ReligiousLeftLaw.com

David Hume & Denis Diderot: philosophers … and writers

       

As invariably happens, when doing the research for a bibliography (in this case, on the European Enlightenment) I come across titles on persons or subjects that I’ve not known about or, if familiar by title or renown, I’ve yet to read at any length or with proper care (in some cases of course, I simply was or am not sufficiently interested). Thus the life and especially works of two such individuals has provoked and intrigued me in ways I have not anticipated. The first, David Hume,¹ some of whose works I read breezily (!) in graduate school, never inspired me, likely because I was distracted by thoughts and things in those days rather outside the orbit of Hume’s concerns. The second, Denis Diderot,² I’ve long been drawn to, but never found the time to look at in depth, in part because I was not confident about the secondary literature on him: what I learned about Diderot was in the larger context of more general studies of the Enlightenment or Enlightenment topics (e.g., French salons and Encyclopédie…).  At a later date I will discuss some of Hume’s philosophy which I’ve grown fond of, especially his thoughts and observations on human psychology. As for Diderot, I’ll cite a recent study among several others I’m reading that stands apart in  conspicuous and surprising respects which I will address at a later date: Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s Prose of the World: Denis Diderot and the Periphery of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021).

Some readers may be puzzled by the fact that neither of these philosophers were, to put it mildly, religious. But for those of us who are ardent religious believers or spiritually minded or disposed, it is important to appreciate the reasons why others do not share (or may be averse or even hostile) to our worldviews, as well as the acknowledge the fact that many of these individuals from around the world have made and continue to make remarkable and lasting contributions to humanity, to education, the arts, and profoundly civil society, whatever their individual worldviews, not infrequently owing to a humanistic or moral cosmopolitanism of one kind or another, be it incipient, implied, or avowed. The spiritual Left and the—for want of a better term—secular Left, are brothers and sisters in the struggle for justice in general, and liberté, égalité, and fraternité in particular (here is where we can incarnate our more modest version of the Rawlsian ‘overlapping consensus,’ one which may contribute to society’s larger and more arduous Liberal and democratic realization of same with regard to its political pursuit of justice). Yet being religious is no guarantee that one has an abiding moral or ethical orientation or living an ethically infused life in the daily round. That said, our proceedings should turn out quite different in tone and temperament from that of the “new atheists” or the evangelistic materialist and naturalist philosophies (metaphysics) that animate more than a few contemporary professional philosophers (both parties, which of course overlap, act in a manner akin to a missionary or missionizing impulse).

       

Although Diderot is well regarded as an Enlightenment philosophe, it should be noted that he is today not widely acknowledged as a “philosopher,” at least as assessed by the criterial standards of professional philosophers:

“Despite the obvious sophistication of Diderot’s philosophy, his legacy has suffered because of the historical differences separating his writings from the discipline of philosophy as it is practiced today. Enlightenment philosophie was something very different from what professional academic philosophers mean by that term today, and Diderot’s writings are often ignored by modern philosophers because they do not appear to be philosophy as they know it. Like many Enlightenment philosophes, Diderot also worked as an homme de lettres first and foremost, and only as a philosopher narrowly construed in certain instances. He also never authored any recognizable work of ‘systematic philosophy’ if by that term we mean writing in the vein of his contemporaries such as David Hume in his Treatise or Immanuel Kant in his Critiques.” — from the SEP entry on Diderot by Charles T. Wolfe

Perhaps needless to say, my conception of philosophy is capacious enough to call Diderot a philosopher.

Notes

1. “David Hume (May 7 [April 26, Old Style] 1711— August 25, 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism.” He is “[g]enerally regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English.” A master stylist in any genre, his major philosophical works—A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748), An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as his posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779)—remain widely and deeply influential.”
2. “Denis Diderot (5 October 1713 – 31 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the Encyclopédie along with Jean le Rond d’Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment.”

On Hume: Here is the list of secondary literature on Hume I am working my way through. There is a bias toward later works, so if anyone knows one or more older titles (‘classics’) believed indispensable, please share with us:

• Ainslie, Donald C. and Annmarie Butler, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Hume’s Treatise (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Garfield, Jay L. The Concealed Influence of Custom: Hume’s Treatise from the Inside Out (Oxford University Press, 2019).
• Hardin, Russell. David Hume: Moral and Political Theorist (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
• Harris, James A. Hume: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Merrill, Thomas W. Hume and the Politics of Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
• Norton, David Fate, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Hume (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Pears, D.F., ed. David Hume: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1966).
• Russell, Paul. Freedom and Sentiment: Hume’s Way of Naturalizing Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Sandis, Constantine. Character and Causation: Hume’s Philosophy of Action (Routledge, 2019).
• Sinhababu, Neil. Humean Nature: How desire explains action, thought, and feeling (Oxford University Press, 2017).
• Strawson, Galen. The Evident Connexion: Hume on Personal Identity (Oxford University Press, 2011).
• Strawson, Galen. The Secret Connexion: Causation, Realism, and David Hume (revised ed., Oxford University Press, 2014).
• Stroud, Barry. Hume (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).

On Diderot: This list for secondary literature on Diderot is even shorter than the one for Hume, largely because I’ve confined it to works in English. Still, for many of us, these works should suffice as an even-handed introduction that can at least be used as a starting-point should one want to do more in-depth reading and research, including the material in French.

• App, Urs. “Diderot’s Buddhist Brahmins,” in App’s The Birth of Orientalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010): 133-187.
• Blom, Philipp. Enlightening the World: Encyclopédie, the Book That Changed the Course of History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
• Blom, Philipp. A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment (Basic Books, 2010).
• Blum, Carol. Diderot: The Virtue of a Philosopher (Viking Press, 1974).
• Brewer, Daniel. The Discourse of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century France: Diderot and the Art of Philosophizing (Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Curran, Andrew S. Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019).
• Furbank, P.N. Diderot: A Critical Biography (Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).
• Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich. Prose of the World: Denis Diderot and the Periphery of Enlightenment (Stanford University Press, 2021).
• Wilson, Arthur M. Diderot (Oxford University Press, 1972).
• Wolfe, Charles T. “Diderot and Materialist Theories of the Self,” Society and Politics, 9(1): 75–94. Available: https://socpol.uvvg.ro/diderot-and-materialist-theories-of-the-self/ (click on ‘read more’ and the pdf version of the article will appear).
• Wolfe, Charles T. and J.B. Shank, “Denis Diderot,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2021), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/diderot/
  

See too: The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert — Collaborative Translation Project, a labor of love for which we should all be grateful.

“And all I gotta do is act naturally” — from Buck Owens’ song, Act Naturally (although he did not write it)

On an existential level, when we recognize the extent to which our lives are molded by social constructs, we become able to free ourselves from a type of emotional entanglement that disturbs our tranquility. The social ambitions that motivate us—money, wealth, power, privilege—lose their grip, become less influential. Other possibilities for a flourishing life may emerge, not determined by manipulative actions and its attendant desires. With the diminishing of the hold of desires and conceptual constructs, one’s mode of engagement with the world will be more accommodating, allowing events to happen without attachment to outcome. Thus the loosening of artifice goes hand in hand with the cultivation of a sort of indifference toward worldly success and failure. — Steve Coutinho

Some people are only funny when they try to be serious. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nothing makes it so difficult to be natural as the desire to be so. — La Rochefoucauld

*           *           *

My late dear brother, Brian, once took an undergraduate course on Zen Buddhism that affected him deeply, although perhaps not in the way one might expect (he did not become very interested in either Buddhism in general or even Zen in particular). What he took away from the class—as we might say—was the importance of living spontaneously, or “in the moment,” not unlike what Ram Dass famously implored his readers: “be here now,” which is perhaps more about being scrupulously aware or attentive than about trying, as it were, to live in the moment (I’m inclined to label this admonition, like ‘willing what cannot be willed,’ a pragmatic contradiction). I vividly recall his happy announcement to me (in more or less these words): “From now on I am going to act spontaneously,” which upon hearing I laughed heartily, although I did not have the heart to explain to him that that made no sense, for one cannot will spontaneous behavior (yet my dear brother’s desire had noble precedent, for as Elster reminds us, Stendhal’s diary reveals almost identical obsession with ‘becoming natural’).

