magazine (1)

AD ABSURDUMBRISTOL’S PHILOSOPHY MAGAZINE

Spring 2012 Edition

Editor’s letterNow that two issues of AD ABSURDUM have come into existence, you may expect that there will be a third and that it may feature an animal on the front. BUT BEWARE: Just because you’ve only ever seen average-sized white swans doesn’t mean that there isn’t a black swan out there, large enough to support a portly, Scottish philosopher.

We hope there will indeed be a summer outing for Ad Absurdum, but we mustn’t become complacent; the sun may not always rise, so please enjoy this issue in case it’s our last.

Thank you to all contributors who have shared their reasoning for others to enjoy. We encourage debate so please get in touch if you wish to respond to any of the articles, especially if you are willing to enter the lion’s cage and defend the student’s right to be satisfied…

Contact us at:[email protected]

Editor-in-ChiefVanessa Lucas

The Editorial TeamThomas Galley, Vanessa Lucas, Elizabeth Watkins, James Wilson

Designed byJames Wilson

Cover DesignElizabeth Watkins

IllustrationsKathy Cox, Ellie Harper

Printed byUniversity of Bristol Print Services

Contents1 Moral Dilemmas

Michael Lyons questions whether consequentialism or deontology can provide the answer.

3 The Student ExperienceEngaged students or passive consumers? James Ladyman outlines why ‘satisfying’ students might not be the prime objective of a philosophy professor.

4 Arthur Prior and the Logic of TimeAlex Malpass gives us the philosophical biography of an influential and undervalued logician.

6 In conversation with: Dagmar Wilhelm

7 I’m SorryA conceptual analysis of apologising.

8 An Atheist’s Guide to RealityThomas Galley and Barney Scott talk us through radical scientism and nice-nihilism, as debated by author Alex Rosenberg and Samir Okasha

10 The Pre-SocraticsJay Stone extends our philosophical timelines

11 Philosophy Graduates: Where are they now?An anonymous civil-servant tells us about life in the Fast-Stream and philosophy in government.

12 Poem & The Unfinished Novel

13 News & Events

14 Puzzles

16 BUPS Conference

mailto:[email protected]


AdAbsurdum | Spring 2012 1

HE problem of moral dilemmas is a commonplace objection to non-

consequent ia l i s t e th ica l theor ies. According to Mill (1863), there is no alternative strategy to consequentialism with which dilemmas can be handled. Moral conflicts in fact are most frequently directed to deontological ethics, as according to which there are certain actions that should not be conducted. If a deontologist found himself/herself in a moral dilemma, it appears to be impossible to maintain the claim that one moral duty/obligation ought to be violated in favour of another. To accept this strategy for dealing with moral d i l e m m a s w o u l d b e f a t a l t o a deontological ethic.

In my view, Mill’s claim could only be plausible when justified with the following argument (I shall refer to this as Mill’s Argument):

P1. Moral intuitions determine whether it is right to conduct an action or not. These intuitions are either deontological or consequentialist.

P2. In any situation where morality pertains (i.e. where one can act in a c c o r d a n c e t o o n e ’ s m o r a l principles), there is always a morally right course of action to take.

P3. In circumstances ф, one has to either conduct action α or conduct action β, and both action α and action β are morally wrong according to one’s moral intuitions.

P4. A judgment can always be made over which action will produce the better consequences. Therefore, consequentialist intuition is always applicable to moral decision-making.

P5. If one’s moral intuitions are deontological, both action α and act ion β v iolate one’s moral obligations/duties, thus both actions are forbidden.

P6. Therefore, deontological intuition cannot determine whether to

conduct action α or action β.

C. If deontological intuition cannot determine which action to conduct, then the only way to determine which action is the right one to conduct is by using consequentialist intuition.

In this essay, I shall be arguing that moral dilemmas are actually an issue for both deontology and consequentialism. I shall produce a dilemma as an example for which neither consequentialism, nor indeed deontology (at least immediately), provide a strategy, in order to deny P4. I will then argue that the only way in which to overcome moral dilemmas is to deny their genuine existence. The dilemma shall thus also act as a counterexample to P5. I shall also provide the Kantian account of moral dilemmas, and argue that it can give guidance when Mill’s Utilitarianism cannot.

I. ‘Sophie’s Choice’

One of the most notorious cases of such a dilemma comes from William Styron's novel Sophie's Choice. The dilemma is as follows: Sophie is forced to choose to save one of her two children (a boy and a girl), but that choice condemns the other child to death. If Sophie chooses neither, then both of her children will be killed. Because of this condition, Sophie has a morally compelling reason to choose one of her children. But the reasons for choosing one child seem to be the same as for the other.

The duties that Sophie has to both the children are entirely identical, and therefore a duty to one child certainly can’t overrule the duty to the other. Equally, according to deontological intuition, Sophie has the obligation to make a choice, on account of these duties to her children. As she has a duty to save her children if she can, letting both children be killed as opposed to saving one child is forbidden by deontology.

So deontology leaves Sophie in a

double bind. However, consequential intuition allows her to make a decision. At the very last moment of opportunity, Sophie chooses to save her son, with the justification that because he is older and stronger than her daughter, he would be more likely to survive the concentration camp than her daughter. This case seems to support Mill’s argument. However, with a smal l adjus tment to the case, consequential intuition becomes as unable to provide advice as deontological intuition.

The only reason why consequentialism manages to advise Sophie over which child to choose is because of the difference between the two children. Therefore, let us say that for the sake of argument, that instead of the two children being an older boy and a younger girl, they are in fact identical twin brothers. These twin brothers are not only completely the same in terms of physical form, but also have exactly the same personality, to the point that they might as well be considered as clones. Moreover, they even have exactly equal value to Sophie, to the point where they are, for all intents and purposes, interchangeable. Under this new imagining of ‘Sophie’s Choice’, the consequences of choosing one child will be exactly the same as c h o o s i n g t h e o t h e r . U n d e r consequentialist intuition, Sophie is still obliged to make a choice, because choosing one will avoid the consequence of death for the chosen one, whilst not choosing will make both children suffer the consequence of death. Therefore, consequentialist intuition is just as unhelpful as deontological intuition.

This clearly demonstrates the falsity of P4, leaving Mill no room to use moral d i l e m m a s a s a n a r g u m e n t f o r c o n s e q u e n t i a l i s m . M o r e ov e r, i f deontology can provide a solution to moral dilemmas, then moral dilemmas can’t even be used as an objection to it. I shall now investigate how this might be achieved.

T

MORAL DILEMMASCan moral dilemmas only be settled by appeals to consequences rather than duties?

2 AdAbsurdum | Spring 2012

II. How Should Moral Dilemmas Be Solved?

It seems that the moral conflicts that are worthy of the term ‘dilemma’ are those like Sophie’s conflict, which leave the individual in a double bind. They can be defined with an adjustment to P2 of Mill’s argument. One could say the moral dilemmas are:

1. When in circumstances ф, one is morally obliged to either conduct action α or conduct action β, and both action α and inaction β are morally wrong according to one’s moral intuitions.

Or

2. When in circumstances ф, one is morally obliged to conduct action α and to conduct action β, but cannot conduct both action α and β. Therefore, one must either choose to conduct action α or conduct action β.

These two parts of the definition are essentially saying the same thing. However, the first accounts for a negative moral dilemma (being morally obliged to choose between doing two actions which are morally wrong), and the second accounts for a positive moral dilemma (being obliged to choose between two moral obligations).

