My review of Zen and the Art of motorcycle Maintenance

Here. This book is like many of the philosophizing books of Ayn Rand. A whole lot of words and no substance. In case there's any ambiguity in my review, I didn't think it was very good.

I can't say I'm surprised about this. The evolutionary psychologist Marc D. Hauser of Harvard has been implicated and found at fault on 8 counts of academic misconduct by Harvard investigators. From what the Times Higher Education has reported, it looks to be a case of academic fraud (as detailed by a letter to the Times from Hauser's research assistant) but Harvard's investigation has not publically stated yet what the misconduct was for. I wrote scathing a book review of his “Moral Minds” book at amazon two years ago.

The structure of happiness

In the previous post, I said that even thought I'd agree with many people that happiness is what gives the ultimate worth, value and significance of life (and hence one "meaning" of life), it is (or more accurately should) not be the purpose of life. But why shouldn't it be?

I think to explain this, we have to ask what is happiness. I think it is distinct from pleasure. Happiness, as I understand it, is intentional (that is, it is "about something" or has an "aboutness" property). Pleasure is not. Pleasure is just good feeling and as such, we can think of pleasure machines which think, feel, do nothing but experience a sense of pleasure. Happiness, OTOH, is always for some reason which the experiencer of that emotion or state or whatever, can tell you. It is dependent on beliefs about the world. We make ourselves care about the world by making ourselves vulnerable to its vicissitudes by adopting certain normative values about the world. Some things should be and other shouldn't. That's what it means to have values. When things that should be the case obtain, we experience a positive attitude based on our allegiance to those state of affairs being valuable. So a happy person can always tell you why she is happy but someone who experiences pleasure may not necessarily do so. Someone who lives their entire lives only for pleasure (a hedonist or wanton) does not seek happiness because they make their own pleasure the object of their desire. The person who seeks happiness, OTOH, seeks it only through the obtaining of a state of affairs which they deem of value. Thus, I think that a hedonist or wanton cannot attain happiness, only pleasure.

But think about what the hedonist does. Her life's goal is to manipulate things, however other things may be, so that she experiences pleasure. How is this from treating oneself (and others) as a means to an end (the experience of pleasure)? So at least on a Kantian note, one would be violating one's duty to self and others by making pleasure as one's ultimate goal in life. But happiness cannot be sought by itself because it is by its very nature, intentional (or perhaps being metaphorical, "transparent") thus obtained only through an indirect route, through the obtaining of the deemed valuable state of affairs.

The meaning of life

Philosophers have nearly forgotten this oldest and perhaps most important question. Other than being the title of a somewhat philosophical movie, it is worth pursuing as a topic of contemplation and it seems to be making a comeback in the discipline.

Before any deep pondering can be done, I think it is important to parse this question as it is ambiguous. By "meaning" I take that the question can really be asking two (or more relevant that I'm not aware of) very different things. So what are the meanings of 'meaning' as it is used in that question?

I suspect that one can either mean, What is the purpose or aim of life? or one may mean, What is the thing that gives life its ultimate worth, value or significance.

These are different questions and confusing them may contribute to a crude analysis of the answer to that question.

I think that the answers to these two questions are different but I suspect for most people and many philosophies they are the same. It makes some sense to say that what gives life it ultimate worth, value or significance is also what people should seek (their purpose). So many people (such as utilitarians, e.g.) may say that the answer is happiness. They may then argue that if happiness is that which gives life it ultimate worth, etc, then that is also what people should ultimately aim for in life and to achieve the greatest amount of it possible. I don't think that should be the case even though I agree that happiness is what gives life its ultimate worth, etc.

Here is where I think the distinction I made comes in handy. I think that the aim or purpose of life is something different; it is to be the best person one can be (a goal approaching a limit). Sometimes, achieving happiness comes at the price of achieving goodness of character (but the relationship is extremely complex). It's hard to imagine how someone who is very virtuous can be happy in an unjust, evil world. Someone who is very good will likely experience lots of resentment, indignation, righteous anger, etc etc, emotions that are not conducive to a happy life. If they are truly good, it is hard to see how they can easily overcome such negative emotions in the face of evil and in fact it is precisely these very emotions which partly make up their good character which block their ability to achieve that happiness. The attainment of happiness sometimes comes at the cost of good character. Some people can live happy lives oblivious or ignorant by choice to the evil surrounding them (such as a Happy German during the Nazi regime). Others, better people, cannot do so.

Funny Memoir

This is a funny story (coincidentally from another blog by the same name as mine) about Quine and a battle he had with another Harvard professor about the quality of a student's Ph.D dissertation.

At almost the first meeting I attended, a dispute broke out between Quine and Aiken. The year before, apparently, one of Quine=s doctoral student working jointly in Mathematics and Philosophy had been permitted to substitute one of the Mathematics qualifying examinations for the Preliminary Exam on Ethics. Now one of Aiken's students, working jointly in Philosophy and Art History, wanted to substitute an Art History exam for the Logic Prelim. Quine said flatly that it was out of the question. Aiken protested that by parity of reason [ordinarily a winning move in philosophical arguments] he should be allowed to make the substitution. Quine was adamant. Finally Aiken turned to Quine and said, "All right, Ledge, why not? What is the difference between Ethics and Logic." "The answer is simple," Quine replied. "Ethics is easy and Logic is hard." Aiken was apoplectic but the substitution was disallowed.

