The Stupidity of Philosophers – Story of Civilization VIII.xxi.v-VIII.xxiv.vi

I have often thought that many of the theories of the great minds of the past could have been entirely avoided by a proper training in modern natural science.

Nowhere can we find a better illustration of this hypothesis than with Gottfried Leibniz.  Leibniz’s most famous contribution to philosophy is his theory of monads: monads are the fundamental constituents of all reality; they possess mental characteristics, and a monad underlies each man’s consciousness; they strive and change according to their own will, and each one is independent of the outside universe, but perceives it.

Leibniz had apparently been inspired by the reports of the first microscopists of cells, and the tiny organisms inhabiting diverse matter.  Of course, cells, it turns out, are quite different from monads, and are governed by the same laws as the rest of the world, which, it turns out, is not composed of monads, but rather of atoms.

Some apologists will argue for Leibniz, translating perception as influence, monads as electrons or subatomic particles, and so on ad nauseam.  There is no ground for such interpretations.

This is not to argue, as I have suggested in my title, that Leibniz was stupid.  He, along with Newton, invented calculus, and his theory of geology was remarkably consistent with the most modern ideas.  He was a scholar of high repute and had far-seeing ambitions for the future of academia.

It just seems unfortunate that, like Spinoza, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Berkeley before him, Leibniz should have devoted so much time and effort to a purely deductive philosophy which took as its starting point an undeveloped and largely ignorant science.  The weak metaphysics of these philosophers may have prevented them from building their theories of ethics and government on solid ground.  Modern philosophy is in a much stronger position, having been freed from metaphysical pursuits by the advances of physics, and losing the need for deduction with the ever-increasing panorama of history now opened before us.

So where are the philosophers?

Review – “Can’t Be Tamed” – Part 1

Where to begin?  In many ways, Miley Cyrus’s “Can’t Be Tamed” covers what, by the standards of our lightning-fast age, is very old ground.  A young pop diva clad in next to nothing bumping and grinding with a dance troupe while singing ambiguously sexual lyrics… the newest thing I saw was the special effects quality, which has mercifully improved from the days of “Oops, I Did It Again”.  Otherwise, change the words (including the pop star’s name), add a slight shift in theme, and this could be 2000.  Cyrus, after an abbreviated youth, is even being groomed to look like <Britney, Christina, Madonna, Go-on-a>.

So what’s new?  “Can’t Be Tamed” has received extraordinary media attention primarily, I think, because of Cyrus’s age, which is not yet the magical eighteen.  Prior to viewing the production, I had been misled by the blogosphere into thinking that there was some question as to whether the video is or is not age-appropriate.  If by “not age-appropriate” it is meant that the production is a bunch of suits marketing a seventeen-year-old girl’s body, then yes, it’s not age-appropriate.  As I watched the video, I couldn’t help wondering whether our culture has truly, finally, achieved decadence.

So what are the moral implications, vis-à-vis society, of this video?  (I have no idea what I’ll conclude.)

The proposition, by the opponents of a video like this, is that the sexual trafficking of a seventeen-year-old girl is wrong.  I think there are two lines of thought that commonly contribute to this proposition.  One (the “puritanical” proposition) is that sex, in all or most of its varieties, is inherently sordid, and that such trafficking as this video ought to be prohibited for the moral good of all concerned – producers, viewers, and diva.  The other (the “not-yet” proposition) is that, withholding judgment on the ultimate morality of sex, seventeen-year-olds do not possess the maturity, emotional stability, worldliness, or any of innumerable other qualities that are implicitly assumed to advance with age.

Let’s begin with the not-yet proposition, and defend it from some cheap attacks.  First, many will argue, the “not-yet” proposition is problematic because why should we say that eighteen-year-olds, but not seventeen-year-olds, have whatever qualities are necessary to make sexual decisions?  (An instance of the argument by degrees.)  And why assume that the advancement of these qualities is uniform?  Could not there be some who ought to be permitted to make such decisions earlier, and some later?  And what’s more, is there even broad societal consensus on what these qualities are?  Couldn’t we just call this an antiquated and unexamined tradition that Miley Cyrus, for one, can safely discard?

Let us propose that there is – yes, there is – a broad consensus on what some of these qualities might be, and a reason that they occur magically and exactly at eighteen for all men.  This is the notion of economic self-sufficiency.  There are many magical changes that occur at the age of eighteen, by virtue of laws having to do with wages, parental relations, taxes, criminal behavior, military service, etc. that treat eighteen-year-olds as adults but seventeen-year-olds as children.  Many – most – of these changes have nothing to do with sexual maturity, and we confess all of them to be arbitrary, but any discussion of sexual mores cannot escape these other laws as a backdrop.

