Two and a half millennia after Parmenides

Raymond Tallis has written an interesting article about the Pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides in the latest Prospect, as a taster for his forthcoming book on the same topic.

The Pre-Socratics suffer from our having relatively little information about them, and the fact that little of their material survives. They were also in the invidious position of having to invent philosophy from scratch, and of speaking to an audience unfamiliar with the flavour and purpose of philosophical thought. We should therefore not be surprised if their statements, while at times profound, are on the simplistic side.

There is a temptation to read more into Pre-Socratic utterances than is justified. It isn't possible to conclude very much from the fragments we have, beyond the fact that there were intellectuals in that period of history having interesting philosophical thoughts. Interpreting an individual's complete philosophical outlook from what survives has a tendency to move from speculation into fantasy. Whole academic papers are written on the question of whether some fragment of Heraclitus should be interpreted one way or the other. (The interpretation sometimes hinges on how a single word in a particular fragment should be translated.)

While Tallis makes some thought-provoking points, he falls into the same trap.

[In Parmenides' thought] human consciousness had a crucial encounter with itself. This was, I believe, a decisive moment in the long awakening of the human species to its own nature. From this self-encounter resulted the cognitive self-criticism, the profound critical sense that gave birth to the unfolding intellectual dramas of metaphysics and science that have in the last century or so approached an impasse.

Well, perhaps, and Tallis is not alone in wishing to make grandiose claims on his behalf — Nietzsche did it, ditto a number of more recent professional philosophers. But it seems highly speculative. While Plato said nice things about Parmenides, this in itself is not conclusive proof that the latter was indeed the essential foundation for the former, let alone the basis of Plato's metaphysics, as some have suggested.

Parmenides' key idea is usually thought to have been that change is an illusion: ultimately, everything that exists continues to exist. This is an insight comparable to Heraclitus's that you cannot step into the same river twice: a useful reminder about the 'boggliness' of reality, and that common sense concepts don't work very well when you try to analyse the fundamental nature of things. Notably, it is also — on the face of it — saying the opposite from the one about stepping into a river. Conclusion? The Pre-Socratics had some interesting ideas, but it's questionable whether they amounted to full-blown philosophical theories, let alone scientific ones. Still, it is good to be reminded that the metaphysical debate about change versus continuity goes back to the 5th century BC.

Tallis is on more questionable ground when he starts to make claims about Parmenides' contribution to epistemology. While it was useful to state that knowledge comes from analysis rather than perception, and to draw a distinction between appearance and reality, as Parmenides did, Tallis surely goes too far when he says that

In his short poem, thought and knowledge encounter themselves head on for the first time. This is such a huge advance in self-consciousness that it is no exaggeration to call it an "awakening." …The pre-Socratic revolution in thought that Parmenides brought to its climax is, I believe, a more compelling epistemological break than any that Foucault claimed to discover in post-Renaissance humanism.

Tallis asks why this development happened when it did. His answers involve giving political developments priority over intellectual ones — a common move, but a speculative one, and based on the ideological assumption that individuals cannot make innovations without being prompted to do so by their social environment.

Why, hundreds of thousands of years after human beings woke to the outside world as an object of knowledge separate from themselves, did they awaken to knowledge itself? What was it that fostered this collision of human consciousness with itself, such that thought came to think about itself and knowledge inquired into its own basis? …

The pre-Socratic awakening was the result of a unique concatenation of circumstances in place by the 7th century BC. In his classic investigation The Origin of Greek Thought, published half a century ago, J P Vernant connects the pre-Socratic awakening with the rise of the polis, or city state. …

Another driver to the explicitness of thought that made the Parmenidean self-encounter of human consciousness more likely was the rise of cities. … There is one more important driver: writing. This is an extraordinary technology: it stores human consciousness outside of the human body.

Such assertions may seem axiomatic in a post-structuralist culture, but they are highly theory-laden. There is no less evidence for the opposite claim, i.e. that socio-political developments were inspired by philosophical ones. In following the standard line, Tallis comes close to the reductionist thesis that consciousness, or at least thinking about consciousness, is a product of social forces.

Tallis's article becomes more interesting at the end when it turns away from its ostensible subject, and talks about our present intellectual situation.