The reason these dilemmas are generated is because of a combination of the ‘ought implies can’ principle and the agglomeration principle of morality. In the case of circumstances ф, one cannot conduct both actions, despite being obligated to do so. It appears that one has to admit that although one is obligated to conduct action α, and obligated to conduct action β, one is not obligated to conduct both act ions. Moreover, according to the agglomeration principle, the obligation to conduct action α implies the obligation not to conduct action β, and the obligation to conduct action β implies the obligation not to conduct action α. Without doubt, moral dilemmas are a serious problem; they give reason to put fundamental principles of morality into doubt. If one is to accept moral dilemmas as presented here, then either the ‘ought implies can’ principle or the agglomeration principle has to be rejected.

The only way to maintain both principles is to assert that moral dilemmas are impossible. Earl Conee (1989: 137-140) explained a portrayal of morality that allowed for such an

assertion. This portrayal was that a wholly moral life was one that “consists in the person’s closest possible approach to a (morally) perfect life” (Ibid. p.137). In other words, to be completely moral is to fulfill every moral obligation physically possible to do so. Conee refers to the physically possible moral obligations as absolute moral obligations (Ibid. p. 136). According to him, with respect to moral dilemmas, confounding moral obligations no longer lead to a contradiction, as one is only one moral obligation could be absolute. To exemplify, with the case of Sophie’s choice, Sophie is only under the absolute moral obligation to choose one of her children to save, because one is as many as she can possibly save. Though it is a moral obligation for her to save her other child, it is not an absolute moral obligation, as it is not physically possible to save the other. Conee would argue that Sophie’s choice isn’t in fact a moral dilemma, because she is not making the choice to sacrifice one of her children. From a deontological point of view, she is instead simply fulfiling her duties as her mother to the extent that is physically possible, so who exactly she chooses doesn’t matter from a moral perspective. Equally, from a consequentialist point of view, she is simply producing the best consequences she possible can, given her circumstances. So in the second imagining of Sophie’s choice, like with the deontological point of view, it doesn’t matter from a moral perspective which twin brother she chooses.

III. The Kantian Alternative

Whilst it is clear that in the re-imagined version of ‘Sophie’s choice’, Mill’s utilitarianism could give no guidance to Sophie as for what course of action to take, Kant might argue that a particular course of action is required in both the new and original scenario. Both Mill (1863: 36-37) and Kant (1964: 23) argued that an ethical theory should be set out in such a way that prevents genuine moral dilemmas ever coming about, and both claimed that each of their theories managed this respectively. As such, for Kant to be able to give moral guidance when Mill can’t is that much more of a victory for deontological intui t ions over consequent ia l i sm, especially when Mill claimed that his theory avoided dilemmas exclusively.

In my view, Kant probably would have argued that the right choice for Sophie would be to not make a choice in the first place. Because Kant’s requirements for action are only dealt out in terms of

duties, the difference between imperfect and perfect duties makes a much more significant difference to the matter of moral conflict. Kant would have said that Sophie’s duty of care towards her children would be, although resolute, imperfect nonetheless. It would not for instance be considered a violation of moral law if Sophie’s children had simply been taken away from her and killed, simply because she failed to protect them. Nevertheless, the duty to not kill a rational being is a perfect one, and thus electing one of her children to die would make Sophie complicit in the act of killing, which I would imagine Kant wouldn’t allow, even if it meant the death of both children. He would clearly manage to give Sophie a clear understanding of what in his eyes she should do, however difficult it would be for her to act according to it.

IV. Conclusion

In this essay, I have shown that Mill’s argument can be objected to on two different grounds: firstly, on the notion that appeals to consequences are sufficient for settling moral conflicts, and secondly on the notion that deontological intuitions do not manage as well as consequentialist ones. In light of this, Mill’s claim merits its rejection. I have also shown that what was lacking in appealing to consequences can be made up with Conee’s argument that whatever principles are behind our moral obligations, in order to be completely moral, an individual need only fulfil as many moral obligations as physically possible. I then finally demonstrated in a given scenario how Kant apparently succeeded in avoiding moral dilemmas whilst Mill did not. Thus not only was Mill wrong to think that the concept of moral dilemmas put his version of consequentialism in any favour, but the case might actually be the reverse. This essay has demonstrated how deontological intuitions can in fact provide guidance w h e n c o n s e q u e n t i a l i s m c a n n o t . Regardless of whether the advice itself is in appealing, there are cases where deontological intuitions can still provide advice when consequentialism cannot.

Michael Lyons. 3rd-Year Philosophy UG, University of Bristol.


N days gone by one went to university to ‘read’ a subject. In the terms of the

current idiolect academics are expected to ‘deliver the student experience’. What if anything does this shift in language signify? Perhaps on average students do not read as much as in the past; I do suspect that fewer whole books are read at the expense of articles and anthologies and introductory material . More important though is the shift from the active to the passive, from studying to having an experience delivered to you. It is something of a cliché that our culture has become increasingly focused on short-term and superficial experience at the expense of long-term deep engagement. Compare Brian Cox on the solar system to Carl Sagan on the cosmos – with the former you get a much slicker and more visually engaging experience than with the latter, but you also get a lot less content. It is worrying that there is a lot of pressure for higher education to follow the same trend.

There is now an emphasis on appraising quality in higher education with questionnaires that largely concern students’ perception of their own satisfaction. The National Student Survey is increasingly treated as a measure of how good university departments are at educating students. This is despite the fact that those taking the survey have absolutely no basis for comparison in making their judgments, nor have they had any time to find out whether their education has served them well in their lives. In respect of the former, students may reward their departments for having efficient administrations and giving them lots of support and making them feel good about themselves, even where those departments are teaching at a relatively

low level outside of the context of high-powered research in philosophy; well taught students are also likely to be more critical of their education and so to score their departments lower than those whose reflective capacities are less developed. In respect of the latter, it is only in later life with the benefit of experience and wide exposure to others who have graduated from other programmes and universities that one is in a position to appraise one’s own education. In any case, whether or not a degree programme is appropriately rigorous and has enough logic or Kant or whatever ought not to be for students to decide anymore than it is for my son to decide whether he has enough chips in his diet. Furthermore, the survey places students in the position of consumers of a product. Psychological research has demonstrated the importance of framing effects in influencing how people answer questions. Perhaps if students were asked extensive questions about their own contribution to their education they would give very different responses to subsequent questions about their teachers and classes. For example, in my experience, sometimes students find seminars unproductive because they have not done the preparatory work necessary to get much out of them.

The emphasis on the student experience makes studying at University sound like watching a movie or visiting a theme park. Hence, many worry that ‘edutainment’ is replacing ‘education’. Every year I read UCAS personal statements in which the candidates declare themselves to be dedicated to philosophy and the development of their minds, and every year I witness students without a pen and paper sitting back waiting for the lecturer to make the

subject interesting. Attending a lecture or seminar without having prepared is not very rewarding, but the solution is for the individual to take responsibility for their own learning not for them to ask for the subject to be made exciting for them. Academic study is not supposed to be immediately accessible and enjoying it requires commitment and concerted and sustained effort. If your lecturer has nicely presented Powerpoint slides with pictures of all the philosophers talked about and simple synopses of all the main arguments you may have a better experience than listening to someone talk in bewildering detail about the intricacies of the subject, but the intellectual content of the latter may be greater and it may be much more satisfying to those students who arrive at the lecture already well read in the subject. I had a lecturer who used to begin a course by saying ‘I make no concessions to the idle’. It is not clear that satisfying the idle is compatible with doing right by the industrious. In any case, it is not clear that we want to make students satisfied. Studying philosophy is about engaging with among the most profound and deep thoughts human beings have had. I usually find doing philosophy disquieting, perplexing and frustrating not satisfying. Satisfaction is what I feel after doing the washing up or eating my tea, it is not the right term for the result of thinking about metaphysics, the nature and extent of human knowledge, or how to live a good life.

