Judging Life and Its Value

Philosophy

Oneâs life can be meaningful, but not worth living, or worth living, but not meaningful, which demonstrates that an evaluation of whether life is worth living differs from an evaluation of whether oneâs life is meaningful.  But how do these evaluations differ? As I will argue, an evaluation of whether life is worth living is a more comprehensive evaluation than the evaluation of whether oneâs individual life is meaningful. In judging whether one finds life worth living, one takes into account, not only whether oneâs life is meaningful, but undesirable aspects of life such as chronic pain and suffering. For example, a person who is suffering greatly, but who has lived a meaningful life, might still conclude that his or her life is not worth living. Although the famed question about the meaning of life has received most of the attention, I argue that the better and more fruitful question is âIs life worth living?â One should want, not just for oneâs life to be meaningful, but for it to be worth living.

SORITES (Σωριτης), ISSN 1135-1349 http://www.sorites.org Issue #18 - February 2007. Pp. 60-75 Judging Life and Its Value Copyright © by Brooke Alan Trisel and SORITES JUDGING LIFE AND ITS VALUE Brooke Alan Trisel We could live life - perhaps as animals do - without judging whether it is good or bad, meaningful or meaningless, or worthwhile or not. However, we do not. We make judgements about the value1 of life, concluding that life has no value or great value, and then may attempt to convince each other that we have placed the proper value on life. It is not just philosophers who perform these evaluations. Many people, whether they realize it or not, compare their own lives, or life in general, to their expectations or desires, and then render a judgement about whether life, as they have experienced and view it, measures up to the standard they have adopted to judge it. There is a wide range of sophistication with these evaluations and judgements. At one extreme are simple, commonly uttered statements such as «life is good» or «life is terrible,» where it may be unclear how the person reached the conclusion they did. At the other extreme are the differing judgements of philosophers - often carefully thought out and based on elaborate arguments. Between these two extremes are the evaluations and judgements of poets and playwrights, including Shakespeare's famous words that life is «full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.»2 Different methods and standards have been and can be used to judge the value of life. Furthermore, our judgements about whether or not life has value depend, in large part, on which method is used, as will be shown. Therefore, it is important that attention be given to examining the methods used to make this judgement. There has been a great deal of work done by normative theorists in evaluating various methods, such as utilitarianism, for helping us to decide among different courses of action. In contrast, there has been little attention paid to examining the methods used to make judgements about the value of life. Rather, attention has been concentrated, for many years, on assessing whether life can be meaningful without God and immortality. In this essay, I will explore and compare the various ways of judging whether life has value with the ultimate aim of identifying the best method for making this judgement. Purposefulness Versus Worthwhileness When people first begin to reflect on philosophic questions, they often start with purpose related questions such as «What is the purpose of life?» and «Why are we here?» After reflecting on these questions for a while, some people eventually realize that these questions presuppose that life was created for a reason and so they then strip the question of 1. Value will be used to mean worth. 2. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.5.27-28 (Arden edition), ed. Kenneth Muir (London: Methuen, 1951), 154. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 61 its assumption and ask themselves «Is there a purpose of life?» Although people may ponder the famed question about the meaning of life, many of those who do never ask themselves the distinct question «Is life worth living?» which is unfortunate for reasons I will explain. Based on the amount of literature on the question «Is there a meaning or purpose of life?»3 relative to the question «Is life worth living?»4 one might be led to believe that the purpose related question is more important. However, as I will attempt to demonstrate, I believe that the reverse is true. In disputing the claim made by some that life is not worth living if it has no meaning, Kurt Baier convincingly argues that one can find life worth living even if one's life is not «meaningful,» regardless of whether meaningfulness is thought of as a «hidden,» universal meaning or simply as valuable or important. Referring to the second sense of meaningfulness, he writes: «Now, many lives are not valuable or important and are not, in this sense, meaningful. But, again, this need not imply that they are not worth living.»5 The opposite is also true. A person may lead a successful and purposeful life and yet may find life not worth living and may even commit suicide. Albert Camus had earlier argued a similar point to Baier when he writes: «Hitherto ... people have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgements.»6 However, Camus, earlier in the same essay, makes a common mistake of failing to distinguish between these questions, which leads him to give undue importance to the question about the meaning of life. In a famous statement, he indicates: Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest, whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories - comes afterwards. ... I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. ... On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. ... I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions.7 I believe that Camus was correct in asserting that judging whether life is or is not worth living is the most important philosophic question. However, he is incorrect to conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. 3. For a discussion and bibliography of recent (since 1980) works on the meaning of life, see Thaddeus Metz, «Recent Work on the Meaning of Life,» Ethics 112 (July 2002): 781-814. Earlier works on the meaning of life can be found in E.D. Klemke, The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 4. For discussion on the question of whether life is worth living, see Kurt Baier, «Threats of Futility: Is Life Worth Living?» Free Inquiry, 8 (Summer 1988): 47-52; Kurt Baier, Problems of Life and Death: A Humanist Perspective (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1997), 67-70; Richard Wollheim, The Thread of Life (London: Yale University Press, 1984), 244-48; John McDermott, «Why Bother: Is Life Worth Living?» Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 67783; and Karsten Harries, «Questioning the Question of the Worth of Life,» Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 684-90. 5. Kurt Baier, «Threats of Futility,» 49. 6. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 6. 7. Camus, 3-4. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 62 Regarding the questions «Is there a purpose of life?» and «Is life worth living?» the fact that a person may answer one question negatively, and the other question affirmatively, demonstrates that these two questions are different. Some have explicitly noted that these are distinct concepts. For example, Thaddeus Metz writes: «The concept of what makes a life worth living is distinct from the concept of what makes a life meaningful.»8 Although some philosophers have noted that there is a difference between a «meaningful life» and a «life worth living,» what it is that makes these concepts different has not been explored. How do these concepts differ? The principal difference between these concepts is that the latter concept has a much broader scope than the former concept. One who asks about the purpose of life generally seeks to know whether we were created for a purpose or have some role to play in carrying out a divine or cosmic purpose or plan. It is a narrow question about goal-directed activity. In contrast, the question regarding whether life is worth living is a broad question. Addressing this question has often been thought of as a process of weighing benefits against costs, good against bad, or pleasure against pain9 to determine if, in one's life, the former outweighs the latter. Hereinafter, the terminology of benefits and costs will be used. Granted, one benefit of being alive is the satisfaction obtained from having and pursuing goals or purposes. However, there are other benefits associated with life, including interacting with family and friends, music and art appreciation, and adventure, that may have little or nothing to do with goal-directed or achievement-oriented activity. If we ask ourselves the question «Is life worth living?» these other benefits would be taken into account when judging life. But this will not occur if we only reflect on the question «Is there a purpose of life?» and never ask ourselves the more encompassing and important question «Is life worth living?» An evaluation of whether life is worth living takes into account, not only whether one has a «purpose» or «purposes,» in whatever way one interprets these words, but other experiences that do not involve pursuing goals. Because an evaluation of worthwhileness is more comprehensive than an evaluation of purposefulness, this explains how it is possible that one could live a life that is not goal-driven or purposeful and yet find life worth living or could have a purposeful life and yet find life not worth living. In a cross cultural study, the anthropologist Gordon Mathews asked various people in Japan and the United States the question of what makes life worth living.10 Mathews indicates that there is a term used by Japanese called «ikigai» which means «that which most makes one's life seem worth living.»11 When he asked the Japanese participants the question of what it is that most makes them feel that life is worth living, they responded with answers such as family, work, and leisure activities. Because there are few references in the print media in the United States to the phrase «life worth living,» but many references to the phrase 8. Metz, «Recent Work,» from footnote on p. 788. 9. See, for example, Wollheim, «The Thread of Life,» 244. 10. Gordon Mathews, What Makes Life Worth Living: How Japanese and Americans Make Sense of Their Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). 11. Ibid., 5. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 63 «meaning of life,» and because there is no cultural equivalent to the term «ikigai» in the United States, he initially asked American participants the following question: «What, for you, is the meaning of your life?» Mathews indicates that the participants in the study were perplexed by the question and were unable to answer it. However, when Mathews later asked them the question «What most makes your life seem worth living?» he indicates that the «Americans responded to these questions almost exactly as the Japanese responded to «What's your ikigai?»12 This study supports two points that are being made in this essay. First, questions about whether life is worth living are intelligible whereas questions about the meaning of life are not. Second, when people are asked whether life is worth living, they will take into account benefits that are disregarded when they reflect on whether there is a purpose of life. «Life,» as it is used in the questions «Is there a purpose of life?» and «Is life worth living?» could refer to life in general or to our individual lives. Therefore, when discussing these questions, it is necessary to define «life» to avoid misunderstanding. In this essay the word «life,» in the question «Is life worth living?» will refer to our individual lives. This is the important question. The question of whether life in general is worth living is peculiar and almost as unclear as the question «Is there a purpose of life?» - which is notorious for being obscure. Of course, life in general does not live. It is individuals who live and so it is individuals, not life in general, who may or may not find life worth living. Thus, the question «Is life (in general) worth living?» is unclear. With the question, one could be asking whether the life of every individual who makes up the human species is worth living. One might also be asking whether the life of a typical or average person is worth living, even though no one individual may actually have the characteristics of this imaginary individual. Judging whether life in general is worth living has no practical value. If one decides that one's own life is not worth living, one can act upon this judgement by attempting to engage in certain activities or form relationships with other people that will make life worthwhile.13 One may also act upon this judgement by ending one's life. However, if a person concludes that life in general is not worth living, there is not much that this person can do with this judgement, except perhaps for engaging in a futile attempt to try and convince the entire population of the world to commit mass suicide. The question «Is there a purpose of life?» has two possible responses: yes and no. Neither of these responses says anything about the value of our lives. However, some venture beyond addressing the question and claim that if there is no purpose of life that life has little or no value. For example, William Lane Craig asserts: «Without God the universe is the result of a cosmic accident, a chance explosion. There is no reason for which it exists. As for man, he is a freak of nature - a blind product of matter plus time plus chance. Man is just a lump 12. Ibid., 28. 13. I do not believe that there is a difference between finding life worth living and finding life worthwhile. Wollheim («The Thread of Life,» 244) uses «worthwhile» to mean satisfying one's desires and plans, whereas most people would use the term «meaningful» or «purposeful» instead. Because he uses «worthwhile» synonymously with «meaningful,» he concludes that there is a distinction between finding life worth living and finding life worthwhile. Although there is a difference between finding life meaningful and finding life worth living, if he had used «worthwhile» in the conventional sense to mean worth the effort, then he likely would not have concluded that there is a difference between finding life worth living and finding life worthwhile. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 64 of slime that evolved into rationality.»14 Craig and others who make similar arguments assume that there is a relation between whether there is a purpose of life and whether our lives have value. In claiming that life has no «real» significance or value if it has no purpose, they have, in effect, adopted a purpose-based standard to judge whether life has value. What criterion or standard should be used to judge whether our lives have value? Should it be a purpose-based standard or a worthwhileness standard? The two standards are as follows: (a) My life has value only if human life has a purpose. (b) My life has value only if the benefits of being alive outweigh the costs. The first standard will be referred to as the «cosmic standard.» If we are going to judge life, then the standard that we use for making this judgement should be clear and take into account a broad range, if not all, of our experiences. As I have argued, the purpose-based standard fails to take into account experiences that do not involve pursuing goals. Furthermore, the notion of «purpose,» as reflected in the claim that life has value only if it has a purpose, is unclear as many have argued. Because there are different types of purposes, this is one source of confusion with the claim. Having a purpose could mean that human life was created for a reason (to serve a function) by a god or an intelligent cosmos. Alternatively, having a purpose could mean that we were not created by a superior being to serve a function, but that we have self-chosen goals or that we some role, either selfchosen or externally imposed, in carrying out the goal(s) of a superior being. Because the notion of having a purpose is obscure and the purpose-based standard disregards many of our experiences - some of which we may cherish the most - it is an inadequate standard to use to judge whether our lives have value. Furthermore, this standard is based on the assumption, as mentioned, that there is a direct relation between whether there is a divine or cosmic purpose and whether our lives have value, but is there such a relation? If the cosmos were intelligent and had a self-chosen purpose, such as to expand forever, but human beings were unintended and simply a byproduct of this expansion, then the fact that the cosmos has a purpose in no way adds value to our lives. Some have asked the question of whether we would be satisfied if we learned that we had a purpose, but that this purpose was to serve as a food source for another entity.15 Of course the answer would be «no,» which provides further support that there is no direct relation between whether human life was created for a reason and whether our lives have value. A now commonly used way of responding to those who maintain that life is purposeless without God and immortality, is to point out, as Baier16 did in 1957, that there are two different senses of the word «purpose» and that one can create purpose in one's life, by pursuing certain goals, regardless of whether life was created for a purpose. In pointing out 14. William Lane Craig, «The Absurdity of Life Without God,» in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 45. Originally published in Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologies, 1994. 15. See, for example, Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 586. 16. Kurt Baier, «The Meaning of Life,» in The Meaning of Life, ed. E.D. Klemke (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 101-132. Inaugural Lecture delivered at Canberra University College, 1957. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 65 this other sense of the word «purpose,» and by arguing that it is sufficient to make life meaningful, these philosophers indirectly propose an alternative, lower standard for judging whether life has value. For one's life to have value, there does not have to be a grand cosmic or divine purpose of which we play a central part. Instead, they suggest that one can create value in one's life if one has nontrivial, achievable goals and pursues them with passion. Although this latter standard is clear and much more reasonable than the cosmic standard, it fails, as does the cosmic standard, to take into account experiences that do not involve goaldirected activity - experiences that would be factored into a worthwhileness evaluation. When the separate concepts of «worth» and «while» are combined into the word «worthwhile,» it creates a powerful and elegant concept. In using this concept, one takes into account benefits and effort, placing them in a side-by-side comparison so that one can determine whether the benefits justify the expenditure of effort. Because we arose in an imperfect natural world, where there is competition among the creatures of this world for limited resources, which can result in hunger, disease, and suffering, it is unrealistic to expect that there would only be benefits associated with living. The worthwhileness standard acknowledges that there are, and will always be, costs associated with living whereas the purpose-based standards do not. Therefore, the worthwhileness standard is a more realistic way of judging whether life has value than are the purpose-based, benefit-focused standards. Methods for Determining Whether Life is Worth Living Method 1: Weighing Benefits and Costs Although the worthwhileness standard has significant advantages over the purposebased standards for judging whether life has value, how can one determine whether one's life is worth living? One can attempt to weigh the benefits of being alive against the costs, as has been discussed. However, there are well-known limitations with a cost-benefit analysis, including it can be difficult to determine what counts as a benefit or a cost. It also can be difficult to quantify benefits and costs. Consequently, one may be unable to determine whether there is a net benefit associated with living one's life. Because of the limitations of a costbenefit analysis, it is important to explore alternative methods for judging whether life is worth living. Baier contends that addressing the question of whether life is worth living has generally been misconceived.17 Instead of being the outcome of an investigation such as finding out whether a thing is worth its price, he asserts that one can determine whether one's life is worth living without having first determined whether the good things outweigh the bad. He suggests that one can infer whether one's life is worth living based on the following method: «I assume, without argument, that we can say a person really is finding his life worth living if, and only if, supposing it were up to him to live his life over again, exactly as it was, he would be prepared, or even glad or eager, to do so.»18 Others have used different inferential methods to determine if life is worth living. I will evaluate the various methods that have or could be used to make this determination. Because one might question whether we really can infer whether life is worth living, as suggested by Baier, I will explain why I believe this is possible before evaluating the methods. 17. Baier, «Threats of Futility,» 49. 18. Ibid., 49. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 66 We are continually faced with decisions about how best to use the limited time that we have available as finite creatures. We could perform activities impulsively, starting and stopping them without reflecting on whether the activities are worthwhile, but generally we do not. We evaluate the worth of activities - before, during, and after we do them. Before we commit ourselves to doing one activity of the many that we could be doing, we consider whether it will be worth our effort. And if we choose to begin the activity, we do not just keep doing it without giving it any further thought. Rather, we periodically question whether the activity continues to be worth the effort, and if it is found not to be worthwhile, then we cease performing the activity, unless we are forced to continue or fear what might occur if we stop. Finally, before we repeat an activity, we consider whether we found the original activity worthwhile. If we found that the original activity was a «waste of time,» then it would not be repeated. However, if we found the original activity worthwhile, then it may be repeated. As explained above, we do not generally make decisions about whether to begin, continue, or repeat an activity impulsively or without any rational thought. Rather, we evaluate whether the activity is worth beginning, continuing, or repeating. Therefore, if we begin or continue an activity, it may be possible to infer from this that we found the activity worthwhile. And if we repeat an activity, then this suggests that we found the original activity worthwhile. But how can we tell if we find our individual lives, as a whole, worthwhile? Can we adopt the methods discussed above for inferring whether an activity is worthwhile and use them to infer whether our lives are worth living? As will be shown, this has been the approach that some people have taken. We did not decide whether to be born into this world (a point emphasized by many existentialists),19 nor can we repeat our lives. Consequently, we cannot infer whether we find life worth living based on these decisions. However, we can imagine whether we would have chosen to begin life and live our lives, if this choice had been ours to make. In addition, one can imagine whether one would, if it were possible, repeat one's life. Finally, it might be thought that we can infer whether life is worth living based on whether or not we choose to continue living, but can we? These methods will be considered below, in an attempt to identify the best method for judging whether life is worth living. In a previous section, the two purpose-based methods and the worthwhileness method, and the standards derived from these methods, were evaluated. They were judged based on whether they were clear and took into account a broad range of our experiences. The five inferential methods that will be discussed (methods two through six) are all relatively clear and broad in scope. Two additional criteria will be considered in judging them, including: (1) whether, using the method, one can validly infer whether one's life is worth living and (2) whether the standard associated with the method is reasonable. The best method for judging if life is worth living will be revealed in the concluding section. 19. Martin Heidegger is perhaps the best known example, referring to our facticity, which would include the fact that we did not choose to be born, as has having been «thrown» into existence. See Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 174, 321. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 67 Method 2: Continuing to Live The fact that pessimists continue to live their lives and engage in projects such as writing suggests, it might be argued, that they really do find life worth living despite their claims otherwise. But does the fact that one has not ended one's life demonstrate that one finds life worth living? Human beings do not die easily, as evidenced by the drastic measures that people use to commit suicide, such as leaping off tall buildings. People may continue living at a miserable level rather than ending their lives because of a fear of death, as Baier points out.20 Schopenhauer makes a similar observation when he writes: «It will generally be found that where the terrors of life come to outweigh the terrors of death a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance: they stand like a sentinel at the exit gate.»21 In other words, people may continue living, not because they find life worth living, but for other reasons - because they fear death and the pain that would come from killing themselves or perhaps because they hold out hope that, at some point, their lives may become worth living. If true, then we cannot validly infer that we find life worth living just because we continue to live our lives. Suppose, however, that we were equipped with an inborn switch, whereby we could painlessly and irrevocably turn off life when we wished and we somehow knew for certain that death was nothing to fear. Could we then validly infer that we find our lives worth living if we do not flip the switch to end our lives? Even under these circumstances, we could not validly make this inference. Some may go on living in misery, rather than committing suicide, because they do not want to inflict suffering on people who care about them. Due to the interpersonal attachments they have formed, the only way that they may ever flip the switch to end their lives is if the switch had the power to make it as if they had never been born, which would be the only way of assuring that their nonexistence would hurt no one. Method 3: Choosing to Live Although we did not choose whether we would be born into this world, to determine whether life is worth living, one can imagine whether one would have chosen to live the life that one is living, taking into account everything that one has experienced. If one would have chosen to live one's life, then this suggests that one finds life worth living. If we do not believe that an activity, such as attending a conference, will be worth the effort or if we think that undertaking the activity will make us miserable, then we avoid it. But we had no control over whether we would be born into this world and some may feel resentment or dismay over this. This method under discussion places one in a position to decide whether to live one's life. It allows one to judge whether living would be worthwhile and then to decide for oneself whether to remain nonexistent or to come into existence and live the life that one has known. This method requires that one imagine that one is a nonexistent thinker who knows in advance what one's life will be like if one chooses to live life, and who has control over the decision whether to remain nonexistent or to be born into this world. Stretching one's imagination to this extent, and accepting the contradiction of a nonexistent thinker, may be 20. Baier, «Threats of Futility,» 49. 21. Arthur Schopenhauer, «On Suicide,» in Essays and Aphorisms, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 78-79. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 68 difficult for some people to do. There is, however, a similar method of evaluating whether life is worth living that does not require that one engage in a thought experiment and imagine that one is a nonexistent thinker. With this method, you ask yourself whether you «wish that you had never been born.» When these words are uttered, it expresses a feeling of regret about being alive. For example, in the Old Testament, Job, who is apparently suffering greatly, professes: «Let the day perish in which I was born ....»22 He continues: «Or why was I not buried like a stillborn child, like an infant that never sees the light? There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest.»23 To give another example, in Goethe's Faust, Faust proclaims «I wish I had never been born!»24 With this method, in contrast to the prior method, one does not advance to the step of putting oneself in the imaginary position of deciding whether or not to be born into this world and live the life that one has experienced. However, the judgements reached using the two methods would likely be consistent. People who regret that they were born would also choose not to live life, but to remain nonexistent, if this decision had been theirs to make. And people, who are satisfied or grateful that they were born into this world, would also choose to live the life they have experienced rather than remaining nonexistent, if the choice had been theirs to make. Although the judgements will generally be the same using either of the methods discussed above, putting oneself in the imaginary position of deciding whether to be born into this world will give a better indication of whether one finds life worth living than simply asking oneself whether one regrets that one was born. Because there is no easy way to cease living this life that we did not choose to live without hurting others, one may feel trapped in this world. To cope with this, one may try to convince oneself, in an act of self-deception, that one does not regret that one was born into this world, though deep down one may feel otherwise. By giving oneself control over whether or not to be born into this world, by forcing oneself to make this potentially difficult decision, and by providing one with a painless way to escape life (deciding to remain nonexistent) that will not make others suffer, this method better reveals whether one truly finds life worth living than the method of surveying one's life from the time of entry into this world to the present, but not going the extra step of deciding whether one would have chosen to enter the world in the first place. Method 4: Choosing to Bring Others into the World Although we had no control over whether we would be born into this world, we do decide whether to bring future generations into this world. It could be argued that, as creatures who are capable of feeling empathy for others, we would not bring others into this world unless we found our own lives worth living. Stated differently, if we are miserable, then, because of empathy, we would spare potential persons from having potentially miserable lives by not bringing them into existence. For these reasons, it might be thought that one could infer whether one's life is worth living based on whether one has brought or wants to bring children into the world. Is this a valid inference to make? 22. Job 3.3. New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), 307. 23. Job., 3.16-17, 307. 24. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, trans. Louis MacNeice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 152. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 69 The inference discussed above is based on the false premise that people make decisions about whether to have children in a rational manner. Granted, some people do take into account the state of the world and reflect on the value of life when deciding whether to have children. For example, occasionally someone will make a statement such as «I would not want to bring a child into this world.» However, nearly half of all pregnancies are unintended25 and so, quite often, people give no thought at all to whether life is worth living before bringing a newborn into this world. Another problem with this method is that some people have children to make their lives worth living. Thus, in this situation, the fact that they want to have children does not indicate that they find life worth living. On the contrary, it suggests that they currently do not find life worth living and are searching for something that will give meaning to their lives. For the preceding reasons, we cannot validly infer whether we find our lives worth living based on whether we have brought or want to bring others into this world. Method 5: Wanting to Live Again and Again Nietzsche attached great importance to eternal recurrence, the ancient idea that the history of the world, including each human life, recurs again and again without end. In introducing this idea, he writes: What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you ... and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence ....' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth ... Or ... would [you] have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'26 Various interpretations have been given of Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence. Maudemarie Clark contends that Nietzsche was not advancing a cosmological theory or proposing the following practical directive about how to live our lives: live them in such a way that we would want to live them innumerable times. Rather, she suggests, as follows, that Nietzsche was proposing a test to judge our attitude toward our lives: I interpret Nietzsche as taking our hypothetical reaction to the demon's message - how we would react if we accepted the message uncritically - to reflect our actual attitude towards ourselves and our lives. A joyful reaction would indicate a fully affirmative attitude towards one's (presumably, nonrecurring) life, whereas gnashing of teeth ... would indicate a negative attitude.27 To use eternal recurrence as a test of affirmation, Clark maintains we must «imagine eternal recurrence in an uncritical or preanalytical manner, suspending all doubts concerning its truth or conceivability.»28 25. Sarah Brown and Leon Eisenberg, ed., The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families (Washington: National Academy Press, 1995), 2. According to the study, 44% of all births in the United States in 1990 were unintended. 26. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books), 273-74. 27. Maudemarie Clark, Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 251. 28. Ibid., 270. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 70 If eternal recurrence is thought of as a possible method and standard for judging whether one finds life worth living, regardless of how Nietzsche thought of it, would it be a good method to use? With this method, in contrast to a cost-benefit analysis, there is no direct weighing of benefits and costs. Rather, Clark's interpretation suggests that one can infer whether one finds life worth living based on whether or not one would want to repeat one's same life an infinite number of times. In the literature debating Nietzsche's idea of eternal recurrence, one main point of contention is whether there would be a continuity of consciousness and an accumulation of what we remember from one life to the next.29 If one had no memory of one's prior30 lives, and thus each life was independent of each other, then there would be no reason to be horrified with this idea as Nietzsche thought some people might be. Therefore, with this idea, Nietzsche must have envisioned that one would remember one's prior lives. Clark writes: «I can only imagine recurrence as it would appear to a continuing consciousness ....»31 For the sake of argument, let us suppose, not that we have lived innumerable times before, but that each of us has a first life and that it is the life we are currently living. Let us also suppose that our lives will repeat forever after our first life and that what we remember would accumulate from one life to the next. The first time we live life, we experience the novelty, adventure, and excitement associated with being alive. We look around and see brilliantly colored flowers, flowing rivers, and majestic mountains. We also experience costs associated with living such as suffering, pain, and having loved ones die. The second time we live life, we have the same experiences of our first life. However, this time there is less novelty and excitement because we have experienced everything, in the exact same way, once before. The benefits have lessened, but there has not been an offsetting reduction in costs. If our mother and father died before us in our first life, then we experience their deaths for the second time. We may not suffer as much emotional distress with their second death, as with their first, if we have reason to believe that they will live again. However, we experience the same physical pain as we did in our first life. Indeed, the pain may be intensified if we realize that we will experience this pain, not just during one life, but each time that we live one of our countless lives. The third time we live life, there is even less novelty and excitement than the second time. As we continue to repeat life, there is less and 29. Like Clark, Julian Young interprets eternal recurrence as a test. However, Young's view of the test differs from Clark's in two ways. First, Young conceives of it, not as a test to judge one's attitude toward one's life, but to determine «whether one is living as successfully as possible.» Second, Young envisions that one would be unaware of one's prior lives with eternal recurrence. See Young, The Death of God and the Meaning of Life, (London, Routledge, 2003), 89-90. 30. For explanatory purposes the word «prior» will be used, but it is a point of contention whether one's various lives would occur at different times. If a person has an infinite number of lives, and this person's lives are the «same,» then one could argue that they must occur at the same time and thus there would be no «prior» lives. If there are an infinite number of lives, then in what respect do they differ? According to Clark («Nietzsche on Truth,» 267): «Only a difference in temporal position fits the bill - the recurrence of my life must be part of an earlier or later cycle of cosmic history than my present life ....» 31. Clark, «Nietzsche on Truth,» 269. <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 71 less benefit derived from living until we reach a point where all the novelty and excitement have been drained from life and we are left with nothing but drudgery, pain, and suffering.32 The following standards can be derived from methods three and five, respectively. Standard 3: My life is worth living only if I would have chosen to live my life, if the choice had been mine to make. Standard 5: My life is worth living only if I would want to live my same life over and over again without end. Eternal recurrence is a much higher standard for judging whether life is worth living than the other worthwhileness standards that have been and will be discussed. People may have no regrets that they were born into this world, and if the choice had been theirs to make, may have chosen to live their lives. However, they may have no desire to live a second time, let alone an infinite number of times. Thus, if they judged life using standard three, they would find life worth living, but they would not find life worth living if they used the eternal recurrence standard to make this judgement. The eternal recurrence standard for judging life is unreasonable. The following example shows how ridiculous this standard is: Suppose that you have just watched a movie with a friend and then ask your friend how they liked the movie. The friend replies that the movie «was not worthwhile.» You ask why and your friend replies «it was not worthwhile because I would not want to watch it an infinite number of times.» If this were the standard that this person uses to judge movies, then no movie would ever be considered worthwhile. We recognize from experience that we derive less and less benefit each additional time that we watch the same movie - an example of the well-known utilitarian and economic principle of diminishing marginal utility. We eventually reach a point where we are tired of the movie and may never want to watch it again. Because human beings abhor unending repetition, as reflected by the principle of diminishing marginal utility, it would be unreasonable to judge whether life is worth living based on whether or not one would want to repeat one's same life an infinite number of times. To return to the movie example, if a movie is good we may want to watch it again. However, we do not judge a movie based on whether we would want to watch it repeatedly. Rather, we use other criteria such as whether the movie was exciting, funny, innovative, or moving. Alternatively, instead of judging the movie based on specific criteria, we may indirectly judge the movie based on an inferential standard, but this standard does not involve unending repetition. Rather, it typically involves reflecting on whether we felt satisfied that we decided to watch the movie in the first place. Because we never employ the idea of unending repetition to judge the worth of the activities in our lives, this should serve to caution us about using eternal recurrence to judge whether our lives, as a whole, are worth living. The eternal recurrence standard for judging life has been found unreasonable. The second criterion that will be considered in evaluating this method is whether, using the method, one can validly infer whether one's life is worth living. As I argued earlier, if a 32. Arthur Danto advances a similar argument against Nietzsche's version of eternal recurrence. He argues that it would involve «eternal monotony.» See Danto, Nietzsche as Philosopher (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), 210. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 72 person repeats an activity, then we may be able to infer from this that the person found the original activity worthwhile. It is important, however, to understand what it means for us to «repeat» an activity. When an activity is repeated, it is performed a second time, but the second time is never the «same» as the first. It occurs at a different time and perhaps at a different place as, for example, when people go to see their favorite entertainer repeatedly. Also, the second activity may be performed with a different group of friends than the first activity. If we want to repeat an activity, realizing that the second activity will always be at least slightly different from the original, we can infer from this that the original activity was worthwhile. It would provide an even stronger indication that we found the original activity worthwhile if it were possible to repeat the «same» activity and if we would want to do so despite knowing that, because it is the same activity, we will not experience as much novelty and excitement as with the original activity. Analogously, if one would want to repeat one's same life, even if one's subsequent life or lives would lack some of the features (excitement, for example) of one's current life, then this strongly suggests that one finds one's current life worth living. Because the eternal recurrence test is so demanding, hardly anyone would pass it. However, for that rare person who would want to live his or her same life innumerable times, in spite of having diminishing benefits with each successive life, this person can feel confident that he or she does truly find life worth living. As noted earlier, people may continue living, not because they find life worth living, but for other reasons, such as not wanting to hurt others by committing suicide. Thus, the continuation standard, where it is presumed that people find life worth living just because they have not ended their lives, would in many cases falsely indicate that people find life worth living. In other words, it would yield false positives. This is also a significant problem for method four (inferring that life is worth living based on whether one has brought or wants to bring others into the world). There is a relation between the level and the validity of the various inferential standards. If the standard for judging whether life is worth living is very low, such as the continuation standard, then everyone who uses this standard would find life worth living, but there would be many false positives. On the other hand, if the standard is extremely high, such as eternal recurrence, then the test - because it is so demanding - will not falsely indicate that people find life worth living. Although this is an advantage of the eternal recurrence test, very few people, if any, would find life worth living using this test. Furthermore, many of the people who would gnash their teeth at the thought of eternal recurrence would affirm life using a more reasonable standard, such as asking themselves if they would have chosen to be born into this world and live their lives. Method 6: Wanting to Live One More Time As previously noted, Baier asserts that we can say a person finds his life worth living, if, and only if, this person would want to live his «same» life over again. The only difference between this standard and the eternal recurrence standard is the number of times that we are to imagine repeating life. With the standard