Philosophy

Self-reflexive videogames are videogames designed to materialize critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. This essay focuses on the use of virtual worlds as mediators, and in particular on the use of videogames to guide and encourage reflections on technical, interactive, and thematic conventions in videogame design and development. Structurally, it is composed of two interconnected parts:

          1) In the first part of this essay, I will discuss NECESSARY EVIL (Gualeni et al., 2013), an experimental videogame that I designed as a self-reflexive virtual artifact. With the objective of clarifying the philosophical aspirations of self-reflexive videogames â and in order to understand how those aspirations can be practically pursued â I will dissect and examine the design decisions that contributed to the qualities of NECESSARY EVIL as an example of âplayable philosophyâ.

          2) Taking off from the perspectives on self-reflexive videogames offered in the first part of the essay, the second half will focus on virtual worlds as viable mediators of philosophical thought more in general. In this section, I will argue that, both through the practice of game design and through the interactive experiences of virtual worlds, twenty-first century philosophers have the possibility to challenge the often-unquestioned understanding of written discourse as the only context in which philosophical thought can emerge and be developed.

Self-reflexive videogames: observations and corollaries on virtual worlds as philosophical artifacts Stefano Gualeni – Institute of Digital Games, University of Malta firstname.lastname@example.com 0 ABSTRACT: Self-reflexive videogames are videogames designed to materialize critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. This essay focuses on the use of virtual worlds as mediators, and in particular on the use of videogames to guide and encourage reflections on technical, interactive, and thematic conventions in videogame design and development. Structurally, it is composed of two interconnected parts: 1. In the first part of this essay I will discuss NECESSARY EVIL (http://evil.gua-le-ni.com), an experimental videogame that I designed as a self-reflexive virtual artifact. With the objective of clarifying the philosophical aspirations of self-reflexive videogames – and in order to understand how those aspirations can be practically pursued – I will dissect and examine the design decisions that contributed to the qualities of NECESSARY EVIL as an example of 'playable philosophy'. 2. Taking off from the perspectives on self-reflexive videogames offered in the first part of the essay, the second half will focus on virtual worlds as viable mediators of philosophical thought more in general. In this section, I will argue that, both through the practice of game design and through the interactive experiences of virtual worlds, twenty-first century philosophers have the possibility to challenge the often-unquestioned understanding of written discourse as the only context in which philosophical thought can emerge and be developed. 1.1 – AN INTRODUCTION TO SELF-REFLEXIVE (VIDEO)GAMES: Self-reflexive videogames are videogames that are deliberately designed to materialize, through their gameplay and their aesthetic qualities, critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. The subversion of representational and/or interactive canons, and the often jeering metarepresentation of (video)ludic objects are design strategies that are frequently employed in the realization of such videogames. Self-reflexive video games typically question their own (generic) technical, interactive, and thematic conventions by intentionally provoking a sense of unease and unfamiliarity in their players and spectators. From this perspective, they can be recognized as aspiring to produce experiential effects that are conceptually comparable to those pursued by some of the currents of the philosophical and artistic movement customarily labeled 'modernism'. The bizarre and unfamiliar aesthetics embraced by several modernist currents explicitly attempted to unsettle the observer, the reader, the spectator, the player, and to elicit in them a state of detached, suspicious inquiry. This state of mind was recognized and sought-after by the Dadaists, the surrealists, and the situationists among others as the necessary precondition for demystifying representational as well as cultural conventions, and ultimately for reforming society (Laxton, 2003; Flanagan, 2009, 88-94; Gualeni, 2015a, 63–67; Van Roessel, 2008, 44, 45). A few, particularly noteworthy examples are in this sense Bertolt Brecht's 'epic theatre', Alexander M. Rodchenko's works of photomontage and photography, Lev Tolstoy's literary production, and the practice of Surrealist play. In a similar way, the aesthetic and interactive experiences of self-reflexive videogames are designed with the overt intention of establishing – through astonishment and unfamiliarity – a degree of analytical distance between players and videogames, turning the latter (embraced together with their established conventions and tropes) into objects of critical analysis. As Brecht phrased it, the spectators (or, in this case, the players of self-reflexive videogames) "need to develop that detached eye with which the great Galileo observed a swinging chandelier." (Brecht, 1964, 192) With those objectives in mind, these kinds of unsettling videogames typically disclose experiences that are not inherently enjoyable or rewarding. In analogy with Brecht's 'epic theatre', their gameplay tends to be uncouth and drily instrumental to their experiential and critical goals. Self-reflexive videogames do not generally employ interactive and aesthetic techniques that try to make their players identify with the playing characters, unless with the intention of pulling that empathetic rug from under the players' feet later in the gameplay. In this sense, they are not typically designed to elicit a sense of catharsis in the Aristotelian sense – that is to say to trigger "the purging of the emotions through empathy with the stirring fate of the hero" (Benjamin, 1999, 147). Subverting conventions and making grotesque mockeries out of traditional tropes, self-reflexive videogames prompt us to become aware of the ways in which we currently play, design, develop, sell, modify, criticize, and attribute social values to videogames and videogame elements. This seditious approach to game design is pursued by self-reflexive videogames to the extent that, if we were to try to identify their 'gameness' in terms of formal properties, many would barely be recognizable as games at all. It is not infrequent for them to be roughly executed, short-lived, unwinnable, and deliberately annoying1. In the pursuit of subversion and 'defamiliarization', the gameplay of self-reflexive titles often includes the overt exhibition of the 'constructedness' of videogames as artifacts (for example displaying debug 1 The intentionally frustrating and raw aesthetic qualities of gameplay in self-reflexive videogames can be exemplified by Failnaut's videogame Grindstar (2012). Grindstar can be freely accessed online at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/605910. information or background geometry, deliberately triggering aesthetic glitches, and making elements of how a game engine triggers scripted actions visible). Instead of excluding the artificiality and the technical setup of videogames from their gameplay (removing them, or keeping them only accessible to the game developers), those aspects are frequently and purposefully exposed. Particularly evident examples of this design strategy for unsettling the players are encountered in the recent videogames releases The Beginner's Guide (Everything Unlimited Ltd., 2015) and The Magic Circle (Question, 2015) , in which design decisions and technical solutions are aesthetically revealed during gameplay and are openly discussed by in-game characters (including the narrator) as a key feature of their gameplay. In the sense explained above, The Beginner's Guide, The Magic Circle, and NECESSARY EVIL (discussed and analyzed in the upcoming sections of this essay) be considered examples of games with evident self-reflexive traits and objectives. 1.2 – NECESSARY EVIL: A SELF-REFLEXIVE VIDEOGAME NECESSARY EVIL (http://evil.gua-le-ni.com) is a small, single-player, experimental videogame that was developed by Dino Dini, Marcello Gómez Maureira, Jimena Sánchez Sarquiz, Allister Brimble and myself during the summer of 2013. NECESSARY EVIL was designed with the intention of revealing to its players – through its aesthetics and gameplay – that the ways in which we conceptualize, design, and develop videogames all rely on an implicit player-centric ideology. According to this ideological framework, the virtual worlds of videogames and digital simulations are typically produced and presented in ways that allow for a specific way of 'revealing': a way of disclosing an experience that is exclusively limited to the perspective of the player(s). In current practical terms, when we approach virtual worlds as (experiential and technical) products of this ideology, the experience horizon that they afford can be understood as being explicitly generated around the players' perceptual and interactive possibilities. As a case in point, elements of an interactive, digital world that are too far from the players to be perceived, virtual objects whose sight is occluded by other virtual objects and characters that are momentarily irrelevant for gameplay or for a certain world-simulation are not actually materialized by the software, and only exist as potentiality2. 