Indeed. This is an illustration of that mental fallacy Jon Elster, after the late psychologist Leslie Farber, termed “willing what cannot be willed” (that is, in reference to those mental state or states of affairs in the world—like spontaneity or sleep—that cannot be the direct product of willing but are rather the—indirect—outcome or by-product effect of other mental states or actions).¹ And yet, in Daoism, for example, we learn that one can engage in an “intentional project” to “be natural,” which in this case is characterized as wu-wei (lit., non-action). Livia Kohn’s entry on this concept from The Encyclopedia of Taoism provides us with a succinct formulation: “Wuwei or ‘non-action’ means to do things the natural way, by not interfering with the patterns, rhythms and structure of nature, without imposing one’s own intentions upon the world.”² The “natural way” is not meant here in the sense of how most of us, most of the time, “naturally” behave or act (which may be a function of habit, mindlessness or inattentiveness) but has a more specific or technical meaning depending on the way in which the natural world is said to be intrinsically in harmony with or expressive of (in an immanent sense) of the Dao. Thus wu-wei is not, literally, non-action but refers instead to a qualitatively distinct and uncommon kind of action, what the late Huston Smith called “creative quietude,” meaning one acts with a still or clear (‘unmuddied’) mind in a manner that embodies or incarnates or exemplifies the Dao. Such action is characterized by a freedom and spontaneity (ziran) that arise from a heart-mind experiencing, it seems, an ecstatic or blissful oneness (or simply a kind of contentedness) with “all-there-is.” It is the characteristic and conspicuous action of the sage (shengren) and the ideal ruler in the political realm and is, arguably, a direct product of ascetic praxis and mystical states of consciousness. In short, wu-wei is acting with a meditative heart-mind (like a polished mirror, to use a prominent metaphor) in harmony with the natural world and tian while instantiating the Dao.

Ascetic self-discipline or “spiritual exercises,” training in the arts, and meditative praxis are necessary yet not sufficient conditions for wu-wei. In other words, while it is true that “making every effort,” “striving,” “working hard” or even “willing” are, in one important sense, truly the antithesis of wu-wei, arduous striving, self-discipline and training the mind are no less integral to the eventual accomplishment of wu-wei! The “acting naturally” that is wu-wei, therefore, does not come naturally to us, hence we are instructed, by way of an “intentional project,” to “return to the uncarved block,” dampen the passions and still the mind, all by way of attaining a “second” nature in Joel Kupperman’s sense,³ as this requires forms of self-discipline and self-knowledge that are arduous, that involve ascetic or ascetic-like training of the body and the heart-mind (i.e., reason and the emotions). Thus for human beings to act “naturally” in the Daoist sense entails acquiring a “second” nature that is attained indirectly, as a by-product of mental and behavioral dispositions, or mental states and actions that are not “willful,” as when, say, we set out to satisfy our first order desires or instrumentally achieve our ends. The intentional project is fulfilled over an unspecified period of time during which we are engaged in the sorts of practices the Daoist recommends (or hints at) that are necessary but not necessarily sufficient conditions for “acting naturally,” to wu-wei. Only then are we capable of acting in a timely fashion with the consummate skill, grace and spontaneity befitting alike the exigencies of daily situations and unique circumstance, and this in a manner indicative of our ability to “be,” so to speak, one with Dao. In sum, acting naturally in the Daoist sense means cultivating what for us does not come naturally, and thus self-cultivation brings about, so to speak, a second nature, a nature in accord with the natural world, one in which a person has acquired the capability to act spontaneously and effortlessly, a state in which one’s personal judgment coheres with the exigencies of a situation, be these practical, moral, spiritual (perhaps a combination thereof) what have you.

Notes

1. See Elster’s Sour Grapes: studies in the subversion of rationality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 43-66.
2. Livia Kohn, “wuwei,” Fabrizio Pregadio, ed., The Encyclopedia of Taoism, vol. II (New York: Routledge, 2008): 1067. Notice the definition refers to not imposing one’s intentions on the world, suggesting the possibility that an “intentional project” in the extended temporal sense outlined by Fraser in his review of Slingerland’s Effortless Action (2003), to wit: “If acquisition of an effortless state is understood synchronically, this is indeed paradoxical: one cannot be effortless while simultaneously exerting effort. But as long as the process of achieving the effortless state is understood diachronically, no paradox arises. We can and frequently do acquire the ability to act effortlessly, as when we master skills or regain a physical ability through rehabilitation after injury. Acquisition begins with deliberate exertion, but eventually we internalize the skill and develop the ability to act automatically and sometimes effortlessly.” And yet, a paradox perhaps remains: “On the other hand, if we take wu-wei to refer to the absence of intentional action, as I suggest, then the conceptual structure of intentionality may indeed render the directive to achieve wu-wei paradoxical, even construed diachronically. To cite just one of several potential paradoxes, on some accounts of intentionality, an agent cannot intentionally cause herself to perform actions that are wholly non-intentional, because intentions (unlike effort) remain in effect over time, even when not consciously held in mind, and their scope covers all the subsidiary actions that contribute to their fulfillment. For example, this morning I set to work on this review spontaneously, without consciously forming an intention to do so. Nevertheless, my activity was intentional, because it is part of a project I am performing intentionally. At some level of description, any voluntary movement an agent performs is intentional, merely by virtue of being an action rather than a reflex.” For our purposes, what is important is the possibility that the original intentional project is capable of becoming “subconscious” or even “unconscious” in Elster’s sense, meaning one attains a state of “relating directly to the world without relating also to the relating,” which he proceeds to characterize as an exquisite piece of moral psychology, “an argument to the effect that the good things in life are spoiled by self-consciousness about them.”
3. See Joel Kupperman, Learning from Asian Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

References and Further Reading

• Ames, Roger T., ed. Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1998.
• Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall. Dao De Jing, “Making This Life Significant:” A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003.
• Cook, Scott, ed. Hiding the World in the World: Uneven Discourse on the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003.
• Coutinho, Steve. An Introduction to Daoist Philosophies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
• Csikszentmihalyi, Mark and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Religious and Philosophical Aspects of the Laozi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999.
• Elster, Jon. Sour Grapes: Studies in the Subversion of Rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
• Forman, Robert K.C. The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
• Fraser, Chris. “On Wu-wei as a Unifying Metaphor,” Philosophy East and West, Vol. 57, No. 1 (January 2007): 97-106.
• Ivanhoe, Philip J., trans. (with commentary). The Daodejing of Laozi. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002.
• Kirkland, Russell. Taoism: The Enduring Tradition. New York: Routledge, 2004.
• Kjellberg, Paul, and Philip J. Ivanhoe, eds. Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and Ethics in the Zhuangzi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996.
• Kohn, Livia. Early Chinese Mysticism: Philosophy and Soteriology in the Taoist Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.
• Kohn, Livia. Monastic Life in Medieval Taoism: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2003.
• Kohn, Livia. Cosmos and Community: The Ethical Dimension of Daoism. Cambridge, MA: Three Pines Press, 2004.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. The Taoist Experience: An Anthology. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
• Kupperman, Joel J. Learning from Asian Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. 
• LaFargue, Michael. The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992.
• Little, Stephen (with Shawn Eichman). Taoism and the Arts of China. Chicago, IL and Berkeley, CA: The Art Institute of Chicago with the University of California Press, 2000.
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, ed. The Encyclopedia of Taoism, 2 Vols. New York: Routledge, 2008.
• Rosemont, Henry, Jr. Rationality and Religious Experience: The Continuing Relevance of the World’s Spiritual Traditions. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2001.
• Slingerland, Edward. Effortless Action: Wu-Wei as Conceptual Metaphor and Spiritual Ideal in Early China. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
• Stanley, Jason and Timothy Williamson. “Knowing How,” Journal of Philosophy, 98.8 (2001): 1-40.

Thinking about Comparative Philosophy: a short bibliographic introduction

Untitled. Ella Bergmann-Michel (1896 –1971), a German abstract artist, photographer and documentary filmmaker.

The introduction to this short list:

As with most of my bibliographies, there are two main constraints: books, in English (a few of the entries consisting of an article or chapter from a particular book). This list is a bit idiosyncratic insofar as it reflects works that have shaped my thinking on this subject (hence its introductory nature and length), a formative process that began in conjunction with my life as a student many years ago (most of my adult life has been outside the academic world), when I was fortunate enough to study under the mentorship of Nandini Iyer, Juan E. Campo, Gerald James Larson, Raimundo Panikkar, Herbert Fingarette (as a teaching assistant for one of his philosophy courses) and Ninian Smart. By my lights, Panikkar, Smart, Fingarette, and Larson (all of whom are no longer with us) were among the foremost pioneers of “comparative philosophy” (or ‘worldviews’). From afar (well, the other side of the country), I learned much about reason and philosophy in Islam from the writings of Oliver Leaman, so I suppose he is a virtual mentor of sorts (this included providing me with an opportunity to have some work published in the field of Islamic Studies). To all of these individuals I remain deeply grateful. 

I implore all who are drawn to or working in this area to read Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber’s invaluable Introduction to their co-edited volume, Comparative Philosophy without Borders (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016). I suspect it would be worthwhile to consider if theoretical or methodological thinking about and exemplifications of comparative philosophical praxis have any implications or relevance for considering questions of comparative law and legal pluralism.

This compilation is found here.

Unpacking an Aphorism

Kawanabe Kyōsai (May 18, 1831 – April 26, 1889), Crow Resting on Wood Trunk (woodblock print; ink and color on paper)

 

“Pharmaceutical companies are better at inventing diseases that match existing drugs, rather than inventing drugs to match existing diseases.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Random House, 2010).

