Philosophy

In this article I maintain that a progressive and leftist carbon tax should be revenue-neutral through a dual policy package: first, it should use some revenues to offset price increases for the poor and middle classes; second, it should use the remaining part of revenues to lower taxes on labour income (both employed and self-employed income) for those below a middle-income threshold. I will briefly examine three reasons why such a revenue-neutral and dual-package carbon tax (RN-DP-CT) could (and should) become central in the political agenda of the European Left â even though much of what I will suggest can reasonably hold also with respect to other countries. First, the tax wage on labour in the euro area is one of the highest in the world. Second, the revenue-neutral and dual policy package carbon tax will tax more capital that yields income without a proportional increase in labour demand, rather than capital that creates new job opportunities. Third, we live in societies that are highly unequal, hence I see no moral reason why a carbon tax reform should not aim, among other things, to take wealth away from the richest.

By Fausto Corvino Why a carbon tax? People normally pay the private cost of CO2, but not the social cost. The private cost is given by the price of each unit of CO2, usually measured in tonnes, which in turn is the result of a series of market contingencies: the costs of extracting, processing, and selling fossil fuels, taking also into consideration the interplay between supply and demand. The social cost of CO2, instead, is obtained by summing the private cost of CO2 to the climate damage it is expected to cause (Cho 2021, Wagner et al. 2021). The climate change we are experiencing now is nothing more than the result of the negative CO2 externalities of the past. If we set aside the complex ethical question of responsibility for past emissions (Meyer & Sanklecha 2017), a simple solution to this market inefficiency is to get people to internalise the social cost of the CO2 they emit, through a carbon tax. This is not only because it is ethically sound (e.g., in virtue of the polluter pays principle) , but also because it is the most effective (and non-coercive) way to make people reduce their emissions to a level that we can consider as economically efficient (Metcalf 2019: 35-71; Rabe 2018: 112) – keeping into consideration both the marginal benefits of CO2 emissions and the resulting climate damage. Which carbon tax? The carbon tax is usually seen as part of a broader fiscal policy, consisting of both taxation and revenue spending. Regarding the taxation part, there are basically two different approaches. A first approach consists in setting the market price of CO2 on its social cost (SCC). Economists usually calculate SCC through complex mathematical models that take into account future climate change based on the amount of GHGs expected to be in the atmosphere, the effects that certain marginal changes in average temperature will have on the planet, socio-economic data, and the discount rate of future utility (see Nordhaus 2017; Fleurbaey et al. 2019). SCC is not only a useful fiscal yardstick but also a more general and fundamental parameter of economic policy. It indicates how rational it is to invest in climate mitigation today by deducting avoided climate damage from investment costs. So, for example, the medium-term cost of an economic project that requires N dollars and produces an emission reduction of X tonnes of CO2, should be calculated by subtracting X*SCC from N. The assessment of SCC is both a technical question (what data to include in the models) and an ethical-political one (what discount rate to apply to future utility), so it is not surprising that there are different numbers attributed to SCC. The task force set up by US President Obama, for example, quantified the SCC upwards in 2013 at $51 (measured in 2020 dollars) per tonne of CO2. His successor, Trump, reduced SCC to as low as $1, effectively excluding global damages from the total cost of CO2 emitted in the US and more than doubling the discount rate of future utility. Newly-elected Biden then requested a recalculation, and his advisers provisionally reset the SCC to $51, reserving a year to study the issue further (Samuel 2021). The second approach is to set the carbon tax rate not in relation to the SCC but to a specific mitigation target (Kaufman et al. 2020). Suppose, for example, that a country wants to reduce its emissions by half by 2030. The national carbon budget for the climate target is calculated and a carbon tax rate is set to achieve this target. Obviously, an automatic adjustment mechanism will have to be introduced to keep the tax rate steady on the basis of intermediate climate results achieved or missed (Metcalf 2019: 111). This type of approach shifts some of the moral and economic responsibility for past emissions onto the present generation. If the mitigation target is an ambitious one (e.g., it is in line with the Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming to 2/1.5 °C, compared to pre-industrial levels) and the SCC is considered to be around $50 (as postulated by the Obama administration), a SCC-based carbon tax will be lower than a target-based carbon tax (see Stern and Stiglitz 2021). It can be discussed at length whether the carbon tax is regressive or not, i.e., whether it hits the poor more than the rich or vice versa (Andersson 2021 ; Carattini et al. 2019; Metcalf 2019: 91-98). But the fact remains that it is a tax that raises the price of a range of goods and services that everyone needs, from electricity and heating that we use in our homes, to transport, especially on wheels. As such, it obviously meets with social resistance, especially from the poorer classes. As I said before, however, this is only part of the story. Because the carbon tax generates revenues and it is how the revenues are spent that determines whether and how regressive or progressive the tax reform of which the carbon tax is a part is (there is no room here to discuss the magnitude, but suffice it to mention that according to Gilbert Metcalf a carbon tax of $50 per tonne of CO2 would produce a fiscal revenue of $200 billion in the first year alone, see Metcalf 2019: 87). There are two major ways of investing carbon tax revenues (Marron & Morris 2016; Marten & van Dender 2019; Fried et al. 2020). One is to give revenue back to the people, either through reductions in other taxes or simply through rebates (which can be more or less equal). This is the revenue-neutral carbon tax (RN-CT): the government obtains climate mitigation without increasing its budget. Another method, instead, consists in using revenues to expand government spending, i.e., by earmarking revenues for new projects (either climate or non-climate related) or for reducing public debt. This is a revenue-positive carbon tax (RP-CT). A RP-CT tends to be regressive, and it also reinforces inequality. The new jobs and the new sectors (climate, AI, Page 2 WEA Commentaries 11(3), October 2021 http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/ An egalitarian carbon tax: revenue-neutral and dual policy package http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/ Page 3 WEA Commentaries 11(3), October 2021 technology, and so on) that could be financed through the carbon revenues require on average a high know-how; therefore, what you take away from the poorest in terms of lost jobs and higher bills, you cannot give back to them through new jobs and new opportunities (at least, not in the short term, before reconverting the poorest part of the workforce). On the contrary, a RN-CT, if designed in the right way, can become an egalitarian policy that not only tries to solve the climate issue but also corrects macroeconomic distortions that are independent of the environment. An egalitarian use of carbon revenues There are two main possible ways of devising a RN-CT and by combining these two methods in different ways, different policy packages can be obtained. One way is to give people equal rebates. By doing so, you obtain a fiscal policy that is slightly egalitarian (Metcalf 2019: 95-98; Cecco 2018). The poorest will probably get back a bit more than they paid through the carbon tax. Those in the middle will see their situation almost unchanged. The richer will receive back a bit less than they were taxed. This is in substance a fiscal reform that seeks to maintain the status quo quite unaltered – except for some redistribution from the top towards the bottom. And also, the fact the everyone is entitled to carbon revenues conveys the message that the carbon tax will not be too intrusive in pre-tax social arrangements – it will seek, as far as possible, not to allocate net costs to anyone. Alternatively, you may want to earmark revenues for certain social groups, thus altering existing power equilibria: e.g., you could distribute the revenues between the poor and middle classes, either through tax credits or even direct transfers (see Paoli and van der Ploeg 2021).1 This policy would be progressive, but it would involve two problems: where very distortionary taxes are in place (e.g. a high tax wedge, as we will see later), this policy would mobilise a lot of money but would not correct the problems of economic inefficiency (although it would stimulate consumer demand ); it would meet with strong political opposition from the wealthiest, and it would therefore be difficult, if not impossible, to get approved. Arguably, a progressive and leftist carbon tax should be revenue-neutral through a dual policy package: first, it should use some revenues to offset price increases for the poor and middle classes; second, it should use the remaining part of revenues to lower taxes on labour income (both employed and self-employed income) for those below a middle-income threshold. I will briefly examine three reasons why such a revenue-neutral and dual-package carbon tax (RN-DP-CT) could (and should) become central in the political agenda of the European Left – even though much of what I will suggest can reasonably hold also with respect to other countries. The first reason is simply that the tax wage on labour in the euro area is one of the highest in the world: in some countries, like Belgium, Italy, Austria, France and Germany, the net pay of the employee is over 45 percent lower than the cost of her/his labour for the employer (OECD 2021). The high cost of human labour creates several problems for the working class. Entrepreneurs have all the interest in accelerating investments in automation, faster than any society committed to a sustainable technological transition can stand; and imbalances of market power allow employers to shift the burden of the tax wedge onto workers, by reducing wages. High taxes on self-employment income, in turn, force lowand medium-income self-employed workers in a race to the bottom on the costs of their services (this leads to a reduction in their income and obviously creates strong incentives to evade taxes). By lowering labour costs (for lowand middle-income earners), a RN-DP-CT is more egalitarian than any RP-CT, because it creates new opportunities for all workers, not simply those who could be easily employed in the midand high-tech sectors, and at the same time it shields the unemployed from price increases – the unemployed do not get better off, as the employed, but they neither suffer a net loss. Conversely, a RN-CT that simply gives rebates to the middle and poor classes would benefit both employed and unemployed equally, but it would not be as supportive of economic growth as the RN-DP-CT which, it should be recalled, can benefit the unemployed indirectly, by enlarging employment