2 Interestingly, from an etymological perspective, the adjective 'virtual' was originally coined in modern Latin to encapsulate the idea of 'potentiality'. Virtualis is a late-medieval neologism the existence of which became necessary when Aristotle's concept Technically speaking, every virtual world tacitly materializes what could be identified as an idealistic perspective. According to a radical version of idealism – for example in the case of George Berkeley's subjective idealism – the qualities that we can experientially encounter in objects (regardless of whether they are part of the actual world or of a virtual one) are not objective properties of those objects. From an idealistic standpoint, it is our experience of those objects that is responsible for bringing them and their properties into existence as mental contents (Gualeni, 2015a, 88). This idealistic foundations of the ways in which we technically materialize virtual worlds has, first and foremost, the functional scope of limiting the amount of calculations that are needed to sustain that virtual world. It is a convenient – if not necessary – evil. 1.3 – A SELF-REFLEXIVE DESIGN ANALYSIS OF NECESSARY EVIL NECESSARY EVIL was designed and developed with the intention of playfully problematizing the unquestioned idealistic structuring of virtual worlds that was outlined in the previous section of this essay. In doing so, it also inevitably ridicules the player-centrism of videogame worlds, thus functioning as a selfreflexive videogame. From a game design perspective, and similarly to most games that are understood as having selfreflexive qualities, NECESSARY EVIL heavily relies on interaction norms, narrative tropes, and aesthetic conventions that are firmly established in the tradition of a particular game genre (in this specific case, the fantasy action role-play-videogame genre). The repetition of time-honored traditions in videogame aesthetic, videogame narrative, and videogame interaction appears to be consistently preferred to the pursuit of formal and/or technical innovation when developing self-reflexive videogames. This design strategy must be recognized the dual advantage of 1) not requiring the players to learn (or to learn from scratch) how to operate within the virtual world which the self-reflexive videogame discloses for its players. This advantage includes not having to familiarize with the ways in which abstract and extra-diegetic information are encoded and represented. In this way, the designers can focus on the alteration and repurposing of specific areas or elements of the game that they intend to subvert and trigger critical thought upon, and 2) making the destabilized (and destabilizing) aspects of the game emerge with particular evidence by way of contrast; that is to say by making in-game elements and behaviors stand out as of δύναμις (dynamis: potentiality, power, quadrate) had to be translated into Latin (Van Binsbergen, 1997, 9). The concept of 'potentiality' at the etymological foundation of the adjective 'virtual' provides the background for understanding why, at least in one of its interpretations, it is used to indicate the latency of certain possibilities inherent in a specific artifact, combination of artifacts, or state of things. In this understanding, the adjective 'virtual' works in counterpoint with the adjective 'actual', where the latter does not indicate a potential state of affairs, but the current, presently existing one. A more common connotation of the adjective 'virtual' was presented by Pierre Lévy not in opposition to 'actual' in the sense discussed above, but to 'actual' in the specific meaning of "pertinent to the world humans are native to." (Lévy, 1998, 14) unexpected and uncanny against the backdrop of the bulk of notions and conventions that the players are considered to be already largely accustomed to. In order to function as a critical artifact, as already explained, the game relies on its players' familiarity with the ludo-narrative structures that the game mockingly discloses3. Consequently, a large portion of the gameplay of NECESSARY EVIL aligns to traditional canons and functions accordingly. On the backdrop of that conventional background, and in order to demystify the player-centric approach outlined above, the game crucially subverts a specific interaction trope: it gives the player control over a contributory character. In NECESSARY EVIL, the player takes the role of a disposable minion of evil instead of the customary part of the valiant hero, a paragon of valor. In line with the aesthetic canons of action role-playing videogames, the players are supposed to recognize the minion of evil that they control as a generic, minor figure: a secondary character that plays a subaltern role in the progress of the main character – the hero. In NECESSARY EVIL, the hero is a computer-controlled non-player character (NPC) (see figure 2). 3 Similarly, in Brechtian 'epic theatre' the intended spectators should already be familiar with what is being represented. This trait contributed to shifting the focus of the experience away from its narrative contents of a certain work, and to prevent the public from being emotionally involved in the events taking place on the stage (or in the virtual world in question). In these contexts and with those 'estranging' objectives, according to Van Roessel, "telling an old story is a benefit rather than a drawback." (Van Roessel, 2008, 44) Figure 1: In NECESSARY EVIL, the player's interactions with the environment are functionally pointless; the little horned minion of evil controlled by the player cannot trigger any useful interactions with the room or escape from it. In our self-reflexive videogame, the horned minion controlled by the players is confined in a dimly-lit room from which it cannot escape (see figure 1). The monster has, in fact, no constructive options for interacting with the room: the door does not open for its little red paws, the chest contains nothing, and the objects that are already in the room respond to the players' actions as if they were cheap theatrical props. These design decisions were meant to elicit a sense of marginality in the players, and to experientially reveal to them what a virtual world feels like when that world is designed around someone else's perceptions, needs, and narrative progress. In other words, the players' possibility for interaction with the world of NECESSARY EVIL, as well as the duration and the quality of their experience, are deliberately designed to be deficient and unsatisfactory (Gualeni, 2015b). Figure 2: In NECESSARY EVIL, the hero is an outspoken and relentless non-player character whose objective is to vanquish evil; he will attack the monstrous player-character instantly and without apparent reasons. As a consequence of what was just discussed, the virtual world of NECESSARY EVIL is likely to be understood by the players as existing only to be experienced by the NPC-hero, and not to be enjoyed or explored by the horned monster. The little monster merely poses a challenge among many others: it is something for the hero to overcome in order to continue on his intrepid quest. Eventually, the computer-controlled hero accidentally enters the room where the monster is trapped. As expected in these videoludic situations, a fight ensues between good and evil. After the fight, when the horned monster is finally slain, the computer-controlled hero collects a key from the chest, opens the door, and leaves the room4. At that point, the room itself, its elements, and the player-creature are swiftly removed from the computer's memory, which consists – from the point of view of the monster – in witnessing the 'derezzing' and disappearance of the game-world. This concluding act is symmetrical to the loading process that the players experienced at the beginning of the game. Both the beginning and the end of NECESSARY EVIL try to metaphorically communicate the players the 'constructedness' of the game as a technical artifact: the de-allocation of elements and characters is needed to save memory and computation resources in order to efficiently materialize the rooms that are (implicitly) going to be visited next by the hero. (END OF PART 1) 2.1 – ON VIDEOGAMES AS CRITICAL TOOLS Through the 'defamiliarization' of aesthetic and interactive conventions – and thus by encouraging players to see the videogames 'anew' and recognize them as possible objects of analysis and/or satire5 – self-reflexive videogames perform specific critical functions in our culture. As cultural artifacts and as mediators of thought, they disclose perspectives and notions that are often tacitly and unwittingly excluded from practices and theories concerning virtual worlds and videogames. Similarly, as discussed and exemplified in the first part of this essay, the social agenda of several modernist currents relied precisely on the conviction that the self-reflexivity of expressive media forms (or, more generally artistic techniques and design strategies meant to make mediated content feel astonishing and unfamiliar) could foster a 'state of suspicious inquiry' imbued with critical potential. The modernists deemed this 'state' to be to be capable of insinuating alternative possibilities of being and promoting change at the broader socio-cultural level. 