But all we have really done here is punted the problem.  We have proven that there is an exact, defined difference between seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds that is not trivial (i.e. merely a tautology of their age), but we have based that proof on the existence of other arbitrary societal conventions that themselves are vulnerable to the argument by degrees.  So is there anything really magical about turning eighteen, that an enterprising crusader for sexual freedom, like Miley Cyrus, could not overturn?  I think even our most enterprising crusader would concede that infants are incapable of economic self-sufficiency, while the vast majority of forty-year-olds are self-sufficient.  To prevent the cruel economic usage of infants, which we almost universally condemn as violating the taboo against the exploitation of helpless humanity, we must have laws that decide who is self-sufficient and who is not.  Such laws cannot act on a case-by-case basis, because this would be prohibitively expensive.  They could act on a class-by-class basis, and classify individuals between zero and forty into multiple classes, some economically self-sufficient and some not.  This would appear to be the optimal solution, but it would probably be difficult to form a societal consensus on what the qualifications to enter into the self-sufficient class should be.  What’s more, in even today egalitarian society, such a practice would probably increase social stratification, which we deem repugnant.  (It is ironic that we should rely so much on our biases in a discussion of the sexual trafficking of children.).  In the absence of case-by-case treatment or class-by-class treatment, we are left with age-determinate universal treatment, or some system not relying on top-down determination of self-sufficiency.  The latter system would be sufficiently radical that we shall set its proponents aside as outside the sphere of our present discussion, for desiring to reform far more than sexual liberty.

Once we have arrived at age-determinate universal treatment, we are left only to quibble about the particular age at which people achieve economic self-sufficiency.  We assume that there is nothing logically impossible about that age being eighteen.

But the next objection to sexual liberty at eighteen also applies to economic liberty.  This is the argument that some achieve the qualities requisite for economic self-sufficiency far earlier than others.  Our logical demonstration that there ought to be a universal age of economic self-sufficiency would appear to preclude this argument, but perhaps the unfairness of such a system to those whom it oppresses, who possess all the prerequisites for freedom without its perquisites, is a persuasive argument against it.

In response to this, we would propose that the age at which economic self-sufficiency occurs follows a distribution heavily centered around a relatively narrow range of values, and that there may be numerous outliers.  Our task as legislators would be to select an age as the age of maturity that will give the overwhelming majority of citizens protection from exploitation before they are, in fact, economically self-sufficient, while letting a very few suffer from such exploitation because they are, in fact, not equipped to make their own decisions.  Those who are oppressed by the system for years, just like the few who are released prematurely, are the costs of justice and prosperity for the rest.  (Shockingly, I have written no post on the opposing positions on this problem presented in Crito and The Shawshank Redemption, but the case of the unjustly-treated individuals is itself a philosophical problem that we shall, again, set aside.  I have treated it extremely briefly here.)

We have now shown that there is a magical switch that does occur at eighteen, and that, logically speaking, this could maybe be justified, though we have not done so.  But is this related to sexual freedom?  To answer this, we must examine the qualities that could be requisite for sexual maturity.

Intellectual exhaustion sets in.  More later.  Who knew there was so much to say about such ephemeral strumpetry as Miley Cyrus?

What Went Wrong? – Story of Civilization VI.xvi.viii-VI.xxiii.viii

“If God spare me life, ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scripture than you do.” With these words, William Tyndale answered a man who disapproved Tyndale’s efforts to translate and print the Bible in English for the first time.

The words capture well the sentiment of the first years of printing. Just like Aldus Manutius in Venice, Tyndale saw in the printing press the beginning of an era when obstacles and impediments to the spread of knowledge were about to disappear. Tyndale assumed that when the press allowed him to create, at fractions of its former cost, vernacular editions of the Bible for every man, woman, and child in England, nothing further would stand in the way of the spread of full knowledge of the Bible.

What went wrong? It’s five hundred years after Tyndale forecast the wisdom of farmhands, and the children of the country – nay, the whole of society – seem as ignorant of the Bible as in Tyndale’s day. A reference, from a clearly biased, but well-referenced source, cites many examples of Biblical illiteracy. For example, “God helps those who helps themselves” is supposed to be the most widely-known Bible verse in America, despite the fact that it is not actually in the Bible.

Perhaps it’s a problem the recognition of which Durant attributes to Roger Bacon: “But what if the progress of physical science gives man more power without improving his purposes?” (IV.xxxvii.vii) This seems to be precisely the problem that modern man faces. The medieval peasant did not know scripture not because he could not read, but because he did not care to. He was content to take his religion in small doses, on weekends, just as are people today. Knowledge is more available than ever before, but man’s desire to know it has not changed.