opportunities. The second advantage of a RN-DP-CT is that it will redistribute wealth from capital towards labour in a way that is supposed to be welcomed by the Left: i.e., by taxing more capital that yields income without a proportional increase in labour demand, rather than capital that creates new job opportunities. If, for example, you earn income exclusively in the form of rents, by managing your real estate, or through financial activities, the RN-DP-CT will make you a net-loser.2 If you are a worker, instead, the cost of your labour will go down, so there will be more (and perhaps even better paid) job opportunities: what you lose with the carbon tax, you get back again through your job contract, in the form of tax cuts. Therefore, if you are a worker, the RN-DP-CT can make you better off in two ways. First, if you are a low/middleincome worker, your energy consumption is likely low enough to allow you to obtain net benefits from the carbon tax reform. Second, if you also start ethically spending your income, shifting to green products and green energy sources, you are likely to increase even further your net income in the medium term. This is both because you will reduce the impact of the carbon tax on your consumption and because the price of green goods could be reasonably expected to fall over time. The third argument in support of a RN-DP-CT is that we live in extremely unequal societies. World billionaires now control the same amount of wealth as has been spent by all G20 governments in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly 11.95 trillion dollars (Oxfam 2021: 23). At the same time, the richest 1 percent is responsible for 15 percent of global emissions from 1990 to 2015 (and the richest 10 percent is responsible for 52 percent of global emissions, see Oxfam 2020: 3). I see no moral reason why a carbon tax reform should not aim, among other things, to take wealth away from the richest. References Andersson, Julius. 2021. "Carbon Tax Regressivity and Income Inequality", FREE Network – Policy Brief, May, 17. https://freepolicybriefs.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/05/freepolicybriefs20210517.pdf Carattini, Stefano, Steffen Kallbekken & Anton Orlov. 2019. "How to win public support for a global carbon tax". Nature 565: 289-291. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-01900124-x Cecco, Leyland. 2018. "How to make a carbon tax popular? Give the proceeds to the people " The Guardian, December 4, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how -to-make-a-carbon-tax-popular-give-the-profits-to-thepeople Cho, Renee. 2021. "Social Cost of Carbon: What Is It, and Why Do We Need to Calculate It?". State of the Planet Columbia Climate School, April 1, 2021. https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/04/01/socialcost-of-carbon/ European Commission. (2020). "Tax Wedge On Labour: Shifting Tax Burden From Labour To Other Forms Of Taxation". Ref. Ares(2020) 580200 30/01/20. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/42557/egthematic-discussion-on-growth-and-jobs-tax-wedge-onlabour.pdf Fleurbaey, Marc, Maddalena Ferranna, Mark Budolfson, Francis Dennig, Kian Mintz-Woo, Robert Socolow, Dean Spears, Stéphane Zuber. "The Social Cost of Carbon: Valuing Inequality, Risk, and Population for Climate Policy". 2019. The Monist 102, no. 1: 84–109. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/ony023 Fried, Stephie, Kevin Novan, & William B. Peterman. 2021. "Recycling Carbon Tax Revenue to Maximize Welfare". Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2021-023. Washington: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2021.023. Fried, Stephie, Kevin Novany, William B. Peterman. 2020. "How Should Carbon Tax Revenue be Recycled?". Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco – Working Paper. https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/carbontax-revenue-be-recycled-fried-novan-peterman.pdf Kaufman, Noah, Alexander R. Barron, Wojciech Krawczyk, Peter Marsters & Haewon McJeon. 2020. "A near-term to net zero alternative to the social cost of carbon for setting carbon prices". Nature Climate Change 10: 1010– 1014. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0880-3 Marron, Donald B. & Adele C. Morris. 2016. "How to use carbon tax revenues". Brookings Institution, February 23, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-touse-carbon-tax-revenues/ Metcalf, Gilbert E. 2019. Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax is Good for America. New York/Oxford:Oxford University Press. Meyer, Lukas H. & Pranay Sanklecha (eds.). 2017. Climate Justice and Historical Emissions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nordhaus, William D. 2017. "Revisiting the social cost of carbon". PNAS 114, no.7: 1518-1523. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1609244114 OECD. Taxing Wages 2021 summary https://www.oecd.org/tax/tax-policy/taxing-wagesbrochure.pdf Oxfam 2021. The Inequality Virus, January 25, 2021. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/ha ndle/10546/621149/bp-the-inequality-virus-250121en.pdf Oxfam. 2020. Confronting Carbon Inequality, September 21, 2020. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/ha ndle/10546/621052/mb-confronting-carbon-inequality210920-en.pdf Paoli, Maria Chiara & Rick van der Ploeg. 2021. "Recycling revenue to improve political feasibility of carbon pricing in the UK", VoxEU. October 4. https://voxeu.org/article/recycling-revenue-improvepolitical-feasibility-carbon-pricing-uk Rabe, Barry G. Can We Price Carbon?. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Samuel,.Sigal 2021. "We've been radically underestimating the true cost of our carbon footprint". Vox, September 4, 2021. https://www.vox.com/futureperfect/22643358/social-cost-of-carbon-mortalitybiden-discounting Stern, Nicholas & Joseph E. Stiglitz. 2021. "Getting the Social Cost of Carbon Right", Project Syndicate, February 15. https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bidenadministration-climate-change-higher-carbon-price-bynicholas-stern-and-joseph-e-stiglitz-2021-02 Wagner, Gernot, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, Simon Dietz, Kenneth T. Gillingham, Ben Groom, J. Paul Kelleher, Frances C. Moore & James H. Stock. 2021. "Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon", Nature 590: 548-550. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-02100441-0 _______________________________ 1 Consider also that if you believe in trickle-down economics, you may also want to devise a RN-CT that earmarks the rich, i.e., using carbon revenues to lower corporate taxes (see Fried et al. 2021) 2 You will pay more than you get back, unless you become an ethical investor and consumer. Page 4 WEA Commentaries 11(3), October 2021 http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/


Philosophy

A review of Anna Elisabeth Galeotti's "Political Self-Deception"

http://social-epistemology.com ISSN: 2471-9560 Politics, Deception, and Being Self-Deceived Matthew R. X. Dentith, Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Bucharest –––––––––––––––––– Dentith, Matthew R. X. "Politics, Deception, and Being Self-Deceived." Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 8, no. 4 (2019): 38-43. Short url: https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-48t (provided by WordPress) 38 Vol. 8, no. 4 (2019): 38-43. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-48t Sometimes you read a blurb and think "That dovetails with my work; I must read that!" Then, when you finally manage to get hold of a copy of the text, you either devour it in as few sittings as possible... Or you sit on it for months because whatever excitement you had dissipated by the end of the introduction. This book is, unfortunately, an example of the latter. It is a book with a very interesting central thesis-the development of a theory about political self-deception-which suffers both from overreach and a poorly structured argument. Let me start with the former issue, since the latter is only really a problem of presentation rather than the nuance of the argument. To Deceive Oneself... Anna Elisabeth Galeotti argues that not only can agents self-deceive, but there is a special species of self-deception which is political in nature. So, what is self-deception, let alone political self-deception? According to Galeotti-although it is a contested concept-selfdeception is "the distortion of reality against the available evidence and according to one's wishes (p. 1)" and "a form of motivated irrationality, displayed by usually rational subjects, as a rule capable of responding to evidence adequately and forming and holding beliefs appropriately (p. 19)." That is, when self-deception occurs, it really is the case that the agent wants to and thus comes to believe p despite the evidence. Why is self-deception a contested concept? Well, because both in Philosophy and Psychology people have questioned whether someone can really self-deceive. After all, to deceive someone else is one thing (and, it seems, unfortunately quite common), but to deceive yourself is another thing entirely. Some justify this scepticism that self-deception is possible by preferring accounts that, say, characterise seeming self-deception as just post facto rationalisations (an agent acted as if p were true despite knowing it wasn't, and then justified their actions after the fact by saying they believed p to be true at the time). Others explain away such apparent self-deception by saying agents are simply subject to biases (there is no motivation behind the irrational belief that p, just unconscious bias). Galeotti argues that to ignore the possibility of self-deception, however, means "giving up a whole body of phenomena, amply described and reported in literary works and novels, and deeply entrenched in our common experience (p. 25)." Yet tropes of fiction are not evidence of the existence of actual mental phenomena; at best such tropes suggest that in our folkpsychologies we think it is possible to self-deceive. Better is her argument that we seem to personally experience self-deception, although even then that is questionable: not only might we retroactively perceive biased thinking as a case of self-deception (since it moves our fallacious reasoning from the cold to hot domain of cognitive activity) but there is a huge literature-particularly in the Philosophy of Mind- which questions whether our self-descriptions of mental activity reflects at all how we M. R. X. Dentith 39 actually think. Galeotti also argues that there is evidence elsewhere for self-deception, although this evidence is hard to parse. In the first half of the book many such examples of this evidence are introduced, but then never explained properly. An experiment by C. Michel and A. Newen is mentioned in passing, the results of which are said to support the self-deception thesis (p. 39). But there isn't enough detail in the description of the experiment to show this. Similarly, when discussing voice recognition experiments by R. Gur and H. Sackein, Galeotti claims they support the ascription of self-deception as a mechanism for avoiding embarrassment (p. 24). Yet, once again, we are told this, rather than had it explained to us. There are also times that we are told things like "Yet philosophers regard this solution as less than desirable (p. 73)" without ever being told who these philosophers are. Add to this the problem that if self-deception occurs, it occurs and operates selectively. As Galeotti writes self-deception: [I]s not a general causal mechanism countering any unwelcome data, but it activates only under specified circumstances, namely, in case the negative evidence threatens an important belief for S's well-being which S cannot (or believes he cannot, or discounts he can) counteract or finds too costly to counteract (p. 45). That is, we have to ascertain when something is self-deception rather than merely deceptive. As to why people might engage in such self-deception-aside from being motivated to irrationally believe p over ~p-in part it is because, in the short term, self-deception can be good for reducing anxiety. After all, the self-deceiver really wants p over p to be true. However, the problem with being self-deceived is that, in the long term, such self-deception leads to bad consequences. P, after all, turns out not to be true and your subsequent decisions based upon p being true will reflect badly on you and-as we will see in the political case-your mates. Galeotti argues not only is it not a contradiction-in-terms to deceive oneself, but there is a species of political self-deception which explains away not just bad policy decisions but also the failure of policy-makers to see the consequences of such decisions. Now, Galeotti is quick to point out that her conception of self-deception does not absolve self-deceivers of the responsibility for their subsequent actions. Once an agent realises they have been self-deceived, then they should correct their future behaviour. Not just that, but Galeotti even suggests it might even be possible to design political institutions to ensure against self-deception in the first place. Yet, despite this her case studies-the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and the Invasion of Iraq-end up reading as apologetics rather than excoriations. 