Yet There Is Method In It

I recently finished On Liberty and I was pleasantly surprised, after his book on utilitarianism. Mill’s basic thesis is that the state should not impose laws on people unless it is to prevent harm on other people. He then sets about examining the arguments for and against his principle. He begins by arguing for the necessity of free thought and speech, based on fallibilism. Since it is absurd to claim we are without error, we should allow what is “true” to be argued in the public space – otherwise we cannot except to arrive at knowing what truth is. Also, without properly knowing the full arguments for and against this “truth”, the knowledge of truth becomes an atrophied belief (like, he claims, Christianity has become in the western world). He then extends this principle of free thought to human action – given that the best mode of life might still be discovered in a diverse society. This seems fairly reasonable except his assumption that moral propositions could be “true” or “false”, so fallibilism would not apply in this case.

The most interesting chapter, particularly from a Nietzschian perspective, is “On Individuality”. I few choice quotes:

Having said that Individuality is the same thing with development, and that it is only the cultivation of individuality which produces, or can produce, well-developed human beings, I might here close the argument: for what more or better can be said of any condition of human affairs, than that it brings human beings themselves nearer to the best thing they can be?

But these few [innovators] are the salt of the earth; without them, human life would become a stagnant pool. Not only is it they who introduce good things which did not before exist; it is they who keep the life in those which already existed.

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

So he claims that development of individuals and of humans generally is only achieved though diversity and experimentally trying different ways of thinking and living. Due to social pressure and psychology, only a minority can innovate in this way, but the entire history of mankind depends on these types of people. Nietzsche poetically described this as “the song of the necessary ones, the single and irreplaceable melody.” But even Nietzsche would admit that the majority of non-innovators are “necessary” and cannot be done away with (“Are poisoned fountains necessary, and stinking fires, and filthy dreams, and maggots in the bread of life?”). To perhaps summarise the difference these two writers, Mill proposes a safely net for individualism of preventing people harming others – but there is no such safety net in Nietzsche’s concept of the superman. However either system of innovation encompasses morality and this is, according to Mill, incompatible with objective morality. Mill specifically states that Calvinism would be opposed to his principles, because that view considers diversity and expression of human will as something to be avoided – and to some extent this applies to all Christian morality. I touched on a few of this issues in a previous post.

Mill does state a principle of state power and it is a fine summary of my own view:

[T]he greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency; but the greatest possible centralisation of information, and diffusion of it from the centre.

Power should be localised, information should be shared. Good stuff!

Anti Citizen One

On Liberty (Librivox free audio book)

… strangely under reported or belittled by the (corporate) media.

Capitalism on Trial (BBC)

Update: I keep ranting about how the Bible is actually anti-materialist, anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist. Looks like the Vatican might have been thinking about that. Full story here, of course Catholic politicians are unlikely to listen… and again!

Let us be on our guard against thinking that moral decisions are hard. It is true we cannot deterministically determine what course of action is moral, but we cannot pretend that that moral decisions are simply the result of logically thinking through the issue. We can think we have found a solution but then realise it has unacceptable consequences and we have this as a reason to reject that course of action. But how do we determine, systematically, what is relevant to a moral decision and what is not? Of course, there is no logical basis for this criteria. We just use a hybrid of logic and instinct and social pressure and so on – although the use of logic is usually restricted to creating an ad-hoc justification of our conclusion.

If there is anything hard about moral decisions, it is because we have different impulses and priorities that play out in our minds. I would not be surprised if this mostly happens subconsciously. But when our subconscious cannot come to a firm conclusions, it is referred to our conscious mind and we need to make a decisions – but the parameters for the decision have largely been determined already in our minds. We then have a war of priorities and logical thought is allowed to have a role, along side our instinct. This is when we experience that wavering before deciding on the moral action. When a particular decision has the upper hand in our conscious mind, we should not forget it has only the upper hand in the landscape of our subconscious. The hard part of decisions is only us suffering under the uncertainty of reality as these tendencies resolve themselves.