I agree with this aphorism from Taleb, but it is a conditional agreement. And before I explain why, let me introduce the sūtra in Indic religious and philosophical traditions:

In Indian literary (including religious and philosophical) traditions a sūtra (सूत्र, ‘string’ or ‘thread’; Pali: sutta) refers to an aphorism (cf. maxims, proverbs, etc.) or more often a collection of aphorisms in the form of a manual or, more broadly, a condensed manual or text. Sūtra(s) are a genre of ancient and medieval Indic texts found, for example, in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, as well as other literary, medical, legal, and loosely scientific traditions. Because of their aphoristic or condensed (or even enigmatic) quality, they typically require and thus are often accompanied by one or more bhāṣya(s) (भाष्य), which are expositions, interpretations, and commentaries of the sūtra(s).

Sometimes aphorisms or maxims strike us as either painfully or brilliantly obvious, their meaning more or less transparent, and we admire the author’s skillful, creative, and perhaps wise literary concision, the elusive ability to say so much, as it were, in so few words (cf. the Asian proverb that proclaims ‘one picture is worth a thousand words’), much like the poetic power of haiku, although typically the latter have an experiential or existential dimension that speaks from the heart (or the uncommonly attentive and open mind) and, at least traditionally or conventionally, is written within the parameters of the natural world, unlike its literary twin in Japanese, senryū.¹ Bashō, perhaps the best known haikai master, sought to exemplify in his poetry both comic playfulness and spiritual depth, an uncommon blend of the vita contemplativa, which he practiced on his own terms, with the vita activa, evidenced in his willingness to take seriously “the ordinary, everyday lives of commoners,” portraying such figures as the beggar, the traveler and the farmer.

Comparable in several respects to the Indic sutra, and sharing to some extent the literary qualities of poetry as well, are the “proverb-like polemic aphorisms” and sundry “sayings” found in the Daodejing (earlier translated into English as Tao Te Ching, the later and preferred transliteration facilitating more accurate pronunciation of the words).² It is important to keep in mind that these compositional elements of the text have roots in an oral tradition, with the Daodejing exemplifying the transition between “an oral culture and a culture centered on writing and reading.” While its authorship is traditionally attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu), scholarly consensus views the chapters as “consist[ing] of individual sayings that once circulated [more or less] independently of each other as oral tradition [in the Laoist shih school].” Michael LaFargue has demonstrated the necessity of a sophisticated hermeneutic approach to interpret accurately the meanings of the aphorisms and sayings that populate the finished composition, combining in this instance the methods of both “form” and “redaction” criticism:

“[Polemic aphorisms] are directed implicitly or explicitly against some views, assumptions, or tendencies Laoists oppose [in addition to views among the masses, these could be the views of other ‘schools’ or philosophies or trends within or outside of Daoism, the latter including the Confucians, Mohists, and ‘Legalists,’ for example]. A second context for sayings consisted of conversations within the Laoist school concerning the practice of self-cultivation, including instruction in self-cultivation given by teachers to students. Most of these sayings are ‘celebratory’ [or laudatory], celebrating the wonderful character of the quality of mind Laoists cultivate.”

We have ample warrant to refer to the self-cultivation at work here as a Chinese version of that species of philosophical and spiritual therapeutic praxis found in other philosophical and religious worldviews (e.g., Stoicism, Buddhism, monastic and mystical traditions in Catholicism, Sufism, and Pātañjala Yoga).

And now we are prepared to return to Taleb’s “polemical” aphorism. Like the literary styles and forms found in the Asian worldviews we introduced all too cursorily, this aphorism requires or deserves “unpacking” (a term I learned in graduate school but now rarely have occasion to use, having long been separated from the academic world). Taleb’s aphorism does not reflect, as far as I can ascertain, any specific expertise in pharmacology or modern medicine, a fact Taleb might characterize as serendipitous or even virtuous. Its meaning is not transparent from my perspective because it is not clear what kind of diseases he is referring to: bodily, mental, both? Is “disease” used here in an analogical or metaphoric sense or is it intended to be understood (defined) in strictly biomedical terms. I think we need to specify more precisely what this aphorism is communicating or else its truth is less obvious and thus eminently more arguable. From my vantage point, it packs a punch only if it is referring to “disease” primarily in an analogical or metaphorical sense (there may be some exceptions, but they help make the rule, not break it), as when we are speaking of someone with a diagnosed or putative mental disorder or illness. Now while it is true that some forms of mental disorder have natural, organic or physiological causes (and perhaps even genetic roots), in which case we can speak properly of a disease, most forms of mental illness, I believe, are not of this sort, and among these, perhaps only the most severe forms of depression are likely to have the worst of their symptoms (i.e., those that cause the most suffering and are detrimental to moral psychological autonomy) ameliorated by pharmaceutic drugs. Taleb may have intended to include biomedically diagnosed bodily diseases,³ which of course affect the whole person, body and mind, but if that is the case, I don’t think the aphorism hits its target, if only because “inventing diseases that match existing drugs,” falls clearly and most often within the province of biological psychiatry and “pharmaceutical logic” (I’ve slightly altered Andrew Lakoff’s term ‘pharmaceutical reason’ from his book title), as the list of titles below attests (culled from my compilation on ‘Biological Psychiatry, Sullied Psychology, and Pharmaceutical Reason’).

By way of a conclusion (apart from the fact that I thought it necessary to unpack Taleb’s aphorim for it to pack a punch), it is worth thinking more generally about the indispensable role of “hard” constraints and “soft” constraints (or conventions) in the arts as incarnate in sūtras, haiku, aphorisms, maxims, and proverbs. This involves, in the first place and among other things, a discussion of “the relation among constraints, value, and creativity.”⁴ 

• Carlat, Daniel. Unhinged: The Trouble with Psychiatry—A Doctor’s Revelations about a Profession in Crisis. New York: Free Press, 2010.
• Conrad, Peter. The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
• Frances, Allen. Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis…. New York: HarperCollins, 2013.
• Goldacre, Ben. Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm Patients. New York: Faber and Faber, 2012.
• Greenberg, Gary. Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
• Greenberg, Gary. The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry. New York: Blue Rider Press/Penguin, 2013.
• Greene, Jeremy A. Prescribing by Numbers: Drugs and the Definition of Disease. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007.
• Healy, David. The Antidepressant Era. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.
• Healy, David. The Creation of Psychopharmacology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002.
• Healy, David. Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression. New York: New York University Press, 2004.
• Horwitz, Allan V. Creating Mental Illness. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
• Horwitz, Allan V. and Jerome C. Wakefield. The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Kirsch, Irving. The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Anti-Depressant Myth. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
• Lane, Christopher. Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
• Rasmussen, Nicolas. On Speed: From Benzedrine to Adderall. New York: New York University Press, 2008.
• Schwarz, Alan. ADHD Nation: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic. New York: Scribner, 2016.
• Wedge, Marilyn. A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic. New York: Avery/Penguin Random House, 2015.
• Whitaker, Robert. Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill. New York: Basic Books, revised ed., 2010 (2002).
• Whitaker, Robert. Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown, 2010.

Notes

1. Senryū (川柳, literally ‘river willow’) “is a Japanese form of short poetry similar to haiku in construction: three lines with 17 morae (or ‘on’ often translated as syllables, but see the article on onji for distinctions). Senryū tend to be about human foibles while haiku tend to be about nature, and senryū are often cynical or darkly humorous while haiku are more serious. Unlike haiku, senryū do not include a kireji (cutting word), and do not generally include a kigo, or season word. Senryū is named after Edo period haikai poet Karai Senryū (柄井川柳, 1718–1790), whose collection Haifūyanagidaru (誹風柳多留) launched the genre into the public consciousness.”
2. Please see Michael LaFargue, The Tao of the Tao Te Ching: A Translation and Commentary (State University of New York Press, 1992): 196-214.
3. See, for example, Paul Thagard’s How Scientists Explain Disease (Princeton University Press, 1999).
4. Please see chapter 3, “Less Is More: Creativity and Constraint in the Arts,” in Jon Elster’s Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (Cambridge University Press, 2000): 175-269.

Abstention from alcohol in Buddhist ethics … and intemperance in Thomas Hobbes’s Natural Law morality

By Adolph Gottlieb

[F]orasmuch as the laws of nature are nought else but the dictates of reason; so as, unless a man endeavour to preserve the faculty of right reasoning, he cannot observe the laws of nature; it is manifest, that he who knowingly or willingly doth aught whereby the rational faculty may be destroyed or weakened, he knowingly and willingly breaks the law of nature. For there is no difference between a man who performs not his duty, and him who does such things willingly as makes it impossible for him to do it. But they destroy and weaken the reasoning faculty, who do that which disturbs the mind from its natural state; that which most manifestly happens to drunkards, and gluttons. We therefore sin … against the law of nature by drunkenness. — Thomas Hobbes

*           *           *

Like weakness of will, addiction is a secondary failure of intentional agency, which derives from akrasia, a primary failure of intentional agency. [….] Unlike weakness of will, addiction is associated with a sense of compulsion rather than merely giving in to some guilty pleasure or other. The contrast is frequently posited in recent philosophical works on weakness of will. However, no positive account has been offered as to why we should distinguish the two phenomena in this way, though of course skeptics about weakness of will have presented arguments for the insignificance of this contrast and proponents have aimed to refute these arguments. Applied to addiction and weakness of will, the actualization model provides such a positive account. Weak-willed pursuits depend on being perceived as pleasurable, albeit unworthy. Once a weak-willed agent experiences these pursuits as fundamentally disappointing sources of pleasure, she also grows out of weakness of will. By contrast, addictive behavior transcends the experience of pleasure initially associated with the object of addiction. As illustrated by De Quincey [Confessions of an English Opium-Eater] and Dostoevsky [Notes from the Underground and The Gambler], addiction is bound to survive addicts’ recurrence experience of their addiction as harmful, distressing, and painful. In this respect, addiction is not just a recalcitrant form of akrasia, which is essentially true of weakness of will, but more importantly, a form of akrasia that is utterly devoid of pleasure. Paradoxically, or ironically, being devoid of pleasure is what makes addiction compulsive: the pursuit of a specter of pleasure is bound to be insatiable. In this sense, addiction could be said to involve a disoriented, if not a disordered appetite.