40 Vol. 8, no. 4 (2019): 38-43. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-48t Case Studies of Deception or Deceptive Case Studies? The second half of the book concerns the application of her theory to the aforementioned three cases, all of which have been put forward as examples of political deception. As such, the problem with Galeotti's characterisation of these events is the primary issue for selfdeception itself: does it occur? Because if we deny the existence of self-deception, then we still have explanations based on deception for these three cases. Not just that, but even if we grant there can be cases of selfdeception, why think these are notable cases of such deception? Once again, there are rival and well-accepted explanations for the same phenomena. In part my scepticism is based upon Galeotti's dismissal of conspiracy theories for some of these cases. I mostly work on the epistemology of conspiracy theory, and I am somewhat used to people outside the small community of philosophers who bother to treat conspiracy theory seriously talking about said theories as if Karl Popper was the last word on the topic. So Galeotti's dismissive take on conspiracy theories when it comes to accounts of what went wrong in particular with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in 1964, or the "case" for the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 was no surprise. She casts the conspiratorial explanations to these events to one side because of their supposed implausibility, and this is awkward because-just as I defend conspiracy theorising in a range of cases-she is seeking to show self-deception rather than deception best explains these curious sets of events. However, unlike self-deception-which is contested-we know conspiracies occur. What we probably do not need are rival explanations which seek to explain away deceptive political practices as something else. Part of the problem is a certain naive reading by Galeotti of the minutes, diaries and other official records around these events, which she takes to show that the agents involved selfdeceived rather than sought to deceive. Galeotti assumes that the extant records are honest testaments of the intentions and thoughts of the political actors involved. Yet I can't help but be reminded of Julius Caesar's Commentāriī dē Bellō Gallicō (Commentaries on the Gallic Wars). These were ostensibly accurate recollections of the events of Caesar's campaigns in Transalpine Gaul. Yet most Classicists and Ancient Historians now think these were written primarily to garner support and sympathy for Caesar back in Rome: Caesar characterised the Gauls as an almost existential threat to the Roman Republic which only a general like Caesar could counter. Yet, from what we now know about the Gauls and their civilisation, Caesar was hamming it up for his Roman readers. My point here is that whilst it is possible the recollections of the people involved in Galeotti's case studies are sincere, it is also possible that these recollections were written to excuse mistakes, or hide intentions. This is sometimes done intentionally, and sometimes unintentionally (and not necessarily in a self-deceptive fashion). M. R. X. Dentith 41 The Benefit of the Doubt? Indeed, reading this book I was constantly asking myself why should we give these politicians the benefit of the doubt and say they deceived themselves? Take for example, the Gulf of Tonkin affair-discussed in chapter 5-where the USS Maddox was alleged to have been attacked by Vietnamese forces on August 4th, 1964. Galeotti thinks that as there is evidence that, initially, senior naval personnel and members of the U.S. Government thought the attack was genuine, the resulting deception-after it was discovered to be otherwise-means a conspiratorial explanation is untenable. Yet even if the president and his advisors thought the attack on the USS Maddox was genuine in the first instance, their subsequent actions-once it became clear the "attack" had been misreported and then misrepresented to Congress-does not take conspiracy out of the equation. Sometimes conspiracies emerge when events you had no control over end up being used to serve a political purpose, especially if you think you can control the narrative. You do not have to fake an event to conspire after the fact. Not just that, but she then claims the resulting twenty-year cover-up of what really happened also does not support the existence of a conspiracy. Yet that is precisely what a cover-up is: a kind of conspiracy. This is all very reminiscent of the Popperian success notion of conspiracy: in The Open Society and Its Enemies Popper argues that a conspiracy is only successful if it ultimately achieves all its ends. Thus the Holocaust, according to Popper, was not a successful example of a conspiracy because the Nazis did not ultimately achieve their goal. Using the same kind of reasoning, Galeotti claims that as the story of what really happened to the USS Maddox eventually came out-some twenty years later, mind-this means the cover-up fails to be suitably conspiratorial. Indeed, Galeotti makes a similar argument for the dodgy dossier that "justified" the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, claiming the conspiracy theories: [C]annot explain why a group of so skilled liars and cynics, so good at manipulating people and masterminding the attack, failed so miserably in managing the aftermath of the invasion and did not serve their own vested interests as well (p. 202). Yet, as Charles Pigden argued in Popper Revisited, or What Is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?, people do not believe conspiracies are only ultimately successful if the conspirators get what they want. Despite Popper's claim, the Holocaust was, unfortunately, a success, even though the Nazis desired more. Meanwhile, just because Blair, Bush and company might not have been able to ultimately control the narrative around the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, they still got what they wanted at the time (at least according to the conspiracy theorists) and-notably-do not seem to have suffered much for it either (which raises the question of whether they really were ultimately unsuccessful in the first place). 42 Vol. 8, no. 4 (2019): 38-43. https://wp.me/p1Bfg0-48t Now, it may seem that this review is more a rumination on conspiracy theories than it is a discussion of Galeotti's theory of political self-deception. This is a fair criticism, but I've focussed on these conspiratorial explanations precisely because she is putting forward alternative explanations which strip away deception and replace them with a story that the political actors in question were mistaken. Galeotti claims she is not absolving the culprits of responsibility for their actions, but it's hard not to take her case studies as tailor-made to say that mistakes were made, rather than attributing them to disturbing political maneuvers. And Another Thing... Which brings me to the second part of my complaint, which relates to the poor structure and presentation of Galeotti's argument. Political Self-Deception is a long book, and its chief fault is that it takes far too long to get to the examples-the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and the Invasion of Iraq-which motivate the use of political self-deception as a potential explanation for certain kinds of political activity. Before we get to these cases studies-which would justify the analysis-we have to go through the process of distinguishing the author's view of self-deception from that of her contemporaries or forebears. Whilst this is all well-and-good, spending half a book on a literature review before getting to the meat of the discussion makes the text lopsided, particularly since it is dry and unmotivated. Galeotti might have thought the examples had to wait until after the theory was expounded. But without meaty examples which suggest political self-deception might explain away certain events, the first half of the book is a long slog through theory which lacks any sense of motivation. The text also has a number of other problems than its structure. It is badly edited (and its lop-sided structure could also be seen as evidence of that): "WDM" in place of "WMD" (p. 109); "Turn" rather than "turns" (p. 117); a missing "they" (p. 129); "real fact" (p. 171); "thepresident" (p. 179); a reference back to a section which has yet to occur (p. 217); and the author of the Chilcot Report is named "Sir John Chilcots" (p. 243). The book is littered with such mistakes, big and small, which is all a little off for a CUP publication. This review might come across as harsh. But I want to stress that nothing I have said means self-deception does not occur: I somewhat think it is a likely contender in a range of cases. I was even struck by how closely Galeotti's work on self-deception dovetails into a thesis I have been developing elsewhere (the notion of the "polite society"). Rather, my point is that almost any explanation of a complex political event involving multiple actors is going to be amenable to a range of different explanations, some of which will turn out to be complementary. As such, this book is for people who already think there is something to the thesis of self-deception, and thus want to know how it applies in political cases; it is not likely to convince people who are skeptical of the notion agents can selfdeceive. M. R. X. Dentith 43 The case studies used to show self-deception should be at least considered as potential explanations never quite show that self-deception is the only viable explanation on offer. Thus, unless you think political self-deception is common, this book is just not that compelling. Contact details: firstname.lastname@example.com References Galeotti, Anna Elisabeth. Political Self-Deception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pigden, Charles. "Popper Revisited: Or, What Is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?" Philosophy of the Social Sciences 25, no. 1 (1995), 3-34. Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.