Anti Citizen One

All history is the experimental refutation of the theory of the so-called moral order of things

Nietzsche

I was blown away by Nolan’s Inception. I thought the themes in the movie took Plato’s cave and extended the idea, but at the same time also subverted the original meaning so as to be critical of Plato’s position. If you have not seen the film, my discussion is likely to be totally meaningless or possibly contains spoilers – so I suggest you stop here.

From the point of view of upper and sub realities, the two most interesting characters are Mal and Saito. Of course the protagonist, Dom Cobb, is also philosophically interesting, but this is beyond the scope of what I want to discuss. At the time of her apparent death, Mal’s views on waking reality are reminiscent of the cave prisoner who is aware of the nature of the Cave and wants to return to the upper world. The difference between Plato and Nolan is that the cave prisoner’s view is justified, but Mal’s view is likely to be mistaken. In both cases, bystanders try to dissuade them of their beliefs. The bystanders, of course, do not have experience of an upper would and, empirically speaking, this is enough to question the existence of an upper world but not enough to rule out it’s existence.

Inception also considers nested realities: a “dream within a dream”. I am not aware of much previous philosophical work on this matter, but it is interesting and extends the Allegory of the Cave. I am also interested in the phenomena of lucid dreaming – the awareness of being in a dream. As in Inception, this tends to be an unstable state which often ends in waking or a false awakening. A false awakening is the experience of waking from a dream but still actually being in a dream. Lucid dreaming also tends to be accompanied by having complete control over the dream world – this is usually… entertaining. I have personal experience of all this, as well as a “dream within a dream”, which I experienced as (incorrectly, inside a dream) believing I was awake, then experiencing falling asleep and dreaming but being aware that it was a dream (I could still remember the pre-lucid dream), then false awakening back into a normal dream (while remembering the both previous stages).

This possibility of layered reality throws a question to Plato’s cave: what if the upper world is in some sense another cave, that could be transcended? And what if there were an infinite chain of upper worlds? An extreme possibility, not discussed in any media I can think of, is the possibility of more than one branch of upper worlds? These might exist completely independently and be mutually inaccessible, except through a dream? With no definite way to address these possibilities, the message of Plato’s Cave is nullified. So what if there is an “upper world”? Without knowing it is the final objective reality, it could be said to be just as self-deceiving as the cave dwellers view of reality.

I have tried to express the different stages of Mal’s awareness of realities in the same form as my previous posting on Plato’s cave.

Key

Early life – before personally using dream sharing technology
Dream experiments – Dom said he and Mal were “exploring the concept of a dream within a dream”
Lost in limbo – Dom and Mal grow old together in the dream. Mal forgets they are dreaming, possibly as a coping mechanism. Presumably they are sedated in the upper world and can’t escape until the drug wears off – a duration which they perceive as about 50 years.
After Inception – Mal begins to question her own perception of what is “real” and what is a dream.
At time of here death – Mal is convinced that Dom’s waking world is also a dream.

Waking – including the Boeing 747/Anniversary Hotel
Dreams – Kidnapping/City streets/Van chase,Saito’s Flat
Dreams with Dreams – Hotel with “Mr. Charles”,Young Saito’s fortress
Limbo – Old Saito’s fortress, Dom and Mal’s city

According to Plato, the biggest problem we face is the lack of awareness of the true world: “idealism” while falsely taking the apparently world as reality. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, one of the greatest contemporary issues we face is the destructive belief that there is a metaphysical world and that it is more significant than the apparent waking world. Mal’s tragic death is caused by both of this issues. Firstly, she willingly forgets that limbo is not real. This is symbolically shown when she puts her spinning top in a safe in her dolls’ house. Dom “rectifies” this with his first inception. Secondly, she succumbs to the idea that waking reality is a dream – resulting in her suicide by jumping from a window.