The difference between weakness of will and addiction is not one of degree but of kind. … [T]he pleasure that could be derived from the object of future addiction is already blow out of proportion before the onset of addiction and even before any actual first-hand experience of the object. [….] [S]ome authors aim to avoid framing problems of addiction in explicitly evaluative terms since they consider that this would further stigmatize people with addiction. [….] [N]egative moral appraisal strengthens the person with addiction by reengaging with her as an apt valuer that could also act under the guise of the good, not only the apparent—and disappearing—good of her addiction. For … evaluative immaturity is what necessarily leads to less than successful pursuits, such as akrasia, weakness of will, and addiction. At the same time, however, evaluative immaturity is always object- or pursuit-centered rather than global: less than successful agency still takes place under the guise of the good. And so success in action is never completely out of sight. — Lubomira Radoilska

*           *           *

“It is as easy to deceive ourselves without noticing it as it is hard to deceive others without their noticing.” — La Rochefoucauld

“We are so used to disguising ourselves from others that we end by disguising ourselves from ourselves.” — La Rochefoucauld

“Over the long term, you are more likely to fool yourself than others.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb¹

*           *           *

Āryāṣṭāṅgamārga (Skt., आर्याष्टाङ्गमार्ग) is translated as the “noble eightfold path” in Buddhism, the path that brings an end to the two primary causes of suffering (inordinate desire and ignorance) and thus it’s the fourth of the “four truths known by the spiritually noble ones” (catvāry āryasatyāni), mistranslated but commonly known as the “four noble truths.” The Eightfold Path in Buddhism is tripartite in structure, with meditation (samādhi समाधि) only one part of this threefold division (and each part, in turn as two or three components*), the other two parts being sīla (शील) or ethics, broadly construed, and prajñā (प्रज्ञा) or insight into the true nature of reality (involving both ‘discriminating knowledge’ and ‘intuitive apprehension’). Yet it seems when the question is asked of someone if he or she is a Buddhist and an affirmative response follows, the very next question typically concerns meditation (‘Do you meditate?’), and thus it seems “outsider” knowledge of this religious worldview, in the first instance at least, associates Buddhism with mind training generally and meditation practice in particular. Yet even among some Buddhist practitioners one finds a similar stress or preoccupation with meditation, hence comparatively little attention is devoted to the other two parts of the Eightfold Path. I don’t have a good explanation for why this is so, but perhaps neglect of the ethical dimension follows from the assumption that religious ethics of one kind or another are commonplace to religions. This may be accompanied by the thought that Buddhism proffers nothing unique on this score. And what about prajñā? I raise this issue by way of reiterating the fact that the three parts of the Eightfold Path are meant to be complementary and mutually reinforcing and thus neglect of any one part negatively affects both one’s grasp of basic Buddhist teachings and proper Buddhist spiritual praxis.

(This list has the Pāli translations sans diacritics.)

1. Right understanding (samma ditthi)
2. Right thought (samma sankappa)
3. Right speech (samma vaca) 
4. Right action (samma kammanta)
5. Right livelihood (samma ajiva) 
6. Right effort (samma vayama)
7. Right mindfulness (samma sati)
8. Right concentration (samma samadhi)

* Tripartite division: I = 1 and 2; II = 3, 4, and 5; and III = 6, 7, and 8

I introduce this fundamental framework for Buddhist teaching as a background to something that falls within Buddhist morality or śīla (Skt.), namely, the “five precepts” (pañcaśīla). These precepts are said to be the form the foundation of Buddhist ethics for both lay and monastic devotees (in other words, this does not exhaust the scope of Buddhist ethics, especially for monks and nuns). The five are: (i) to abstain from killing sentient beings, (ii) to abstain from stealing, (iii) to refrain from sexual misconduct (what this specifically entails is controversial and thus contested, with differences often owing to schools, teachers, and geography; one broad criterion entails avoidance of causing suffering through one’s sexual behavior), (iv) to abstain from lying and other forms of harmful speech, and (v) avoidance of intoxicants (that cause ‘heedlessness’), in positive terms, the practice of sobriety.

There are a number of nuanced treatments of these precepts by scholars inside and outside of Buddhism proper but I’ll cite here only one I’ve found particularly helpful: Peter Harvey’s treatment in An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000): 60-122. Harvey relates the failure to observe the fifth and last precept to its effect on the pursuit of “right mindfulness” (7. above) in particular, but one can find sufficient reason to link it to all parts of the Eightfold Path. He notes, however, the fact that breaking the fifth precept can lend itself to a disposition to break the other four precepts as well! The Buddha himself listed myriad baneful consequences from drunkenness, some well-known to us from our experience with and understanding of alcoholism, others harming our ability to be act virtuously or follow the Buddhist spiritual path. This amounts, I would argue, to a non-fallacious slippery slope argument. One Mahāyāna commentator, Jinaputra, seems to have believed that “carefully drinking a small amount of alcohol, with no desire for intoxication, is not reprehensible in itself, but is best avoided for what it may lead to.” By way of closing our introduction to this precept (there is much more that has and can be said), I’ll share one paragraph from Harvey’s discussion:

“While making a living by the sale of alcohol is seen as ‘wrong livelihood’ [5. above], Buddhists are not generally puritanical about drinking. It would be seen as bad form for a Buddhist who is avoiding alcohol to look down on others who are drinking it in his or her company; rather, it would be appropriate to tune in to their happy frame of mind [an interesting assumption here, as a ‘happy frame of mind’ is not invariably common to those who are drinking together] without having to resort to alcohol [this can be difficult to do, especially if one is trying assiduously to avoid drinking owing to a personal history of problems associated with same, as is the case of course with ‘alcoholics;’ see Jon Elster’s brilliant account of pre-commitment and ‘self-binding’ strategies by way of reducing or eliminating the desire or temptation to drink in Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (2000): 63-77]. Unlike some Muslim countries, no Buddhist country bans the sale or consumption of alcohol….”

In an earlier post, I highlighted Hobbes’s unusual and surprising argument against Christian missionary activity as a violation of the Law of Nature (its ‘reciprocity theorem’) and “natural reason.” This time round I’d like to share another provocative argument from Hobbes derived from his Law of Nature, one that forbids drunkenness and other forms of intemperance. What stood out for me was, like the Buddhist, Hobbes ties his principal objection intoxication to a high probability for what we might term a slippery slope of adverse consequences. In the words of S.A. (Sharon) Lloyd, “The reason why the Law of Nature forbids drunkenness and other intemperance is that such intemperance impairs our exercise of the rational powers we must use to follow the law of nature.” For the Buddhist, intoxication impairs mind-training and leads in general to what we call weakness of will (akrasia), which may lead to breaking other moral precepts or the kind of behavior strays from the path of Buddhist spiritual praxis as outlined in the Eightfold Path. Again, with Hobbes,

“Intemperance can be understood as forbidden by the Laws of Nature insofar as it compromises people’s ability to observe those laws; not because it harms the agent personally [of course it typically does this as well], rather only because it may contribute to actions by individual agents that do damage to the common good, and in violation of the Law of Nature.”

While Buddhism speaks to the harms that may befall the individual Buddhist in a state of intoxication, the effects redound to others as well, in other words, they increase the quotient of suffering of those interacting with such an individual. In short, such behavior does nothing to reduce suffering in the world, indeed, quite the converse, and thus it is in pragmatic and doctrinal contradiction to Buddhist teachings, much like intemperance is in pragmatic and doctrinal contradiction to Hobbes’s Law of Nature (or several ‘laws’ of nature).

References and Further Reading

• Elster, Jon. Strong Feelings: Emotion, Addiction and Human Behavior (MIT Press, 1999).
• Elster, Jon. Ulysses Unbound: Studies in Rationality, Precommitment, and Constraints (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
• Fingarette, Herbert. Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (University of California Press, 1988).
• Harvey, Peter. An Introduction to Buddhist Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
• Lloyd, S.A. Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
• Radoilska, Lubomira. Addiction and Weakness of Will (Oxford University Press, 2013).