Philosophy

. ~ ' p HILOSOPHIA CHRISTI " ... in aJhom are flicftfen all 1£e lreasure.s of aJisdom and hnoaJfedye" Col 2 . .:J EDITOR CRAIG j. HAZEN Biola University ADVISORY BOARD William Lane Craig, Talbot School of Theology (President, EPS); David K. Clark, Bethel Theological Seminary (Vice-President); Paul F. Pardi, Federal Way, WA (SecretaryTreasurer); J.P. Moreland, Talbot School of Theology (Book Review Editor); David Beck, Liberty University; Francis J. Beckwith, Trinity International University; Douglas Blount, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; L. Russ Bush, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary; Paul Copan, Ravi Zacharias International Ministries; Garry DeWeese, Talbot School of Theology; R. Douglas Geivett, Talbot School of Theology; W. Gary Phillips, Bryan College Philosophia Christi is a peer reviewed journal published twice a year by the Evangelical Philosophical Society with the support of Biola University as a vehicle for the scholarly discussion of philosophy and philosophical issues in the fields of apologetics, ethics, theology, and religion. The journal is indexed by the Philosopher's Index and Religious and Theological Abstracts. SUBSCRIPTIONS Annual subscriptions are available to anyone whether members of EPS or not. For individuals and institutions the rate is $25 per year. Students can subscribe for $15 per year. All non-U.S. subscriptions should add $5 for additional mailing costs; funds must be drawn on a U.S. bank. EPS membership includes a subscription to the journal. See below for membership information. INQUIRIES & CORRESPONDENCE Inquiries about advertising and any editorial correspondence should be sent to: CRAIG J. HAZEN, Editor Biola University, 13800 La Mirada, CA 90639-0001 E-mail: email@example.com • Phone: 562.906.4570 • Fax: 562.906.4592 Requests regarding subscriptions, memberships, and change of address should be sent to: PAUL F. PARDI, EPS Secretary/Treasurer 35706 25th Place South, Federal Way, WA 98003 E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com • Web: www.epsociety.org EVANGELICAL PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY Founded in 1974, the EPS is an organization of professional scholars devoted to pursuing philosophical excellence for Christ in both the church and the academy. As part of this pursuit, we seek to offer scholarly, evangelical perspectives on philosophy and philosophical issues in the fields of apologetics, ethics, theology, and religion. Interested laypersons can join as associate or student members. The EPS holds a national meeting each year in conjunction with the Evangelical Theological Society and the AAR/SBL. See the journal announcements section for annual meeting details. For membership information contact the EPS Secretary/Treasurer above. The opinions and conclusions published in Philosophia Christi are* solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and/or Biola University. SERIES 2 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2 1999 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI E,DITOR'S ll'\!RODUCTION ARTICLES How Concepts Relate the Mind to Its Objects: The "God's Eye View" Vindicated? Mysterious Flames in Philosophy of Mind On Divine Foreknowledge and Newcomb's Paradox Can Michael Martin Be a Moral Realist? Sic et Non Theodore Orange on the Fine-Tuning Argument: A Critique PHILOSOPHICAL NOTES Perfection at Risk? CRAIG J. HAZEN 3 DALLAS WILLARD 5 CHARLES TALIAFERRO 21 THOMAS M. CRISP 33 PAUL COPAN 45 STEPHEN E. PARRISH 73 Postmodemism and the Intelligent Design Movement DAVID P. HUNT J.P. MORELAND 91 97 A Somewhat Playful Proof of the Social Trinity in Five Easy Steps Was I Ever a Brain Stem? Eric T. Olson on Human Identity The Historical Paul: A Review Essay BooK REVIEWS Michael Paul Gallager, S.J., What Are They Saying about Unbelief? Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Maloney, eds., Whatever Happened to the Soul? Michael J. Murray, ed., Reason for the Hope Within Robert Kane, The Significance of Free Will Eleonore Stump and Michael J: Murrã, eds., Philosophy of Religion: The Btg Questwns John Perry, Dialogue on Good, Evil and the Existence of God STEPHEN T. DAVIS JOSHUA DAVID BLANDER GARY R. HABERMAS PAULK. MOSER STEWART GOETZ WILLIAM LANE CRAIG DAVID M. CIOCCHI CHARLES TALIAFERRO 103 107 115 123 126 129 134 137 MICHAEL BERGMANN 140 The Yale Divinity Library New Haven, Conn. JAN 1 1 2001 4 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI SERIES 2 VOL. 1, No. 2 COPYRIGHT© 1999 How Concepts Relate the Mind to Its Objects The "God's Eye View" Vindicated? DALLAS WILLARD School of Philosophy University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA I What is it for an object to be "before" the mind in thought, or in consciousness generally? And how, exactly, are "concepts" necessarily involved in such a case? Everyone seems to agree that they are involved. There must in any case be something which is or accounts for the fact that a given thought has as its object what it in fact does have as its object. And that "something" is generally said to be a concept. Thus John McDowell opens his recent book, Mind and World, with the statement: "The overall topic I am going to consider in these lectures is the way concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world."1 He quickly proceeds, however, to "focus the discussion in terms of a familiar philosophical outlook." This turns out to be that of the "dualism of scheme and content" which Donald Davidson put forward in his paper, "On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme." This route, McDowell continues, "will quickly get us to Kant," with the idea he, McDowell, cherishes, "that Kant should still have a central place in our discussion of the way thought bears on reality." 2 At these words those who have been over the Kantian road several times might not be thought too uncharitable if they threw up their hands in despair. The move to Kant/Davidson might serve to focus the discussion, but it is sure to blur the subject under discussion. You have already given away a great deal in your analysis of world, thought and concept if you agree with Kant and Davidson on what is at issue in the Mind/world nexus. For Kantand Davidson in his own peculiar way, which in fact is by no means that of 'John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 3. 'Ibid., my italics. 6 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI Kant (How anyone could even think it is is a topic worth pondering)-understands a "concept" to be an activity of mind (Davidson would say "Ia _ gu~ge"), brought ~o bear (?) on sense contents (?) to produce (?) a represe~- tatwn (act? or obJect?) of a world (?) which has the character it has on! because of what the mind is 'doing to' the sense contents. y !~ his remarkably penetrating paper, "Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition: Comments on John McDowell's Mind and World") M" h 1 F. , IC ae nedman d~ftly shows how McDowell's version of the coming together of sense ~xpenence (content) and understanding (conceptual scheme) fails. His result Is: "Relation_ t~ an independent objective world is thus not secured by the idea of receptiVIty _[a_s_ McDowell presents it], but rather by the spontaneous conceptual actiVIties of the understanding as it rationally evolves an integrated picture of this world. Hence, given McDowell's own conception of what impressions of outer sense amount to, I do not see, in the end, how he ~as f~lly rebutted the ch~ge of idealism. I do not see why his conception Itself IS not finally a versiOn of Coherentism." (443-4) . ~he ~ifficulty with the Kantian route, in its original as well as in its Jingmstic (szc) forms (Davidson, etc.), is that it always turns the "mediation" of the relation between mind and world into a form of making: the object which ~ões to stañ before the ~nd is in some essential way made by a 'graspmg _õ someth1~g other than It (sensa?)-and then the object before the mind too 1~ gras~e.d : I have elsewhere called this "Midas touch epistemology," to pr~v1de a VIVId Image of what always turns out to be an indispellably murky action or process.4 When concepts are treated in this way-as an activity of mind (lan- ?uãe) brought to bear upon something to produce something-it is ~nev1table th~t th_ose who do not agree with that treatment should be admonIshed for fallmg mto the "Myth of the Given," in the phraseology made popular by Wilfrid Sellars some decades ago.5 But they are in a good position to re~~y by sugg~sting ~hat there is also a "Myth of the Taking" (and of course of the T~en ). All m good sport, perhaps, but with serious intent nonetheless. For If because of the minds action the given is never to be actually 3 Mich~el ~riedman, "Exorcising the Philosophical Tradition: Comments on John Mc~owell s ~md ~nd _World," Philosophical Review 105 (October 1996), 427-67. See my :red1~at:~~ as Originary Violence: A Phenomenological Critique of Derrida's View of Intentw~a!It~, m Working Through Derrida, Gary B. Madison, ed. (Evanston Ill.: Northwestern Umvers1ty Press, 1993), 120-36. ' '~ilfrid Sellars, "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind," in his Science, Perception and Realuy (New York: T\Je Humanities Press, 1963), 127-96. DALLAS WILLARD 7 found in experience, as Sellars and most others assume, the same is equally true of the taking (and of the taken as such). Kant, of course, offered transcendental arguments that the taking must be going on, but, for reasons inherent in his views, insisted that the taking could never be brought before the mind except through an inference which still never reveals what, exactly, it is. This "taking" remains to this day every bit as much a myth as the given, and its inherent obscurity (if not unintelligiblity) has driven many, from Kant on, to reject both the given and the taking, and simply to accept the flow of experience (language, society). Coherentism (including what today is often called "internal" realism) tries to reconstruct objectivity from within the flow. The various idealisms, phenomenalisms, historicisms, Lebensphilosophie (of which Heidegger and the second Wittgenstein offer varieties), and agnosticisms are so many versions of Coherentism.6 Indeed, the