Still, this seems odd. One would think that the very availability of the cherished wisdom of Plato and Aristotle, Caesar and Marcus Aurelius, even Abelard, Aquinas, and Bacon, would cause their spread. One imagines that one man alone could read the classics, could transmit them to his offspring, and that from that day forward, he and his would have the wisdom of the ancients. And so the love of wisdom, and obedience to its precepts, would spread, ratchet-like, from family to family. For after all, who in their right mind would know wisdom and not use it, and teach it to his sons? (We leave aside as too complicated for present discussion the question of what wisdom is, and leave unquestioned the assumptions that it is desirable and transmissable.)

This reasoning is clearly not true, given the absence of any genuine popular effort to utilize the wisdom of the past, or even to study the Bible. Nonetheless, it is sufficiently convincing that we must require some positive explanation for man’s present behavior. It is not enough to say that what is is “human nature” and leave it at that. What is human nature? What elements of man’s character have brought him to the present pass? Why does the farmhand not wish to quote scripture to his purpose?

The answer, I think, lies in our soma society. Soma is the vaguely-described wonder drug of Huxley’s dystopian Brave New World. The drug induces extremely pleasurable “trips” or “vacations” lasting from hours to weeks, and appears to occupy much of people’s time as the ultimate mode of recreation.

There are many sources of soma in the world today: video games, television, alcohol, marijuana, pornography, literary trash, fast food, and many more. All are pleasurable in virtually limitless amounts, console our sorrows, and cap our joys. Most importantly, all are so cheap as to be easily within the reach of all but the poorest in our society. They deaden our aspiration and inspiration. Once we have achieved a mild modicum of success, we have no reason to strive, having secured access to limitless stores of soma.

What’s more, we have no reason to contemplate. What is the need to ask why, or question the eternal, after a long day’s work, and when soma is just an arm’s reach away? Why do something so hard, and to which we are unaccustomed and ill-equipped, when soma is so familiar and so easy? Soma itself appears to provide the answer. Pleasure is an end.

But perhaps the classics of today are the somas of yesteryear. Did not Vanity Fair or Dickens in their serial releases, arouse the same passion that Lost arouses today? Who can say what the future will remember as our classics? Even the lost vulgar dramas of Plato may have been somaa in their time.

And what goal is more worthy? Beyond soma, there is only the will to power. All of our virtue, all of our striving for excellence, our sexual and social pursuits, and our bold plans for better worlds, all these are only the will to power, the ambition to dominate our fellow man.

Story of Civilization – V.i.i – V.ii.ii

We begin here the study of the Renaissance, and what a relief it is to escape the medieval mind at last!

Durant describes Petrarch, the literary successor of Dante, as the first humanist: “the first writer to express with clarity and force the right of man to concern himself with this life, to enjoy and augment its beauties, and to labor to deserve well of posterity.”  Here we see, in a nutshell, what separated Petrarch and most of those who followed him from his predecessors.  “The right of man to concern himself with this life, to enjoy and augment its beauties…”  What a far cry is this from the relentless asceticism of Bernard and Francis, and the severity of Dominic!  What productive philosophy might arise from this, now that we can leave behind the vain logic-chopping of Thomas Aquinas, and the mysticism of Duns Scotus!  And now perhaps art may imitate life, and leave Dante’s putative ethereal wanderings behind.

I sometimes imagine a giant Hegelian phylogeny of ideas wherein a single proposition formed each point of the phylogeny.  Each proposition depends on the one above it, and accepting the proposition at a point, a thinker tends toward one of two dependent ideas.  For instance, do you believe in government or anarchy?  If you believe in government, do you believe in despotism or rule by many?  If you believe in rule by many, is that many a few or most?  If most (democracy) do you believe the people should hold all power directly or should there be a republic?  Etc. etc. etc.

What’s interesting about the idea is that that you can determine how closely two people agree on a subject by how far down the tree they share the same premises; two people who accept democracy agree more than two people who only accept the necessity of government.

In any case, if we were to form such a tree from the very first principles, I think that the conflict between humanism and medievalism (for lack of a better word) would arise very high on the tree.  Do you believe that this life is man’s first concern, where in all his meaning arises, or do you believe that there is another life, more meaningful and more important, after this one?  If the former, you find yourself in a maelstrom of philosophers and ethicists, pagan and modern.  If the latter, take a one-way ticket to the Middle Ages.  You have no need to concern yourself with politics, art, or any such trivialities.  No discussion of material comforts is necessary, and no time need be wasted on anything but the salvation of your soul.

Epistemology is Cool, Vitalism is for Morons

Epistemology is cool?  What?  I’m beginning to believe that many of today’s most interesting problems boil down to epistemology.  In our age, we have an epistemological problem that the ancients never dreamt of.  To wit, we have discovered that there is really a very, very great amount of things to know.  Indeed, there are far more things to know than one puny mind, as we now understand the term, can possibly comprehend in a lifetime.