Over the last century, there has been a growing feeling that in crucial areas of knowledge, we have reached an impasse. For instance, the endeavour to turn the scientific gaze on our own consciousness has run into a brick wall. Although you wouldn't know it from the excitement surrounding brain science, we have made no progress in understanding how it is that we are conscious and are aware of being located in a world that we in part construct and in part encounter as a given. ...

Dismissing the importance of subjective experiences, or "qualia"—a common ploy among the champions of neurophilosophy such as Daniel Dennett—keeps the impression of progress alive, but this is cheating. Biological science—evolutionary theory and so on—is increasingly assimilating itself to physics, chemistry and mathematics. Gene-eyed evolutionary theory and the rise of molecular biology forge closer connections between the biosphere and what Richard Dawkins has called "the blind forces of physics." Not only does this deepen the tension between an objective understanding of ourselves as organisms and our sense of being conscious agents, it exposes the biological sciences to the difficulties our understanding of the physical world is encountering. At the apex of contemporary physics, we have two mighty theories—quantum mechanics and the general theory of relativity—which are incompatible. The attempt to unite the two theories in "superstring theory" has produced a sterile landscape of largely untestable theories … Quantum mechanics, as Richard Feynman repeatedly pointed out, is incomprehensible, for all its extraordinary effectiveness.

He concludes by making the curious suggestion that a solution to these problems can somehow be found in Parmenides’ original insights.

We need to return to the Parmenidean moment to see whether, without losing all the gains that post-Parmenidean thought has brought us, there might be another cognitive journey from that which western thought has taken.

Tallis is right to point to the impasse and sterility which many fundamental areas of science and philosophy have reached. Hanging this observation on the utterances of a minor philosophical figure some two and half millennia ago, however, seems a little contrived. A more persuasive connection between the two periods might have been made as follows, but would probably have been too ideologically incorrect for Prospect Magazine.

'We need to recognise that the revolutionary insights of the Pre-Socratics were made by independent thinkers operating outside an institutional environment, supported by private capital. If we wish to continue to make significant progress, we need to consider whether a different political route from the one which we have taken might be required to restore to us the cultural advantages of classical Greece.'

Such a thing as society

Is there such a thing as 'society', over and above a collection of individuals? Curiously, the question is now associated in many people’s minds with Margaret Thatcher, who said:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!", "I am homeless, the Government must house me!", and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

The argument may of course originally have been mentioned to her by one or more of her intellectual supporters. It has also been pointed out that it was made in a fairly informal context, i.e. an interview with Woman’s Own (in 1987).

There are several ways of interpreting the question. Unfortunately, attention tends to be focused on the least interesting one. The trivial answer is, “yes, of course there is”. The word is useful in the same way that the concept of ‘global warming’ is useful — it is a shorthand for describing complex phenomena by means of aggregating and averaging.

Probably one can go further, and say that there are social phenomena which, while ultimately reducible to individual behaviour, only become observable at the aggregate level. They are, in other words, a kind of (weakly) emergent behaviour. For example, to say that "Italy advanced technologically in the sixteenth century" is theoretically reducible to the behaviour of individual Italians, but it would be difficult to do so, and the aggregate phenomenon is not readily predictable simply from information about the individuals.

However, to say that patterns emerge at an aggregate level which are not conveniently reducible to descriptions of individual behaviour is not the same as saying that a different kind of entity emerges at that level. There is clearly a sense in which methodological individualism — the claim that the whole is ultimately nothing but the sum of its parts — is trivially true, and anything more ambitious than weak emergence — e.g. social holism — is 'obviously' false.

The arguments that individuals are influenced by their social environment (situationism), or even that they are largely a function of that environment (constructionism), are really concerned with a different issue from the one raised by Thatcher's assertion. Even if the actions of individuals are always traceable to societal influences, those actions are still the basic components of social behaviour, and the latter must ultimately admit explanation in terms of the former.

However, all the above points are somewhat incidental to the issue typically at stake when the Thatcher quote is discussed. Reactions to it are more often concerned with a different matter altogether: that of whether ontological or moral priority should be given to the individual over the social group. In other words, the argument is really about the conflict between political individualism and communitarianism.