Note

1. Cf. Elster: “Many addicts deny that they have a problem or, if they admit it, deny that they can do anything about it. Here are some of the stock phrases of addictive thinking:

• I am only a social drinker.
• I can quit any time I want to.
• I’ll quit tomorrow.

[I’ve left out those phrases not having to do with the problem drinker or alcoholic.]

Addicts often confuse cause and effect, saying, for instance, that they drink because of a marital problem when it is actually the other way around. Although alcoholics and gamblers may be especially prone to deceive others in order to get to the next drink or the next gamble or to explain away what they have done, they also tend to deceive themselves. More generally, the addict can respond to his predicament in one of three ways: by escaping from his awareness of it, by denying it, and by trying to quit. The alcoholic, for instance, may drown his guilt in alcohol, affirm that he is only a social drinker, or join the Alcoholics Anonymous. The first two responses obey the pleasure principle, the last the reality principle. Many addicts have two strong desires: the desire to consume and the desire to stop consuming. In the struggle for self-control, now the one, now the other desire seems to be gaining the upper hand. The most effective strategies for self-control seem to be private rules and strategies of precommitment [on these rules and strategies see Elster’s Ulysses Unbound, above]. Whichever technique is used, we observe a qualitative change in addictive behavior from the moment when self-control becomes important. [….] The transition from being a heavy drinker to a self-acknowledged problem drinker triggers similar changes. At the same time, a number of deceptive and self-deceptive mechanisms come into play. Ambivalence is a hallmark of serious addiction in humans.”  From Elster’s Strong Feelings (above): 73-74.

See too this compilation: Addiction—Transdisciplinary Perspectives

The capitalist mediation and modulation of taste, fashion, and style: class, status, and standing in the struggle for comparative and competitive identity

As I’ve done in the past, I plan on occasionally sharing one or more of La Rochefoucauld’s (Leonard Tancock, trans.) Maxims (Penguin Books, 1959, first published in 1665), commenting when the mood strikes. Permit me to introduce one of the foremost reasons these maxims continue to enchant us with some characteristically incisive observations from Jon Elster:

“Alone among the moralists, La Rochefoucauld offered something like a theory of human motivations. In fact, his views about unconscious motivation and unconscious cognition are probably more valuable than anything found in twentieth-century psychology. To some extent it is true, as Jean Lafond says, that ‘a certain verbal exuberance together with the exaggeration required for an original assertion turns the psychology into mythology.’ Yet…some systematic views can be extracted from what first appear as a random collection of diamond-like maxims.” — Elster on “the French Moralists” in a work that evidences his singular capacity to see with remarkable clarity both the forest and the trees in the study of emotions, namely, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

The four writers he treats in one part of the book—Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère—“mark the beginning and the end of the greatest era in French intellectual and cultural history.” This amounts to an implicit and unflattering comment on the overweening infatuation with postmodern French philosophers among quite a few intellectuals in the academy.

     

“Our self-esteem is more inclined to resent criticism of our tastes than of our opinions.”—La Rochefoucauld

Rochefoucauld’s maxims were penned when early aesthetic theories or philosophies more or less revolved around a notion of “taste” (beyond its gustatory meaning, literal or metaphorical) while the centrality of this concept in aesthetic theories has greatly diminished (with notable exceptions) since then, it persists in everyday societal and cultural practices and judgments, often as a sign or insignia of class and status, of wealth and privilege (and among the middling and upper classes, as a judgment on the ‘tastes’ of the hoi polloi, the masses, despite their attempts to emulate and imitate those above them in the social order). Reflections on our own tastes may bring in their wake insecurity, anxiety, and envy to the extent they affect our self-esteem and amour-propre more widely.

The more I think about this maxim, the more I’m inclined to believe it is not true. In other words, in general, we’ve become fairly tolerant of different tastes (in an aesthetic sense, however crude or dimly understood) than of opinions, if only because we have so many choices when it comes to the kinds of objects thought to incarnate or reflect our tastes, thus implicating taste in the nature of capitalist societies (be they affluent or less so). Perhaps one corresponding irony is the fact that such toleration goes, in an extravagant sense, hand-in-hand with an obsession with such matters. As Nicholas Xenos reminds us, “the utility of goods becomes secondary to the value they come to have as elements within a symbolic order of consumption.” Thus taste becomes bound up with our desires, dreams, fantasies, illusions, what have you, all of which are indissolubly tied to conceptions of abundance and opulence, to conspicuous consumption and gratuitous wealth. Marketing managers and advertisers (through ‘branding’ in today’s jargon) are experts in stimulating or expanding the reach of our desires, dreams, illusions, and so on through the manipulation (not always successful and occasionally modified by consumers themselves) of our sense of style and fashion, as well our often narcissistic need for social esteem.

     

Building on the thoughts of both Thorstein Veblen and George Simmel on this topic, Xenos notes that

“while it is clear that fashion, in the up-to-date, exclusionary sense, requires the constant creation of something new, in order for it to function as a means of social differentiation it must be articulated within a common set of understandings—fashion as an ongoing activity in a broader sense. There must be novelty, but it must be novelty that is recognized as a mark of fashion and that is at least potentially capable of being imitated and purchased. In this way, fashion can act at one and the same time as a force of social differentiation and cohesion.

The fashionable objects that serve as signs of social inclusion and individual or group demarcation thus have no intrinsic social value of their own, their value is derived solely from their use as signs, whatever utility such objects may have is completely secondary and socially irrelevant. [….] For a brief moment, an object that exists in great quantity may attain to the level of fashion when it is incorporated into a particular style that transforms it, makes it no longer ordinary. When this occurs, it makes no sense to say that the object has a scarcity value—although once the fashion has caught on there may be a temporary lack of available supply of it to satisfy an unexpected fashion demand. What does have scarcity value is the transforming style itself: the object in its fashionable surroundings becomes scarce because only some people have the stylistic acumen to display it in this particular way. In this sense, the stylish always possess a scarce resource independently of the things themselves that they make fashionable.

The emulation that is typical of modernity and is institutionalized in fashion can be characterized as an effort not only—or not at all—to possess what others possess, but to imitate their style. [….] The more natural that style appears, the less effort in construction it seems to require by its possessor, the more appealing it may be, particularly because when we think of our own style it is hard to think of what we are naturally. [….] Fashion advertising, like much advertising in general, is selling a style [and mode] of consumption, not only the particular goods contained within a photograph [or TV commercial]. [….]

The acceleration of changes in fashion noted by Simmel and Veblen is attributable to the instability built into the fashion code as a result of the relative positions within it. The struggle to establish one’s identity and position is ceaseless because there are not objectively fixed statuses [insofar as this is the capitalism of would-be egalitarian democratic societies], but the struggle tends to reproduce the de facto statuses that do exist. The wealthier find it easier to shift consumption from one set of objects to another than those with less wealth. A competitive hierarchy is established, with no rest for anyone but with real upward movement forestalled—the dynamism of individual and group aspirations is thus institutionalized into a form of social stasis. The deep stability of the struggle for competitive identity is concealed by the sometime frantic manipulation of appearances. Those at the top of the social order cast their glances sideways and downward, cultivating a style that appears natural and that imbues the objects that are signified within its objects of elite consumption serve as markers of group identity. Such objects may be located at either end of the temporal spectrum: they may be identified by their antiquity or by their newness. In either case, their authenticity or their timeliness will ensure their scarcity. With new objects governed by fashion, only an elite possesses, by self-determination, the requisite aesthetic sensibility [‘taste’] to see them properly, at least in the short term. [….] [G]ood taste requires the abandonment of fashionable new objects once they have common currency [this is in keeping with, or at least analogous to, an ethic of transgression], and hence no longer marks of distinction, although it sometimes happens that the fashionable set, accustomed to the rapid changes in style necessitated by its precarious social lead, moves on to new styles without the old ones filtering down….

Along with its stylistic acumen, the uppermost strata cultivates an appreciation of antiquities as a sign of taste but also as a sign of ancestry. Thus history is wedded to nature; the stylish not only possess the seemingly natural stability to decipher newly coded fashions but also possess a heritage. The age of an antique (and frequently the lineage of its ownership [save for those cases in which the object was improperly or illegally acquired, as the history of museum acquisitions informs us]) confers a legitimacy on its possessor’s taste—the owner, in Walter Benjamin’s formulation, shares in the aura of the unique original object. The appropriation of the past is a pseudo-aristocratic substitute of the fixed identity conferred by family and rank in the pre-bourgeois era.

For those below this upper crust—that is to say, for most everyone—status identity requires a panoramic view. Identity is established horizontally, but only in small part [as when one envies the new car bought by a neighbor]. More important are the views upward and downward. Positions in the social order are most precarious in the great middle of the middle class, where identity is poised uneasily between relationally defined extremes and where catching up to the styles previously adopted by those above instantaneously results in the debasement of those same styles—the accomplishments of “high” culture become middle-brow, designer labels no longer carry a cachet of exclusivity.” — Nicholas Xenos, Scarcity and Modernity (Routledge, 1989): passim.

