Table of contents for April - May 2019 in Philosophy Now

We want Philosophy Now to be well read; but do we want it to be, well, red? Indeed, why be interested in Marx after ‘the end of history’ – as Francis Fukuyama (taking from Hegel – all intellectual property is theft!) styled the triumph of global capitalism and liberal democracy? The continued interest in Marx is demonstrated to us by the continual stream of submissions we receive concerning his thinking, the ripe red fruits of which we present here. But that doesn’t explain why people are still interested in looking at his ideas, and why we should be, when most believe that Marx’s ideas have been demonstrated to be false. There is first the fact that he is historically a very significant philosopher. Some might argue the most significant, having…

In 1784 Immanuel Kant described humanity as being in a state of immaturity, which to Kant is “the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another” (An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’, trans Mary C. Smith). The reasons for this immaturity are “laziness and cowardice.” For progress to occur, we must “have courage to use [our] own understanding.” And for Kant, historical progress must yield some form of freedom: “For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom. And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all – freedom to make public use of one’s reason in all matters.” This freedom must not however be understood as political or social freedom: “A high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to…

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was an Austrian-born philosopher of science who became a British citizen. He is famous for his falsification principle – the idea that the method of science is to try to show a scientific theorem to be false, thereby allowing a better hypothesis to be generated. A proposition can be shown to be false by even a single contrary observation. The classic example: the proposition ‘All swans are white’ was proven false when black swans were observed in Australia. But Popper’s greatest contribution to philosophy, in my opinion, is his attack on historicism – the idea that history has a pattern, a purpose and an ending, and that it moves inexorably toward that end according to certain laws. Popper dissected historicism in his 1957 book The Poverty of…

In 1962 Thomas Kuhn published a book from which the philosophy of science has not yet recovered, and probably never will. Before this book it was generally assumed that the only history that was relevant to science was recent. Science was believed to be a relentless march towards the truth, every innovation an advance. Scientists may have been standing on the shoulders of giants (to quote Isaac Newton), but every change was assumed to be taking us higher. Ironically, Kuhn the philosopher did what a good scientist does, and actually looked at the evidence. What he saw was that far from being the steady, uniform accumulation of objective truth about the way the world functions, the history of science is punctuated by moments when the prevailing consensus is completely shattered.…

Do our senses give us an accurate idea of the way the world is? Every day we’re confronted by masses of data about the world: sounds, smells, shapes, hues, textures. But does our sensory information amount to a picture of reality – an idea of things as they really are? Sensing the world around us accurately and with precision must be advantageous in natural selection terms. We can see why humans and other species would have developed refined senses through the process of evolution. We might think of the gazelle who can detect their predator miles away with an acute sense of smell, and so potentially evade a sorry end; or the human, who upon recognizing the blue mould on a putrid apple, decides to eat something more pleasant and…

Historians of philosophy are philosophers, but they are also historians. This means that, in principle, they may benefit from knowing whatever historians can know. We usually think of the historian of philosophy as working only on philosophical texts, reading Aristotle or Hume, not the Domesday Book or war chronicles; but I think there are philosophical insights to be found in even the most archeological areas of the historical record. As a kind of test case, I suggest thinking about numismatics – the study of coins. Yes, coins! Especially old ones, such as you’ve probably walked past in museums on your way to view more obviously interesting artefacts. Historians love them because, like clay pots and stone inscriptions, they are among the few physical objects that can survive for millennia, and…

In Arrival (2016), a number of large oval craft arrive on Earth from outer space. Rather than follow the hysteria of a planet coming to terms with its first encounter with aliens, as is a frequent trope of films with this sort of premise, the movie follows a linguist who works as part of a team tasked with figuring out how to communicate with these visitors from another world. She’s picked up in the middle of the night and taken by helicopter to a military campsite near where one of the spacecraft hovers. Military personnel, intelligence personnel, and scientists are already working there, and monitoring the progress of those working at similar sites around the world. After a number of breakthroughs in communicating with the aliens, the sharing of information…

There are many ways of failing to be a philosopher. The most efficient is not to bother being a philosopher in the first place. It is the strategy of choice for the vast majority of the population. Some of the things that exercise philosophers – or seem to do so – are of limited interest to the man or woman in the street, the pub, the lounge, or the kitchen. Agonizing over whether objects are logical constructions out of sense data, whether mind is localized to individual subjects or is spread throughout the universe, or even whether we are free agents, is a minority pastime. In my decades as a doctor, I met many admirable patients and colleagues, but less than a handful evinced any interest in the philosophical topics…

• Word frequency reveals morality’s tides • Marx’s tomb vandalised • Black holes evade conceptual capture Moral Talk and Moral Conflict Researchers Nick Haslam, Melanie McGrath, and Melissa Wheeler of the University of Melbourne in Australia have traced the development of moral language over more than 100 years. Using a program called Google NGram Viewer they searched for 304 terms with moral content in the English language Google Books database. The search covered books published between 1900 and 2007. While they found an overall decline in the use of words conveying general morality, such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘moral’, and ‘evil’, there was a sudden and remarkable turning point around 1980: “The fifth period, from around 1980 to the end of the study period in 2007, involves a relatively sudden shift…