proposed by Baier (hereinafter called «unirecurrence»), one imagines that one's same life recurs once whereas, with eternal recurrence, one imagines that one's same life recurs innumerable times. One may be willing to live one's same life over again once, but not willing to live one's same life an infinite <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 73 number of times. Thus, unirecurrence is not as demanding of a standard as is eternal recurrence. Nonetheless, because it involves repetition without variation, it is too high of a standard to use to judge whether life is worth living. There are two ways to lower the unirecurrence standard, both of which involve preserving novelty or, in other words, of counteracting the boredom that would arise from living one's same life over again. The first way is to imagine that we live our second life anew and have no recollection of the events in our first life. To return to the movie example, a person would not likely want to watch the same movie two days in a row. However, if a period of ten years has elapsed from the time the person first watched the movie, such that the person will have forgotten many details of the movie, then this person may want to watch the movie a second time. As evidenced by the earlier quote from Clark, it may be difficult for one to imagine recurrence without also imagining that one would have a continuing consciousness. Therefore, in developing a standard to judge whether life is worth living based on the idea of repetition, it will be useful to explore if there are other ways that novelty could be preserved. One such approach would be to allow some variation in our second life. Suppose, for example, that you would be born a second time. You would be born at the same time and place as your first birth, would have the same parents, and would remember your first life. However, your second life could unfold differently from your first life. Would you want to live this second life? If a person would want to live a second life that is similar to his or her first life, then this suggests that this person finds life worth living. However, the second life cannot be too different from one's current life. If it is, then one could no longer validly infer whether one's current life is worth living. For example, suppose that a patient in a hospital who has suffered with lifelong pain and disability is in a state of despair and yet observes others who do find life worth living. If we ask him whether he would want to live again, and he imagines himself living as a joyful and healthy physician, then he may very well say that he would want to live again. The reverse situation could also occur. If a joyful physician is asked this question and imagines living a second life as a person who has severe functional limitations, he may decide that he would not want to live a second life. Consequently, if we imagine a second life that is too different from our own, then we can no longer validly infer whether our current life is worth living based on whether we would want to live again. Conclusion At the beginning of this essay, I noted that we could live our lives without evaluating whether they are good or bad, but that we do not. Evaluations are often performed to help us make decisions. For example, a committee may do a cost-benefit analysis to help determine whether to construct a new facility. To give another example, clinicians or medical ethics committees may perform an evaluation as a way to help guide medical decision making. They may try to determine, using various methods, whether a patient, who is unable to judge for himself, finds life worth living.33 If they conclude that the patient, under the circumstances, would not find life worth living, then a decision may be made on economic or moral grounds to withdraw treatment from the patient. 33. For further discussion, see Bobbie Farsides and Robert Dunlop, «Measuring Quality of Life: Is there Such a Thing as a Life Not Worth Living?» British Medical Journal 322 (June 16, 2001): 1481-1483. <http://www.sorites.org> - SORITES Issue #18 - February 2007 ISSN 1135-1349 74 Because evaluations provide us with a basis for making decisions, it is understandable why they would be used to judge whether someone else, such as an incompetent patient, finds life worth living. But why do we judge the worth of our own lives, instead of living them without judging them? Are these evaluations undertaken for the purpose of helping us to decide whether or not to continue living, as might be thought? If this was the reason that we judged the worth of our lives, then some difficult questions would arise, including when should the evaluation be performed. If people perform the evaluation when they are young, then their judgement about life would be based on incomplete information. It is possible that based on their short experience they may conclude that life is not worth living, yet if they waited until they have had more experiences before judging life, then they may conclude otherwise, and vice versa. If one's judges one's life when one is very young, for example 20 years old, then one's evaluation will be incomplete. But if one waits too long before doing an evaluation, such as performing the evaluation when one's life is almost over, then the evaluation would no longer be relevant if the purpose of the evaluation is to help us decide whether to continue living beyond adolescence. Some people judge that life is not worth living, but continue to live their lives. Therefore, if it is true that the reason that we perform these evaluations is to help us decide whether to continue living, then of what practical value are these evaluations if some people will continue to live despite concluding that life is not worth living? However, I do not believe that we undertake these evaluations to help us decide whether to continue living. Why, then, do we judge the worth of our lives? Oftentimes, the evaluations are prompted by a question, such as when people ask themselves «Is there a meaning of life?» They may long to know whether life has value and may assume that there is a relation between whether life has a purpose and whether our lives have value. As a result, they attempt to address the question of whether life has a purpose. In some cases, they keep searching for an answer and never reach a conclusion. In other cases, they go beyond the question and adopt a standard or ideal - many times unwittingly - to judge life. They then compare life to their adopted standard and make a judgement about whether life measures up to the standard. The evaluations and subsequent judgements are also prompted by unhappiness, pain, and suffering as, for example, when Job suffers and then begins to question whether life is worth living. The persons who are suffering compare their lives to a prior time when they were not suffering, to other people's lives, or to what they consider an ideal life, which, in turn, leads them to make a judgement about the value of their lives. Because we make these comparisons between life as we are experiencing it, and life as we would like it to be, we will make judgements about the value of our lives even if we do not deliberately set out to do so. Therefore, it is important to understand the methods used to make these judgements and, if we find ourselves judging life, to select the best method for doing so. A number of methods and standards for judging whether life has value have been evaluated to identify the best method and standard for making this judgement. The two purpose-based standards have been cast aside because they fail to take into account experiences that do not involve pursuing goals. Because one's life can be worth living even if one's life is not purposeful, the important question is, not whether there is a purpose(s) of or in life, but whether one's life is worth living. In addressing this question, it can be difficult <http://www.sorites.org> - «Judging Life and Its Value» by Brooke Alan Trisel 75 to determine if the benefits of being alive outweigh the costs. It is possible, though, for one to infer whether one finds life worth living. Of the inferential methods that were evaluated, methods two (continuing to live) and four (choosing to bring others into the world) were rejected because, in many cases, they would falsely indicate that people find life worth living. Although the eternal recurrence standard and unirecurrence without variation (the standard proposed by Baier) would not yield false positives, they are unreasonable. To avoid the problems inherent with using standards that are too low or too high, a moderate standard is needed. There are two moderate standards to choose between: reflecting on whether we would have chosen to be born and live our lives, if the choice had been ours to make, and reflecting on whether we would want to live a second life that is similar to the one we are living (unirecurrence with variation). Many people, I suspect, if the choice had been theirs to make, would have chosen to live their lives instead of remaining nonexistent. However, they may have no desire to live again, even if their second life were different from their first such that they could experience novelty and excitement. Thus, the repetition-based method reflects a higher standard for judging whether life is worth living. For life to be worth living, according to this higher standard, it is not enough to be satisfied with life, one must also want to live again. But why should one have to want to live again for one's life to be considered worth living? There is no advantage in adopting this higher standard. If one would have chosen to enter the world and live one's life knowing in advance what one would experience, and one feels grateful that one has had the opportunity to experience the sights, sounds, and wonders of this world, then this should be sufficient to find life worth living. In conclusion, the best standard for judging whether one's life has value is to ask oneself whether one would have chosen to be born into this world and live one's life. If the answer is «no,» then the question becomes, what, if anything, should be done with this judgement. Should one ignore the evaluation, commit suicide, or do something to try to make one's life worth living? In deciding this question, one point worth considering is that these evaluations can fluctuate over time such that a person can find life not worth living at one point and find life worth living at a later point in life. If one answers «yes» to the question of whether one would have chosen to be born into this world, then one can feel confident that one finds life worth living. Brooke Alan Trisel <email@example.com>


More Things in Heaven and Earth

Philosophy

Philosophers in the field of analytic metaphysics have begun gradually to come to terms with the fact that there are entities in a range of categories not dreamt of in the set-theory and predicate-logic-based ontologies of their forefathers. Examples of such âentia minoraâ would include: boundaries, places, events, states holes, shadows, individual colour- and tone-instances (tropes), together with combinations of these and associated simple and complex universal species or essences, states of affairs, judgment-contents, and myriad abstract structures of the sorts which are studied by the mathematical sciences. How, as hunter-gatherer ontologists, are we to bring order into this vast array? How are we to gauge the ontological merits of given candidate entities, and how are we to understand their relation to entities of more humdrum sorts? Meinong, it turns out, offers a very simple answer to all of these questions.