primary question in all this concerns the exact nature of concepts. What their role in consciousness and knowledge is can only be answered in the light of their nature. What they are makes their role possible. The basic mistake is, on my view, to think that we can understand the role of concepts without first understanding what they are. The "way thought bears on reality" will obviously be, to some important extent, a matter of concepts, if, as McDowell says, "concepts mediate the relation between minds and the world." But how they mediate, serve as "go betweens," in the interrelationship between the mind and the world cannot be understood without clarity on what they are. Given that concepts do so mediate, do we know anything about them other than that they are whatever does that? If we don't, the claim that they (whatever mediates the connection) mediate the connection becomes non-informative and trivially true-and baffling. Kant, in a famous letter to Marcus Herz of Feb. 21, 1772, described the problem of how anything in the mind can be a representation of anything outside the mind as the most difficult riddle in philosophy. Hilary Putnam, citing that letter, remarks that "Since the so-called linguistic turn in philosophy earlier in this century, that question [of Kant's] has been replaced by the question 'How does language hook onto the world?' but the replacement has not made finding an answer any easier."7 Thus, as Putnam famously holds, there can be no "God's Eye View" on the world: no view of reality as it is independently of how we have shaped it, no possibility of knowing it as it is when it is not being 'shaped' by our consciousness of it. But this entire outcome-Kant's riddle and Putnam's-is due to an implicit theory of the •G. E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," in his Philosophical Studies (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922), 5. 'Hilary Putnam, Renewing Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 21. 8 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI act of thought (of language) and its concepts, according to which what comes before the mind as its objects-trees, cats, atoms, quarks, numbersare products of the action of the mind upon something other than those objects, action by means of concepts-which objects then again, curiously, fall under the very concepts which 'made' them. Historically, Locke, Kant, Nietzsche, Brand Blanshard and Nelson Goodman, among multitudes of others past and present, can plausibly be superimposed on this diagram, though with some significant differences. It is now simply the reigning dogma not only within philosophy, but far out into academic culture and culture generally, that no one can "step outside" their thought or language to find how things are "apart" from it and then compare them to it. And this is entirely due to the idea that the primary contact of mind with world is one of modifying or making. II Is Coherentism and its inevitable twin, agnosticism (for that is what "no God's eye view" really amounts to), then to be our fate? Is there any way of thinking about "concepts"-the "mediators" of mind and world-that does not leave us in this position? I must say that I think there is, and one not entirely unheard of in the history of philosophical thought. But it is hard to get a hearing for it in the face of "the reigning dogma," and beyond that this option is not easy to make intelligible or plausible in its own right. This is in part because it depends upon explaining and defending positions on profound issues in general ontology, having to do with individuals, qualities and relations. "Midas touch" epistemologies depend upon failures in general ontology, and overcoming those epistemolgies depends upon placing 'concepts' convincingly in a framework of individuals, qualities and relations. Needless to say, that is Izard. And, as Aristotle remarks when setting out to see if there are "besides sense perceptible substances any which is immovable and eternal," "one must be content to state some points better than one's predecessors, and others no worse."8 Perhaps, even, some not as well! We might begin by allowing that 'concepts'-whatever they are-do mediate the relation between mind and the world, but refrain from entering the Kantian pathway of making, forming, etc. My dog and my thought of my dog obviously are different. (They have different properties. The latter has no fleas, though the former does, and is about or of the former, though the former is not about or of it.) Moreover they are obviously related. We have two things and a certain specific together with reference to them. So there 'Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book M (XII), chapter I, (1076a, 15). DALLAS WILLARD 9 must be something that mediates or is the condition of that relation, as is true of every relation. There must be something about each of the terms (my thought of my dog, my dog) that accounts for the fact that my .thought of my dog is "together with" or pairs up with my dog in that pecuhar manner we express by saying that the thought in question is of or about my dog. In fact that thought could not be of anything other than that dog. The 'relation' is in this respect a very tight one. The thought is, in some mãñr hard to spell out, individuated by the dog. It could not be the thought ~t ~s and be about anything else, though, of course, the dog could be the dog it iS if that thought had never occurred. As the schoolmen formulated it: OMÑS ACTUS SPECIFICATUR AB OBJECTO. (Every act is specified from itS object.) So there surely is something about the act, some aspect õ the act, .th~t makes it of the particular object which it is "of' or "about." This, I take it, iS a truth of general ontology applied to the case of the "together" of the thought and its object. That "something" is what "mediate~" its. re~ation to its object. In traditional language, it grounds or founds the relat10n . Let us call that "something" a concept, but leave the word "concept" innoce~t, so far as possible, of further interpretation, for the time being-and, especially, innocent of the Kant/Davidson interpretation. Are there any other things that we might agree to about concepts? There are, 1 believe, and ones which can provide us with a framework. for further discussion; but they fall beyond the range of general ontology st~ictly speaking. Whatever we are to make of concepts ultimately, they are Widely agreed to have the following five features: . (i) They are in the normal case things which persons may acqUire, and therefore may lack or have. (Possibly they can also be lost, but that would not be the same as a simple failure of memory.) This fact alone of course implies nothing concerning whether or not a concept exists when it is not "had" by some~ne, nor c.oncerning what such mind-independent existence might be l~ke. That is something eventually to be dealt with, but not here, Within the framework of general ontology. (ii) A concept is something which "applies to" or is a c~ncept of something other than itself, its "cases." This is the extenszon of the concept. Concepts have actual or possible extensions. The "ofness" of the concept extends to the members of its ex tens~ on. (iii) If a concept C applies to (or is the concept of)~* that esse~tlally depends upon what characteristics, what propertieS or relatio?s, x has. These make up the intension of the concept: the properties a thing must have in order to fall under i~. The intension.of the concept is non-identical with but necessanly connected wi~ the concept itself. Leaving aside for the moment the problematic case of 10 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI "!ndivi~ua.l" c~ncep~s, i~ is .always wrong to say of two things preCisely Similar m all mtnnsic and extrinsic respects, that a certain concept applies to oñ but not the other. To explain or "analyze" a concept therefore will normally require reference to properties or relations which belong to whatever "falls under" the concepts. (iv) Many ~eople may have one and the same concept. A concept is somethmg transpersonal, and hence "objective" in the sense that many people may have one and the same concept. It is shareable by many persons, and ~epeatable within the experience of a single person. It may be that m fact only one person has a given concept, ~nd we may for example speak with contempt or hilarity or gratItude ~f "Joñs' concept of fairness," as of something which he has qmte to himself. But if a concept does belong to one person alone, that would only be a fact and due to contingent circumstances, not a necessity. And even if we are dealing with a biolõical necessity of some sort-let us suppose an absolutely umque mu~~~t of the human species, with a mind of special con- ~ep.tu.al abilities-the uniqueness of a given concept to such an IndiVIdual who actually has it is not derived from the mere fact that the concept in question is a concept. (v) C?ncepts are necessary (but not the sole and sufficient) constituents of human thought and knowledge. The full explication of th?ught, and of knowledge as well, must invoke concepts along ~~~h other factors that make up individual acts (as well as dispoSitions) of thought. {Possi.bly a sixth point of general agreement would be that whatever there is to ~õIcal coñtraiñ and logical law is entirely grounded in concepts and their mterrelatwnsh1ps. But to assert this is perhaps more adventuresome than we should be at present.