The purposes of religion

In a secular society such as ours, religion can seem an odd phenomenon. Consider the beliefs that are involved:
- belief in the existence of an invisible deity;
- belief that the wishes of the deity can be ascertained by studying scripture;
- belief that people ought to comply with the deity's wishes.
These things can seem peculiar from the point of view of someone brought up without religion. A number of writers have recently tried to emphasise these peculiarities of religion in order to discredit it.

However, assume for the sake of argument that these beliefs happen to be correct. The question arises, what is the purpose of religion — should it aim to generate conclusions consistent with prevailing secular attitudes? Some who reject religious belief as irrational also criticise it for producing implications about behaviour that lack cogency from a secular perspective. It is not clear that this is a sound line of reasoning.

Consider Catholic objections to the use of condoms and to homosexuality, often linked to arguments about what is 'natural'. Many critics argue that Catholicism is morally wrong to generate advice which, they say, causes suffering, or stops it being prevented. However, the purposes of religion are not the same as those of secular morality.

Philosopher Stephen Law, for example, has recently argued that Catholic doctrine in this area is flawed:
- 'Even if there is a God, the claim that those purposes that we find in nature indicate what God desires is questionable.'
- 'Why not say, "We'd prefer you not to have sex, but if you are going to, please use a condom"? Can I suggest that saying anything else puts you onthesideofthedevil?'
- [responding to commenter] 'You say that the Church's view is: "condoms aren't going to stop you infecting or being infected". I believe medical opinion is that condoms can indeed prevent infection, isn't it? Doesn't this mean the Church's position is wrong?'

It may be appropriate to put pressure on the Church to change its policies, for pragmatic reasons. Church doctrine has changed over the centuries to accommodate changes in public thinking. One can dispute the basic beliefs of a religion, but to say that church policy is irrational because it goes against common sense seems like bad logic.

Other articles
Stephen Law on Thomas Aquinas
Stephen Law on condoms and Catholics
The Guardian on the use of condoms in Africa
Jonathan Tweet on condoms for Catholics
Nourishing Obscurity compares three major religions

God

Recently there has been a good deal of debate about the existence, or otherwise, of God. Christians face the problem that the God of the New Testament is normally presumed to be both omnipotent and supremely good, which seems hard to square with the existence of suffering. It should be noted that moral "goodness" is notoriously difficult to define with regard to human behaviour, and is presumably even more problematic applied to a deity.

If we consider the more general idea of a creator or other supreme entity, and leave the idea of "goodness" aside, then we are faced with two key questions:

(A) What characteristics would such an entity have?

(B) What would count as "evidence" of the existence of such an entity?

Much of the debate seems to have blurred the distinction between the Christian God and the idea of God in general, and also failed adequately to consider questions A and B above. By not properly defining terms or considering the fundamental issues, the debate has effectively had the character of political argument rather than intellectual analysis. If a Christian claims that God has particular characteristics definable in ordinary language, or that God has performed particular actions comprehensible to human minds, then it is relatively easy to shed doubt on this. The effect is to undermine the concept altogether.

In a discussion with Alister McGrath, Richard Dawkins says "we have to talk about probabilities", and McGrath agrees. McGrath seems to think there is an inherent improbability in the complexity of living things, which makes the existence of a creator god plausible. Dawkins responds "I want to say exactly the same thing of a designer … Any being capable of designing a universe, or an eye, or a knee would have to be the kind of entity which would be statistically improbable in the same kind of way that the eye is". But both seem to be misusing statistics: we cannot really assign probabilities to hypotheses as abstract as that.

The strongest argument against the existence of God is probably that of superfluity (a version of Ockham's Razor): the concept is irrelevant because it is neither useful nor needed in explaining any facts we wish to account for. However, this argument is not as strong as it may appear.

Within a closed and self-contained system of explanation, e.g. physics, a concept at the biological level such as 'sexual reproduction' is not required to explain all the observed phenomena: we merely need to know the initial conditions and the laws of particle interaction. Yet when we move to a more macroscopic level, we find that it is useful and necessary to invoke certain additional higher-level concepts to provide satisfactory explanations. (This is sometimes expressed using the idea of 'emergent properties'.) The fact that we find it perfectly possible to explain phenomena without recourse to additional theoretical entitites is not strong evidence that no other concepts would be required at a 'larger' level of significance.