Simply put, the old epistemological questions were things like “What is knowledge?” or “How do we get to know things?”  Now, the question is “How can we get every individual member of our species to know all of the things that he needs to that, collectively, we already know?”  More briefly, the old question was “How do we get to know things?”  The new question is “How do we get other people to know things?”

It was not always so.  With the help of one or two devoted pupils, Aristotle compassed nearly all of the scientific knowledge of his age, and made the greatest of contributions in most other fields too.  Aristotle, showed that, in principle at least, the acquisition of complete knowledge by an individual was possible in his time.  Even much more recently, it was possible for an educated man to be familiar with all of the most important cultural touchstones of human history; such familiarity made the writings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries possible.

Today, this is no longer true.  I have worked out in some detail (and a long time ago) how the proliferation of knowledge – or at least information – has created a problem in the arts, and particularly literature.  I have also discussed, in gloss, how the highly developed nature of scientific knowledge has, in a way, limited mankind’s ability to understand the grave existential threats facing it today.  Now I wish to discuss one of the most irritating consequences of our epistemological problem, the persistence of vitalism.

Vitalism is the belief that some separate principle, or essence, occupies living things and makes them distinct from “inanimate” (literally, soulless) matter.  A common vitalist proposition is something like, “You can’t create life in the laboratory, because there’s some constituent of life outside the realm of matter that you don’t know about.”  Most vitalists are actually mystics: they not only believe that there’s some principle of life that we don’t know about, they also believe we can’t know it, that the scientific method will never understand this mysterious, non-material vital principle.

Put this way, it’s obvious that vitalism is not really a much more dignified belief than the belief in ghosts or ESP.  After all, if there’s one aspect of our daily lives that can’t be understood or measured, why not others?  If I have a mystic principle animating me that I can’t detect or know anything about, why couldn’t that mystic principle exist outside of the body?  Since this mystic, non-material principle seems to be able to influence matter (for instance, by giving me life), why shouldn’t ghosts be able to talk or do whatever else it is that ghosts do?

Of course, most religious types are vitalists too.  The vital principle for a religious type is the “soul”, which, when they speak of it, is an entirely separate form and mode of existence from the body, something ethereal and mystical, but somehow capturing all of an individual’s individuality.

Most pre-modern philosophers were also vitalists.  The belief in the animating principle spawned Descartes’s mind-body duality, the inane ramblings of Aquinas, and even the more tripped-out theories of the Greek philosophers.

Now, let us imagine our philosopher, our modern philosopher.  He has a complete understanding of science, and can imagine, in broad outline, how he could construct a bacterium, or even a simple sponge.  It’s not possible yet, of course, because in a way, the smallest microbe poses the same challenge as a great mountain: we know what the mountain, or the bacterium, is made of, but we lack the extraordinary resources that would be required to create one out of nothing.  Still, the philosopher knows of what a microbe or a sponge is made, and he mostly understands humans; he’s optimistic that in a hundred years he’ll know everything.  Having this knowledge enables the philosopher to completely escape the abyss of vitalism, and in so doing, keep a cautious distance from religion, ancient metaphysics, belief in ghosts, and any number of other intellectual crosses that humanity continues to bear.

Now, the epistemological problem arises: how is he to communicate this knowledge to others?  The philosopher acquired his knowledge of the way the world works by decades of painstaking study.  It did not take decades because he learned inefficiently, or learned the wrong things; it tooks decades because there was so much to know.  In short, the philosopher can only communicate his secret with others by passing on his knowledge, in toto, to them.  For anyone to escape the trap of vitalism, decades of study are necessary.  Ironically, then, the philosopher, who believes that knowledge is communicable, that the universe is comprehensible, that laws govern the natural world, and that we can discover and use these laws, arrives at the same problem as the mystic, who believes the opposite of all of these things: the philosopher has knowledge, but its transmission is impractical – though not, as with the mystic, impossible.

There is another way.  The philosopher could resort to what would now be termed the “technocratic” solution.  He could appeal to the unknowing people to trust that his years of study have produced for him intransmissible knowledge, but knowledge that would give him the power to solve problems and help the people.  If the appeal is not taken, the same solution applies, through a longer route: build a culture of awe and respect.  Over enough generations, the philosopher and his heirs could instill in the people the idea the fervent belief that the philosopher holds superior knowledge.  He would, of course, hold such knowledge, though the years of study required to attain it make it hard to prove to the people that he does in fact have the knowledge.  That is why the priest, I mean the philosopher, would have to instill belief and trust in the people, as opposed to convincing them on merit.