Prof. James Ladyman. Head of Subject and Profesor of Philosophy, University of Bristol.

the StudentExperience

As the National Student Survey urges final years across the country to appraise the delivery of their degrees, James Ladyman questions the value of student satisfaction.

I


RTHUR Prior was a 20th century philosopher and logician, who

became famous for pioneering temporal logic (or, as he called, it “tense logic”).

Prior was born in Masterton, New Zealand in 1914. Unfortunately, his mother died of septicaemia only two weeks after giving birth. This resulted in Prior being brought up by his Methodist grandparents, and for a long time the influence of religion played a very important role on Prior’s thought. While an undergraduate at the University of Otago, Prior became influenced by three main figures:

1) He discovered the radical neo-orthodox Calvinist theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968), who taught a complex version of the Doctrine of Predestination. God knows what will happen in the future, argue Calvinists, and so there is a selection of people walking around today who are destined to go to heaven (the ‘elect’), and then the rest of us. This doctrine, with its heavy emphasis on temporal concerns, fascinated the early Prior.

2) He was also influenced by the Presbyterian minister, Rev. Alexander Miller (1908-1960), who taught a combination of pacifism and socialism. In the spirit of both Christianity and socialism, Miller called for Christians to willingly give away any income they received above the national average – an economic proposal that was at the same time radical, moral and strangely rational. The concern for the welfare of the community was a value Prior ardently adhered to throughout his life, long after the spirit of Christianity had left him.

3) The last, and in the long run most important, influence on the early Prior

was the relatively unknown philosopher John Findlay (1903-1987), who was professor of philosophy at Otago. This influence lasted the longest because he introduced Prior to logic. Other than teaching Prior logical techniques, Findlay ignited Prior’s imagination with an article entitled “Time: A Treatment of Some Puzzles” [1941]. In this, Findlay wrote:

“[O]ur conventions with regard to tenses are so well worked out that we have practically the materials in them for a formal calculus”.

Having noted the possibility of a formal calculus of tenses, and sketching out a few rudimentary principles therein, he left the task for others to continue. It was this task that Prior pursued tirelessly for the rest of his life.

Hav ing s ecured a po s i t i on a t Christchurch, New Zealand, Prior continued work on the logic of time, while also lecturing on ethics and Keynes’ theory of probability. He was an unusual figure in Christchurch, as a student of his, Jim Wilson, recorded:

“He was usually late for his own lectures (or anyone else's for that matter). But he almost always turned up eventually… He would pull cycle clips off his trousers and plonk an ancient shopping bag on the desk in front of him. Out of this bag would come… a cabbage, a bunch of carrots, a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk… until, always at the bottom, he would find the book he was looking for…, then he would look up at us, apologise for being late and ask: ‘Now where were we last time?’ Someone in the front row would consult her or his notes –Arthur couldn't, as he never had any – and would say ‘You were just dealing with such and such’. ‘Ah yes, thank you’ Arthur

would respond, and forthwith launch into an extempore exposition which followed on perfectly from the previous session and was beautifully structured and clear even though he was just thinking along with us.” (Copeland [2007]).

Soon Gilbert Ryle, who approved of Prior’s “complete lack of mugwumpery”, invited Prior to Oxford to give the John Locke Lectures in 1955. Prior accepted, and swapped the stuffy atmosphere of Christchurch (where he was the only philosophy professor) for a year as a visiting scholar in one of the most vibrant philosophy departments in the world. In the Lectures, which went on to become his first book about temporal logic ‘Time and Modality [1958], Prior displayed how he had developed temporal logic from the rudimentary remarks of Findlay into something approaching a full logical system. Prior gained a wide audience that regularly included Peter Geach, Elizabeth Anscombe and E J Lemmon.

Prior had adapted the latest logical techniques from the hugely influential Po l i sh l og i c i an Jan Łukas i ew icz (1878-1956), with whom he had been in correspondence for a number of years. The basic idea was to modify or extend the basic propositional calculus in some way in order to express important aspects related to time; either to change it, like the development of non-Euclidian geometry, or to extend it, like the development of the predicate calculus. PC deals with basic propositional elements, p, q, r etc, and certain strictly defined combinations of these (‘not…’, ‘…and…’, ‘…or…’, ‘if…, then…’ etc.), which get given one of two truth values (true or false). Łukasiewicz’s was moved by Aristotle’s famous ‘Sea Battle’ argument (de Interpretione), in

A

With a passion for human freedom, this conveniently named logician almost ‘single-handedly developed a new type of logic’, inspired Kripke and even managed to avoid philosophical ‘mugwumpery’.

Arthur Prior and the Logic of Time


which i t i s a rgued that ce r ta in propositions, i.e. predictions of contingent future events (‘future contingents’), can neither be true nor false. Łukasiewicz tried adapting the propositional calculus so that propositions have one of three t r u t h v a l u e s ( t r u e , f a l s e , a n d indeterminate). The idea was that the propositions which took on the third value (indeterminate) were the future contingent propositions (like ‘there will be a sea battle’ etc). This meant redesigning the basics of the calculus, right down to the elementary permissible combinations of propositions according to ‘not…’, ‘…and…’, ‘…or…’ etc.

Prior went another route, and extended the propositional calculus instead. He added two new elements: the future-tense operator, ‘It will be that…’, and the past-tense operator, ‘It was that…’, using the symbols F and P respectively. This made it natural to understand simple atomic proposition letters (with no tense-operator prefixing them) as expressing present tensed propositions (like ‘it is raining’). So, if p = ‘It is raining’, then the English sentence “It will rain” would be symbolised as “Fp” and was understood as expressing the following proposition ‘(It will be that (It is raining))’.

S o , t o c o m p a r e t h e t w o ; i n Łukasiewicz’s system, some of the atomic proposition letters were given the ‘indeterminate’ truth value, and taken to stand for future-tensed propositions; in Prior’s system, the logical form of the tenses was made explicit, so that the present tensed and future/past tensed propositions could be clearly distinguished and manipulated. This enabled Prior to express more nuanced formulae, as his system had greater expressive power. Early on, Prior recognised and formulated the idea that the following should count as a type of tautology specific to the logic of tenses:

a) p → FPp

This says that if it is true now that (say) ‘it is raining’, then ‘it will be that (it was that (it is raining))’ is also true; the principle can be stated thus:

a*) If it is, then it will be that it was.

The year 1955-56 spent giving the John Jock Lectures in Oxford was the happiest of Prior’s life. Soon after returning to the stuffy atmosphere of Christchurch, Prior managed to secure a job in Manchester, and he was off – this time for good. His post at Manchester gave him a base from which he could maintain close research relationships with his Oxford friends.