Other articles
Wikipedia on emergent properties
Discussion between McGrath and Dawkins
Stephen Law on the probability of God

No smoking

Smoking is now illegal in the UK in all indoor locations that are open to the public. Controversially, this includes private establishments where the counter-argument exists that a non-smoker could frequent another establishment if they minded enough.

The logic for tolerating the smoking ban seems to proceed as follows.

1) Most people now believe that smoking cigarettes is equivalent to taking a regular dose of poison: it is basically extremely harmful to health, probably more so (addiction aside) than any of the major illegal drugs.

2) Therefore the right to behave how you like, provided it does not harm others, is not important in this case, and hence does not need to be defended.

3) Many smokers are themselves in favour of the ban, because they believe it will help them to give up.

There has therefore been relatively little objection to the ban encroaching on areas where no non-smoker is being harmed. But is it possible that an important principle is being lost sight of? J.S. Mill argued that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.”

Once a major piece of legislation breaks clearly with this moral restriction, and without significant opposition, are we likely to find other areas in which it will be applied? “Slippery slope” arguments of this kind are regarded as dubious by many philosophers. Bernard Williams, for example, considered them illogical because they appear to assume “that there is no point at which one can non-arbitrarily get off the slope once one has got onto it”.

Nevertheless, there does seem to be something in the idea of slippery slopes, in politics at least. The argument “we allow A, therefore it is inconsistent not to allow B", or “we already ban X, so why do we allow Y?”, is frequently used. Even if not sound, it is a line of argument which the general public seems prepared to regard as reasonable. On that basis, it may not be long before other legislation is proposed to prevent unhealthy individual behaviour. It has already been suggested that it should be a crime for a parent to allow their child to overeat. On that basis it is not impossible that it will, in the not too distant future, become illegal to sell or consume certain foods, e.g. snacks with more than a permitted maximum level of sugar or fat.

Other articles
David Hockney against the smoking ban
Daily Referendum on the smoking ban
Reuters on the smoking ban
Pub tries to avoid ban by becoming an embassy
Stumbling & Mumbling on the smoking ban
Nourishing Obscurity on the smoking ban
Julian Baggini on slippery slopes
Fallacy Files on slippery slopes

Inheritance (2)

Is it fair for a person’s chances in life to be affected by the receipt of a capital sum from another individual? We could ask the same question about innate ability: is it fair for a person to have a better chance of a high income because of genetic characteristic they did nothing to deserve? It has been argued that it is not. Of course, it is harder to stop people benefiting from their abilities than to stop them benefiting from inheritance.

This raises the question of what exactly is fair, and what is deserved. The philosopher John Rawls thought that, given a choice of different possible reward systems behind a ‘veil of ignorance’, people would opt for a system which permitted rewards to ability and effort only to the extent that the position of the worst off would be maximised. Rawls proposed that this hypothetical choice should be used to define what is ‘fair’. This is usually taken to mean, permitting a certain amount of competition, with higher ability and/or greater effort tending to yield higher rewards, but also a good deal of redistribution back down towards the poorest.

It has been pointed out that Rawls’s solution depends on assuming a particular attitude to risk: that of not being willing to gamble to any extent on a high variance of possible outcomes. If correct, what does it tell us about inheritance? Assuming a Rawlsian system allows for savings, it is not clear that an individual behind the veil of ignorance would necessarily insist on capital gifts being taxed, since such gifts do not themselves result in greater divergence of outcomes between individuals in the way that free market competition does.

If we say inheritance or ability are not morally deserved, then that leaves the question of what is. Although we might want to say that effort is more deserving of reward than ability, because it is more under the control of the individual, we could make similar objections as with ability. If A makes more effort than B, is it not because A benefits from conditions which make it easier for him to try harder, e.g. a more supportive upbringing, a higher level of self-confidence, or a greater innate capacity for making efforts?

Other articles
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on egalitarianism
Wikipedia on John Rawls

Inheritance (1)

The phenomenon of wealth that is acquired from a relative appears to have few sympathisers. Even pro-market supporters often have little time for it. Socialists tend to be scathing about it. Anthony Giddens, for example, argues that inherited capital "violates reciprocity”. The recent e-petition against inheritance tax argued it was “double taxation”, but provided no economic arguments in favour of transfers per se.