On the distinction and differences between AI (‘artificial intelligence’) and human intelligence, judgment and the emotions

This is a revised version from something I posted several years ago. I was inspired by to return to this topic after dipping into Erik J. Larson’s The Myth of Artificial Intelligence: Why Computers Can’t Think the Way We Do (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021).

I do not think that it is true or fair to say that “artificial intelligence” (hereafter, AI) replicates human cognitive abilities, although it may “replicate” in a very attenuated or simply analogical sense, one aspect or feature of one particular cognitive ability, even then, in as much as human cognitive abilities do not function in isolation, in other words, as they work more or less in tandem and within a larger cognitive (and affective, etc.) human context, the replication that takes place in this case is not in any way emulative of human intelligence as such. AI is not about emulating or instantiating (peculiarly) human intelligence, but rather a technological replication of aspects of formal logic that can be mathematized (such as algorithms), thus it is a mistake to describe the process here as one of “automated reasoning” (i.e., AI machines don’t ‘reason,’ they compute and/or process), if only because our best philosophical and psychological conceptions of rationality and reasoning cast a net—as the later Hilary Putnam often reminded us—far wider than anything that can, in fact or principle, be scientized, logicized, or mathematized (i.e., formalized).

Moreover, AI only occurs as the result of the (creative, collaborative, managerial …) work of human designers, programmers, and so on, meaning that it does not in any real sense add up to the construction of “autonomous” (as that predicate is used in moral philosophy and moral psychology) machines or robots, although perhaps we could view this as a stipulative description or metaphor, albeit one still parasitic (and to that extent misleading) on conceptions of human autonomy. And insofar as a replication is in reference to a copy, in this case the copy is not an exact replica of the original. We should therefore be critically attentive to the metaphors and analogies (but especially the former) used in discussions of AI: “learning,” “representation,” “intelligence” (the adjective ‘artificial’ thus deserving more descriptive and normative semantic power), “autonomous,” “mind,” “brain,” and so forth; these often serve, even if unintentionally, to blur distinctions and boundaries, muddle our thinking, create conceptual confusion, obscure reality, and evade the truth. Often extravagant claims are made (by writers in popular science, scientists themselves, mass media ‘experts’ and pundits, philosophers, corporate spokespersons or executives, venture capital and capital investors generally, and so forth) to the effect that AI computers or machines possess powers uncannily “like us,” that is, they function in ways that, heretofore at least, were demonstrably distinctive of human (and sometimes simply animal) powers and capacities, the prerogative, as it were, and for better and worse, of human beings, of persons, of personal normative agency.

Recent attempts to articulate something called “algorithmic accountability,” meaning a concern motivated by the recognition that data selection and (so to speak) algorithmic processing often encode “politics,” psychological biases or prejudices, or stereotypical judgments, are important, but attributions of accountability and responsibility, be they individual or shared (in this case, almost invariably the latter), can only be human, not “algorithmic” in the first instance, hence that notion lacks any meaningful moral or legal sense unless it is a shorthand reference to the human beings responsible for producing or programming the algorithms in the first place.

A fair amount of the philosophical, legal, and scientific (including computer science) literature—both its questions and propositions—on AI (‘artificial intelligence’), including robots, “autonomous artificial agents, and “smart machines,” is replete with implausible presuppositions and assumptions, as well as question-begging premises such the arguments can be characterized by such terms as implausibility, incoherence, and even “nonsense” (or failure to ‘make sense’). In short, the conceptual claims upon which its statements and premises depend, that which is at the very heart of its arguments, often make no sense, that is to say, they “fail to express something meaningful.”

Sometimes even the very title of a book will alert us to such nonsense, as in the case of a volume edited by Wendell Wallach and Colin Allen, Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong (Oxford University Press, 2009). The book title begs the question, first with the predicate “moral,” and correlatively, with the phrase, “teaching robots right from wrong,” which depends upon concepts heretofore never applied outside human animals  or persons (we can speak of ‘teaching’ at least some kinds of animals, but it makes no sense to speak of teaching them ‘right from wrong’), and thus it is eminently arguable as to whether or not we can truly “teach” robots anything, let alone a basic moral orientations, in the way, say, that we teach our children, our students, or each other, whether in informal or formal settings. The novelty of the claim, as such, is not what is at issue, although radical and unprecedented manner in which it employs concepts and words should provoke presumptive doubts as to whether or not our authors have a clear and plausible picture of what it means for “us” to “be moral,” what it typically means for us to teach someone “right from wrong,” or how someone learns this fundamental moral distinction. We might employ such words in a stipulative or even theoretical sense, for specific and thus very limited purposes that are parasitic on conventional or lexical meaning(s), or perhaps simply analogical or metaphorical at bottom, but even in those cases, one risks misleading others by implying or evoking eminently questionable or arguable presuppositions or assumptions that make, in the end, for more or less conceptual confusion if not implausibility.

According to our editors, respectively a consultant and writer affiliated with Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and of Cognitive Science, “today’s [computer] systems are approaching a level of complexity … that requires the systems to make moral decisions—to be programmed with ‘ethical subroutines’ to borrow a phrase from Star Trek” (the blurring of the lines between contemporary science and science fiction, or the belief that much that was once science fiction on this score is no longer fiction but the very marrow of science itself, is commonplace). This argument depends, I would argue, on a rather implausible model of what it means for us to make “moral decisions,” as well as on an incoherent or question-begging application of the predicate “ethical.” Wallach and Allen open the Introduction with the breathless statement that scientists at the Affective Computing Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) “are designing computers that can read human emotions,” as if this is a foregone conclusion awaiting technical development or completion. Human beings are not always adept at reading emotions insofar as we can hide them or simply “fake it,” as it were. In any case, as I argue below, a machine cannot understand what constitutes a human emotion. The expression of emotions in persons is in fact an incredibly complex experience, involving both outward and inner dimensions (some of which are cognitive), biographical history, relational contexts and so forth, all of which are part, in principle or theory, of an organic whole, that is, the person. In the words of P.M.S. Hacker,

“Emotions and moods are the pulse of the human spirit. They are both determinants and expressions of our temperament and character. They are tokens of our engagement with the world and with our fellow human beings. [….] [T]he emotions are also perspicuously connected with what it, or is thought to be, good and bad. Our emotional pronenesses and liabilities are partly constitutive of our temperament and personality. Our ability to control our emotions, to keep their manifestations and their motivating force within the bounds of reason, is constitutive of our character as moral agents. So the investigation of the emotions is a fruitful prolegomenon to the philosophical study of morality. It provides a point of access to the elucidation of right and wrong, good and evil, virtue and vice, that skirts the morass of deontological and consequentialist approaches to ethics without neglecting the roles of duties and obligations, or the role of the consequences of our actions in our practical reasoning.”

Let’s consider in a rough and preliminary matter, the role of emotions from the vantage point of human nature or philosophical anthropology. This should help us appreciate the extravagance or implausibility of the claim that AI machines soon will, in fact, or might, in principle, “read human emotions.” Here I rely upon P.M.S. Hacker’s third volume in his tetralogy on human nature as seen from the vantage point of philosophical anthropology, The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (2018).

In particular, I’d like to briefly address the claim that AI systems can—or soon will—“read human emotions.” By way of tilling the ground for our discussion, it is not an insignificant fact that, in the words of Hacker, “[t]he deepest students of the role of emotions in human life are the novelists, dramatists, and poets of our culture” (Hacker confines his examination of ‘the passions’ from the vantage point of philosophical anthropology to Western civilization). A virtually identical point has been made by Jon Elster in his book, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (1999):

“… [W]ith respect to an important subset of the emotions we can learn more from moralists, novelists, and playwrights than from the cumulative findings of scientific psychology. These emotions include regret, relief, hope, disappointment, shame, guilt, pridefulness, pride, hybris, envy, jealousy, malice, pity, indignation, wrath, hatred, contempt, joy, grief, and romantic love. By contrast, the scientific study of the emotions can teach us a great deal about anger, fear, disgust, parental love, and sexual desire (if we count the last two as emotions). [….] I believe…that prescientific insights into the emotions are not simply superseded by modern psychology [here Elster means largely what we would call ‘scientific psychology’] in the way that natural philosophy has been superseded by physics. Some men and women in the past have been superb students of human nature, with more wide-ranging personal experience, better powers of observation, and deeper intuitions than almost any psychologist I can think of. This is only what we should expect: There is no reason why one century out of twenty-five should have a privilege in wisdom and understanding. In the case of physics, this argument does not apply.”

I would amend Elster’s account by recognizing that insofar as psychoanalytic psychology is a “subjective science,” it fares far better with regard to instructing us about the role of our emotions in daily life than the “scientific psychology” that dominates the contemporary academic world. Finally, I would further qualify Elster’s remarks with the following from Hacker:

“The constitutive complexity of human emotions, their diverse relation to time, to knowledge and belief of a neurologically uncircumscribable scope, to reasons and the evaluation of reasons, to somatic and expressive perturbations, to motivation and decision, guarantee that there can be no simple correlation [let alone causation!] between genetic, physiological, or neural facts and an emotion [this comment is made with regard to the efforts of developmental and evolutionary psychologists as well as cognitive neuroscientists to identify a class of absolutely basic (‘natural kinds’ if you will) human emotions].”