During this period at Manchester, Prior continued to develop his logic of time in new directions. In addition to the ‘tense-logic’, Prior also developed a ‘calculus of dates’ along the following lines:

A proposition letter, like p, only gets given a truth value when it is paired up with a date, or a time, symbolised with a t. So instead of having basic propositions, like p which are true or false depending on when they are expressed, one has more complex propositions, like ‘(p, t)’ which express the propositions like ‘p is true at time t’, and which do not depend on when they are expressed for their truth value. So if p = ‘England is at war with Germany’ and t = some time in 1916, then ‘(p, t)’ is true. If t = some time in 1920, then ‘(p, t)’ is false. The times, it is natural enough to suppose, are ordered by a binary relation, i.e. the ‘...is later than...’ relation; so Rtt’ expresses ‘(t’ is later than t)’.

Prior was able to discern a precise relationship between the ‘tense-logic’ and the ‘calculus of dates’, and even prove certain facts about this relationship. One such fact was that if the ordering relation on the times in the ‘calculus of dates’ was transitive, then the following would be true in the ‘tense logic’: FFp → Fp (if it will be that p, then it will be that it will be that p). This accomplishment much impressed the young Saul Kripke, who was inspired by it to do the work that led to his famous completeness proof for the modal logic S5. This famous and breakthrough work utilised similar models to Prior’s which, while not involving reference to times, involved reference to possible worlds. Thus, Kripke’s ‘possible worlds’ and ‘accessibility relation’ are just Prior’s ‘times’ and ‘earlier/later-than relation’ in a new guise.

For a decade between 1955 and 1965, Prior is the only person to have a published paper on tense logic. In 1965, Prior was invited to be the visiting Flint Professor of philosophy at the University of Cal i fornia and found himsel f surrounded by interested and capable young researchers, such as Dana Scott and Nino Cocchiarella. In ’65 work was published by Robert Bull and Peter Geach in England, by Georg von Wright in Finland; by Charles Hamblin in Australia; and by Scott and Cocchiarella in California. Prior was now at the head of a growing research group. During this fertile time, Prior produced his most sophisticated work, which went on to become his second major work on temporal logic, his book Past, Present and Future, widely regarded as a masterpiece

of philosophical logic. Prior blended together his new and cutting edge logical techniques with antiquarian knowledge of obscure figures from the history of philosophy, theology and logic, such as Diodorus Cronus, Jonathan Edwards and William of Ockham. In this work we find traditional discussions of freedom, ontology and metaphysics interlaced with technical discussions of the relationship between the topological properties of time and the logic of tenses.

There are many original contributions to logic alongside the logic of tenses found within this work, such as the creation of hybrid logic, which have gone on to have important impacts in areas such as computer programming. One innovation that I would like to mention in particular was the discussion of logics that combined both modal and temporal operators, in which one can properly express propositions like ‘it is possible that (it will be that (p))’. These were modelled using a suggestion from Kripke made in 1959 that the future might be represented, not as a simple linear series of times, but as a set of ever branching futures. This idea fascinated Prior, as it seemed to combine his passion for temporal logic with his youthful Calvinist-inspired passion in predestination and human freedom. Prior used these models, along with his so-called ‘Piercean’ semantics, to make a tense-logic in which “even God does not know what a free agent will do, until he does it”. The influence of Findlay had triumphed over the influence of his early religious teachers, as he used his tense logic to express with all the clarity and precision he could humanly muster (by single-handedly designing the logical vocabulary capable of expressing it formally) the idea that the human agent is free.

Prior died on the 6th of October 1969, aged only 55. During his relatively short career as a philosophical logician, he contributed a new type of logic (almost single-handedly) and helped in the development of formal philosophy during a t i m e w h e n t h i s w a s d e e p l y unfashionable.

Alex Malpass. Teaching Fellow at the University of Bristol.


in conversation with…

Dagmar Wilhelm

Why were you attracted to Bristol philosophy department?

Because it is a department that does work on intuitions – well, Finn does work on intuitions. They have got Chris Bertram in political philosophy, and maybe I should mention Seiriol as well.

Where were you before you came to Bristol?

Before I came here I worked at Keele University. I was a student at Aberdeen, then Glasgow, then Aberdeen again. I was tutoring in Glasgow, St Andrews and Edinburgh.

How would you sum up Bristol Philosophy Department in three words?

Lively, encouraging, and smart.

How did you first get into philosophy?

By accident. I was studying in Scotland and I had to choose another subject alongside my chosen degree in Psychology. I chose to study philosophy and I liked it better. It was more challenging.

Did your experiences in psychology lead you to pursue the philosophy of mind, or to your current interest in intuitions?

Yes but I think it went a much longer way. I had an interest in the philosophy of mind but it is not so strong anymore. It makes me see psychology in a very different way; it makes me more distrustful of the experimental method.

Are their philosophers who have heavily influenced your work?

It’s difficult to say… there have been some political philosophers who have influenced me. But when I was studying psychology, every philosopher stood out, I was taken in by whomever.

One of your primary research areas is Recognition Theory, within political philosophy. What attracted you to this area?

It brought together several of my interests. Recognition Theory is an ambitious theory, a moral theory and it also makes certain assumptions about the nature of self. It believes that justice should not just be a matter of economic distribution and it advocates giving people their due recognition - that this is an important part of their development of autonomy and that is something valuable. I think there is something to that. It’s not an unproblematic theory. There are a lot of assumptions, which seem intuitively plausible but that just don’t hold. You have to accept that a proper development is desirable - more than desirable.

What do you mean by ‘a proper development’?

Well, even if you get misrecognised you develop some kind of character, some kind of self. But you don’t have the right kind of self-image and that you are not to accept.

Recognition theory takes a lot of influence from the Frankfurt School. Do you have any affinities philosophically with any individuals within that school?

Yes, Axel Honneth, a British third-generation theorist.

What are the strengths of the theory?

Well, there seems to be something missing if we must think of social justice only in terms of economic resources.

And what would you say are some of the weaknesses?

So Honneth, Taylor, Fraser - several of the recognition theorists - tell a very plausible story of why others are involved

in our conception of ourselves and how that might influence the confidence with which we go out into the world. But I guess it is not obvious that this should have any normative force. I think that is the biggest problem. Also, Honneth - who I like - doesn’t ignore but sidelines issues of economic distribution, which I think he should care about.

You are from Germany originally, what brought you to the UK?

Do you want the honest answer?

It’s up to you!

It’s nothing particularly philosophical, I wanted to emigrate to Australia. The Australian embassy told me to study in an English speaking country. I wanted to study something that was not psychology but I would have had points deducted on my emigration application. And I just chose Aberdeen because I liked the name.

Do you think there are significant differences between the UK and German education systems?

I think the UK system is a better system, because I think it is fairer and it is open. But I might be prejudiced and I don’t know the German system at all, and I think that it’s changing as well.

Were you tempted to return to work in Germany, perhaps at the home of The Frankfurt School, The Institute for Social Research?

They actually now have a bigger centre and it’s much more international. In fact, they now have a centre in New York. I am interested in what they do, so I am interested in their conferences but I don’t necessarily want to go back to Germany.

Are there any places you would particularly like to visit, either in the UK or elsewhere?

I actually think that Bristol is a great place, I feel very happy here. I also think

AD ABSURDUM interviews the most recent addition to Bristol's Philosophy Department, Dagmar Wilhelm, on her travels within UK academia, Recognition Theory, and the plight of Australian street children.