And therein lies the problem: the philosopher, to receive his power, must appeal to the same devices as the priest.  Technocracy ruled our society for millenia before the advent of scientific knowledge; that technocracy was called the priesthood.  The priests could not prove to the people that they held superior knowledge, but they said that they did, and they sometimes resorted to tricks to convince people.  The philosopher would be left to the same devices, the same claims, and the same arguments that the priest used for thousands of years.  To borrow from Arthur C. Clarke (here), the people must view the sufficiently advanced knowledge of the philosopher in the same way they view the magical claims of the priest.

And so, perhaps there is no hope for humanity: the scientists are left to argue with the priests on grounds that, in the eyes of the people, are totally equal.  The only difficulty is that the scientists cannot choose their ground, their position on issues; it is determined for them by their very real knowledge.  The priests, on the other hand, are free to have “revealed” to them whatever positions the people seem to favor.

Could the scientists outline the argument I have given here, and appeal to the very fact that no one would take their position if not impelled to it by real knowledge?  For example, could we appeal to people to believe in global warming because why on Earth would a scientist choose to take the position that we have to adopt a poorer, simpler lifestyle?  (There are, actually, many reasons, which I hope to someday discuss.)  I think not; such an argument is weak because it rests on no actual information, and can be used as a defense for anyone arguing for an apparently unpopular position.

We can make heroic efforts (such as the one here), but ultimately, we must tackle our epistemological problem before we can solve any of humanity’s other problems.

The Prisoner: The General

“The General” is a broad-based satire of modern education. It mocks deconstruction and examines the shortcomings introduced into education by the necessity of educating huge numbers of people.

There is much in “The General” to suggest a desire for a return to a study of the classics and the Great Books.  In several places, “The General” criticizes modern education, represented by the Village’s Speedlearn program, as empty.  “Finding things a bit strange?” the Professor’s wife asks Number Six.  “That is the trouble,” he replies, “I can’t find anything at all.”  When he steals into her house, he enters a tastefully decorated room filled with draped busts.  One is inclined to suspect that they are Greek or Roman, but when Number Six removes the drapery, we are surprised to find that they are busts of the leaders of the Village.  In other words, the leaders of the modern educational movement idolize only themselves, and not the great thinkers of the past.  Finally, the question that Number Six uses to destroy the General (which turns out to be a computer) is simply “Why?”  He asserts that no machine can answer this question, nor any human.  All of these examples point to a thesis that education ought not merely to fill our heads with science and the sterile literature of today’s educated class, but instead to teach us true art, to expose us to things that stir the soul and suggest where we might find meaning.

One scene, in which Number Six inquires of the Professor’s wife why a student is standing on his head (“to gain a new perspective”) reminds us that satire of education is an old art.  Recall a similar scene from Aristophanes’ Clouds.  Strepsiades is examining Socrates’ “Thoughtery of wise souls”:

Strepsiades: …[W]hat are those fellows doing, bent all double?
Disciple: They are sounding the abysses of Tartarus.
Strepsiades: Why do their rumps point toward heaven?
Disciple: They’re being taught astronomy too.

The hollowness of modern education is further examined with “Speedlearning” itself.  Speedlearning’s motto is “100 percent entry, 100 percent pass.”  In just fifteen seconds, Speedlearning enables all of the citizens of the Village learn a complete college course in history, and they can then go about quoting to each other facts about the Boer Wars.  The knowledge turns out to be shallow, though; the citizens know the rote facts, but they attach no meaning to them.  When Number Twelve, a sneaky rebel, asks Number Six, who has just finished the Speedlearning course, “What was the Treaty of Adrianople?” Number Six responds “September, 1829″.  The students of Speedlearning are unable to adapt the facts they have learned to new situations.

I think there is much value in this satire.  We live in an amazing age.  The Earth is more populous than ever before, so much so that up to six percent of all people ever born are walking the Earth today.  Literacy and the availability of accumulated written wisdom are both more widespread, and reaching far greater absolute numbers of people, than at all previous points in history.  Despite all this, the student of history knows that the behavior of people today is not substantially different from the behavior of the uneducated masses of forgotten eras.  We are still subject to xenophobia, jingoism, manipulation, greed, and religion.  How can this be, given the nearly free availability of knowledge?  The failure cannot be in anything but the agents we have chosen to disperse that knowledge, educators who have seen fit to mock and destroy the accumulated wisdom of ages.

For those fortunate enough to have studied the classics, some secrets are known.  Plato could not teach us to be wise, but he at least filled us with a desire to be wise.  He could not teach us the truth, but he at least assured us that it existed.  What is the ignorance and denial of modern America but a complete escape from the desire to know, and the belief in absolute truth?  We see in the anti-intellectualism, the anti-scientific movement, and the race for wealth only the simple fact that people have not been taught to strive for goodness and wisdom.