MORE THINGS IN HEAVEN AND EARTH Barry SMITH SUNY Buffalo What follows is an exercise in hunter-gatherer ontology. More precisely, the region of space and of spatial objects will be adopted as a happy hunting ground for the purposes of Meinongian metaphysics. Meinong, notoriously, struggled against the prejudice in favour of the actual and fought on behalf of the ontological rights of incomplete, impossible, and indeterminate objects. A parallel struggle, as we shall see, can be waged in the domain of spatial objects. Meinong's ideas can in this way be seen to have relevance for studies of the philosophical foundations of the theories of land-surveying and of international law. 1. Heaven Heaven, for our (initially purely illustrative) purposes, is simply empty space; it is the three-dimensional counterpart of the territory that is represented by the Bellman's blank Ocean Chart in Lewis Carroll's Hunting of the Snark: Figure One: Bellman's Blank Ocean Chan Grazer Philosophische Studien, 50 (1995), 187–201 188 Candidate denizens of empty space are the parts of this space. These include: three-dimensional spatial volumes, two-dimensional surfaces, one-dimensional lines, zero-dimensional points. (We shall ignore such further options as would arise in case a temporal dimension in the realm of heavenly objects were taken into account, or in case heaven were allowed more generally to contain topoids of larger numbers of dimensions. We shall ignore also the issue of deviant geometries, space-filling curves, Klein-bottleand Sierpinski-Menger-sponge-shaped regions, and the like. 1) We shall concentrate our attentions further on finite portions of space, though we acknowledge that, if the empty universe is itself infinite, then infinite spatial volumes, too, for example the western hemisphere of the universe, would have strong claims to be countenanced as existing within it. Suppose, now, that empty space as here defined exists. Do all abstractly (geometrically) conceivable finite portions of this space exist also? Imagine, for example, _that portion of space which consists of two disjoint and non-connected spheres. Does this double sphere exist in the same sense (have the same ontological rights) as its separate spherical parts? Or imagine a perforated spatial region that has the form of a sphere of two-unit radius, in the interior of which is a one-unit radius spherical hole. Does this perforated sphere exist in the same sense as does the corresponding solid sphere of two-unit radius? Or imagine some single spherical volume of unit radius. Imagine further that this spatial volume is topologically closed (or in other words: includes as proper part its outer boundary or skin). Does this skin itself exist with the same rights as does the closed spherical volume with which we began? And what of the corresponding open spherical volume (the residue which remains when the skin is conceived, abstractly, as having been removed from the sphere as a whole)? Does this open sphere exist as an object additional to its closed counterpart? And what of the infinitely many partially open and partially closed unit spheres, the results of subtracting different 1. Our aim is to depart not too far from space as given intuitively, while at the same time leaving open the possibility of applying a version of these reflections to space as described by the mathematician. 189 fragments of this skin from the original spatial volume all of which, we would do well to bear in mind, occupy the very same spatial region as does the closed sphere with which we began? Consider moreover the fact that, if the unit sphere exists as a closed spatial region, then its complement that object which results when we abstractly conceive the sphere in question as having been removed from the universe is itself open. Do heavenly complements exist with the same civil rights as do the objects which they are the complements of? In heaven, as we see, there are many questions. Some, more brutally minded ontologists (the practitioners of ontological force majeure ), might want to resolve these questions by conceiving heaven set-theoretically, so that the only heavenly entities which existed with full civil rights would tum out to be extensionless spatial points. In addition to these one would recog-. nize, as entities existing in some second sense, all sets of points, all sets of sets of points, etc. This set-theoretic account and the system of coordinate geometry which goes along with it have familiar advantages. But it also brings problems connected not least with the failures of the set-theoretical project associated with Cantor's continuum hypothesis. A further family of problems arises when we consider how the set-theoretic treatment of space is to be understood. If, on the one hand, it is conceived as yielding a mere model of space, then it leaves open the very ontological questions which are here at issue. If, on the other hand, it is treated not as a model but as an exercise in serious ontology if, in other words, it is accepted that spatial regions are sets, then it would follow that such regions are abstract objects. But how, then, could they be such that concrete things are able to occupy them? The set-theoretic account dictates finally a controversial metaphysical thesis to the effect that space is built up out of points. In the absence of secure intuitions as to the truth or falsehood of this thesis we should surely seek a more neutral theory such as mereology ._..,which is consistent with both the postulate of atomism and its negation.2 2. See Simons 1987. 190 Mereology proceeds as it were from the top down, taking as its starting point in our present case extended spatial continua. An extreme version of the mereological top-down approach is generated by what might be called Aristotelian mereological potentialism, a view to. the effect that the part of a whole can never be an actual thing if the whole is.3 My arm, as part of me, is real or actual on this view, but it is not a real or actual thing; rather, it is merely a potential thing: it would become an actual thing only through physical separation. Similarly a collective of bodily wholes, say of separate coral reefs, would become an actual thing only if the bodies in question were fused together to form a unitary object. These constituent bodies would then themselves thereby cease to be actual things. (My arm as part of me is, we might say, sub-unitary; the collection of non-connected coral reefs is super-unitary.) Since heaven is, by assumption, everywhere homogeneous, there is on the potentialist view only one candidate heavenly object (only one place), namely the universe as a whole. Each putative constituent place exists only potentially (i.e. it would exist if, counterfactually, heaven were reduced in size in corresponding fashion). Mereological potentialism thus avoids the embarrassments of an over-generous ontology; it recognizes only one (actual) object. It appeals to those of our intuitions which suggest that our answers to the considered questions can be a matter of convention only, so that such questions might surely be ignored for any purposes of an ultimate ontological assay. These advantages of the potentialist view are spurious, however; for the very questions raised above reappear in modified form in the potentialist framework: do all those candidate denizens (open and closed regions, solid and perforated regions, and all the possible sums, differences and complements thereof) exist potentially in the same sense and in such a way as to * enjoy equal ontological rights? In what follows, therefore, we shall defend the (Brentanian) doctrine of mereological actualism, a doctrine to the effect that parts exist with the same ontological standing as do their respective wholes. If you have a single spherical region, then you thereby also already have infinitely many pairs of hemispherical regions, infinitely many quadruples of quarter-spherical 3. On this terminology see Smith 1987. 191 regions, and so on ad indefinitum. The doctrine of mereological actualism asserts that the parts of things are as actual as the things themselves. With Brentano ( 1981 ), we shall extend mereological actualism to boundaries also, both external (the outer surface of the closed spherical region as a whole), and internal (interior surfaces, interior lines, interior points, and so on). We shall however deny the presupposition that is at the heart of set theory to the effect that boundaries for example isolated points can exist independently of the entities of higher dimension which they are the boundaries of. Boundaries are actual things, but they are dependent entities; they can exist only in tandem with the larger things or regions which are their hosts. Already Abelard had remarked that 'A line ... is unable to exist apart from some bodily subject,' and as Chisholm points out, 'Brentano makes the same point with respect to every type of boundary.' (1992/93) In Smith (1993) I refer to the principle that boundaries cannot exist except in consort with the higher-dimensional entities which they are the boundaries of as 'Brentano's thesis'. 2. Earth I have not the foggiest notion as to how to go about answering the various questions raised and left open in the foregoing. One thing, however, seems clear: the empty space that is described above is from the ontological (as from every other) point of view thoroughly homogeneous. What holds in one comer of heaven holds identically in every other corner, and for this reason also empty space has no dynamics and no history. Where space is not empty, however, matters are entirely different. Here a range of different sorts of spatial objects can be distinguished, in addition to that stock of homogeneous spatial objects (the stock of places) which exists purely in virtue of the underlying geometry of space. Following the terminology advanced in Smith 1994 we can distinguish above all between: 1. Bona fide spatial objects (for example planets, moons, islands, lakes) which exist in virtue of intrinsic physical discontinuities 192 in the material constitution of the earth. 