In short, we can conclude that science does not and will not provide us with our best or most accurate knowledge and understanding of human emotions. One fundamental reason this is the case is the fact that emotions often “exhibit” what Hacker defines as “both compositional complexity and contextual or narrative complexity:”

“Compositional complexity is patent in the manner in which emotions may involve cognitive and cogitative strands (perception, knowledge, belief, judgment, imagination, evaluation, and thought); sensations and perturbations; forms of facial, tonal, and behavioral manifestation; or emotionally charged utterances that express one’s feelings; reasons and motives for action; and intentionality and causality. The contextual complexity is manifest in the manner in which emotions, in all their temporal diversity, are woven into the tapestry of life. An emotional episode is rendered intelligible not only by reference to a past history—to previous relationships and commitments, to past deeds and encounters, and to antecedent emotional states. The loss of temper over a triviality may be made comprehensible by reference to long-standing, but suppressed, jealousy. One’s Schadenfreude (delight at the misfortune of another) or by reference to one’s standing resentment at an insult. The intensity of one’s grief may be explained by reference to the passion with which one loved. [….] For the most part, understanding the emotions, as opposed to explaining their cortical and physiological roots, is idiographic rather than nomothetic, and historical rather than static.”

This suggests that the notion that AI systems or robots “reading emotions” is quite implausible if not impossible (I happen to think the latter), given the manner in which emotions are “woven into the tapestry of life.” Some might respond by asserting, more plausibly (and after the work of the evolutionary psychologist Paul Ekman on ‘facial recognition technology’), that what is being “read” here are simply facial expressions and perhaps bodily comportment. But assuming that is true, it’s still doubtful if only because even episodic or “temporary” emotions “have characteristic multiple associations, manifestations, and forms of expression” both within and across cultures (and these are not static), together with the fact that we can conceal our emotions by, say, pretending to feel an emotion one does not feel and thus mimic emotions and emotional expressions. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, the “facial manifestations of emotions occur in a context that gives them meaning.” Hence facial recognition software alone will not suffice to “read” our emotions, if only because, as Hacker writes,  

“[o]ur emotions are made evident not only by our countenance and voice, but also by our posture and mien [all of which can be mimed and mimicked by a decent actor, an adept criminal, a dishonest person or a ‘drama queen’], the way we walk or sit, our gestures and gesticulations. So called body language, sermo corporis, as Cicero dubbed it, is rich and variegated, with natural behavioural roots and cultural modifications, constraints, refinements, and inventions. [….] Throughout recorded history, posture and deportment were refined and constrained in order to differentiate the aristocracy from the demos or plebs, imperial rulers from the ruled, and men from women. Natural gestures and gesticulations of anger, defiance, triumph, submission, grief, awe, and wonder were, from one period to another, subject to various forms of social modification and restraint to mark out the superior from the inferior, the cultivated from the uncouth.”

Thus,

“[f]acial expression, inarticulate vocal expression, gesture, and mien constitute collectively an orchestra of possible behaviourable manifestations and expressions of agitations, of the perturbations of temporary emotions, of enduring emotions, of moods, and of emotional attitudes. In addition there are wholly conventional behavioral signals by means of which we express our feelings. These include nodding or shaking one’s head, thumbs up or down, pointing with index finger or—rudely—with thumb, winking, beckoning, waving, and rude and obscene gestures of rejections, mockery, and insult. Couple them with the articulate verbal expressions of agitation, emotion, mood and attitude; the tone and speed of utterance; and the volume of voice in which one speaks … and we have a veritable symphony for the manifestation and expression of affections in general and of emotions in particular. The orchestra is normally conducted in honest concord. The various forms of discord are often marks of insincerity, which, for the unaccustomed, is difficult to make. [….] One can wear a veil but, when one doesn’t, one’s features are revealed. That one can sometimes conceal one’s feelings does not imply that, when does not, it is not the very feelings themselves that are manifest—even though anger is not shaking one’s fist and crying is not sadness.”

Hacker explains how the “behaviour of others, in all its diversity and complexity, in a context that renders it intelligible, constitutes the logical criteria for ascribing emotions to them.” These multifarious logical criteria are not available to an AI machine or robot. Furthermore, our emotions are not simply inferred from the behavioural criteria we observe, as behaviour provides the (non-formal) logical and non-inductive ground for ascription of an emotion, and such criteria are defeasible in part because “there is a degree of opacity and sometimes even a form of constitutional indeterminacy about the emotions and their manifestation.” This “interpersonal opacity” is more frequent and pronounced in cross-cultural encounters. In any case, the opacity and indeterminacy of the emotions (or, put differently, their ideographic character), whatever their depth and authenticity or the motives they give rise to, can make for mutual misunderstanding between two people who love each other, or between two close friends who know each other well:

“There need be no disagreement between them over the facts of their relationship—but one interprets the manifold nuances of behavior and attitude one way, and the other another way. There may be no additional data to resolve the misunderstanding—all the facts are given. One person makes a pattern of their emotional life one way, the other person another way. There need be no further ‘fact of the matter.’”

This vividly illustrates, I think, the wild implausibility if not nonsense ensconced in the belief that AI machines or robots can, or in the near future, “read emotions.” The uniqueness of human nature and the role of emotions as part and parcel of the human condition, singled out here in terms of “the penumbra of opacity and indeterminacy surrounding the application of concepts of the emotions,” is an urgent reminder that

“there is such a thing as better and worse judgment about the emotions of others. Greater sensitivity to fine shades of behaviour is conducive to more refined insight into their hearts. Wide knowledge of mankind and openness to what people tell of themselves make for better judgment. If one knows a person well, one is more likely to be able to render his responses and reactions intelligible than if one were a mere acquaintance [or an AI machine!]. One may learn to look, and come to see what others pass over. One may become sensitive to imponderable evidence, to subtleties of glance, facial expression, gesture, and tone of voice. One will then not have a better ‘theory of the emotions’ than others: one will have become a connoisseur of the emotions.”

The capacity for and power of judgment is distinctively human and thus forever beyond the reach of AI. Only a (human) person, not a robot, has the potential to one day become “a connoisseur of the emotions.”

Philosophy of Mind & Consciousness—Selected Readings

• Bennett, M.R. and P.M.S. Hacker. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
• Bennett, Maxwell, Daniel Dennett, Peter Hacker, John Searle, and Daniel Robinson. Neuroscience and Philosophy: Brain, Mind and Language. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. (I find the arguments of Bennett, Hacker, and Robinson more sound and persuasive than those of Dennett and Searle.)
• Bilgrami, Akeel. Self-knowledge and Resentment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
• Descombes, Vincent (Stephen Adam Schwartz, trans.) The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Dreyfus, Hubert L. What Computers Still Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, revised ed., 1992 (1979).
• Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Stuart E. Dreyfus. Mind over Machine. New York: Free Press, 1986.
• Finkelstein, David H. Expression and the Inner. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
• Ganeri, Jonardon. The Self: Naturalism, Consciousness, and the First-Person Stance. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Gillett, Grant. Subjectivity and Being Somebody: Human Identity and Neuroethics. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2008.
• Gillett, Grant. The Mind and Its Discontents. New York: Oxford University Press, 2^nd ed., 2009.
• Hacker, P.M.S. Human Nature: The Categorial Framework. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007.
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Intellectual Powers: A Study of Human Nature. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
• Hacker, P.M.S. The Passions: A Study of Human Nature. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.
• Hagberg, Garry L. Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
• Hodgson, David. The Mind Matters: Consciousness and Choice in a Quantum World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• Horst, Steven. Beyond Reduction: Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Hutto, Daniel D. The Presence of Mind. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999.
• Hutto, Daniel D. Beyond Physicalism. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2000.
• Hutto, Daniel D. Folk Psychological Narratives: The Sociocultural Basis of Understanding. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.
• Pardo, Michael S. and Dennis Patterson. Minds, Brains, and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Patterson, Dennis and Michael S. Pardo, eds. Philosophical Foundations of Law and Neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
• Radoilska, Lubomira, ed. Autonomy and Mental Disorder. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1988.
• Smith, Christian. What Is a Person? Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Sprigge, T.L.S. (Leemon B. McHenry, ed.) The Importance of Subjectivity: Selected Essays on Metaphysics and Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Tallis, Raymond. The Explicit Animal: A Defence of Human Consciousness. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999 ed.
• Tallis, Raymond. I Am: An Inquiry into First-Person Being. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
• Tallis, Raymond. The Knowing Animal: A Philosophical Inquiry into Knowledge and Truth. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004.
• Tallis, Raymond. Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Durham, England: Acumen, 2011.
• Wollheim, Richard. The Mind and Its Depths. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.