The Prerogative To Kill

Thanksgiving is just around the corner, and the vegetarians are out to make us feel guilty again.  Gary Steiner has just flayed the American conscience with a powerful op-ed piece in the New York Times advocating ethical veganism.

Is it wrong to kill?  Is it wrong to inflict suffering?  Philosophers advocating veganism typically start by asking one of these questions.  These are two very different questions, and will require two very different ways of saying “Definitely not.”

So is it wrong to kill?  The answer can’t be “Yes, always.”  Most of us would agree that a Mack truck should swerve and run over a fox if necessary to avoid plowing into a busload of little children.  Arguing by degrees, we might even conclude that the Mack truck should run over ten foxes, or the last fox in the world, to save one little child.

Implicit in any of these conclusions is the notion that life has value, and that killing should be avoided.  Why is this?  There are two radically different schools of thought to answer this question.  The first is the religious school: God says not to kill.  If we accept this idea, we may as well just go home; there’s no arguing with God.  The second school of thought says that life is an inherent good and should be preserved whenever possible.  Many proponents of this school – and we will follow them – would go so far as to say that human life is exceptionally valuable and worthy of preservation because of our capacity for abstract thought, or our ability to appreciate life, or a variety of other distinctions.  (There is a third school of thought, which suggests that the act of killing itself, as opposed to a “neutral” transition from life to death, is such a traumatic, jarring experience that it should always be avoided.  This school compounds the problems of killing and inflicting suffering, and for this reason is too complicated to deal with here.)

The “life has value” train of thought is the reason most people would have the Mack truck kill the fox instead of the busload of children.  “Life has value” is also the reason that killing animals for food, or even fun, could be morally justifiable.  What would happen if everyone in the world suddenly became a vegan?  The meat market would collapse and the brutal slaughter of animals would cease; farmers would feed their animals until they died natural, happy deaths; finally, the land would be used to plant hummus and tofu.  And there would be no more animals!  All of the animals that would have existed – that will exist, assuming we do not become vegan – would not be bred, would not experience life.  If life has value, if we wish to maximize life, we must argue forcefully for the continuation of animal slaughter.  The raison d’etre of the vast majority of domestic animals is industrial exploitation, and if this ceases, few, if any people will argue for the continued breeding of these animals simply for the sake of maximizing potential lives lived.  Continue exploitation, or accept that life is a secondary consideration to human convenience.

Another way of stating this argument is that because we give animals life, we should have the power to take that life away.  By logical extension, because a father or mother gives life to children, they should have the power to take that life away.  Indeed, in many ancient societies, infanticide was condoned, sometimes even encouraged.  As recently as the Roman Republic, the law permitted fathers the absolute power of life and death over their children – even their adult children.*

In modern society, we do not recognize this right of parents over the lives of their children.  The case for this could be made as follows: as soon as a person comes into existence, but not before,** he is endowed with a right to life.  In other words, because life has value, and because this person has life, we cannot – usually – take it away from him, thereby depriving him of this morally valuable thing that he has.

This argument does not supersede the argument that life has value and therefore we should be able to kill a fox to save children; rather, it is an extension of it.  Human life has such great moral importance, and therefore killing a human is such a great wrong, that we choose not to kill.  In essence, we give everyone a “free pass” from having their life judged insufficiently morally valuable to continue.  There are exceptions: suppose our speeding Mack truck had to choose between a busload of children and not a fox, but Hitler.  Almost everyone would choose to kill Hitler.  The reason we give all humans a free pass, a right to life, is that choices are almost never as clear-cut as choosing a busload of children’s lives over Hitler’s.  Even if we are in a situation where killing another person appears to offer substantial moral benefit to the universe, we usually consider the possibility that we are wrong, and by killing the person could merely be committing an enormous moral trespass, to be great enough that we choose not to kill.  Life has value, and therefore we choose never to reduce life by killing a person, despite merely potential future opportunities to increase life (or other moral goods) by doing so.

Phrased this way, two major differences emerge between killing a human and the ongoing industrial slaughter of animals.  First, the animals are not humans.  We ascribe moral value to their lives, perhaps even very great moral value, but we reserve the moral “free pass” for humans alone.  Second, since animals do not have a free pass, we have the ability to judge the moral value of their existence, and the conclusion, as described above, is unambiguously that these animals must die so that future animals can live.

What about suffering?  Is it okay to inflict suffering on animals so that we can eat them?  The arguments pertaining to killing apply analogously to suffering.  In broad strokes, there are situations where the infliction of suffering is justified.  One of these situations is when a little bit of suffering can be inflicted on one entity to avoid a lot of suffering for another.  In many cases, we exempt humans from such considerations because we believe human suffering to be an exceptionally great moral evil.  Animals do not get this free pass, and so when we judge whether their suffering is outweighed by the joy we generate through their exploitation, a case can be made that more joy is generated than suffering inflicted.