2. Fiat spatial objects (for example states, counties, land-parcels) of a sort which reflect no intrinsic physical discontinuities but are rather the product of boundaries drawn on the basis of human fiat or convention or are otherwise the artefacts of human geographical practices. Earth, unlike heaven, contains conventional parts. Fiat spatial objects, in contrast to the purely geometrical denizens of heaven and in contrast to the bona fide ('natural') spatial objects here on earth, seem to be human creations: they are entities which come to be superadded to the world in consequence of human cognitive acts and practices. The opposition between what is found or discovered and what is made or created is of course nothing new in the history of metaphysics. For present purposes we might distinguish, in the range of possible ontologies, between: Extreme idealism: the doctrine that all objects are created, or in other words that all objects exist exclusively as the products or figments of human cognition. Moderate (or 'creationist' or 'lngardenian'4) realism: the doctrine that some objects are created, some discovered. Extreme (or 'platonist' or 'Meinongian') realism: the doctrine that all objects are discovered, or more particular that all objects are found and not made. I shall dismiss immediately the extreme idealist alternative (or is there really some extreme idealist who believes sincerely that the ground on which he stands, or the meteor speeding towards the building in which he sits, is a mere product of human cognition?). The important debate, I would argue, is that between extreme and moderate realism. Consider, in this light, the case of Wyoming which, like many political and administrative spatial objects in the United States, has a shape roughly as follows: 4. See Smith 1980. 193 Figure Two: Hyoming From the Meinongian, extreme realist perspective, which we might also call 'geometrical Platonism' or 'geometrical objectivism', Wyoming existed long before man first set foot on the American continent, but so also did infinitely many alternative Wyomings (Wyoming displaced 1 inch to the east, Wyoming displaced 1 furlong to the west, Wyoming minus Crook County, and so on). Wyoming is thus to be conceived along the lines of the heavenly objects discussed above. Wyoming as it is at present (anno 1995) geometrically constituted will on this view continue to exist even if Wyoming and one or more of its neighbours should agree to some exchange of territory (though our present geometrical Wyoming would then no longer be called 'Wyoming' and would likely not have any name at all). Surprisingly, this Meinongian view can claim the advantages of ontological economy at least for those who have already embraced a suitably rich ontology of spatial objects distributed purely geometrically across the surface of the earth. For it conceives political and administrative spatial objects of the sort which might otherwise be seen as being created by acts of human fiat as mere logical constructions out of geometrical objects, and it is exclusively the latter which are granted full ontological rights. The Meinongian account can even do justice to changes in geopolitical and administrative borders: entities like Bosnia, or Poland, or the Netherlands would tum out from this perspective to be entia successiva, whose successive real parts are corresponding purely geometrical bits of space. (I am here clearly leaving out of account issues pertaining to the fact that the earth itself is such as to occupy distinct portions of space at different times.) 194 The competing, Ingardenian view, on the other hand, can claim the advantages of naturalness. This view asserts that, in the year 1890, a new spatial object called 'Wyoming' came into being as a result of human fiat and that this object has since enjoyed a certain history of its own; thus in the intervening period Wyoming might have changed its size or shape or location in relation to other spatial objects on the surface of the earth. Political and administrative entities are comparable in this respect to organisms they may grow and develop, yet in such a way as to preserve their identity. (Unlike organisms they may even, as occurred in the case of Poland and Austria, enjoy a period of non-existence after which their identity is once again recovered: perhaps we might refer in such cases, in Meinongian spirit, to the 'implexive existence of the pure spatial object'.) Land-parcels, political and administrative entities may also fuse and split, in such a way that new entities are produced out of parts existing earlier.5 Certainly Wyoming in this historical sense is at any given moment coincident with some region of space of the purely geometrical sort; but as we shall argue below it is never identical with any such region of space. 3. Performative Maps The Ingardenian ontology of historically existing political-administrative spatial objects is an extension of the theory of multi-dimensional continua elaborated by Brentano in the papers collected together as Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time and the Continuum (1988). Brentano there sketches a conception of the realm of spatial objects as a lasagna-like, many-layered edifice, with realms of heterogeneous ('secondary') spatial objects built up on the basis of a homogeneous 'primary' spatial continuum on the lowest level. But the theory can also be seen as an extension of the theory of performatives worked out by Adolf Reinach in his A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law in 1913 (a theory subsequently rediscovered, though with none of Reinach's ontological sophistication, 5. They are comparable, in this respect to holes and other superficial entities of the sort described in Casati and V arzi 1994. 195 by Anglosaxophone speech act theorists in the 1950s). We distinguish first of all between two classes of speech acts, giving rise to two sorts of products or consequences, which we shall call abstract and concrete, respectively. Commandings, thankings, forgivings, warnings and threatenings are performative uses of language which yield concrete consequences above all actions, attitudes and feelings on the part of real people, entities which are fully a part of the real, historical, world of causal change. Promisings, legislatings, contractings, plightings, baptisings, ennoblings on the other hand, are performative uses of language which give rise to abstract consequences, to entities sui generis which are not (or not directly) subject to causal influences. Examples of such abstract consequences are: claims, obligations, laws, rights (including property-rights), troths, knighthoods, names, etc.6 Having drawn this distinction in the realm of linguistic acts, we can now point to the existence of a parallel distinction in the realm of what we might call performative uses of maps. That is, we can distinguish between 1. concrete consequences of uses of maps, for example actions (above all actions of way-finding, acts of war, etc.) and feelings (of being threatened, overawed, offended, etc.: see Monmoyer 1991, ch. 7); 2. abstract consequences of uses of maps, for example the creation of state-, countyand property-boundaries, as also of such entities as the International Date Line, the Mason-Dixon line, and so on. Abstract consequences are distinguished by the fact that they are entities of such a sort that they can exist only as the fruits or products of corresponding performative acts. They are distinguished further by the fact that, like claims, obligations and other legal entities, they fall midway between Platonic objects, which lie outside the realm of time and change, and real objects of the causal flux. (See Twar6. Certainly such abstract consequences may give rise in their tum to concrete consequences. The terms 'abstract' and 'concrete' may from this point of view be misleading. 196 dowski 1979.) In this respect they are comparable to the natural kinds of biology as also to linguistic kinds (such as adverb or phoneme) and to the other entities treated of by Husserl ( 1973) under the heading 'bound ideality'. The feature of dependence upon specific acts of human fiat seems to be characteristic of political and administrative spatial objects in general, though some manifest this feature to a higher degree than others. Thus there are maximally conventional objects of this sort whose boundaries are exact geometrical figures, normally straight lines (though part of the Delaware-Pennsylvania border is an arc of a circle). Straight borders are associated especially with colonialism: they are borders drawn by governments in (Washington, Ottawa, London, or Mexico) before they know how things look on the ground. Such borders can be quite stable and peaceful (this applies also to the colonially drawn borders in the sub-Sahara region), in contrast to the carefully drawn boundaries of Europe based on the idea of a "self-determination of nations", or to the boundaries insisted upon by Irish nationalists, for whom 'Ireland cannot shift her frontiers. The Almighty traced them beyond the cunning of man to modify.' (Bowman 1982, p. 11) God made Ireland, we might say, but all the rest is the work of man. Even those island nations which seem to be blessed with maximally natural borders are abstract consequences in our sense, however, which is to say that they are products of human convention or fiat. This is because their apparent naturalness disappears when we take into account the status of all nations as historical products. Certainly any given political or administrative entity may at any given time be loosely identified with some given portion of land (either a two-dimensional surface or a three-dimensional slab of a certain thickness). That this identification is at best loose, however, i.e. that we do not have before us here a case of identity, is shown by the fact that the surface or slab in question typically existed long before the corresponding political or administrative entity came into being. The political or administrative entity is marked further by the fact that it may change in shape or location, may in other words become similarly loosely identified with a different slab or surface in the course of time, yet in such a way as to remain itself one and identical. 