E tend to have the idea that when we do bad things, and we know it,

we say sorry. This principle is hammered home from infancy and commendably so; think of TV’s ‘Supernanny’ naughty-stepping toddlers into admitting to their mischief and forcing them to apologise to the afflicted parent/sibling/whatever. In saying sorry for their misdemeanour, the child is acknowledging their responsibility for their behaviour and making it clear that they understand that they should not have carried out whatever perversion they are guilty of.

If I were to say sorry to my (non-infant) brother for having punched his face, I would seem to be claiming two things about myself: firstly, that I had indeed intentionally punched my brother on his face, and secondly, that I can now see that this was something I should not have done. If either of these claims were not true, then my brother could rightly claim that my ‘sorry’ was hollow: I would not be apologetic at all. With this in mind, we can characterise some necessary conditions that must be true of an agent when they say sorry for an action, if it is not to be a hollow or inauthentic apology:

They must believe that they have intentionally performed an action;

They must have an attitude of regret towards that action because of the actual or potential harm that has been dealt by that action to the person to whom they are apologising.

The notion of regret towards an action can be simply cashed out in terms of a desire to have not performed that

action.Now, I also use ‘sorry’ in other

circumstances. Take for instance, “You were involved in a minor car accident? Oh, I’m sorry to hear that”, or when said at a funeral, “I am sorry for your loss”. Assuming that I am not regretting having intentionally listened to someone tell me of their vehicular misfortune, and that I’m not a murderer who attends his victims’ funerals, what’s going on? The obvious and accurate answer is that on occasion people use ‘sorry’ in a rather different way: to express sympathy, to demonstrate that they find some situation lamentable. This is true even when that situation is not one to which the sympathiser is remotely related. This use of the word is neatly captured in the phrase “a sorry state of affairs” because it makes clear that the ‘sorry-ness’ applies to a broader situation independent of the agent, rather than picking out a relation between an agent and their act. The two conditions of the ‘apologetic sorry’ in the first paragraph clearly do not apply to the ‘sympathetic sorry’ as it is used at funerals and the like.

So what? One word, two uses? It matters because saying sorry has become a prominent feature of public life and too often these two discrete meanings are fudged. When politicians blunder, we hear things like, “I am sorry for any offence caused.” Does this mean that you’re apologising for what you have done because you offended people? Do you regret your behaviour and intend to avoid it in future? If that’s what you’re saying then say that. Admit you’ve done

something you regret, apologise and move on, fine. But by phrasing it in the passive (offence caused) rather than active (causing offence) the speaker is distancing themselves from the action and it becomes unclear that there is a genuine ‘apologetic sorry’ at work. Anyone can sympathise with, or lament, the existence of “any offence caused”, but only the agent can apologise for causing offence. Now there’s nothing wrong with sharing sympathies with people in unfortunate straits, but it does not amount to an apology. And if offended parties are calling for an apology, “I’m sorry for any offence caused” should not placate them.

Luke Jones. MA Philosophy, University of Bristol.

that Glasgow is a great place, they are my favourite places. Otherwise, I would like to go to Tehran in Iran.

Why Tehran?

Because I like Iranian culture. Also – and this is complicated given the situation at the moment – because they have great philosophers.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

I used to do theatre in my space time – when I had spare time – and I think I have

to somehow get involved in the theatre in Bristol. I like to translate philosophical texts into plays. I did a bit of Plato and I would like to do a philosophical cabaret. And I would do Beauvoir.

As a child, what did you imagine that you would be as an adult?

I wanted to work with street children in Australia. I liked Popper and I liked Nietzsche. I always had an interest in philosophy but I didn’t think I would do it as a job. I don’t think you sit there and think, ‘I really want to be a philosopher’!

Why did you want to work with street children in Australia?

I don’t know… I was so small when I formed this idea. I had the impression that there were not so many people living on the streets there that it was hopeless to do something to improve the situation, if that makes sense.

I’m Sorry

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Apology or sympathy? A conceptual analysis of saying ‘Sorry’


A N A T H E I S T ’ S Does physics tell us everything there is to know? Two Physics & Philosophy students outline the debate between controversial author Alex Rosenberg and Bristol University’s Samir Okasha.

N the fateful night of 23rd of February, Alex Rosenberg, author of

“An Atheist’s Guide To Reality”, took a seat in Foyles Bookshop in Bristol to defend his controversial thesis that scientific knowledge is the only knowledge we can have about reality. Bristol University’s Samir Okasha was there to reign in this radical scientism.

Here, Barney Scott and Thomas Galley summarise and further the debate.

N many ways the methodology of (good) philosophy, or indeed any other

critical discipline, should be a constant questioning and stripping away of intuition and ungrounded assumption in pursuit of some set of fundamental features. Whether the target of enquiry is the essential nature of human psychology, a set of binding normative principles or even some abstract notion of the ‘essence’ of reality, such processes are both increasingly enabled by and also reflective of natural scientific methodology. I argue that Alex Rosenberg’s reductionist arguments are suggestive of (if not yet a substantial realisation of) the only plausible position to hold regarding reality and subsequently morality which does not succumb to naive intuition; a position leading to what is lightly referred to as ‘nice nihilism’.

At the most basic level, Rosenberg argues that everything real can be reduced (certainly theoretically) to the level of physics; that is in essence to the level of fundamental particles (fermions and bosons) and laws. By extension, anything irreducible to physics cannot have reality. This presents a clear threat to some very deeply held intuitions, particularly concerning morality (which by this model is content-less), free-will (which again turns out to be illusory) and God (needless to say an early casualty).

More on the above later, but first a crucial clarification I believe is necessary regarding what this type of reductionism does not need to threaten; namely the autonomy of the various scientific and

s o c i a l - s c i e n t i fi c d i s c i p l i n e s . A n appreciation of exactly what is meant by Rosenberg’s use of ‘reduction’ is essential to following his theories. Where it may be understandable that, say, a psychologist would feel aggrieved in being told that her work was merely applied physics, it is a naive interpretation which reads into Rosenberg’s theories any contempt for other disciplines. What I feel can often be missed is that there was no proposal of a ‘bottom-up’ revaluing of scientific process; no suggestion was made that physics in any way supersedes or invalidates other disciplines, nor that a particle physicist should ever be able to construct and predict all complex (biological, political etc.) structures in the world from fermions and bosons. The reductive thesis being expressed was in fact a more subtle one: that a posteriori, that is, given the knowledge of the world we have now obtained through our various scientific and social scientific disciplines, there is nothing observed that we could not conceivably reduce to fundamental physics. Anything outside of our laws reg ard ing the phys i ca l world i s explanatorily superfluous. Perhaps the clearest example cited by Rosenberg in the debate was that of genetics: Mendel’s initial framework for heredity preceded any molecular biological understanding of genetics by nearly one hundred years, and this itself preceded an understanding of the underlying chemistry. What should be clear in this example is that reduction does not imply constructability; to argue that it is theoretically possible to argue a posteriori back to some fundamental physics is not to say that all investigation should or even could proceed from first principles, but simply that there are no basic building blocks which exist outside of what can in principle be known through the study of physics.

Samir Okasha argued that the above example is a particularly convenient one for the reductionist, citing ideas of ‘emergence’ of complex systems in various cases such as ecology and

consciousness. However, this appears to me to be a threat only to the ‘bottom-up’ model previously dismissed. One may not be able to abstract systematic interaction on such scales from the behaviour of particles, but it is possible to explain these interactions, once observed, in terms of the previously observed behaviour of their constituent parts.