4 If the players are particularly proficient with their control of the little monster, it is also possible for them to defeat the NPChero. Once the hero is defeated, however, the game promptly triggers a 'game over' state. This behavior might be unexpected (and hopefully even unpleasant) for the players, as their gameplay experience is interrupted by the 'game over' screen (a customary way of giving negative feedback to the players) after having successfully accomplished a difficult task. This design decision is, however, logical. It aligns with the intention of experientially revealing to the player that it is the experiential path of the hero and his situation that are relevant to the game state, while the skill level and the aspirations of a subsidiary character are . 5 Poignant theoretical and critical references that I consider worth mentioning in support of this argument are Viktor Shklovsky's notion of ostranenie ('estrangement', 'defamiliarization') and Ezra Pound's dictum "make it new". In several essays of the American poet, "make it new" encapsulated what he understood the defining feature of modernist aesthetic: a change of perspective that allows the recipients of the work of art to rediscover their familiar world and to reshape their sensitivity and perspectives (Shklowsky, 1917; Pound, 1934). The question I am tackling in this section of my essay, however, is not whether the self-reflexivity of mediated content can effectively be understood as a factor of socio-cultural change. In the specific context of game studies, in fact, the notion that virtual worlds could be embraced as interactive arguments, as academic output, and as critical artifacts has been firmly established since at least a decade ago (depending on the 'origin myth' one decides to embrace in that respect) (Bogost, 2007; Bogost, 2011; Grace, 2014). Contemporary culture already recognizes virtual worlds of videogames and digital simulations as viable and often desirable alternatives to traditional media forms. This is particularly evident in contexts such as education, persuasion, and training. The question I am asking in this second part of my essay is whether those worlds, both in their self-reflexive qualities and inherently as 'worlds', can be understood as philosophical artifacts. I believe this question can be fruitfully asked – and perhaps even answered – from the standpoint according to which the central modus operandi of philosophy consists in guiding thought to rigorously reflect on the correctness and the possibilities of thought itself. In pursuing this task, the philosophers of language dedicate their academic efforts assessing the validity and correctness of linguistic propositions. Their perspectives rely on the idea that language holds a privileged – if not throughout exclusive – relationship with thinking. In academic fields like philosophy of language and psychology, the two are often conflated (Petocz, 1999, 186-188). To be sure, approaches and models that are founded in some form of identification between thought and language are not only common to philosophy of language or psychology: in contemporary philosophy of mind, for example, the understanding of mental states (such as beliefs, desires, etc.) as 'propositional attitudes' is often accompanied by the belief that such states are thereby linguistic (ibid., 186). Since Plato, for reasons that are rooted in socio-technological context of fifth-century Greece, the history of philosophy has been specifically identified with the history of a particular declination of a linguistic approach to philosophy: written philosophy. Interestingly, these reasons also started to be explicitly discussed in some of Plato's own texts, for example in the The Seventh Letter or in the Socratic dialogue Phaedrus. One of the first twentieth century philosophers to advocate for a critical attitude towards the exclusive and often unquestioned association between thinking and writing was Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, apart from a few remarkable exceptions (among which Wittgenstein's own 1929 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Jacques Derrida's 1974 Glas), philosophical texts have rarely supported and complemented their perspectives and arguments by means of their physical design and/or editorial structure. Hardly ever has philosophy materially expressed reflections on its very materiality6. The enduring and exclusive focus on linguistic ways (and, in particular, on written ways) of mediating thought can be understood from this perspective as having numbed the sensitivity of Western philosophy towards the specificities and the limitations through which that specific form of mediation frames and sequences arguments and ideas. I believe that it can also be accused of having made philosophers 6 A similar argument was raised by German philosopher Friedrich Kittler in his 2011 article 'Towards an Ontology of Media'. In his text, Kittler addresses the systematic exclusion of physical and technical mediation from the practice and the objectives of philosophical thinking, arguing that it was only thanks to the work of Martin Heidegger that a philosophical consciousness for technical mediation finally arose (Kittler, 2011). poorly capable of entertaining the possibility of alternative methods for mediating philosophical thought. This almost complete eclipse of philosophy's critical attitude towards the medium-exclusivity and the viability of alternative ways of mediating thought (and thinking) is what the second part of this essay tries to challenge in the age of digital media. Motivated by similar concerns as mine, philosopher and game designer Ian Bogost recently went as far as accusing the focus on the practice of writing of being a detrimental habit for the humanities in general. In his 2012 book, Alien Phenomenology, or What It's Like to Be a Thing, he noted that "[t]he longstanding assumption that we relate to the world only through language is a particularly fetid, if still bafflingly popular, opinion." (Bogost, 2012, 90) Bogost and, before him, philosopher Davis Baird proposed a remedy for this alleged cultural malaise that consisted in the embracing of 'building' (understood as the academic praxis of 'doing', of 'constructing things' as a heuristic practice) as a possible, fruitful alternative to the logo-centrism of the humanities. The practice of constructing artifacts as a philosophical practice offers, according to the outlined perspectives, an opportunity "to correct the discursive and linguistic bias of the humanities. According to this view, we should be open to communicating scholarship through artifacts, whether digital or not. It implies that print is, indeed, ill equipped [sic] to deal with entire classes of knowledge that are presumably germane to humanistic inquiry." (Ramsay and Rockwell in Gold, 2012, 78) Having recognized the inherent limitations and effects of linguistic ways of framing and communicating thought, it would be illogical to propose to embrace 'building' as the ultimate philosophical medium. The use of virtual media7 or other forms of practical involvement as ways to pursue philosophical thought through 'doing' can intuitively be understood as overcoming some of the inadequacies and limitations that are inherent to an exclusively linguistic – or more specifically textual – mediation of thought. It is, however, a form of 'overcoming' that inevitably brings about new philosophical problems, limitations, and discontents. The embedding of videogames and computer simulations in social practices (philosophy being one of them) might, thus, best be pursued on the basis of the understanding that, as with any other forms of mediation, their virtual worlds disclose reality in specific ways, and that such ways are always inherently both revealing and concealing (Gualeni, 2015a, 94). New ways of establishing relationships with reality through media necessarily entail a balance between the increase in acuity of certain cognitive functions and the desensitization of others (McLuhan, 1994). In this essay, and in the larger context of my philosophical work, I do not argue that the design and experience of virtual worlds should be understood as exceptional – or even as particularly desirable forms 7 With 'virtual media' I indicate ways of mediating notions and perspectives that do not rely on semiotic encoding and representation, but rather on the interactive experiential engagement with a certain virtual artifact. In this sense, both the design ofand the interaction witha certain virtual artifact, or group of virtual artifacts, or system of virtual artifacts could be considered to be potentially viable academic practices. It is important to observe, for the sake of completeness, that – despite their