197 At least in many of the cases standardly put forward as natural political unities the appearance of naturalness is diminished still further in view of the fact that we are dealing not with some one single land-mass, but rather with more complex products of human demarcation. Ireland, even the unitary Ireland conceived in the minds of Irish Republicans, is still in Meinong's terminology an 'object of higher order': it is a super-unitary entity built up on the basis of constituent parts such as Inishkea, Inishmore, Gorumna Island, and so on. Other even more conspicuous examples of higher order geographical objects are: the Holy Roman Empire, the European Union, the United States of America and so on. Each of the latter is a super-unitary spatial whole made up of smaller and relatively more unitary parts. On the other side we can distinguish sub-unitary spatial objects: spatial parts which can be distinguished within larger (and more or less 'natural') unitary wholes: the noncoastal states and nations of South America and of continental Europe are sub-unitary in this sense (and Catalonia and Cornwall might be regarded as sub-sub-unitary _spatial objects along the same lines).7 Denmark, the Helvetian Confederation, the Commonwealth of Independent States are examples of spatial objects which manifest both superand sub-unitary features, which is to say they are at one and the same time the products of unification of scattered parts some or all of which are at the same time the products of carving out of smaller parts within a larger spatial whole. That sub-unitary spatial objects such as Catalonia or the Czech Republic are fiat or created objects is shown further by the fact that, even where the exterior boundaries of such objects coincide in large degree with rivers or other natural topographical features, these boundaries are still not identical with the given features; rather, the boundaries in question will standardly be identified with some non-natural surrogate. The boundary will run, for example, along the middle of a river. All legal and political boundaries must, it seems, be infinitely thin; they must take up no space, since otherwise 7. A unitary spatial whole is analogous, if one will, to a single organism; the super-unitary whole to a family of organisms; the sub-unitary whole to undetached limbs or organs within a single organism. For more on.these distinctions and their applications to geography see Smith 1995. 198 disputes would constantly arise in relation to the no-mans-land which the boundaries themselves would then occupy. This 'middle' will in the first place be geometrically defined; should the river change its course, however, then it may have to be determined by negotiation or by some other non-trivial means where its 'middle' now lies.8 A final reason for conceiving political and administrative boundaries as created entities (rather then as entities picked out or discovered within the pre-existing totality of all relevant geometrically determined possibilities) turns on the fact that there are political and administrative boundaries which coincide (occupy an identical spatial location) throughout their total length. The name 'Vienna' refers on the one hand to a certain Austrian city, on the other hand it refers to one of the constituent states (Bundesliinder) of the Austrian Republic. As it happens the boundaries of the city and of the state of Vienna coincide exactly, and both serve as boundaries in the same direction. But they are for all that not identical, as is seen in the fact that the two might in principle diverge (as is currently true, for example, in relation to the otherwise analogous case of the city and state of Salzburg). 4. Conclusion: Impossible and Incomplete Spatial Objects We shall conclude, briefly, with a discussion of a spatial analogue of what Meinong referred to as 'impossible' and 'incomplete objects'. Nothing can be red and green all over. And so, also, we might conclude, with our eyes on a map of troop-movements on the Indo-Chinese border, nothing can be both Indian and Chinese all over. The fundamental principles of international law seem after all to dictate, for each given state, exclusive jurisdiction over its national territory and the permanent population living there together with a duty of non-intervention in the area of exclusive jurisdiction of all other states. A moment's reflection reveals, however, that parts of the earth's surface can indeed be both Indian and Chinese (or British and Argentine) all over: something like this applies even under 8. See Prescott 1978. 199 present political conditions to international waters and to Antarctica, and outcomes of this sort were earlier the standard product of one favoured method for resolving border-disputes a la Austria-Hungary, namely through interdynastic marriage and fusion of territories. As to incomplete spatial objects, which is to say spatial objects lacking crisp exterior boundaries, here a range of examples present themselves, beginning with spatial objects depicted on weather maps ('an area of high pressure over the Atlantic') and ending with territorial regions ('the Khanate of the Golden Horde (circa 1350)', 'the Seljuk Kingdom of Iconium (circa 1140)') on the fringes of areas of settled political power. Objects of these sorts might be said to constitute a third category of spatial object, in addition to the fiat and bona fide spatial objects distinguished above. They are found most conspicuously in the extra-human world (of deserts, clouds, gulf-streams, of flocks of birds and shoals of fish), but they are to be found depicted also in languageand dialect-atlases, as also in maps of religious observance and political behavior. Objects of this sort are clearly not the fiat products of some deliberate drawing of conventional borders, but nor are they the products of any tracking of underlying autonomous contours in nature. As they are depicted on maps we might think of them rather as the products of sampling (of temperature, air-pressure, rainfall, etc.), to the results of which certain standard algorithms are applied to generate bounded regions, regions which will however often overlap (and which may be represented, pictorially, by means of cross-hatching). Historical reflection will tell us, now, that objects of this third sort must inf act precede the tidily demarcated fiat spatial objects (nations, states, empires) with which we have grown familiar in the course of time. As the historian Owen Lattimore expresses it (1962, p. 471 ): Frontiers are of social, not geographic origin. Only after the concept of a frontier exists can it be attached by the community that has conceived it to a geographical configuration. The consciousness of belonging to a group, a group that includes certain people and excludes others, must precede the conscious claim for that group of the right to live or move about within a particular territory. The metaphysical treatment of boundaries and frontiers is still, unfortunately, in its early stages. One of its tasks will be to do justice 200 to these 'frontiers of social origin' and to the processes by which, not singly but in inore or less harmonious consort, they become attached to specific regions of space. REFERENCES Bowman, John 1982: De Valera and the UlSter Question 1917-1973, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Brentano, Franz 1981: The Theory of Categories, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Brentano, Franz 1988: Philosophical Investigations on Space, Time and the Continuum, London/New York/Sydney: Croom Helm. Casati, Roberto and Varzi, Achille C. 1994: Holes and Other Superficia- . lities, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Chisholm, R. M. 1992/93: "Spatial Continuity and the Theory of Part and Whole. A Brentano Study", Brentano Studien, 4, 11-23. Husserl, Edmund 1973: Experience and Judgement. Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Lattimore, Owen 1962: Studies in Frontier History, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meinong, Alexius 1899: "Uber Gegenstande hoherer Ordnung und deren Verhaltnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung", Zeitschriftfiir Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 21, 182-272. Monmonier, Mark 1991: How to Lie With Maps, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Prescott, J. R. V. 1978: Boundaries and Frontiers, London: Croom Helm, Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield. Reinach, Adolf 1913: "Die apriorischen Grundlagen des btirgerlichen Rechtes'', Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und phiinomenologische Forschung, l/2, 685-847, reprinted in Adolf Reinach, Siimtliche Werke, 2 vols., Munich: Philosophia, 1989. Simons, Peter 1987: Parts. A Study in Ontology, Oxford: Clarendon Press. 201 Smith, Barry 1980: "Ingarden vs. Meinong on the Logic of Fiction'', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 16, 93-105. Smith, Barry 1987: "The Substance of Brentano's Ontology", Topoi, 6, 39-49. ' Smith, Barry 1993: "Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Reality", in N. Guarino and R. Poli (eds.), Proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation, Institute for Systems Theory and Biomedical Engineering of the Italian National Research Council, Padua, Italy, 51-68. Revised version in G. Haefliger and P. M. Simons (eds.), Analytic Phenomenology, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, forthcoming. Smith, Barry 1994: "Fiat Objects", in N. Guarino, L. Vieu and S. Pribbenow (eds.), Parts and Wholes: Conceptual Part-Whole Relations and Formal Mereology, 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Amsterdam, 8 August 1994, Amsterdam: European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence, 15-23. Smith, Barry 1995: "On Drawing Lines on a Map", in Andrew U. Frank and Werner Kuhn (eds.), Spatial Information Theory. A Theoretical Basis for GIS (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 988), Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, etc.: Springer, 475-484. Twardowski, Kasimir: "Actions and Products: Comments on the Border Area of Psychology, Grammar and Logic", in J. PeJc, ed., Semiotics in Poland !884-1969, Dordrecht: Reidel, 13-27 . •