We re tur n now br iefly to the controversial application of reductionism to morality. The reductive thesis pertaining to evolutionary theory commits us to accepting one of the following:

Either:

‘Natural selection produced the moral core in us because it’s the right one.’

Or:

‘We think it’s the right one because natural selection produced it in us.’

According to Rosenberg, the first option is a non-starter since we have absolutely no reason to expect natural selection (which clearly has generated many morally ‘wrong’ beliefs as well as morally ‘right’ ones) to have access to some abstract universal ‘right’ amongst an infinity of possibilities. Thus we are committed to accepting the latter; that we are loosely bound to a generally accepted normative view only by virtue of its contingent benefit to our survival. The only reason to accept a universal moral reality is on the grounds of some posited, and I would argue ad hoc, metaphysics which lies beyond the observable, reducible world.

Metaphysical loneliness may be hard to swallow, but any honest normative theory must be able to accept itself as contingent on the facts of human psychology, not absolute. Failure to divest ourselves of such dogmas, I would argue, is giving in to teleology and plumbs the depths of anti-naturalist methodology.

Barney Scott. 3rd-Year Physics & Philosophy UG.

I

O


GUIDE TO REALITYAMIR’S initial response to Alex Rosenberg’s scientism was to note the

counter-intuitive consequences that such a position entails, notably with regards to morality and free will. The view propounded by Rosenberg, if accepted, forces one to deem the holocaust to be morally on-par with a charitable action. Such a stance being contrary to the common sense incites us to question Rosenberg’s position (though it by no means provides a refutation of scientism).

Samir’s next line of attack was to question Rosenberg’s assertion that science will explain everything that can be explained and continue to ignore questions such as free will and morality. Historical enquiry shows that 17th and 18th-century scientists had a radically different view of science than our contemporary one and could not have envisaged the possibilities of quantum mechanics or general relativity. In a similar manner we should not claim today to have a final understanding of science which is still rapidly changing, we must remain within a framework of current scientific knowledge. The notion that science will explain everything is a statement of faith, for we cannot assert with any certainty the direction science will take in the future. Rosenberg’s reply was that the seemingly orthodox view that science evolves by paradigm shifts is in fact the unorthodox position and only became prevalent post 1962: science does in fact evolve continuously, hence induction can be used to say that science will continue to be reduced to physics and that morality and such will not come under scientific scrutiny in the future. Such a view coupled with strict scientific realism commits us to denying the existence of free will, intentionality and morality. The disagreement hinged on how we perceive the evolution of science: whether it is continuous or experiences paradigm shifts.

Another strong contention of Alex Rosenberg’s was that all sciences are reducible in physics, if not in practice (the different sciences evolve separately) then at least in principle. Samir acknowledged that this is obvious in the case of biology being reduced to molecular biology and ultimately physics but it is hard to see why this should be the case for a social science

like economics. Economics deals with objects that are physically constituted but have been discovered independently. One should proceed from experience to principle: and there are too many scientific areas which we cannot reduce to physics which should prevents us from inducing that all science can (even as a matter of principle) be reduced to physics. The strong claim that all sciences are reducible to physics relies on too few cases (the natural sciences) to be able to extrapolate a general rule which would govern many other areas such as the social sciences and ecology. Even in biology the principle of natural selection infuses a language of purpose into science (absent in physics): it makes sense to ask questions such as ‘Why does this butterfly have this particular wing colour?’ and search for the evolutionary advantage the trait would confer as opposed to just exploring the biochemistry behind such colours.

An example of non-sc ient ific knowledge given is 1st person experience, feelings of fear for instance. These e x p e r i e n c e s g i v e u s k n o w l e d g e unobtainable by scientific inquiry, knowledge about what something feels like. One cannot know what fear or the feeling of fear is until one has experienced it.

The debate moved on to Rosenberg’s nice nihilism, which states that although there is no such thing as morality (nihilism), we have evolved to be social, cooperative even altruistic. In order for such peculiar and physically uninspiring creatures as ourselves to move out of the African savannahs to our current position of dominance we have had to become n ice. Thi s take on evo lu t ionary psychology is by no means a consensus view. Many accounts portray humans as opportunistic and xenophobic creatures, our ‘niceness’ being limited to certain circumstances (a short glance at human history disconfirms the idea that we are nice).

Samir’s contribution was not an outright attack on Rosenberg’s position; it was an attempt to bring nuance to some of his more absolutist and counter-intuitive claims by bringing into question the less evidence-based parts of an otherwise scientific position.

Thomas Galley. 2nd-Year Physics & Philosophy UG.

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Julian Baggini is running a series of talks at Foyles for the microphilosophy podcast series in partnership with the Festival of Ideas. A full recording of the debate will soon be available on:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/microphilosophy/id438876628

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HOSE we now refer to as the presocrat ic phi losophers were

thinkers of the fifth and sixth century BC and are the first we know of to engage in attempts to explain the nature of the world around them and of being. While many of them would not necessarily have identified themselves as philosophers or even had a complete concept of what philosophy was; the pursuit of wisdom certainly was their goal and more to the point, the fruits of these pursuits as well as their methods form the foundations of all western philosophy thereafter. If the old saying ‘know your roots’ holds any water at all then you philosophers ought to read on because these are yours; thinkers who claimed such things as everything comes from water, men burst full-grown from the guts of fish, or that motion, multiplicity and change are impossible. I will begin with some clarification regarding the presocratics and what the term refers to, then move on to the ‘narrative’ that forms the core of the presocratic period.

The term presocratic clearly means before Socrates, however when we refer to presocratic philosophy, we are not simply referring to the entirety of thought that precedes him chronologically; that would constitute a gargantuan category for which providing a short overview would be near impossible. Rather it refers to those preceding Socrates philosophically, both literally, insofar as Socrates (as portrayed by Plato at least) and his successors are plainly reacting to the presocratics, and in terms of the questions they are grappling with. As already mentioned, the presocratics' primary occupation appears to have been with the nature of things and being, while Socrates and many after him were more concerned with questions about virtue and how to live a good life.

Unfortunately, owing to the gap of roughly two and a half thousand years between the presocratic period and the present day, primary sources for these thinkers range from thin on the ground to non-existent. While we do have some fragments of texts from some of these philosophers, the vast majority of our sources are testimonial; we are reliant

upon the writings of Plato, Aristotle and others for knowledge of them. This render s us unable to accurate ly differentiate between the ideas and arguments of the presocratics themselves and those attributed to them in such writings, however this is all we have and as such we must make do.

Let us now turn to the core narrative of presocratic thought; that of first principles. It begins with the Milesians who sought to provide an empirical and naturalistic alternative to the gods-dependant accounts of the world found in the works of Homer and the like. First among them is Thales, the firs t philosopher. Thales was a very practical man, contrary to the image of the 'armchair philosopher' that seems so common nowadays; he had a number of scientific achievements to his name including the prediction of a solar eclipse. Philosophically, he is known for claiming that water was the first principle of nature from which the other elements, and consequently everything else, were formed. Others followed suit but did not agree with his choice of first principle. For example, Anaximenes posited air in place of water, while Anaximander instead claimed that none of the four elements were the first principle, but rather they arose out of this raw, indeterminate stuff that he called the apeiron.