difference and specificities – both media forms (representational and virtual) allow the possibility to engage the mediated contents hermeneutically at several levels. of 'doing' philosophy. What I am proposing is, instead, that more scholarly efforts are devoted to developing both critical attitudes and sustained curiosity towards the possibilities and limitations offered by our larger technological environment to philosophy. To put it more practically, I am advocating for a more flexible and inclusive approach to the mediation of philosophical thought. From this standpoint, various and heterogeneous technical and expressive forms could be employed and combined to achieve the desired representational, persuasive, experiential, communicative, reflexive, and critical effects. Their synergic use could, I argue, potentially limit the emergence of biases relative to specific media forms and could complement and counterbalance the specific disadvantages inherent to each form. Going back to the specific point I am trying to make, I believe it is important to observe that interactive virtual worlds might not be particularly suitable for presenting abstract philosophical concepts in their full intricacy and subtlety. Similarly, traditional written discourse can be recognized as limited and partial in its unsuitability to grant the recipient of a philosophical notion or argument direct experiential engagement with the notions and points of view that it mediates or the possibility to negotiate its premises and outcomes. These last possibilities are typically offered, instead, by virtual media. In this sense, there are several philosophical practices and arguments that could benefit by the hybridization with media forms that, for example, rely on simulation instead or representation as the dominant mode of the organization of cultural objects. We could, for instance, utilize virtual worlds in combination with textual explanations in philosophical contexts when detailed representations of spatial contexts are particularly salient to the point being made, or when the materialization of a specific situation is called for (for example in the case of thought experiments or the simulation of speculative ethical scenarios). Virtual media could be phenomenologically and rhetorically advantageous when the recipients of a certain philosophical notion or perspective are expected to objectively test and evaluate different possible courses of action, or are confronted with interrogatives concerning non-actual or non-human phenomenologies, etc. For a more detailed and thorough discussion on the philosophical relevance of embracing the design and the experiences of virtual worlds, please refer to chapters 4, 5, and 6 of my 2015 book Virtual Worlds and Philosophical Tools. In NECESSARY EVIL, as a case in point, the philosophical arguments of the game are not only offered to the player in the form of an interactive experience, but is also summarized textually in the pages of a (simulated) book that can be encountered in the game world (see figure 3). Figure 3: The argument brought forward by NECESSARY EVIL can be interactively experienced in the virtual world that the game discloses, but can also be accessed in textual form. One of the books in the grubby library that furnishes the room contains a written summary of its key philosophical proposition. Not unlike videogames and virtual experiences that are designed with social purposes such as education and training, our self-reflexive videogame pursues its socio-cultural objectives via a number of communication modalities: linguistically (via text and speech), aesthetically (through visual, aural, and tactile rhetorical means of persuasion), and interactively (asking the players to evaluate their agency and their options in certain contexts, reinforcing and rewarding specific courses of action over others, et cetera) 2.2 – CONCLUDING REMARKS Following a reflection on self-reflexivity in videogames, this essay advocated for a less intransigent approach to the articulation, the manipulation and the diffusion of philosophical ideas, notions, and hypotheses. In the preceding pages I proposed a more compromissory approach to thinking, an approach that is open to embrace – where contextually desirable – the hybridization (or even the substitution) of traditional media forms with activities that involve doing and/or experiencing something (within as well as without digital mediation). In developing my arguments, I did not only present a linguistic speculation on philosophical mediation, but combined philosophical text with philosophical gameplay within a virtual world. I would like to conclude with the observation that the framing, communicating, and problematizing of philosophical thought through virtual worlds will constitute, for twenty-first century philosophers, a challenge that goes beyond problematizing the exclusive use of written discourse. Philosophizing with (and through) virtual worlds will not simply consist in reframing and reformulating classical philosophical questions and perspectives, but already led to the inevitable emerging of new ways of thinking as well as new philosophical interrogatives. Such questions are often only possible to be articulated as – and/or within – virtual worlds and often reflect on their very digital mediation. I am referring, for example, to philosophical approaches to personal identities in cyberspace, to embodiment and mental dissociation in virtual worlds, to the ontological status of the virtual, to self-reflexivity in simulated worlds, to the our moral horizon in relation with artificial intelligences and virtual beings, to the relationships between actual-world policies and the ones that are enforced in virtual worlds, et cetera. It is in from this standpoint that I argue that virtual worlds need to be understood, studied, and used as the contexts in which a new humanism has already begun to arise. Wanna play? 3 BIBLIOGRAPHY: Van Binsbergen, Wim. 1997. Virtuality as a Key Concept in the Study of Globalisation. Den Haag (The Netherlands): WOTRO. Bogost, Ian. 2007. Persuasive Games: the expressive power of video-game. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press. Bogost, Ian. 2011. How to Do Things with Videogames. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Bogost, Ian. 2012. Alien Phenomenology, or What it's Like to Be a Thing. Minneapolis (MN): University of Minnesota Press. Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on Theatre. The Development of an Aesthetic. Translation and notes by John Willett. London (UK): Methuen. Flanagan, Mary. 2009. Critical Play: Radical Game Design. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press. Gold, Matthew K. (edited by). 2012. Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minneapolis (MN): The University of Minnesota Press. Grace, Lindsay. 2014. 'Critical Games: Critical Design in Independent Games'. Proceedings of DiGRA Conference 2014: <Verb that ends in 'ing'> the <noun> of Game <plural noun>, August 3-6, 2014, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A. Gualeni, Stefano. 2015a. Virtual Worlds as Philosophical Tools: How to Philosophize with a Digital Hammer. Basingstoke (UK): Palgrave Macmillan. Gualeni, Stefano. 2015b. 'Playing with Puzzling Philosophical Problems'. Book chapter in Zagalo, N. and Branco, P. (eds.) 2015. Creativity in the Digital Age. Part of the Springer Series on Cultural Computing. XIV. 59-74. London (UK): Springer-Verlag. Kittler, Friedrich. 2011. 'Towards an Ontology of Media'. In Theory, Culture & Society, 2009, Vol. 26 (2– 3): 23–31. Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore: SAGE. Laxton, Susan. 2003. 'The Guarantor of Chance: Surrealism's Ludic Practices', available online at http://www.surrealismcentre.ac.uk/papersofsurrealism/journal1/acrobat_files/laxton.pdf Lévy, Pierre. 1998. Qu'est que le Virtuel? Paris (France): La Découverte. McLuhan, Marshall. 1994 (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press. Petocz, Agnes. 1999. Freud, Psychoanalysis, and Symbolism. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press. Pound, Ezra. 1934 (1958). Make it New – Essays by Ezra Pound. New York (NY): New Directions. Rayner, Timothy. 2007. Foucault's Heidegger: Philosophy and Transformative Experience. London (UK): Bloomsbury Academic. Van Roessel, Lies. 2008. Re-staging the Epic. Brechtian epic elements in computer games and their use for computer game literacy education. Unpublished MA thesis available online at http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/32324 Shklovsky, Viktor. 1917. 'Art as Technique'. In 1965, Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, trans. and ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. REFERENCED VIDEOGAMES Failnaut. 2012. Grindstar (videogame). Available online at http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/605910 Gualeni, Dini, Gomez Maureira, et al. 2013. NECESSARY EVIL (videogame). Windows, OSX, Linux. Available online at http://evil.gua-le-ni.com. Alexander, S. & Thomas, J. 2015. The Magic Circle (videogame). Windows, OSX, Linux. Published by Question. Wreden, Breit, Flanagan, et al. 2015. The Beginner's Guide (videogame). Windows, OSX, Linux. Published by Everything Unlimited Ltd.


Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action

Philosophy

Religious Inquiries Volume 7, Number 13, June 2018, pp. 55-73 Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action Zahra Khazaei 1 Received: 26-03-2018 / Accepted: 15-05-2018 This paper sheds light on the views of Mulla Sadra about virtue and action. The main question is how he explains the relationship, if any, between virtue and action. Mulla Sadra defines moral virtue as a settled inner disposition by which one acts morally, without need for any reflection or deliberation. This study seeks to explain how, according to Mulla Sadra, a virtue motivates the agent and leads him to do the right action easily. Is virtue the reason for or cause of action? Is there a semantic link between action and virtue? Can we regard an action as right if it is not motivated by a virtue? Another question is about the role of action in the development of moral character. Is virtue acquired through the practice of corresponding actions? If we divide virtues into moral and intellectual, we should ask about the relationship between an epistemic action and intellectual virtues as well. In addition, since Mulla Sadra is a Muslim religious thinker, explaining the role of faith and religious rituals in forming moral character and also the relationship between faith and moral action is important. This paper will show that Mulla Sadra accepts the semantic, metaphysical, and psychological relationships between virtue and action. Keywords: Mulla Sadra, moral virtue, action, intellectual virtue, semantic relationship, metaphysical relationship, psychological relationship. 1. Professor, University of Qom, Iran (email@example.com). 56 / Religious Inquiries Introduction The relationship between virtue and action can be understood in four ways: semantic, epistemological, metaphysical, and psychological. The semantic connection between moral (or intellectual) virtue and right action holds if one defines virtue in terms of right action or defines right action in terms of virtue. So, what is the right action? Is it an action that does not necessarily come from virtue, or is it one that is performed by the virtuous person regardless of the circumstances? If we claim that virtue is defined according to right action, not only should action be used as part of the definition of virtue but also virtue becomes a type of action. And if we claim that right action is defined according to virtue, then action is not right or, at least, not valuable without virtue. As a result, right action becomes an action performed out of virtue. There are versions of virtue ethics that insist on a semantic link between virtue and moral action. Virtue ethicists, who base the definition of moral action on the concept of virtuous person, virtuous motive, or virtue itself, often believe in this kind of link. For example, Hursthouse and Slote have indeed accepted this kind of link. Hursthouse defines right action as "what a virtuous agent would, characteristically, do in the circumstances" (Hursthouse 1999). Michael Slote explains right action according to virtuous motivation (Slote 2001) and believes that an action is right if (and because) it exhibits or expresses a virtuous motive, or at least does not exhibit or express a vicious motive (Van Zyle 2009). Zagzebski, as well, subscribes to this perspective when she states that "the moral exemplar is the basis of ethics" (Zagzebski 2010; 2012) and when she tries to define the other moral concepts including moral action. Since a moral exemplar is a virtuous person,1 it is true that being virtuous is the basis of ethics. "All 1. Moral exemplar, in fact, is a moral saint (see Khazaei 2005, 144-66). Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 57 other basic moral concepts," she says, "are defined by reference to exemplars-a virtue, a desirable life, a right act, and a good outcome" (Zagzebski 2012, 157). So, virtue, in her view, "is a trait we admire in an admirable person ... that makes the person paradigmatically good in a certain respect" (2010, 54; 2012, 159), and the right act "is what the admirable person would take to be most favored by the balance of reasons in circumstances" (2012, 159). Virtue epistemologists accept this kind of connection between rational inquiries and intellectual virtues and define knowledge as a true belief that arises out of intellectual virtue (e.g., Zagzebski 1996). The epistemological relationship between virtue and right action is related to the role moral and intellectual virtues play in the recognition of what one should do. According to virtue ethics, a practically wise agent has such power. Sometimes, we ask about the role of virtue in performing moral actions, while other times we ask about the role of action in forming virtue. Here, we discuss the former connection as psychological and the latter as metaphysical. The metaphysical connection between virtue and action asks whether moral action has a role in forming virtues, and generally in the realization of personal identity, or not. Regarding the psychological relationship, we ask whether virtues are able to motivate the agent to do a right action or not? If so, are moral virtues sufficient for motivating the agent, or are they necessary? Philosophers who seek out reasons for action usually ask about the role of belief in motivating the agent, and whether it is a sufficient or necessary reason. While moral externalists say that "belief is only the necessary condition" and that to desire is sufficient (e.g., Aristotle, Brink, Shafer-Landau), moral internalists believe that "belief only is the sufficient condition for acting" (e.g., Socrates, Kant, Smith, and 58 / Religious Inquiries Korsgaard). Here, we can raise a question about the role of virtue in performing the right act. However, answering this question somewhat depends on the nature of virtue. This paper studies the viewpoint of Mulla Sadra in regard to the types of relationship between virtue and action. Mulla Sadra, the Iranian Muslim philosopher, is the founder of Transcendent Philosophy. His viewpoint in the fields of Metaphysics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mind, Epistemology, and Ethics are extremely valuable. Arguably, however, his ideas on mind are more important. We can see the consequences of his views on the mind in the philosophy of religion, ethics, and epistemology. According to Mulla Sadra, although philosophers believe that all human beings have the same nature and define the human being as a rational animal, everybody has an individual identity, which, through actualizing their practical and theoretical potentials, builds them gradually and makes them distinct from others (Mulla Sadra 1382 Sh, 128; 1981, 8:343, 9:85). Dispositions of the soul, knowledge, deeds, and intentions are the main factors that contribute to forming personal identity (Mulla Sadra 1981, vol. 9). Since the constitutive elements are different from one person to another, everyone will have their own special identity. Mulla Sadra calls this identity the second nature, in contrast to the first nature, which refers to tendencies with which we are born (Mulla Sadra 1382 Sh). According to his teleological approach, the mentioned elements help one to achieve felicity. Mulla Sadra explains these ideas on the basis of his philosophical principles like the metaphysical primacy of existence (asalatal-wujud), the substantial motion (al-harka al-jawhariyya), as well as the unity of the intellect, intelligent, and intelligible (ittihad al-'aql wa-l-'aqil wa-l-ma 'qul). Considering the relationship between virtue and action in Mulla Sadra's viewpoint, this paper focuses on three types of this relationship Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 59 and omits the epistemological one. At the end, it refers to the role of faith. It will conclude that Mulla Sadra accepts all the relationships, while maintaining that the conception of the right action can only depend on the conception of virtue, not vice versa. 