} T~ese five points constitute a part of what in some philosophical quarter~ might be ~ailed a 'grammar' of the term "concept," within which elucidatw?s of particular concepts, as well as elucidations of the concept of concept ~tself, must stand. To use a different philosophical language, they state certam necessru: ele~ents in the essence or nature of concepts as such. Many of the maJor epistemological perspectives can be specified in terms of how one or another of these points is interpreted by them; and hence, of course, when one goes beyond the bare statement here given one steps into heated controversy.9 .. F~r .further development see the discussion of concepts and analysis in my Logic and the ObjeCtiVIty of Knowledge (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1984), Chapter 2. DALLAS WILLARD 11 Nonetheless, these fixed points may serve as a basis for cross-perspective understanding of why a given thinker adopts the detailed view of concepts, and hence of the analysis of concepts, that he does. And they may als.o serve as a statement of minimal conditions which any satisfactory analysis of (the concept of) concept must meet. Any satisfactory account of concept will be one which happily explains how our five guideposts are to be understood, especially how they are to be rendered consistent with each other. Let us try to go further. III With all this in mind I will now try to say, as fully and clearly as I can, what I take concepts to be and how, precisely, they "mediate" the relationship between minds and the objects corresponding to particular acts of cognition that occur as parts of the course of mental life. First, as the foregoing strongly suggests, the concept is a property. 10 They are respects in which entities-in this case acts of thought-may resemble or differ, be identical or different. The concept is not an act or event. It is not a doing or kind of doing, much less a doing to anything. This places it ontologically or categorially. By a property I understand a respect in which things or events may resemble (be the same as) or differ from other things or events. A property is an entity in its own right. It is an "abstract entity," and hence, as Christopher Peacocke rightly says in opening his chapter on "The Metaphysics of Concepts," "Concepts are abstract objects," though one must be careful about 'objects' here. 11 Like every entity, the concept also has a nature-properties and relations of the types peculiar to it. And it has its place in the overall scheme of things. I take any property (as distinct from a part) to be a universal and, as such, capable of existing at many places distant from one another in spac~, or at many points in time more or less separated, identically the same m many instances. Exemplifications of universals (including concepts) are events or states that uniquely occur at a time and at a place. But universals, exemplified or not, do not uniquely occur at a time or place. They do not occur, though they are. Of course this is what one would expect of a concept, ••1 cannot here discuss Fregian and Fregian types of objections to saying that a concept is a property. On Frege's views relevant to this point, see my paper, "The Integrity of the M~ntal Ãt: Husserlian Reflections on a Fregian Problem," in Mind, Meaning and Mathematics, Lelia Haaparanta, ed., The Synthesis Library, (Dordrecht/Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 235-62. "Christopher Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), 99. 12 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI if it is to link up thoughts and objects in the manner suggested by our five guideposts already laid out. Second, the concept is a kind of property that is exemplified in nothing other than events or acts of cognition (perception, memory, imagination, ~ere tho.ught, daydreaming, abstract logical thinking, etc.) Like all properties (agam, a matter of general ontology) it is not indifferent to the type of entity that instances it. Only certain kinds of things can instance it and fall under the laws associated with it. By a certain extension, the concept may be involved in bodily behaviors of various types, including speaking and other linguistic activities. But they are not properties of bodily movements-even of the linguistic ones, which, unl~ke thought~, are not inherently of or about anything. Acts of thought, which are qualified by (indeed, individuated by) conceptual properties (concepts) may be parts of more inclusive behaviors requiring bodily movements, but they need not be. Thinking can occur without any kind of behavior, including the linguistic, and it often does. Behavior, including the ling.ui.s~ic, also occ~rs w~thout incorporating acts of thought as parts. The possibility of behaviOr without thought is one thing that has allowed numerous modem thinkers to try to drop thought altogether, as something distinct from behavior. .one cannõ, as we have already noted, identify an act of thought or perceptiOn, etc., Without mentioning what it is of or about. On the other hand, we d~ readily identify our cognitive acts, of the various types, and it is rarely ever m any terms other than what they are of-though there clearly must be more to them than their precise 'ofness' or 'aboutness', e.g. clarity, consistency. A general term for this ofness or aboutness is "intentionality," which has thrust its way into current Anglo-American philosophy, where intentionality is frequently confused-at least terminologically-with reference, as a presumed feature of words or linguistic behavior. Thi~d, these intentional properties which are identical with concepts (and which also, when appropriately combined, constitute propositions) are for t?e most part identifiable by direct, reflective awareness on the part of the one m whõ the acts of thought instancing them occur. The thinker is, generally speaking, able to pay attention to their thoughts in much the same way as they do (or fail to do) with other types of objects, and, within limits, able to discern-reliably if not always infallibly-the more obvious features of thos~ ~houghts. And conspicuous among such features of our thoughts (or cogmtive acts generally) are, precisely, their intentional bearings, what they are of our about. Descartes was rightly every bit as sure what his thoughts were of as that he was thinking at all. 12 And these "intentional bearings" or "Descartes, Meditations, Second Meditation. DALLAS WILLARD 13 concepts tum out to be astonishingly complex when subjected to logical analysis and epistemic development. Traditional theories of "representations" (actually, for the most part those "representations" were concepts, and were treated as concepts), such as one finds in philosophers in the 18th and 19th Centuries, capitalize on the initially implicit riches of the spontaneous ofnesses and aboutnesses to be found in ordinary human thought in a logically uncultivated condition. So William Lyons is much too hopeful for his own position on the nature of mind and knowledge of mind when he entitles one of his books The Disappearance of lntrospection. 13 Introspection (reflective cognition) of ones own mental states and acts will have disappeared when persons no longer have the ability to direct their attention to their own thoughts or other mental conditions and to accurately recognize the existence, nature and interconnections of those thoughts and conditions. One recalls Mark Twain's letter-from Europe, I believe-pointing out that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Something similar must be said of introspectionthough no doubt claims for it as a method of psychological research were at one time also exaggerated. So when I recognize what is "before my mind" in thought (perception, etc.) I am realizing, and possibly reporting, the intentional properties-the specific ofnesses and aboutnesses-of my cognitive states. I do. not su~ge~t that I can do this for all my mental aspects, or that I thereby g1ve an ultimate analysis" of thought or the mind. But these intentional prope~ies which I thus apprehend are concepts-usually in a highly unrefined logical and epistemic state, for which we can be thankful as we try to get on with our lives. They are, precisely, what "mediates between mind and world." They form the 'bridge' that connects a thought and its object. I am not thinking of them as they are in play, but of what is before my mind through them. It is not they, but their "objective correlates" that are "before my mind.': I am perhaps marginally aware of them as I employ them ?r as they oc~ur m my thinking and awareness. But they stand before my mmd as my obJects only in logical or semantic reflection. . It is, I think, very dangerous to speak of thinking with concepts, as IS often done, though when carefully guarded there is an important and even indispensable sense in which we do 'use' them and think 'with' them-and even with language associated with them-as our abilities to think gro": and we become seriously logical thinkers. This use is not, however, essential to concepts (intentional properties) as such, even though it is essential to all logical thinking. Logically thorough, rational inquiry always involves bring- "William Lyons, The Disappearance of llltrospection (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 14 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI ing the concepts and propositions in which we primarily live and think "before the mind," and therefore involves living in concepts and propositions about (directed upon) other concepts and propositions-possibly about the very ones which are instanced in relatively proximate acts of thought. We have concepts of concepts and propositions, and propositions about propositions (and concepts). Fourth, the nature of the intentional bridge between the mind and the world resides in the way the mental properties that are concepts relate to, or have affinity for, other qualities-specifically, those that essentially qualify the objects which fall within the real or possible extension of the concept in question. Their are two major points to make here, one relatively easy, the other as difficult as they get in philosophical work. First the easy one. A. Concepts, the intentional properties of acts of thought, are, as we have noted, not identical with the properties which things must have to fall under the concept. I.e. concepts are not identical with their intensions. For example, the properties which Fido and Fifi must have to fall under the concept dog (and by extension for the term or word "dog" to apply to them) are not the concept which a thought must exemplify as a property in order for that thought to be of a dog-and then of Fido and Fifi in particular. The properties that make up the intension of the concept are before the mind in thought (of dogs etc.) along with the real or possible extension of the concept. They are not exemplified in thoughts or the mind. If they were, the mind would have a dog in it and not a thought of a dog (of Fifi). B. There is, for want of better