In the film, extraction and inception only seem possible when the target is not aware of being in a dream. When Mal alerts Saito of being in a dream, he can quickly block their plan. When “Mr. Charles” informs Fischer of being in a dream, the hostile projections are more alert. Arthur had previously warned them of this, based on a previous failed attempt to use the “Mr. Charles” gambit. Conclusion: in the reality of the film, loosing grip of what is “real” opens the mind to be manipulated. Perhaps the director intended that this message might be applied outside the film.

With a story as subjective as this, it is hard to make any firm arguments or draw certain conclusions. From my experience, belief in metaphysical realities is “waiting for a train”. Semiotically, this is the will to devalue our apparent reality and to want to escape to an upper metaphysically world. Given there is no “upper world”, waiting for a train is nihilistic. Morality and religion is “waiting for a train”.

Anti Citizen One

PS I hardly need mention Yusuf’s customers, for who the dream has become their reality…

We prefer knowing to thinking because knowing has more immediate value. It keeps us in the loop, keeps us connected to our friends and our cohort. Ideas are too airy, too impractical, too much work for too little reward. Few talk ideas. Everyone talks information, usually personal information. Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions. NEAL GABLER

PS Russell: The Divorce Between Science and Culture

I was recently considering Calvinism, from an existential viewpoint. Superficially, they could hardly be further apart, given that they disagree as to if our lives have an objective meaning! and also, if such a thing existed, to what extent it would be knowable to us. Calvinism has a number of defining doctrines that are believed to be supported by biblical scripture. The one I find most interesting is “total depravity”… I think of it as “original sin” on steroids. Total depravity states that man is both unable and unwilling to fully love God and to obey him, but are inclined by man’s nature to serve themselves. This, according to Calvinists, is a bad thing.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. John 3:19

I was struck that total depravity, at least in it’s narrow interpretation, is actually in agreement with Nietzsche’s doctrine of the will to power. If you don’t already know exactly what Nietzsche means by that, I strongly suggest you abandon your preconceptions now, because the will to power is one of the most misunderstood of Nietzsche’s ideas. The will to power, according to Nietzsche, is the force that determines what is regarded as good and evil (and all values) in the minds of living things. All living things have will to power. We exercise our will to power if we choose to act independently or if we chose to obey another; either way we choose the basis of our actions and that is will to power. The will to power cannot be exercised using rationality alone – in fact rationality is typically not used at all (for one reason, the is-ought problem). Even if we were aware of a god, we still would have to exercise will to power in order to chose to obey or not (or even to recognise the concept “god”, or any other concept, requires a value judgement and WtP). Will to power is driven by psychology, not divine command. For that reason, our actions cannot be entirely guided at the most fundamental level by an external agent (be it god or anything else). This is the essence of total depravity – actions are fundamentally driven by human nature, not god. However Nietzsche strongly approves of the will to power, while Calvinists think total depravity is a negative thing – this contrast could hardly be more stark!

A new will teach I unto men: to choose that path which man hath followed blindly, and to approve of it- and no longer to slink aside from it, like the sick and perishing! Thus Spake Zarathustra

One odd quirk I notice in Calvinism is it’s striving to be spiritually dependant on god as possible, is if that could be increased even by their own doctrine. I do wonder what they think “poor in spirit” exactly entails, from the verse “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them” (Matthew 5:3). Calvinists seem to regard being “poor in spirit” as having the awareness of ones “spiritual situation” – particularly with regard to one’s own spiritual inadequacy. That is strange because I can be materially, educationally or artistically poor without being aware of it, at least for a time. From the doctrine of total depravity, it would seem everyone is equally poor but the awareness of that may vary from person to person. This confusion between the alleged fact and the awareness of the fact is a case of wishful thinking and loose interpretation of the word “poor”. Poor is certainly a lack of something – it is not necessarily knowledge of that lack.