I feel the opposite of what Quine says about ethics and logic is true.

The Free Will card in Theodicies

Traditionally, some people have tried to explain the existence of evil in the world with different theodicies. The most popular of these is the free will excuse. These folks will say that a world with evil allows those living in it to freely choose between doing good and evil. It makes free will possible and they argue that a world with free will is better than a world without it even if the world without it is evil-free. But a world with free will entails that, sometimes, people will choose to do evil.

This is obviously a bad argument for several reasons. The most obvious is that many evils had nothing to do with peoples' willing them into existence; they are natural evils like floods and earthquakes and famine and pestilence. (Additionally, the argument assumes that we have free will which is not at all obvious to contemporary philosophers even though most would agree that we do, they would say that there are tremendous difficulties in explicating a coherent and plausible theory of free will)

But consider these other arguments:

Another reason why the free will card is a bad argument is because of the existence, possible or actual, of moral saints or sages. If these beings are possible (and perhaps the Buddha, Confucius and Jesus were actual historical examples), then God could have made everyone like them. So even if there were evil options like there is in this world, a moral saint or sage would not choose it. It is reasonable (and maybe even an a priori truth) that such a being has free will, like you and me. So why didn't god make everyone a moral saint or sage? It is, I think, reasonable to believe that a moral saint or sage is the way she is due to these and only these reasons: her environment and her innate endowments. So why didn't God give everyone the innate qualities these beings posses and the environment which produces and cultivates their moral rectitude and perfection? The Christian/Islamic apologist cannot answer, I doubt, coherently or persuasively on these issues.

Another argument is that one can have free will even when their choices are limited to only good options (perhaps, even if there is only one option(!) on a famous Frankfurtian compatibilist conception of freedom). Say you have the option of A. to eat cake, B. To eat pie, or C. to torture babies. By making it impossible to choose C, (either by making it unthinkable to everyone or by taking the means away to make torturing babies possible or by bilking such attempts to torture, etc) we will still have free choice to choose to eat cake or pie. No evil will be permitted if we choose either provided we like both, everyone gets enough of what they want, there are no bad consequences from having a little cake or pie, etc. So having free will is not to be confused with having the actual options to choose. God could have taken evil options away without robbing us of having free will. I am not free to violate the laws of gravitation, that doesn't mean I lack free will.

The Liar

I asked what lies are in two previous posts but the question of just what liars are is as interesting. I ask because I was reminded recently of an incident I had with a person who was proselytizing on the street. He asked me, out of the cold as I was walking by him, if I had ever lied. It was such a weird situation that it caught me off guard. Nonplussed, I said, "What do you mean?" He answered with a question: "What do you call someone who has lied?" Obviously, this was a rhetorical ploy to get people to say "Liar". This presumably would prompt him to then say that since lying is a sin, we are all sinners and need Jesus to save us, blah blah....(Looking back, I am proud I had the self-control to refrain from punching him in the mouth!)

Anyway, it was pretty clear to me that just because one has told a lie doesn't make one a liar. Do little white lies count? Never mind the problem with what is a lie as there clearly are vague cases. Even if we agree that someone has told a clear case lie, that wouldn't mean he is a liar. Say he lied when he was 4 years old and hasn't since. He has vowed not to and kept to his promise for 30 years after that. Clearly this is a reformed liar and it would be pretty crazy to call a reformed liar a 'liar' (kind of like calling someone that stopped abusing alcohol for 30 years an 'alcoholic'). Even if the person continues to lie, if only on occasion and in non serious circumstances (like almost all normal adults), we may have reasons not to call him a liar much like we may not want to call someone that has and may still do play football for fun with his buddies a 'football player' or someone that knows how to belt out a few tunes on his piano a 'pianist' or 'musician'.

But is there a definite point in degree and kind of the number, kinds, moral seriousness, of lies told by someone that would make him a liar? No, of course not.

It's also interesting that being called a 'liar' may be quite relational in the way my examples of 'football player' and 'pianist' is not. The person being lied to may have more recourse and even semantic justification to impute liar-hood onto the person that lied to him than someone else who has never met him. This underscores the moral aspect of liar-hood. It is a "thick concept" in the sense made famous by Bernard Williams.

We may consider Honest Bob a virtuous and honest man because he has never lied to us and we know him well. But let's say that 10 years ago, he was a very different person to which he has since mended his ways. He lied to his former friend, Louis, and screwed him over pretty bad (the details of which need not concern us). Louis hasn't seen Bob in a while because he refuses to meet him now and still feels hurt over being lied to like that. But Louis sees him by accident today again on the street. He calls Bob a "liar!" and walks away. It seems that Louis was justified in calling Bob that; not just justified in the sense he may be excused from saying something which may be hurtful, but in the sense he was saying something somewhat true. But we, those who know Bob qua "Honest Bob," would not be justified in the same ways to call him a 'liar'.