingently true propositions. Furthermore, necessarily true propositions-propositions of mathematics and logic, for example-have no truth-makers beyond these entities. A proposition may possess truth from many truth-makers. Consider the proposition expressed by “at least one person exists.” This proposition is made true by each state of affairs wherein a person has those properties which define her as a person. Somebody being rational and somebody being an animal are examples of such states of affairs. Since either of these states of affairs also makes the proposition expressed by “either at least one person exists or the moon is made of cheese” true, there may be many true propositions for a single truth-maker.

David Lewis is disconcerted by an element of necessity in this theory. Consider some particular star and the property of brightness. These constituents are distinct entities. The state of affairs wherein that star is bright is a third distinct entity. Yet if the particular star we have selected has the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily exists; if the sun lacks the property of brightness, the state of affairs necessarily does not exist.

Lewis considers these conditions strange for an independent entity. If the state of affairs is an independent entity, it should be able to exist or to not exist, regardless of the particular star, the property of brightness, or any other distinct entity.

This flows from the ontology which Lewis holds, wherein any combination of possibilia is permitted. Possibilia are “wholes and parts admitted by the most permissive sort of mereology” (Lewis, 2004, p. 250). They can actually exist or be merely possible; spatiotemporal regions, force fields, gods, and spooks are all included.

There is thus a tension between states of affairs and the extreme ‘combinatorialism’ which Lewis endorses. Lewis responds by cautioning against using terms of the form ‘the state of affairs wherein A has B’ interchangeably with ‘A has B’ without seriously considering whether the former is distinct from the latter. He never, however, explicitly states that the two have equivalent referents.

Armstrong’s argument for states of affairs is based on the requirement for a truth-maker; Lewis therefore considers this need. He agrees that some part of the world should, seemingly, be a truth-maker for every contingent truth. Whether or not one believes in the reality of universals-and Lewis does not-this intuition is, perhaps, common. It is certainly easy to agree with Lewis that Armstrong’s coherent metaphysic provides a simple and effective solution to a complex problem.

Works Cited

Armstrong, D. M. A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Lewis, David. “The Truthmakers.” Times Literary Supplement 13 Feb. 1998: 30.

Lewis, David. “New Work for a Theory of Universals.” Metaphysics: A Guide and Anthology. Ed. Tim Crane and Katalin Farkas. 2^nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 249-261.

Footnotes