A more serious objection to Calvinism might be that while they claim to be incapable of making reliable value judgements (particularly moral ones) without god’s intervention, they claim to know not only that the Bible is descriptively accurate, but that it should be used as a prescriptive basis for morality! This itself is a moral judgement. But without scriptural sanctioning, their justification for their self-doubt collapses. Given this, how are we to be reliable judgements of what holy book to follow? For all Calvinist’s know, with their fault moral compass, they are worshipping an entity other than god – possibly the devil. I mean, how would they know? To claim to know if either god or the devil are good or bad, or even to accurately distinguish them at all, is also to claim that they CAN make moral judgements independently of god or the devil, which again contradicts total depravity. (The argument that “god can help to you find god” doesn’t solve the problem because “the devil can help you to find the devil”.)

And many a one who cannot see men’s loftiness, calleth it virtue to see their baseness far too well: thus calleth he his evil eye virtue. Thus Spake Zarathustra

I imagine a problem for Christian existentialists is: assuming there is a god, why should we obey them? Merely from the fact that an entity created you, it doesn’t follow that it should be obeyed. And similarly, if someone is recognised as “King”, it doesn’t necessarily give them power over every aspect of their subjects (particularly post-Magna Carta). Playing semantic games to justify obedience to god simply fails to address the is-ought problem – which I consider to be a foundational part of existentialism: the lack of objective basis for moral actions, particular if this supposed basis is “rational”. Kierkegaard springs to mind.

Anti Citizen One

It is part of the mainstream Dutch Protestant Church, and the service is conventional enough, with hymns, readings from the Bible, and the Lord’s Prayer. But the message from Mr Hendrikse’s sermon seems bleak – “Make the most of life on earth, because it will probably be the only one you get”.

“Personally I have no talent for believing in life after death,” Mr Hendrikse says. “No, for me our life, our task, is before death.” BBC

I want to share some thoughts about Plato’s cave. Being a very influential idea, it is worth some consideration.

I probably should skip the obvious points: that it argues for the existence of other “upper world” realities and the prisoner who experiences the upper world then fails to persuade the cave-dwellers of his experiences is Plato himself. He also claims that one who has experienced the upper world would not be happy with life in the cave. Many of these general ideas were imported into Christianity as the distinction between the material and spiritual world, with again heaven traditionally being thought of as “upward”.

Some Speculations

In Plato’s allegory, there seems to be very little interaction between the two worlds, beyond the casting of shadows into the cave. Can either world, of the cave or the upper one, exist without the other? If the upper world did not exist, there would be no shadows in the cave and nothing for the cave dwellers to discuss. That seems to be all a cave dweller can do and apparently necessary to their existence. However, if the cave did not exist, there would be little impact, except for the lack of released cave prisoners. It is likely to be a rare event, given Plato’s criteria of what constitutes philosophic knowledge. Presumably, the upper world can exist without that and if the cave exists, the upper world must necessarily exist too. The cave seems to be a contingent world.

Applying these allegorical speculations to us, Plato must maintain that objects cannot exist without its corresponding ideal object. However ideal objects presumably exist regardless of all the imperfect versions of it were destroyed. For example, we could burn all imperfect tables, but the ideal table will still exist. The ideal world is necessary. The apparent world is contingent. Also, the cave is a small part of the world “entire”, by which I mean in the allegory both worlds physically exist and are mutually accessible in some circumstances. The upper world probably is “bigger” than the cave, although this is not exactly specified – but quite likely since Plato prefers the upper world to the cave.

The main problem, according to Plato, is the lack of awareness of upper worlds and the acceptance that apparent reality is real.

I am now going to try to tabulate peoples beliefs in existences of “upper” and “lower” worlds. A zero denotes what someone thinks of as reality. Positive numbers indicate layers of contingent realities or contingent worlds. A blank space denotes lack of awareness of a world.

I plan to do a follow up post about the counter view. I’ll give you a clue on what I plan. If someone standing at a precipice asked Plato:

If I jumped, would I survive?

… the answer according to Plato is yes (at least in some form). I base that on the words he put into Socrates’s mouth as his last words.