After the Milesians came the Eleatics, the first was Parmenides who offered a different approach; he was not concerned with empirical methods but came to his conclusions regarding the nature of being entirely a priori. He disagreed with the Milesians outright, for Parmenides it was ridiculous to think that one element could change into the others, in fact change in itself was a ridiculous notion

to him – he claimed that change, movement and multiplicity were mere illusions. Parmenides argued his case well – he began from the base premise that everything that is, is while everything that is not, is not. From this, he reasoned that what is had to be a singular thing with no variation, since everything that is is in the same way. His arguments continue in this manner until he comes to the conclusion

that all that really is in the world is one perfect and eternal sphere that never moves or changes in anyway. Parmenides had a number of supporters, one such man being Zeno, who famously used paradoxes to further demonstrate the logical impossibility of motion and multiplicity.

It's quite plain to us that motion does exist, so too was it to Democritus, one of several thinkers to respond seriously to Parmenides. He sought to take into account Parmenides' insights on eternal and indestructible being, as well as his rational method, while explaining multiplicity, motion and change. He reasoned that as there is plainly motion, there must not be one, but infinitely many tiny indivisible atoms that make up the world around us. These atoms are able to move as a result of the void: literal non-being or empty space that must exist in order for atoms to move around in. It is important to note that these are not the same as modern atoms as they are not reducible to smaller parts, rather they are the absolute base material of the world.

Democritus, as a contemporary of Socrates, marks the end of the presocratic period. I have provided what I deem to be the core of the thought of the time and as should be plain, the core is not the whole, as many philosophers are missing from this account. Many of these thinkers were similarly concerned with first principles and the nature of being, while others were not. Likewise, ideas not directly pertaining to the narrative are missing; Heraclitus' famous doctrine of flux for example, or Anaximander's claim that the first generation of humans burst full-grown from the guts of fish. It would be an impossible task to discuss the entirety of presocratic thought in one text, let alone one brief article. However I would hope that this introduction has piqued your interests sufficiently and implore you all to further explore the presocratics, and in doing so the roots of western philosophy.

Jay Stone. Philosophy UG, UWE.

the Pre-SocraticsJay Stone introduces us to the forgotten forefathers of Western Philosophy.

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Philosophy Graduates:

Where are they now?After three years of intense pondering philosophy graduates must fend for themselves in the material world. So where do they end up, and are they still satisfying their philosophical needs?

This faceless civil servant cannot be named, for he is but a cog in the powerful machine of government and has forsaken his claim to individual identity. All we can say is that in 2010 he graduated with a 1st in Philosophy and gained a place on the Civil Service Fast Stream.

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So, the Civil Service, was it the glamour that drew you in?

The geeky answer is I always wanted to work in the public sector, mainly because it wasn’t the private sector. I couldn’t understand wanting to spend my time making money for a group of individuals. And of course... I always thought that governments should be run by philosophers (sarcastic tone to mask the conviction of this true belief)

But you didn’t go into politics, are you saying civil servants run the government?

Civil servants run the machinery of government.

What’s the key to running this machinery effectively?

Well we’re taught to exercise our discretion professionally at all times. If you look at the Civil Service Code it’s all about objectivity, honesty and discretion, so never being influenced by opinions and passions.

How did your philosophy degree help to prepare you for the job?

Well for any given policy you need to grasp the concepts quickly as appose to having a deep knowledge base and I think I was well trained in conceptual understanding from philosophy. It’s also similar to philosophy in the breadth of fields covered; I could be reading a paper on law, the environment, pensions, in the same way that we covered philosophy of maths and philosophy of ethics or medicine.

But philosophers do like to have deep understanding and become experts rather than having superficial knowledge of lots of disciplines…

Well you could say that a civil servant is an expert in managing other people’s expertise. We have ‘deep understanding’ of the need for professional discretion. We do get to be creative too though, for instance when David Cameron says, ‘The Big Society’ in a speech, it’s the civil servants who have to come up with policies to back it up.

What is an example of philosophical theory used in government?

The management of the armed forces through doctrine. You have rules of engagement which define what you are allowed to do, i.e. you’re only allowed to attack pre-emptively if you have irrefutable evidence that they’re going to strike you. Interestingly Britain’s doctrine on the use of the armed forces is the most widely read across the world.

Can new philosophical ideas influence governance and policy?

I don’t think you get a lot of truly revolutionary or new theories in government; it’s all fiddling with the edges and gradual shifts.

How many late nights at the office?

There is pressure but they have a very healthy approach to development so there isn’t that culture that you can’t complain about having too much work to do, or that you need to outshine everyone else.

What advice would you give to anyone that’s applying for the civil service?

One of the main things they do is to judge you on your learning and development capacity so you need to become very good at self-critiquing, for example on the assessment day you write an evaluation of yourself and one of the ways you score points is how closely your assessment of yourself matches up to their assessment of you.

Do lots of test interviews and try to stay honest and transparent, trust is very important in the public sector. On the written stuff, focus on comprehension: for the e-tray exercises you have to give the

best response based only on what you know, always read the briefing notes and don’t over-analyse using external factors.

You should see the recruitment process as coming to an agreement that it’s the right job for you, not just selling yourself to them.

What did you do your extended essays on?

The first one on Universal Grammar and the second one on Moral relativism versus Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

Any advice or silly mistakes you made?

I didn’t read widely enough and it turned out my theory had been disproved (my supervisor didn’t point that out in the draft). Remember, if you think you don’t understand something, read a book about it. If you think you do understand something, read two books. And always use interesting examples to spice up a philosophy essay.

Did you lie on your UCAS application?

No, but I lied on the civil service application. I said I was the president of yoga society.

Which philosophy or philosopher has had the biggest impact on your life?

Plato and the idea of Eudaimonia (human flourishing/happiness), Socratic virtue ethics.

Where do you hope to be in 5 years?

Number 10, as a special adviser.

Can you name 5 female philosophers?

I don’t know any. Um… Michelle Montague?

What one thing would have improved your undergraduate degree?

I was very happy with it all actually. Occasionally they dumb it down a bit too much in the first few lectures of a module, but that’s my only complaint.


O Being for Self,O End of all Ends,O Something, O NothingWhere everything blends!Identical Absolute,Thee we acclaim,Though empty of Content Thy Vacuous Name.

True Sun of the Realm,Where the Bodiless move,Insensible ObjectOf Sensuous Love,Sole Pattern supernal,First Form without Stuff,Why wasn’t pure BeingExistence enough?

Ah! Why did you sufferThe ‘slim’ DemiurgeIn endless Becoming Your Being to merge.Oh! Where was your NoΰϛOh! What was the Good?You resemble the BabesWho were lost in the Wood.

Oh! Why did you take All the trouble and botherInvolved in becomingA Manifold Other?Ah! Now you are Many,You find it such Fun,You’ll never go backTo the Form of the One.

Prologue

Like all good books, this has only one chapter, so actually it isn’t unfinished. It is very ambiguous and often misread, so I have added this little prologue. Here we see an assault from one of the 'Men of Principle ' ( later ridiculed.. . in the unwritten chapters) directed at ‘the Burdeneer’. The Burdeneer is the misconstrued protagonist of the oeuvre and is often mocked by the men of principle due to his lack of principles. In place of principled he has opted to lighten the load of people around him in an inconsistent fashion based on the whims of his mood.

I fear very little of this comes through; perhaps a longer novel would have been more appropriate.