1. The Semantic Relation Mulla Sadra, like other Muslim philosophers, defines moral virtue as a settled disposition of the soul that helps its possessor do the proper action without deliberation and with ease (Mulla Sadra 1981; Naraqi 1373 AH; Kashani 1960; Miskawayh n.d.). This definition shows that virtue is neither a feeling or activity nor a faculty. Instead, a settled, inner state is what enables a person to think correctly, to feel properly, and to perform moral conduct easily (Mulla Sadra 1981, 4). Moral vice, as well, can be defined in this way, with the difference being that a virtuous person easily performs good acts and a vicious person easily does bad acts without deliberation. The difference between virtue and vice is the same as Aristotelians say; that is, virtue is the means and vice is either excess or deficiency. Mulla Sadra sometimes, using Qur'anic terminology, refers to virtue and vice as angel and satan (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 351-54). Angel and satan, here, may refer to a good and bad character that lead the agent to perform right or wrong actions. By this definition, neither Mulla Sadra nor other philosophers accept a semantic link between virtue and action and they do not consider the concept of virtue to be dependent on that of moral action. However, they assert that virtue is one of the defining elements of the moral act. Accordingly, moral action is what a virtuous person would do in any situation because of his dispositions. For example, a miserly person who gives charity-while his action is not morally wrong and he is not deserving of punishment-is deficient in ethical value and is not worthy of being praised. The most important factor for being ethical is having inner purity and a pure heart. This is what makes one's actions 60 / Religious Inquiries praiseworthy. Given this premise, what makes an action moral? Clearly, it is not enough for it to solely be intentional and conscious; rather, it depends on the agent's good character or his pure inner-self. In Mulla Sadra's view, good intention is another criteria for an action to be considered good. Therefore, a moral act is defined in terms of the motives and dispositions of the agent. As a result, every action should be evaluated on the grounds of the goodness of the agent's motives and his virtues. According to Mulla Sadra (like other philosophers), intention, consciousness, and voluntariness are necessary conditions for right action. This is why a person is blameworthy or praiseworthy for his action. In other words, the agent is morally responsible for the action that has been performed freely, consciously, and intentionally. In addition, the desirability of an act-that is, its being right in itself-is also necessary. This kind of action is one which the good person is permitted to intend and perform. Accordingly, good motives do not belong to bad actions. As a result, the goodness of both the agent and the act are necessary for an action to be good. Up to now, we have discussed the relationship between moral action and moral virtue, but such a relationship can also be discussed in regard to epistemic action and intellectual virtue. According to Mulla Sadra, an action is right epistemically if it arises out of intellectual virtues. In this way, knowledge would be obtained (Khazaei 2013). 2. The Metaphysical Relationship The metaphysical relationship explains the role of action or other factors in forming good character. Discussion about this is possible if we believe that virtues are not natural but acquired. As Aristotle mentions, "virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature; but by our nature we can receive them and perfect them by habituation" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1103a). Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 61 From the viewpoint of Mulla Sadra, human beings naturally have the potential of being virtuous. These virtues are acquired through struggle and learning-moral virtues are obtained through struggle and epistemic virtues through learning. Consequently, Mulla Sadra refers to virtue as a habit of the soul which "necessarily [affects] the easy procession of an action therefrom, without need of any reflection or deliberation. (Mulla Sadra 1981, 4:114). It is worth noting that Mulla Sadra divides people into two groups. The first group consists of the few who inherently have (or do not have) moral and intellectual virtues, and the second group consists of the others who have the potential for moral and intellectual virtues. The latter group is able to acquire them by struggle and learning. However, the former group, which could include a prophet or an innately foolish man, has (or does not have) intellectual virtues naturally, and thus does not need or is not able to acquire them by learning (Mulla Sadra 1981, 9:87). Many philosophers accept the idea of acquiring virtues, especially moral virtues. What distinguishes Mulla Sadra from others is his belief that human beings do not have a constant identity; rather, they gradually build it (Mulla Sadra 1382 Sh, 128; 1981, 8:343; Tusi 1373 Sh, 7:181). Through this gradual process, dispositions, which are among the constitutive factors of human identity, are acquired. Therefore, he is responsible not only for his actions and activities but also for his character. Indeed, everyone chooses his personal identity by way of acting and thinking. As such, the agent is responsible for the factors which contribute to the development of his identity (Khazaei 2013, 34). According to Mulla Sadra, actions, intentions, dispositions and knowledge are the constitutive factors in the formation of human identity. Among these factors, knowledge is the main factor through which human identity will be determined (Mulla Sadra 1981, vol. 9). 62 / Religious Inquiries However, knowledge is an after-product of action. In other words, action is the first step that shapes a person into a good or bad person. Action builds dispositions, and dispositions prepare the conditions for acquiring true knowledge. First, actions produce inner states, and then inner states gradually change into settled dispositions. In his work, Mulla Sadra maintains that we can acquire good and bad characters, which potentially exist in us, through exercising the related good or bad actions (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 347). In fact, good actions make the heart pure and light, while bad actions make it dark (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 347). Mulla Sadra calls these dispositions the inner face (esoteric) of man or his truth (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:297). This truth will appear in the afterlife. Thus, moral virtues are acquired by performing the actions of a virtuous person. The performance value is used to evaluate the agent: the higher the value, the better the agent. Just as performing moral acts leads to moral virtues, carrying out epistemic actions leads to wisdom. Thus, Mulla Sadra believes that exercising, in addition to learning, is necessary for having intellectual virtues. Carefulness, fairness, patience, and authenticity are some of the acquired intellectual virtues required for acquiring knowledge (Mulla Sadra 1981, 9:91). Here, I would like to refer to the following supplemental notes: 1. Considering the effect of actions on the realization of virtues, every action is valuable insofar as it brings about a purification of the heart and so long as this effect remains. Because of this, the amount of reward and punishment of actions varies. Therefore, according to Mulla Sadra, actions are not worthy in themselves; rather, they are valuable in so far as they result in virtues and a pure and illuminated heart (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 2:63; 1376 Sh). Mulla Sadra goes on to repeatedly mention that the right action is not itself the true goodness, but it is important Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 63 for the heart's purity (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:319, 320; 1366 Sh, 2:191-92; 1977, 74). 2. In spite of Mulla Sadra's emphasis on the importance of the purity of heart, he does not consider this purity as the end. Because he believes that humanity depends on theoretical knowledge, and knowledge is the most important constitutive element of human identity, as well as the cause of true happiness or felicity; the worth of everything in comparison to knowledge is secondary. In this way, purity of heart is important, because it gives the person the ability to acquire true knowledge. The more truth one knows, the more pious one becomes, as a result of which, he becomes more felicitous. Accordingly, good action is a means and true knowledge is the final perfection (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:319, 320). The objects of true knowledge are religious entities, such as God, prophets, angels, and resurrection. The stronger the existence of the object of knowledge, the more valuable the acquired knowledge and the greater the felicity of the knower. 3. Moral and intellectual actions are not the only factors, but rituals too have an important role in the purification of the heart and the realization of virtues and eradication of vices. In contrast, sins and evil actions result in vices and darkening of the heart. As moral virtues prepare the mind for acquiring knowledge, moral vices result in vices of the mind, like fallacy and fiction. And, in the end, one becomes ignorant of the truth (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:386). Although rituals have an important role in moral and intellectual development, they are not the end and their value depends on their effect on the purification of the heart. For this reason, rituals and moral actions are the first step of perfecting practical reason. After that, the person, by refraining from vices, struggles to purify his heart. At the third step, he gains virtues, 64 / Religious Inquiries but as long as his heart is not purified, it will not be illuminated. Only upon purification is his heart able to gain knowledge. Mulla Sadra mentions (e.g.. 1981, 9:139; 1360 Sh, 854-56; 1376 Sh, 74) that the purpose of rituals and moral actions is the purification of the soul and the perfection of practical reason. He further says that this purity is not the final purpose; rather, the light of faith is the final purpose that will be brought about after achieving purity of the heart. This light of faith and the light of knowledge are the same in Sadra's view. 4. Intention is another factor that plays an important role in forming human identity. Action, alongside good intention, gradually changes the nature of the human being and makes him a good or bad person. Good intentions motivate the agent to perform good actions, and good actions make good character. Indeed, intention and character have a mutual, internal relationship. Thus, from one side, intention defines the level of one's moral identity, while, from the other side, moral character leads to good or bad intention. Mulla Sadra considers good and bad intentions as the spirit of action. In this way, they not only play a role in the rightness of actions but also in forming moral and intellectual virtues; that is, virtues would be built by good action and good intention. The better the intentions, the worthier the actions. Then, peace of mind and heart will be achieved. Good motives, here, enable good actions to result in a purified heart. Mulla Sadra discusses the effect of bad motives on the soul. In his opinion, darkness, one that is the result of self-love and deception of others, does not allow one to be purified from vices. Bad motives result in a veil over the heart which prohibit one from achieving virtues or "brightness" (Mulla Sadra 1367 Sh, 172). Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 65 The relationship between intention and moral action can be understood in two ways: (1) good intention is necessary for an action being morally right, and (2) Good intention is not necessary for an action to be morally right, but it does make an action morally worthwhile and valuable. The first relationship may occur if the relationship between intention and action is a semantic or metaphysical one. If this is the case, then it is possible to (a) consider the intention as a constitutive element of the concept of right action, and (b) to believe that the existence of moral action depends on good intention. In both cases, if an action has been done without a good intention or moral spirit, not only is it not valuable but it is not right either. In such a case, the agent may deserve punishment. Accordingly, the existence of moral action is based on good intention; that is to say, there is no moral action without good intention. If we say that this relationship (intention and right action) is not necessary, we consider good intention as a sufficient condition for an action to be valuable, not as a necessary part of its definition. In this case, even though an action without good intention is not morally valuable, it is nevertheless right. When Mulla Sadra argues that the worth of an action depends on the level of the heart's purity, he accepts the latter relationship, in which good intention makes an action morally valuable. He believes that gaining proximity to God is the best motive. This does not mean that an action lacking in this kind of motivation is wrong or not valuable, such as performing an act motivated by empathy. He even acknowledges that performing actions with the pure intention of getting closer to God is very difficult and only a few people can achieve such intentions. 66 / Religious Inquiries 5. Faith is the last factor by which a person strengthens the effect of good action on the purification of the heart. Even the lowest level of faith can result in an amount of illumination of the heart. While gaining proximity to God is the main condition for characterizing an action as good, it is also the element that makes an action valuable. In general, faith has an important role in forming identity. Therefore, in Islamic ethics, although achieving virtues is not possible without practice, faith in God plays an important role in shaping moral character. In fact, faith in God promotes one's eagerness to perform good deeds which result in good character. 6. Although building virtues requires practice, Mulla Sadra believes that all virtues, be they moral, intellectual or religious, are due to God's grace. According to Mulla Sadra's interpretation, the word "wisdom," as it appears in Surah al-Baqarah1 and also in Surah al-Jumu'a, 2 consists of knowledge as well as moral and intellectual virtues (Mulla Sadra 1367 Sh). He believes that God graces us with all of them, but gaining such divine grace requires struggle. Thus, while God does not force us to do good acts, He does love that we act morally and He does help us in this regard. 3. Psychological Relationship The main question here is whether virtues lead to action? In other words, do they have a motivational role in the performance of an action? Do they cause action? Most contemporary philosophers have drawn distinctions between normative, motivating, and explanatory reasons. Normative reasons 1. "He grants wisdom to whom He pleases" (Qur'an 2:269). 2. "It is He who sent to the unlettered [people] an apostle from among themselves, to recite to them His signs, to purify them, and to teach them the Book and wisdom, and earlier they had indeed been in manifest error." (Qur'an 62:2). Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 67 justify or favor an action, while motivating reasons are the reasons that the agent takes on in order to favor or justify her action and to guide her in acting (Alvarez 2016). Different still are explanatory reasons, which are the reasons that explain an action. Here, I focus on motivating and explanatory reasons as psychological. Some Western philosophers, like Zagzebski, believe that virtues, moral or intellectual, essentially have a motivational element (1961). Muslim philosophers, including Mulla Sadra, when defining virtue as a disposition that leads the agent to do right action easily, in fact, have argued for this kind of relationship. Although virtue is not a feeling, the emotional element of moral virtue is what motivates the agent. If belief and desire are two reasons for doing an action, moral virtues could be the source of the said belief and desire. Because of this relationship, Mulla Sadra says that dispositions are incentives of the soul for doing good and bad acts. In Mulla Sadra's work, will, anger, and lust have been called motivational faculties. Nevertheless, he does not accept a causal relation between virtue and action (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:546). Despite his belief that our actions indicate our inner states-that is, our dispositions and motives-Mulla Sadra denies that virtues are necessary and sufficient conditions for action. He argues that they are necessary but not sufficient. Human will is what leads Mulla Sadra to adopt this idea. Free will lets a person do or not do an action. Knowledge, desire, and intention are three stages through which the person performing an action moves. Every stage produces the next stage and motivates the agent to do the action (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 35154). Significantly, Mulla Sadra believes that no stage requires the next stage necessarily, and that next stages do not necessarily follow previous ones. Finally, the person would perform what he has chosen by his own will. In Mulla Sadra's view, even after making a decision, the agent may defeat his intention and not do what he should do. 68 / Religious Inquiries According to Mulla Sadra, only those who have true knowledge can necessarily do the right action (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 309-10). He explains that only those who have strong will are able to perform an action as soon as they imagine or conceive of it. It is here that the necessity of the connection between belief and action appears. It seems what makes a person do the right action necessarily is either the strength and weakness of will (or soul) or the possession of moral and intellectual virtues (Mulla Sadra 1981, 9:87). Indeed, the harmony between the reason and emotion of a truly virtuous agent is the cause that necessitates action. This causal relationship also applies to persons who have weak will and lack moral and intellectual virtues; moral and intellectual vices guide vicious people to do bad actions quickly and with ease. In general, Mulla Sadra cites several causes that make the agent fail to do what he should do: 1. Long-term desires not only prevent a person from thinking of God but also create obstacles that hinder good action. 2. Irrational pleasures, which darken the heart, prevent the agent from deliberating, and stop him from doing the right action (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:337-38). 3. Ignorance, sins, and vices of the mind are among the causes of bad dispositions, which in turn result in immoral actions. Mulla Sadra sometimes refers to ignorance as the root of unhappiness, particularly the kind of ignorance that has been ingrained. Mulla Sadra believes that ignorance and infelicity are from Satan, but felicity and knowledge (particularly knowledge that comes with proof) are from an angel (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:386). He argues that ignorance and weakness of will are among the causes of fear and immoral behavior (Mulla Sadra 1991, 9:92). 4. Laziness (or laches), as a psychological factor rather than an immoral one, is one of the obstacles that hinder good actions. Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 69 Maybe this factor, more than others, is proper for justifying the virtuous person's wrong actions, because a virtuous person does not perform wrong easily. This relates closely to Aristotle's argument. If a person knows which action is the right action and does not have any desire for doing the wrong one and is not forced to perform it, then, if he performed a bad action, it would be for psychological factors, such as laziness, depression, obsession, and desires, as Mele and Davidson have referred to (Mele 2009; Davidson 1980, 21-42). 