It is at this point in the argument that I think room for legitimate disagreement arises.  Most people assume the conclusion I just made, that the total human joy in eating is morally more valuable than whatever suffering animals experience during the course of their farming.  However, as the rising interest in free range meat shows, many people are beginning to question this assumption, or realize that animals are suffering considerably more for their enjoyment than previously thought.  I think the free range meat movement is proof that people are not “meat-crazed” egocentric hedonists, but rather utilitarians who place a high enough moral value on animal suffering that they are willing to pay to diminish it.

Free range meat has not taken over the market; clearly there is either disagreement about the precise moral value of animal suffering or about exactly how much the animals do suffer.  Whatever conclusion you have come to, happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy your turkey, whether it be free range or otherwise.  If you’re not eating a turkey, just think about all the animals that didn’t get born because of you.

[I can already hear the vegans screaming, "Yes, born to a life of suffering!"  That, alas, is where the argument gets extremely complicated.  But consider this: if you are a vegan, would you eat meat that had previously lived a brief but extremely happy life, and that resulted in more brief but happy lives following it?  If the answer is "No," then our disagreement does not lie in the complicated argument.]

*This page provides more information.

**Pro-life and pro-choice advocates, I think, are in substantial agreement here; their disagreement could probably be reduced to a debate about the precise moment when life begins, or the precise moment when the endowment with rights occurs, or in the worst case, the exact moment when the life becomes sufficiently human that the endowment with the right to life achieves moral importance surpassing the woman’s prerogative to do whatever she wants.

The Prisoner: Dance of the Dead

Note: This is yet another cultural production for which an understanding of Crito is essential.

“Dance of the Dead” concerns what happens when a free individual, unwillingly participating in a coercive society, breaks “the rules”.  Society – and its members – frown on rule-breaking.  In this episode, Number Six discovers a radio on the beach.  Possession of a radio is against the rules, and so the issue goes to trial, and culminates with an angry mob chasing Number Six through the Village headquarters.  The people are not pleased with a man who has been so bold as to shake the foundations of their society by breaking their rules.

The exchange in which Number Six confronts the observer who reported his possession of the radio lays out the major themes:

Observer: I had my duty.
Number Six: To whom?
Observer: To everyone. The rules. “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”
Number Six: Takes on a new meaning.
Observer: You’re a wicked man!
Number Six: Wicked?
Observer: You have no values!
Number Six: Different values.
Observer: You won’t be helped.
Number Six: Destroyed.
Observer: You want to spoil things.
Number Six: I won’t be a goldfish in a bowl.

The Observer is giving Socrates’ answer to Crito.  The Observer, just like Socrates, considers the rules an entity to which she owes higher duty than any person or individual whim.  She considers the breaking of the rules to be an assault on them.

Unfortunately, “Dance of the Dead” does not answer this Socratic argument.  Number Six asserts that his values are different, and that he wishes to preserve his individualism.  Later, when he is literally on trial for possession of the radio, he mocks the shallow, artificial nature of the proceedings.  He questions the legitimacy of the legal forms, particularly the fact that his defense is given by his nemesis, Number Two.  But nowhere does an argument appear for the prerogative of the individual to break rules at will.  Even if the trial is a sham, if the mechanisms of justice are corrupt, does that mean that every rule is subject to the judgment of every individual?  Surely not.

Perhaps the answer that “The Prisoner” seeks to provide is to an earlier stage of the Socratic argument (and an earlier episode).  Yes, an individual in contract with society cannot break the rules, assault the laws, and seek to destroy society at will.  This would be most unjust.  But suppose an individual is not in contract with society.  Socrates assumes this contract; he says it is implicit in an individual’s decision to remain a participant in a society.  But suppose there is no alternative; suppose the citizen is, in fact, a prisoner.  A prisoner by definition does not enter into contract with his guardians; he is held against his will precisely because he will not acknowledge the law of the guardians that he is to be imprisoned.  In this case, perhaps the law, or the rules, are subject to the judgment of the individual.

But are citizens of modern society prisoners or willing participants?  Indeed, the sole alternative to participation, for both Socrates and Number Six, appears to be anarchy.  Number Six’s response to the suggestion of anarchy is “Here, here!”  This is unsatisfactory; anarchy does not solve the problem of how to reconcile the freedom of the individual with his mandatory participation in a society.  The declaration that there is a contradiction between individual freedom and social order is not a serious intellectual position; it is a complaint.  Further exposition is needed.

The Prisoner: Arrival

“Arrival” lays out two themes that will dominate “The Prisoner”: first, it is a social allegory; second, the setting, “the village”, is the perfect prison.