language, a "natural affinity" between intentional properties (concepts) that qualify cognitive acts and the properties (the intension of the concept) which things must have to fall under the concept. This is the single most important and also most difficult point to make about concepts. With it certainly the account of concepts I am trying to give stands or falls. A primary manifestation of the affinity between thought and object is the fact that no one ever has to be taught what their thought (or perception) is a thought (or perception) of, nor could they be, though of course they have to learn language for talking about their thought and its objects, and they also have much to learn about thoughts and their objects. But the child knows what its thoughts (perceptions, etc.) are of as soon as it becomes aware that it is having experiences; and that is one foundation of most other learning that transpires. Of course I do not mean that further learning is an explicitly logical process, but it is by and large dependent upon the child being able to identify experiences, and thereby what they are of. The child (or adult) has to be able to identify when it is experiencing the same thing or something different. And we do not, for the most part, even know what it would be like to have to identify the child's-or any one else's-experiences for them, or DALLAS WILLARD 15 teach them how to do it if they did not already know. There is an infinitely rich field of "natural signs," as Thomas Reid called them, 14 entities which immediately carry the mind which exemplifies them to something else because in their nature they inherently involve something else (their specific objects). These are the mental qualities that are concepts. Earlier we placed concepts ontologically as properties. Now it is time to notice-quite without any specific reference to concepts-that properties, generally, never come as undetached atoms. They come in ordere~ groups. They come, of course, with natures of their own that place them mto relationships within the range of properties of their own type (say colors, shapes or numbers), and also in relationships to some properties and relations of other types. Sounds, colors and shapes illustrate this in the visible (sense perceptible) world, and numbers, mental properties, character traits-and of course concepts and propositions themselves-do so in the invisible. The affinities (and exclusions) between properties (qualities and relations) have been long recognized and made much of at least since Plato, though with the ever increasing Empiricism, Atomism and Nominalism of the Modem period of thought that recognition finds hard going, where it remains at all (in Whitehead, for example, in Peirce, in Russell at some of his stages, in Husser! and the Phenomenological tendency of Continental thought insofar as it retains its initial inspiration-i.e. not that of the PostStructuralists). The view I am trying to explain and advocate here is that there is a natural affinity between every property which is a concept and the properties that make up its intension (and thereby determine its extension), such that for a thought to instance the concept is for that thought to be of its intension (and thereby its extension). In the irreducible manner peculiar to intentional affinity the properties (concept on one side, its intension on the other) are "together" in such a way that the properties in the intension always come "to mind" upon the instancing of the property which is the concept, but not by being instanced in the thought along with the concept (which is instanced in the thought). All of the puzzles and advantages of so-called "objective" existence in the Medievals and Descartes enter here. By contrast, red is never instanced in anything without color ãd extension (spatial magnitude), and taller, a relation, is never inst.anced wtthout t_he properties of transitivity and shorter (the converse relat10n). The affimty "Thomas Reid, An Inquiry Into The Human Mind, Chapter 4 and elsewhere. Laird Addis also tries to develop a theory of "natural signs" in his book, Natural Signs: A Theory of lllfentionality (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1989). Ed~und Husser! has the mõt fully developed theory of natural signs known to me. See espec1ally the lst añ 5th of h1s "Logical Investigations," in his Logical Investigations, 2 vols., translated by J. N. Fmdlay (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). * 16 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI between these properties is obvious. But there is a great difference to be noted. In these cases the other properties are instanced in the same actually related things, and must exist (be co-instanced) along with them, whereas the properties that "intentionally go together with" a concept are not instanced in the thought (or mind) where the concept is instanced, and, famously, they (and their instances) may not exist at all (the "Intentional inexistence" Brentano speaks of). We know what a winged horse is (Pegasus) and sometimes think of winged horses, possibly even imaging them and telling stories about them. But the conjunctive property winged horse is instanced nowhere, certainly not in the mind, and it seems rather forced to insist that the conjunctive property itself exists-though that is a long story. Causation between events provides another illustration of qualitative affinities. Events do not collect other events as their causes and effects at random, but always in terms of the properties which the events exemplify. Even Hume recognizes this with his invocation of repetition, which can only be understood in terms of relations between qualities instanced. I try to outline how concepts relate the mind to its objects in the following way: Thought of a dog (exemplifies) Concept of dog (has natural affinity with) Properties making up caninity (exemplified in) Dogs (Fido, Fifi, etc.) The crucial transitions from the thought to its object are the two exemplifications and, especially, the natural affinity between the properties exemplified. IV Now for a few hopefully illuminating skirmishes: Does the Kant/Davidson route of making through concepts avoid the necessity of natural affinities between thoughts (concepts) and what they are of? It would be a considerable argument in its favor if it did, but I don't think it does. It too presupposes some kind of natural affinity or selectivity by which the 'concept' as action selects and produces the object of thought or perception. It just refuses to talk about it, or insists that it can't be talked about. But King Midas must touch the object before it turns to gold, and the mind must 'touch' the sensum (or whatever) before it 'becomes' the categoDALLAS WILLARD 17 rially formed object of thought or perception that we then deal with in our usual cognitive acts. Similarly in Locke, we must-on pain of infinite regress-have idealess awareness of his kind of ideas before his kind of ideas enable us to have non-ideas (Fido, the tree, God) before our minds. The initial selectivity presupposed for the object to be 'produced' by the Midas touch of the mind (language, culture) is the epistemological black hole into which any mind independent reality disappears as the unsolvable Kantian!Putnamian riddle overwhelms us. I think that some kind of natural affinity between mind (thought) and world (object) cannot be avoided except by simple refusal to talk about it, or flatly retreating into Coherentism, i.e. surrendering the mind/world nexus altogether. 15 So there is no easy way out. But on the view of concepts that I am advocating the objects of thought do not take on any character by becoming objects of thought. They are not changed in their nature. The objects, if they exist, enter into a relation-like unity with the thought of them. If they do not exist, the thought of them gets no further-in terms of what is actually the case-than the properties they would have if they did exist: that is, the intensions of the concepts involved. Remember Russell's "theory of descriptions," according to which descriptive phrases reach the properties that the King of France, for example, might have if he existed but do not require that mere intentionality (meaning) actually directed upon the King of France necessitate the existence of the King of France. Rather, it establishes a framework of meaning that allows us to determine, precisely, whether the King of France exists or not. It is precisely because concepts do not confer a new characteristic or nature upon the object of the thought or cognition that we are not locked 'inside' thought or language and faced with the futile task of finding something unmodified by thought or language. The "riddle" of objectivity is the result of a massive misunderstanding and misdescription of subjectivity (thought). On my view, we establish or confirm the relation between thought and its object in precisely the same general way we establish any relation between any entities. We compare them to see what relation exists between them. How do we establish that the book is on the table? By comparing the book and the table. How do we establish that 8 is greater than 3? Ditto. How that Lucas made Star Wars? Ditto. "Although this requires separate treatment in its own right, I must here state that linguistic versions of the mind/world connection such as Putnam's do not, so far as I can tell, really tell us how reference joins words etc. to objects and worlds, or even what it is. The õe wh~ ~~me closest to actually doing this was, to my mind Wilfred Sellars. I have given a detmled cnt1c1sm of his view in my Logic and the Objectivity of Knowledge, Chapter 5. 