Some relevant bibliographies:

• The Emotions
• Ethical Perspectives on the Sciences and Technology
• Human Nature and Personal Identity
• Psychoanalytic Psychology and Therapy
• Sullied (Natural & Social) Sciences

I also recommend familiarizing oneself with the literature on “autonomy” in philosophy, moral psychology, and political philosophy, as well as the notion of “human dignity” in philosophy and jurisprudence.  I have made this post available for viewing or download at my Academia page.

Thomas Hobbes’s “reciprocity theorem” (the Golden Rule with regard to our rational agency) and Christian missionary activity

I have not set the background for this post, which would involve a rather lengthy treatment of Sharon Lloyd’s analysis of Hobbes’s methods in Leviathan (which cohere with other and earlier works), in this instance, his “compositive reconstruction” of religion (Judeo-Christianity), a “redescription of transcendent interests,” and the “resolutive analysis” that takes place in Part 4 of Leviathan. I should note, however, Hobbes’s argument that more than a few beliefs, doctrines and practices found in Christianity were imported into this “true religion” from elsewhere: from the Greeks (Gentiles whose beliefs and practices were spread by colonization and conquest, including, ultimately, to the Jews) and the Jews, most notably, and these acted alone and in concert to pervert original (so to speak) articles of Christian faith and doctrine. Thus, for example, demonology (which provides ‘an account of evil, illness, madness, and prophecy as possession by good or evils spirits,’ and is responsible for the practice of exorcism as well as healing and speaking in tongues), with its origins among the Greeks, ultimately infected the religion of the Jews (being ‘carried into Christianity with the conversion of the Jews’). In addition, demonology lends its support to a pernicious interpretation of Scripture that finds us with immortal immaterial souls (as Hobbes says, ‘The soule in Scripture signifieth always, either the life, or the living creature and the body and soule jointly, the body alive,’ which sounds rather like what Wittgenstein later said!). Moreover, idolatry “came into Christianity with the conversion of the Gentiles.” Thus one sees here some of the more significant deleterious effects on the interpretation of Scripture which Hobbes causally traced back to worldviews that were subject to (largely successful) missionary activity.

All the same, this picture gets a bit fuzzy when we understand how Christianity emerged (or evolved, etc.) out of Judaism, Jesus and his disciples being of course Jews and Jesus himself explaining his teaching and preaching as grounded in the Judaic tradition (hence his proclamation that he did not want to abolish the law but to fulfill it). But the missionizing that leads to conversion of Gentiles clearly bothered Hobbes and perhaps an appreciation of this renders our example below of Hobbes’s application of his “reciprocity theorem” to practical reasoning and the doctrines and practices of Christianity more palatable or plausible or even persuasive (bear in mind that, along with Lloyd, and against not a few scholarly interpreters of Hobbes, I do not think Hobbes was an atheist but rather a devout Christian; evidence for this proposition is amply provided in Lloyd’s two books on his moral and political philosophy).

        

What follows is but one—and surprising—application of Hobbes’s “reciprocity theorem” (in essence, the Golden Rule) at the core of his Laws of Nature (at the same time God’s ‘natural law’), which we can arrive through exercise of our natural reason. Despite the fact that this is at once “God’s Law” (thus found in Scripture) and a Law of Nature, it is discoverable in principle by all of us as human beings distinguishable from other animals by our capacity for rational agency [thus atheists, agnostics, and non-theists are not excluded]. This reciprocity theorem serves as both a guide for and constraint upon moral reasoning. Without going into more analytical and explanatory detail here, I just want to note but one intriguing application of this moral and rational principle of reciprocity introduced by S.A. (Sharon) Lloyd in the second of her two works on Hobbes’s moral and political philosophy, Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Laws of Nature (Cambridge University Press, 2009). “For instance,”

“[Hobbes] insists that the efforts of missionaries to alter religion in another country are prohibited by the Law of Nature, and this despite the fact that the proselytizer believes he is doing good by his action. Why? Because ‘he does that which he would not approve in another, namely, that coming, from hence, he should endeavor to alter the religion there.’ This application of reciprocity is striking, because it resists the parochial description of the agent’s action as one of teaching ‘true religion’ [which Hobbes himself believed was in fact Christianity] or ‘saving souls,’ in favor of the least abstract description of the action that members of both societies, disagreeing over the value of the proposed missionary work, might be expected to converge upon, namely that it is an instance of coming from one place and trying to alter the religion in another place. We will not approve the efforts of foreigners to alter our religious beliefs, not least because of the civil strife any effective such effort would surely cause among defenders of the former religion and advocates for the new. In this case Hobbes applies his reciprocity theorem to the action under the least abstract description of it—endeavouring to alter the religion—that all affected by the very action may be expected to accept as correct. Men disagree about which religious teachings are true. They disagree about what conversions are salvationary. But they can agree at least that the action under assessment is one of attempted religious conversion.”

The reciprocity theorem is a normative rationality constraint on moral principles derived from the laws of nature which entail a psychological experiment or test [this is where it functions as a ‘guide’ in addition to serving as a constraint] inasmuch as it asks us to perform an imaginative act of empathy* [this is my characterization of the ‘test,’ not Lloyd’s, as she does not invoke the concept of empathy]: “Reciprocity suggests a test for discerning whether one’s actions comport with the Law of Nature, namely that the agent imagine herself on the receiving end of the action she proposes to perform and consider whether from that vantage point she would fault the action as unreasonable:

‘[T]here is an easy rule to know upon a sudden, whether the action I be to do, be against the law of nature or not … [namely], [t]hat a man imagine himself in the place of the party with whom he hath to do, and reciprocally him in his. Which is no more but a changing, as it were, of the scales. [….]

[For a man in a quiet mind] there is nothing easier for him to know, though he never be so rude and unlearned, than this only rule, that when he doubts whether what he is now doing to another may be done by the law of nature or not, he conceive himself to be in that other’s stead. [….] And this rule is not only easy, but is anciently celebrated in these words, quod tibi fieri no vis, alteri ne feceris: do not that to others, you would not have done to yourself.’” [Hobbes uses both positive and negative formulations of the Golden Rule.]

       

Hobbes might be said to have retroactively identified with those Jewish followers of Jesus who vigorously but unsuccessfully argued against proselytizing to Gentiles after the death of Jesus. Looking back, we see clearly how this proselytization or missionary activity provided the tipping point for a Jewish sect that followed Jesus transforming itself into a distinctly different and thus new religion: Christianity (wherein new converts need not practice many of the traditional Jewish rites and rules or laws and, instead, only acknowledge Jesus as the messiah and savior).

* The notion of empathy, for better and worse, has now become one of those notoriously contested concepts, with recent arguments being made “against” empathy. At some point I will try to spell out the sense in which Hobbes is using this concept, while lacking the word for it, which did not emerge until long after Hobbes’s death (‘sympathy’ and ‘pity’ coming closest to what we now mean by empathy).

The unflattering components of human nature in action

First, there is an incredible number of cognitive and social biases to which we are prone (some of these may have a little noticed or implicit emotional or psychological dimension which perhaps make it misleading to describe them simply as ‘cognitive’). Second, there are the infamous “seven deadly sins” or moral psychological vices (avarice, lust, gluttony, etc.). Third, there are a number of unconscious, subconscious and conscious psychological dispositions or dispositional traits or debilitating phenomena (e.g., self-deception, denial, etc., as well as full-fledged mental ‘disorders’ or illness) to which most of us are liable. Fourth, there are at least several passions that more often than not are troubling if only for the disruption or chaos they bring to both our intra- and inter-personal (or collective) lives (some evidence suggests they may have accompanying and harmful physiological effects as well): anger, rage, envy, jealousy, and perhaps pride, for example (as we see, a few of these fall under the heading of the seven deadly sins). Finally, our attention is now being drawn to what are described as “vices of the mind” according to Quassim Cassam, that is, “systematically harmful ways of thinking, attitudes, or character traits,” in brief, “epistemic vices.”* These essentially intellectual or epistemic vices are “first and foremost, epistemically harmful and the other harms they cause—including political harms—are a consequence of their epistemic harms.”

I am inclined to believe that while we need and thus benefit from conceptual line drawing, there may be some overlap and thus permeable boundaries among the above items in our catalogue of human folly, foibles, faults and vices. Indeed, Cassam’s treatment of epistemic vices suggests as much, given his discussion of the “list of the intellectual vices that led to the Iraq fiasco,” among them arrogance, imperviousness to evidence, dogmatism, closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, and gullibility. While what is morally, intellectually and psychologically troubling or disturbing here is best examined in its particulars (through psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the arts, for example), that is, at the level of the individual person, it of course requires both the social and psychological sciences (the foremost of which I believe is the science of subjectivity, namely, psychoanalysis) to properly place these phenomena in a structural context, let alone engage in any sort of plausible social science and historical explanation. The fact that our foibles, faults and vices may be interacting and mutually reinforcing is not an encouraging picture of the human heart and mind. Indeed, this picture might assume the shape and color of the dystopian musings and apocalyptic tenor of our time. Yet, to use a clichéd expression, we ignore it at our peril.

* Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political (Oxford University Press, 2019)

• To place the aforementioned aspects of human nature within the proverbial big picture, please see the works in this compilation: Human Nature & Personal Identity.