One way Marx distinguished his type of communism from all the other socialist theories and party platforms around during his lifetime was by advocating a specific and prominent role for the state. He imagined government playing a key part in the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism, and then lastly into pure communism, which was to be a stateless, classless society. Here I seek to explain a criticism of Marx’s state theory that was best made by the anarchist thinker Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876). In their 1848 booklet The Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels sketched the initial consolidation of a proletarian government which would take back wealth and land for the public, institute severely progressive taxation, centralize credit by means of a national bank, establish a plan…

If becoming wise involves making effective choices that lead to a morally improved life, it should then follow that philosophy – that rational search for wisdom – becomes its chief means of acquisition. By studying to be wise, perhaps by reflecting upon the experiences of others or reading philosophy books, we can improve our understanding of the world around us. This could make it easier to handle life’s many challenges; for instance when it comes to distinguishing between our individual rights and our moral obligations. Wisdom offers an objectivity that is more helpful than our own narrow, selfish interests. There should be no mistaking wisdom for mere opinion, prejudice, bias, or whim because true wisdom is consistently right and not subject to contradiction or change. Seeking to make wise choices…

In case you haven’t noticed, a theory called panpsychism is undergoing something of a resurgence in the philosophy of mind. [See PN Issue 121. Ed.] As dissatisfaction with physically-based explanations of consciousness increases – and as the ‘hard problem’ of how the brain produces consciousness continues to baffle – that alternative has become more appealing. Panpsychism answers the question of how mind could arise out of matter by claiming that mind was always in matter. It didn’t need to arise because it was already there. Panpsychism holds that even the tiniest particles of matter have some form of experience, even if it’s so basic and primitive that it’s impossible for us to conceive of it. However, panpsychism certainly isn’t the only alternative to the materialist’s dismissal of mind. In this…

Logos by Raymond Tallis WE ARE SOMETIMES SLOW to recognize any downside to our modern age’s mad enthusiasm for scientific achievement, technological advancement, globalization, bureaucratic rationalization and the proliferation of information. But philosophers have highlighted the paradox of the proportional diminishment of the human: knowledge is increased, but the genuinely human recedes. Measurement replaces mere human judgment. General theories are established by the elimination of the particular, the exceptional. Globalization eliminates key markers of individual identity: ethnicity, nationality, locality. Government institutions render communal action redundant. Technological innovation replaces the body. We are more powerful, but less personal. The paradox is that for knowledge to count as knowledge at all, it must be processed in an individual consciousness. From the one who makes the discovery to the community of persons who…

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From the darkness of the hallway, she pushed through into the dimness of her small flat, guided by the small window of light up ahead. It was a miserable place to waste away a summer’s afternoon, but they had been routed and had to take flight once again. She bundled her way into the tight entry with her unwieldy placard, reaching out to hang her hat on the wobbly stand beside her, and made towards the brighter inner sanctum of the sitting room. There came the sound of a long human breath, heavy with exasperation. She paused, all her muscles taught, as her mind tried to search around the door frame and into the living quarters. The police? A vengeful man? An outraged wife? She had many enemies. Yet, confident…

In the beginning was the word, and Marx had a way with them like no other. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) was a supreme stylist with a turn of phrase that few could match. Whatever one thinks of the political ideologies associated with his name – Communism, Socialism and Marxism – he was poetic, pithy, and, at the same time, able to write in clear, succinct, and powerful German. Consider “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living” from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852); or, in his Theses on Feuerbach from 1845, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it.” By contrast, G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), who inspired him, wrote mostly in convoluted prose…

Cogito Ergo Sum:I think therefore I am.But what if the only thought in my head,is that I’d better keep thinking or I’ll wind up dead? Don’t trust the things you see,it’s all just the veil of perception.How do you know that the green you see,is the very same green that’s green for me? I know that my thoughts are my own,so I ask my imperfect sensesto know the things they hold,to feel their weight, and know their worth. Even if life’s a deception,right from the point of conception.Will I care that I’ve been deceivedWhen what matters are the things I believed? When life flies past like a hurricanewhich picks you up and eats you whole,What are the things that you nail down;The things you save before you go? Stop.Take a…

Thoughts on Minds DEAR EDITOR: I was fascinated to read in Peter Stone’s review of Daniel Dennett’s book, From Bacteria to Bach and Back in PN Issue 129 that the book was actually written by a crowd of tiny robots! Amazing! Think of the logistics required to get them all to work together coherently, particularly when it seems that none of them speak English! However, my amazement changed to concern when I thought about the royalties that the book will earn. Dennett has admitted that the tiny robots wrote the book, but he’s still claiming to be the author! Clearly he intends to keep the royalties to himself instead of ensuring that the tiny robots get what is rightfully theirs. Sadly, Philosophy Now appears to be colluding in the swindle…

ROBERT WRIGHT’S BOOK, Why Buddhism Is True: The Science And Philosophy Of Meditation And Enlightenment (2017) is part of the ‘Secular Buddhist’ movement – a project which seeks to strip away the religion’s metaphysical and mystical content and ground it in a naturalistic or science-based interpretation. In this sense the title is something of a misnomer. Wright has little interest in preserving tradition if it cannot stand up to his secular critique. Still, he is convinced that Buddhism anticipated by a matter of centuries knowledge about the human mind that we are only now unearthing through science. Additionally, Wright believes that Buddhism has techniques which allow us to lessen certain negative aspects of the human condition, namely ignorance, suffering and discontent. To argue his case, Wright draws upon evolutionary psychology,…