Anti Citizen One

With the US killing its most recent enemy, I am reminded of some obscure pop culture, the game Red Dead Redemption. (I often think the philosophical aspect of computer games is under rated!). The protagonist is forced to hunt down the state’s public enemy number one: Dutch van der Linde. When cornered, the Dutch states:

When I’m gone, they’ll just find another monster. They have to, because they have to justify their wages.

And so it continues…

AC1

PS “I’m not a great intellect, but…the metaphysical leap from liking the flower to shooting a man in the head because he doesn’t like the flower…is a leap too far.”
PPS I like this “football” t-shirt…

With the UK having a referendum about changing voting systems, I thought I’d say a word. Many countries have a representational system of democracy. Of course, one democratic alternative is direct democracy, where the electorate directly make laws, and appoint officials. In a representational system, the representatives perform the law making and executive functions and are selected by the electorate. The question is “how do we select the representatives?”.

A side note is that many philosophers and commentators recognise that the decisions that most affect our lives are not even taken by politicians! Most famous philosophers seem to be anti-democracy (Plato, Nietzsche), but I exclude polemicists, such as Thomas Paine, who often fall back on “natural rights” as a basis for democracy. Anyway…

Regarding Alternative Vote

Alternative voting system attempts to select the candidate with the most broad support of the electorate. If an electoral representative is intended to represent the views of the electorate, than AV matches the intention of an ideal system! The extent that AV succeeds in “broad support” candidate selection is a matter of dispute. Also, the UK is working with single candidates representing a single constituency, which is an un-proportional system. A proportional system would be better than AV in having the overall selection of representatives better reflect the overall views of the electorate. Given this constraint, AV seems like a step in the right direction but is imperfect compared to a PR system. The popular vote of the winning party has been scandalously low in recent elections – the winning party in 2005 with a large majority had a popular vote of 35.2%!

One interesting objection is the order candidates are eliminated in voting rounds can change the outcome of the final result. This can lead to some votes having an apparently larger influence. I am NOT referring to the fatuous claim that AV votes are counted more than once and it defies “one person, one vote” – that is simply an abuse of terminology and a play on words. (Each person has one vote under AV, but one or more preferences.) The candidate eliminator order quirk would probably be a rare event considering normal voting conditions and in the overall formation of parliaments. However in cases when there is no clear front runner candidate, it can make the outcome rather sensitive to one or two votes. However the resultant candidate would still have to gain a reasonable popular support, so in a way AV still fulfils its function.

An alternative voting system can be changed in future to a semi-proportional system AV+. Or it can be replaced with a fully PR system some point in the future. If AV is rejected, I think PR would be made even less politically feasible, so I recommend that PR supporters ignore any distaste of AV and tactically vote for it, as a stepping stone to a more ideal solution.

Regarding First Past the Post

The main advantage I can see of FPtP is that it is simple to implement. Frankly, electorate understanding of how political systems work is not really of critical importance (although it would be a bonus), as long as it resulted in good candidate selection (however you define “good”). But this simplicity is useful in disputed counts, were one or two votes can change the result. A FPtP is quicker to recount than AV. However helpful that is to individual candidates, this is not a significant benefit to a typical overall election outcome.

Another claim is that FPtP leads to strong governments. Apparently AV would have produced similar results in recent UK elections. However, who is to say voters would vote in the same way if the election system changes? But strong governments have not served us well, leading to presidential running of the UK leading to various fool’s wars and economic bubbles. I am not sure narrow majorities or politicians would serve us better, but they have been selected by a wider base of support. I guess if it all goes wrong, a larger proportional of the electorate is “responsible”…

A major problem with FPtP is of candidates splitting support when in fact they are similar in policies. If there are some hypothetical political positions A and B, with politician X supporting A and politicians Y and Z supporting B. It is often the case that although support for politicians that think B, the votes are divided between Mr Y and Mrs Z. This leads to politician X winning under FPtP, who then implements unpopular policy A. This phenomena has a large effect on the overall balance of candidate selection but FPtP poor in addressing it.

In Conclusion

Yes to AV!