Chapter One

O how noble you are, you mole-sighted little hobble-on! Your hands are so grubby from scrubbing your soul clean; your eyes are so weary from looking too hard into that divine light you are so very fond of. Yes, yes you are the man to tear us out of this mess - perhaps we could cling to your urine-soaked rags and you could drag us all to dignity! Better still, put on an eye patch and then put on another, with such adversity how could we possibly make a wrong turn? No need for a compass, you swashbuckling oaf, just steer your ship onto those rocks over there. I think there’s a ticket to heaven on that particularly frightful shard. Yes, yes that’s the one, the one being straddled by a hungry bear, let it devour your sins and I think we’ll all be a little happier! O if only there were more like you, but alas, alas! The world is littered with sordid little principle-huggers like me, dirty, conniving

tykes who swan around with fresh faces, sharp suits, and a list of judgements tattooed to our hearts. If you look closely, you will see that the combs in our hair betray horned silhouettes, and look, look! That standard of morality upon which I lean, upon which I bless the good and leave sinners to rot for their misdeeds looks rather like a trident doesn’t it? The shadows cannot be fooled; we are devils in the world of the dark! Good heavens let us take a leaf out of that book you haven’t written, let us denounce our rights to revile and to smile.

It does not matter who is shooting, or why, all that matters is that we cast ourselves in front of the bullets, because we can! So go on, Mr. Magoo, carry your cross, carry it to the moon, but be sure to take the long road round or you’ll never be a prince.

Joe Gallacher. 4th-Year Philosophy & French, University of Bristol.

From Camus to Kierkegaard, fiction has played its part in our philosophical development. We invite you to shelter from the analytical rigours of logic and metaphysics, and unleash your imagination with a short piece of creative writing…

the Unfinished Novel

“The Burdeneer”A portrait of the Absolute, originally published in F.C.S Schiller’s satirical periodical ‘Mind!’ in 1901.

Poem

“On”


Events“Can We Think of Things in

Themselves?”

Bristol University’s Philosophy Society would like to invite you to a talk on Kant by John Callanan from King’s College London, 21st March at 7:30pm (Location TBC):

‘Kant says that we cannot know things in themselves in either a 'negative' or a 'positive' sense, but that considering things in themselves in the positive sense is worse somehow. Professor Callanan will be looking into what this worse way of thinking of things in themselves 'positively' actually is.

Professor Callanan will suggest that Kantholds that when we make a judgment regarding things in themselves in the positive sense, the words that we are using do not even express any genuine thoughts, whereas they do when we make j u d g m e n t s r e g a r d i n g t h i n g s i n themselvesin the negative sense. Thus, while we cannot know things in themselves in either sense, we cannot even think of things in themselves in the positive sense.’

Free for members and £2 for non-members.

The History of Logic

The ‘History of Logic’ lecture series prov ides an in t roduct ion to the development of logic and to some of history’s most important logicians. These lectures, organised by Alex Malpass, are open to anyone with an interest at any level. The ‘History of Logic’ series features contributions from both the Philosophy and Maths departments, and features talks on Aristotle’s Syllogism, Stoic Logic, Frege, Godel and more.

When: Thursdays, 1-2pm

Where: Arts, LT2

Timetable available at:

www.bris.ac.uk/philosophy/department/events/historyoflogic

NewsNew Staff

The Department of Philosophy is pleased to announce the appointment of two new members of staff who will be joining us next year.

Kentaro Fujimoto will be joining us from the University of Oxford. Kentaro will hold a joint post with the Maths department, and will be replacing Hannes Leitgeib. His research interests are in mathematical logic and the philosophy of mathematics.

Replacing Jimmy Doyle is Joanna Burch-Brown. She has just completed her PhD on the epistemological difficulties for utilitarians of knowing the consequences of your account. She has research interests in normative philosophy.

The Department is also very pleased to announce that Dagmar Wilhelm will be staying on with us next year.

CompetitionIn an attempt to put the Hume-our back

into this intellectually strenuous subject, we’d like to invite you to send in your best philosophical puns.

The winner, as voted for by a democratically elected panel, will win the ‘Wittygenstein Award’ and be presented with a packet of biscuits of their choice.

Restrain yourselves to one word or phrase please.

Contributions to:

[email protected]

http://www.bris.ac.uk/philosophy/department/events/historyoflogic







Einstein’s Puzzle

INSTEIN is said to have devised this puzzle sometime last century. He

claimed that 98% of the people in the world cannot solve it. Can you?

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There are five houses of different colours next to each other on the same road. In each house lives a man of a different nationality. Each man drinks a certain type of beverage, smokes a certain brand of cigar, and keeps a certain kind of pet. No two owners keep the same kind of pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same drink.

1. The Englishman lives in a red house.

2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.

3. The Dane drinks tea.

4. The green house is just on the left of the white house.

5. The green house owner drinks coffee.

6. The person who smokes Pall Mall keeps birds.

7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.

8. The man living in the house right in the middle drinks milk.

9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.

10. The man who smokes Blend lives next door to the one who keeps cats.

11. The man who keeps horses lives next door to the man who smokes Dunhill.

12. The owner who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.

13. The German smokes Prince.

14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

15. The man who smokes Blend has a neighbour who drinks water.

So who owns the fish?

Across

1. Wrote a book about a giant sea monster (6)

5. “Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain.” (4)

8. Disputed the Greeks’ goal (See 12.), arguing via the categorical imperative that ontologically it exists only in the imagination (4)

9. Visiting lecturer who very nearly got hit by a poker (See 2.) (6)

12. Scored the game-winning goal for the Greeks in the Monty Python Philosophers’ Football Match (8)

13. He’s on the front cover! (4)

14. British Empiricist (5)

15. Duhem-___ thesis (5)

Down

2. When cogent argument fails, threaten your opponent with a poker (12)

3. Founder of the Athenian Academy (5)

4. The Father of Empiricism (5)

6. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.” (4)

7. “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.” (7)

10. Founder of modern logic (5)

11. Also disputed the Greeks’ goal (See 12.), arguing that the reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics (5)

1. 2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

Crossword: Philosophers’ Names

E


VER a period of years, in the course of maintenance, the planks of

Theseus’ ship are replaced one by one – call this ship A. However, the old planks are retained and themselves reconstituted into a second ship – call this ship B. At the end of this process there are two ships. Which one is the original ship of Theseus?

--

This is a famous puzzle about identity and material constitution. It was discussed by the great seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679).

If the old planks had been discarded or just left in a pile, we should have had only one ship. And despite its changing constitution it would have retained its identity: Theseus’ ship would have remained continuously in existence. If a mere change of a plank meant that the ship had been replaced by another one, very few things would last more than a split second. For instance, we would not retain our identity, since our molecular

constitution is constantly changing little by little. Even a major change like the loss of both legs need not destroy a person or that person’s body.

But what if we have the reconstituted ship, B, as well? Until it is largely reconstituted we still have only one ship, which does not suffer any break in its continuity. If the reconstituted ship is

identical with the original, when did A, the ship which had its planks replaced, cease to be the original ship? Did the original ship suddenly switch to becoming the reconstituted one or was there a break in continuity? These problems are not, however, an insuperable difficulty for the option that B is the same as the original ship, A. For there need be no determinate time at which the switch occurs, any more than there is any determinate time, except in law, at which a child becomes an adult.

Perhaps it doesn’t really matter whether A or B that we identify with Theseus’ original ship. However, this quietist approach has its problems: Suppose Theseus had insured his ship before the planks were replaced. Which ship is insured after the reconstitution: A or B? --

Reprinted from Paradoxes from a to z, Michael Clark. (Routledge, 2002)

Paradox: The Ship of TheseusO

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