It is in the context of a social allegory that the behavior of the village’s leadership, represented by Number Two, makes the most sense.  Number Two wants to know why Number Six, the protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, resigned from his job as a secret agent.  Number Two stresses that Number Six will never be able to leave the village; he must simply cooperate, tell them what they need to know, and life could be very nice.  By allegory, society demands the submission of the individual.  In return for submission to the arbitrary authority of society, the individual receives comfort, and “may even be given a position of authority”, in Number Two’s words.  The problem with the arrangement is that the choice is illusory.  Number Six is stuck in the village, and we are stuck in society.  The village is in fact a prison, and so is society.

The elements of this perfect prison are fascinating.  First, we never find out anyone’s names; there are only numbers.  In this way, the people are de-individualized.  (The numbering of people is clearly also a social commentary.)  Second, the prisoners cannot identify each other.  Any supposed prisoner may be a guardian posing as a prisoner.  Because of this, the prisoners’ ability to trust is destroyed.  Number Six is betrayed in the first episode by three people: his maid, a former friend posing as a prisoner, and that friend’s aggrieved lover, who appears after his death.  Third, escape is impossible.  There are substantial physical barriers to leaving the village, and a vicious white… something… can chase down anyone who gets too far.  Fourth, since escape is impossible, attempts to escape are permitted, because they reinforce to the prisoner the futility and hopelessness of his situation.

But is the situation so hopeless?  If society is a prison, what is freedom?  Anarchy?  The wilderness?  One suspects that whatever the alternative, we would almost always choose the prison of society.  The central question then, is not whether society is justified in imposing itself upon us, because this does not matter.  We are prisoners, and no alternative exists.  The central question is how best to reconcile this fact, the coercive nature of participation in society, with the preservation and freedom of the individual.  We desire not the perfect prison that is the Village, but the most imperfect prison that can be imagined, something quite the opposite of the Village.

Story of Civilization – II.4.XXVI.i – II.Epilogue

In its final stages, the “Hellenistic era”, Greek civilization was expanded to the farthest reaches of the Mediterranean world by Alexander the Great.  Philosophy flourished in Athens until the conquest of all Greece by Rome.

It is one of Durant’s signal remarks that “a nation is born stoic, and dies epicurean”.  Ironically, the Stoic philosophy was a late development in Greek civilization, perhaps even the final product of Greek thought.

At first blush, Stoicism appears to be an attempt to live life according to reason, that is, to fill the vacuum that the sophists had left with their attack on religion with a natural ethic.  Upon further investigation, though, it appears that Stoicism is merely Hindu mysticism transmitted to the West.  Stoic metaphysics pictures the universe as the mind of some omnipresent God, with its laws and workings being His thoughts.  The individual ought to live his life in accordance with this cosmic stream of being.  Atman and Brahman anyone?  The tepid astemiousness and desire to escape pain by apathy and ultimately suicide echo the Indian mystic as much as Pythagoras’s doctrine of the transmigration of souls.

It seems to me, then, that Stoicism is at best a religion where “Reason”, whatever that is, is also the name of the God.  As Greek civilization suffered war after war, and conquest after conquest, perhaps people turned to this pseudo-religiosity to offer hope, much as they would soon turn to Christianity.

The pseudo-religious conclusions that spring from Stoic metaphysics wouldn’t be so bad if the metaphysics weren’t also total nonsense.  This is, unfortunately, the pitfalls of many of the early Greek systems of philosphy.  Things that in our time have well-understood explanations were in Greek times thought to be forever restricted to the realm of speculation.  The Stoic division of the universe into matter and Divine Mind (Logos, ether, fire, blah blah blah whatevery ou want to call it), with matter as the passive force and Logos as the active force could correspond roughly to our own concepts of matter and energy.  The problem is that the Greek concepts, vague and imprecise, do not offer the Greeks predictive power.  Instead, they offer what I would call speculative power.  The Greeks speculate that the soul is made of energy, and returns to the all-encompassing energy of the Universe, Logos, when the individual dies.  This could correspond roughly to our idea that thought is carried on by electrical currents and neurotransmitters, and that when we die, the energy in the molecules of our brain travels elsewhere… but in what sense was it ever really separated from the rest of the universe in the first place?  And why should we care?  The Greeks use speculative power to conclude that we must live in accordance with the Logos to which we shall return, but why would we ever want to live in accordance with energy as we now understand it?

In short, the Greeks wished to found a natural ethic based on their understanding of the world, but their attempt was flawed because they understood so little – or at least so little of the details of – the world around them.  Our improved understanding of the natural world has revealed the futility – at least the present futility – of attempting to infer a natural ethic as the Greeks wished to do, which is to say, an ethic explicitly, deductively, and objectively drawn from our understanding of nature.