The logic behind such disapproval relative to other market phenomena is based on the idea that entrepreneurial capital is “earned” and therefore more “deserved”, while capital which someone gave you is not earned at all. However, it is not clear that the logic for this distinction is sound.

Take the case of a self-made millionaire giving capital to an individual who is not a relative, e.g. an artist or composer. This is no less a “market” phenomenon than any other. The millionaire buyer wants something (e.g. a cultural product, whether or not he gets a proprietorial stake in it) in return for his money. The distinguishing feature is that the number of buyers responsible for generating the capital accumulation is one, rather than being in the thousands or millions.

Where the recipient is a family member, it is possible to extend this logic. The millionaire expects to get some benefit, e.g. some kind of quasi-immortality. Rather than a million people paying for (say) astronomical bodies to be named after them and making the supplier of this service wealthy, we have one person “paying” his or her son or daughter to do something with the money which will promote the family name or the memory of the donor. Why is the latter thought to be less tolerable than the former?

Other articles
Anthony Giddens on inheritance tax
Stumbling & Mumbling on hating the rich
Our Word is our Weapon on inequality
Stumbling & Mumbling on slavery and inheritance
e-petition against inheritance tax

Abortion

There is some concern over the level of abortions in this country. Three years ago a report showed that over 20 per cent of pregnancies are being terminated. Recently there have been plans to lower the current time limit from 24 weeks, possibly to 20.

Abortion is an extremely emotive topic. A person's attitudes to it are often said to depend on his or her "value system". As with most emotive debates, attitudes may depend more on emotions - and particularly on strong feelings of horror or rejection - than on logic or religious doctrine. However, one should not assume that an attitude based on emotion is necessarily less justified than one based on analysis.

Those who are strongly "pro-choice" may perceive the horror of a woman having a very strong need or desire not to bear a child, while being unable to do so because of some illegality or social taboo. Those who are strongly "pro-life" may perceive the horror of a foetus being aborted without sufficient recognition that this may be different from killing an individual human only by a matter of degree.

One problem with abortion debates is that they tend to focus on hard legalities (pro-lifers want more restrictions, pro-choicers want fewer) while ignoring a whole range of factors which determine how much and how readily abortion is practised. One factor often ignored is that medicine is largely controlled by professional bodies and the government. This leads to the following points.

1) Whether a woman has an abortion will often depend to some extent on the views of the practitioner advising her, which in turn will reflect the attitudes of government and the medical profession.

2) The "privacy" issue (a woman's right to decide about her own body) is more complicated if "right" means claim on state medicine as opposed to liberty not to be legally prevented.

Is it possible that some women are being advised to terminate - and do so - when this is not an option they would ultimately have chosen if they had been freer to decide for themselves?

Other articles
Telegraph on Catholic Cardinals putting pressure on MPs
Telegraph on doctors refusing to carry out abortions
Nadine Dorries MP in support of Cardinals (see 4 and 5 June)
Not Saussure on Nadine Dorries
Devil's Kitchen on Nadine Dorries
Ministry of Truth on Nadine Dorries
The Times on abortion and Hollywood

Genes and opportunity

Most people would agree that one of the key political issues is this:
How can talented children from poor backgrounds have the same opportunity as those from wealthier backgrounds?

To assess where we are in terms of this goal, we can look at data on social mobility. The problem is, the data can only be interpreted in conjunction with data about heritability of talent.

Say, for the sake of argument, that “ability” is 100% inherited and has no environmental component. Then, in a society that was perfect in terms of the above goal, so that social position was perfectly correlated with ability, would we not find that people never moved from the class they were born into?

Therefore, does it not follow that you cannot assess whether we have the “correct” level of mobility without taking into account heritability? In which case, are not the arguments of both left¹ and right², to the effect that there is “clearly a problem” because so few from the lower classes rise up the hierarchy, entirely specious?

1. Alan Johnson: "There is still a long way to go. A child who is not on free school meals is twice as likely to get five good GCSEs as one who is."
2. David Willetts: "Just 2% of children at grammar schools are on free school meals when those low income children make up 12% of the school population in their areas."

Other articles
Not Saussure on mobility
Stumbling & Mumbling on talent
Conservative Party Reptile on grammar schools
Daily Telegraph on the distribution of ability
The Spectator on David Willetts
Stumbling & Mumbling on nature vs nurture
Peter Hitchens on grammar schools