18 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI Similarly we compare the thought of Fido with Fido. It is the nature of the thought and of the dog that enables us to bring them together and determine that Fido the dog is (or is not) objectively what he has subjectively been thought of as being. If what I (and many others) have said is correct, I do not need to do this-compare the thought and the dog-to determine that the thought is ofFido. For it is the thought's intrinsic nature to be of-Fido. (Yes, this amounts to Putnam's scornfully named "magical theory of reference," or the "noetic ray" theory, though he is talking about words.) Of-Fido is a one-place predicate instanced by my thought of Fido, which thought is a part of my mental life. It is simply a predicate that cannot be explained without mentioning Fido, and cannot be exemplified in thought without Fido coming before the mind in which it is exemplified-though it can be exemplified without it coming before the mind. If Fido exists and other circumstances are right I can compare him to him-as-before-my-mind, to my thought of him; and if he is (or is not) as represented I can observe that. In fact we do this sort of thing all the time, whenever we look at something to see if it is as we have thought it to be. Even those who deny that it is possible do it. They only hold in addition that they can't be doing it because in seeing or thinking of Fido he is modified, so that he can never be seen or thought of as he is when he is not being seen or thought of-usually, today, allegedly because both we and Fido are being shaped by or filtered through our history/culture/language. Thus we are-as G. E. Moore saw a century ago, but could not in the end_ make anything of it-already "outside the circle of ideas" merely by havmg a thought or sensation. We are "outside" precisely because thought and sensation do not produce anything by being what they are. We are outside because there is no inside. The "inside" is produced by the Kant/ Davidsonian (Locke, Mach, Nietzsche, Second Wittgenstein, Goodman, Kuhn, Putnam, etc., etc.) illusion that the touch of the mind (language, culture, history) produces things that form a wall over which we cannot logically or epistemically get. Moore was also close to correct in saying that, if he was right, "not Idealists only, but all philosophers and psychologists also, have been in error, and from their erroneous view ... they have inferred (validly or invalidly) their most striking and interesting conclusions .... And .. .it will indeed follow that all the most striking results of philosophy-Sensationalism, ~gnõticism and Idealism alike-have, for all that has hitherto been urged m their favor, no more foundation than the supposition that a chimera lives in the moon." 16 He hadn't heard of Coherentism by that name, of course. But "G.E. Moore, "The Refutation of Idealism," in his Philosophical Studies (London: Regan, Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., 1922), 5. DALLAS WILLARD 19 Moore only proved that blue, for example, is distinct from (not identical with) the sensation (or thought) of blue, and could not intelligibly conceptualize and prove its independence from the sensation or thought of it. Hence he abandoned his position-without necessarily holding it to be wrong, just unproven-and in his last paper on the topic, 17 many years later, wound up being defeated and baffled by the wall of "sense-data," just like Kant earlier and Putnam later. Thus "The Revolt Against Dualism" in the early part of the 20th Century failed and fell apart, as Lovejoy beautifully details in his book by that name. 18 Now, at the end of the Century we are pretty much in the same position that Moore, Russell, Husser! and the American New Realists found themselves in at the outset of the century. The language and the personalities have changed, the basic issues and arguments are exactly the same. The inside/outside riddle which lies back of all this is generated by what I believe to be mistaken assumptions about what concepts do and are as "mediators" of mind and world nexus. The view of concepts I have put forward does not generate the riddle, and that is perhaps no small reason to pursue it further, clarifying its difficulties and dealing with objections to it. But there is much more to be said for it than that it doesn't generate that riddle. Not least, the way it fits in with the five (or six) guideposts I have spelled out above-far better, I think, than does the Kant/Davidson approach. But I cannot develop that further here. I close with a remark about "the God's Eye View," a remark which also seems to me to be much in favor of the view of concepts and thought acts here advanced. The phrase "God's Eye View" is, of course, Putnam's, and it is designed to make ridiculous the idea that there could be a single description that is right of reality as it is independently of the description. 19 Such a description could, supposedly, only be God's, and the human being could never reasonably profess to have achieved it. This might seem to express a becoming humility. "In C. A. Mace, ed., British Philosophy at the Mid-Cemury (London: Allen and Unwin, 1966). "Arthur 0. Lovejoy, The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas, 2nd ed. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1960). '•The talk of how things are "independently of' description (thought, reference, etc.) mak~s sense at all only if talk of how things are 'dependently on' description etc., also does. The mam point of this paper can be put by saying that no one has ever made any señe of the '_dep~nde~tl?' on', and that the pursuit of the "independently of' therefore is the pursUit of ~othmg mtelhgt~ ble. That is why it can neither be fulfilled or abandoned-as long as the dependently on remains vacuous, which it must of necessity do so long as the basic line of thought is a "transcendental" type of argument. 20 PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI On the view I have advanced, thoughts and their concepts do not modify the objects which make up reality. They merely "match up" or fail to match up with them in a certain way. Thus there would be a "way things are," and the "metaphysical realism," of which Putnam also speaks, would be vindicated along with the possibility, at least, of a God's Eye View. The vagaries, indeterminacies, differing viewpoints, and so on, that are unmistakable and irremovable characteristics of our experience of the world do not transfer to the world itself, and do not erect (produce) a wall that encloses us from the world as it is without regard to our experiences of it. Now I suppose that if there is a God anything like what is commonly held, there certainly is, after all, a God's Eye View in the most literal of senses. I presume that God is not faced with the alleged riddle of how to get 'outside' his "circle of ideas" or of his language (Hebrew, no doubt). And I take it that God gets outside not just in virtue of being "bigger" or stronger. That solution is no more satisfactory here than with the Occasionalists' weird solution to the mind/body problem. (When the needle enters your arm God causes the feeling of pain in your mind.) The problem in either case isn't one of power, but of ontological structure: the ontological structure of the act of thought and its object or of the mind/body nexus. It is interesting to observe that on Kant's view God cannot have knowledge, or possibly consciousness of objects. (For he does not engage in sense perception, and his "concepts without percepts" are therefore blind.) What it can mean for him to be a purely rational being with a holy will one can only wonder, from within Kant's account of knowledge. And with reference to a Putnamian, etc., viewpoint on reference, does God really-if there is a God-have a language that governs his thought and the possibilities of consciousness? Further, one might even suppose, from a commonly held theistic point of view, that if God wants to he can communicate with human beings, bring them to know, how things really are apart from their descriptions. All of this remains impossible, however, on the received view of concepts. God can't get out and we can't get out, and if God could get out he could never tell us how things are apart from our concepts/language. We are left to "construct" him and what he says, along with everything* else, from within our "circle of ideas" or our language. Prospects for a revelation of Divine Truth are pretty gloomy, to say the least. "Construction" and "reconstruction" are the only possibilities, and even they can only be constructions if we are to be consistent. But then consistency too is only .... 20 t ----*-*--*----------------------- "'This paper was read before a philosophy meeting at Biola University in February of 1998. PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI SERIES 2 VoL. 1, No. 2 COPYRIGHT© 1999 Mysterious Flames in Philosophy of Mind CHARLES TALIAFERRO Department of Philosophy St. Olaf College Northfield, MN In The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Mãerial World, Colin McGinn I continues to press forward his case for a naturalist account ~f consciousness. His book is part of a central project in philosophy of mmd. As Jaegwon Kim observes: The shared project of the majority of those who have worked on the mindbody problem over the past few decades has be~n to find a way ~f accommodating the mental within a principled physical sche_me, ~h1le at ~he same time preserving it as something distinctive -that IS, _wJth~ut l~smg what we value, or find special, in our nature as creatures with mmds. But what distinguishes McGinn's work from many in the field is ~is straight-forward acknowledgment that consciousness is altogether puzzl~ng given his materialist background beliefs. His ne~ book also ~ets McGmn apart in that he perceives that a combinati~n of ~e1sm añ duahs.~ amount~ to a sufficiently attractive alternative that It reqmres sustamed cntical atten tion.In this paper I consider McGinn's four objectiõs _to subs~ance dualism, and especially what he calls theistic dualism. Theistic dual~s~ holds that God qua immaterial, omnipresent, omnipotent, all good, õmscien_t Creator has created a material world in which human beings consist of ã u~mater- ial mind and a material body. McGinn is already a pr_operty ~uahst, msõar as he holds that mental properties are not identicã with physical properties as currently conceived in the natural sciences .. He IS ~een not to go any further in his dualistic leanings, and he is set agamst theism. , Colin McGinn, The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (New York: Basic Books, 1999). . p bl d M tal 'Jaegwon Kim, Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mmd-Body ro em an en Causation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 2.