5. Self-deception is another cause of action, one that the agent imagines to be good but in reality is bad. This kind of deception sometimes occurs in regard to our intentions, such that good intentions seem bad and bad intentions seem good (Mulla Sadra 1360 Sh, 358-59). Self-deception produces ignorance, which in turn results in bad action. Only someone who has gained practical and theoretical perfection can understand this kind of deception. All of the aforementioned factors would produce a kind of irrationality, one that leads a person to do wrong action, because he practically and epistemically is not able to do right action. 4. Faith and Its Connection to Action Since Mulla Sadra is a Muslim philosopher, we ask about how the role of faith in God may affect this connection: Are they connected to each other semantically? Is faith the necessary condition for the rightness or value of action? Can it motivate the agent to act? Does faith necessarily result in action? Mulla Sadra defines faith in God as knowledge; it is not itself a kind of action. Nevertheless, he accepts two kinds of relationships between action and faith: On the one hand, he says that faith is the product of good action. Good action, whether moral, epistemic, or 70 / Religious Inquiries ritual, purifies one's heart, which in turn prepares the person to receive faith from God. Because of this purification process, he believes that when an action is done with good intentions, it will produce faith. Nevertheless, faith is a gift given from God to some of his servants (Mulla Sadra 1366 Sh, 1:310). On the other hand, he argues for the psychological relationship between virtue and action, while still stressing the motivational role of faith. Faith motivates the person to do the action. Strong faith will increase the possibility of performing good action. In Sadra's viewpoint, only the faith of a true believer necessitates action. That is, the persons with true knowledge have such a capability. For other people, the commitment to do the right action depends on their faith; with stronger faith, there is a greater possibility of moral commitment. Mulla Sadra believes that faith has different degrees. The lowest degree is to believe in God and His prophets. After that, at the next degree up, a person will get a heart-felt belief, but his heart is not yet exposed to the light of knowledge. When he reaches the third degree, he will have achieved the insight and vision for religious truths. At the last stage, there is nothing that can be present to him except God, who is the beginning and the end of everything (Mulla Sadra 1363 Sh, 255, 257). Given the degrees of faith, it can be guessed that when faith leads to action, what kind of action is appropriate for each stage, and to what extent the relationship of faith and action can be necessary. Conclusion In this article, we discussed the semantic, metaphysical, and psychological relationship between action and virtue in Mulla Sadra's thought. Explaining these relationships, from one side, depends on the definition of virtue and right action, and, from the other side, depends on the factors that contribute to the realization of either action or virtue. In the semantic relationship, we sought to answer whether or not virtue and action are defined in terms of each other. In the metaphysical Mulla Sadra on Virtue and Action / 71 relationship, we determined how much moral and epistemic action existentially depends on moral and epistemic virtue. As we mentioned above, Mulla Sadra accepts the semantic relationship in a unilateral manner; that is, he defines right action on the basis of virtue but not vice versa. He, like Aristotelians and other Muslim philosophers, defines virtue as a disposition of the soul that makes the possessor of it act easily and without deliberation. Therefore, conceptually, right action is defined according to virtue, whether we define it, as Hursthouse does, as "what a virtuous agent would, characteristically do in the circumstances" (Hursthouse 1999) or as Zagzebski says, as something based on moral exemplar. Mulla Sadra believes that right action is what is performed by a good person with good motives. In addition to free will and consciousness, a moral agent should have moral virtues, and an epistemic agent should have epistemic virtues in order to perform moral and epistemic action properly. Indeed, virtuous action makes the agent praiseworthy. Saying that virtues are not natural implies that they are acquired. Mulla Sadra accepts the metaphysical relationship between virtue and action and believes that not only moral acts, but also rituals, are involved in the creation of virtue. Of course, divine grace, as well, plays an important role in creating virtue. Relying on a psychological connection, we tried to answer whether virtues motivate the agent to act. If the belief and desire are the reasons for an action, can virtue be considered one of the reasons too? Is virtue a necessary and sufficient condition for doing the right action, or it is only a motivational reason? Mulla Sadra accepts the psychological relationship between virtue and action, where virtue is the reason for right action, as belief and desire are the reasons for action. However, belief and desire are different from virtue in that belief and desire are 72 / Religious Inquiries stages of performing action, while virtue is not. Instead, virtue is a condition for doing the right or admirable action. In fact, virtue enables the agent to recognize the right action and to control his feelings and behaviors. Because of this, we consider virtue to be the basis of moral judgment, good feelings, and proper actions. Virtues are the reasons for action, not the causes. Consequently, virtue is not a sufficient condition for doing the act, but it is necessary to act properly. Virtue is a sufficient condition for only a few people, such as prophets. According to Mulla Sadra, since moral action builds one's selfesteem for moral virtue, it makes one's self-perfection for the fulfillment of epistemic virtue and knowledge. Therefore, moral virtues cultivate and purify the soul, and, in the final stage, help the agent to obtain true knowledge. Thus, virtue, with its moral and epistemic types, right actions, motives, and knowledge are considered the constructive elements of personal identity. In other words, all of the moral and intellectual factors contribute to forming personal identity. As a result, the stronger these factors are, the more pious the agent will be. In this regard, belief in God is very important. It not only purifies the heart but also motivates the agent to do the right action easily. References Alvarez, M. 2016. 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Philosophy

Larry Temkin draws on the work of Angus Deaton to argue that countries with poor governance sometimes rely on charitable giving and foreign aid in ways that enable them to avoid relying on their own citizens; this can cause them to be unresponsive to their citizensâ needs and thus prevent the long-term alleviation of poverty and other social problems. I argue that the implications of this âlack of government responsiveness argumentâ (or LOGRA) are both broader and narrower than they might first appear. I explore how LOGRA applies more broadly to certain types of charitable giving in developed countries, with a focus on medical crowdfunding. I then highlight how LOGRA does not apply to charitable giving aimed at alleviating the suffering of the absolutely politically marginalized, or those especially vulnerable people to whom governments are never responsive.

Journal of Practical Ethics ALIDA LIBERMAN40 Medical Crowdfunding, Political Marginalization, and Government Responsiveness: A Reply to Larry Temkin ALIDA LIBERMAN Southern Methodist University ABSTRACT Larry Temkin draws on the work of Angus Deaton to argue that countries with poor governance sometimes rely on charitable giving and foreign aid in ways that enable them to avoid relying on their own citizens; this can cause them to be unresponsive to their citizens' needs and thus prevent the long-term alleviation of poverty and other social problems. I argue that the implications of this "lack of government responsiveness argument" (or LOGRA) are both broader and narrower than they might first appear. I explore how LOGRA applies more broadly to certain types of charitable giving in developed countries, with a focus on medical crowdfunding. I then highlight how LOGRA does not apply to charitable giving aimed at alleviating the suffering of the absolutely politically marginalized, or those especially vulnerable people to whom governments are never responsive. 1. POVERTY ALLEVIATION AND THE LACK OF GOVERNMENT RESPONSIVENESS ARGUMENT In his challenging and important paper in this volume, Larry Temkin engages with economist Angus Deaton's argument that foreign aid and other charitable giving to the neediest countries in the world unintentionally does more harm than Volume 7, Issue 1 Crowdfunding, Marginalization, And Government Responsiveness 41 good (Deaton 2013, Ch. 7.). We can reconstruct one of Deaton's arguments for this claim as follows: 1. Extreme poverty and other preventable suffering in a given country cannot be effectively alleviated in the long-term unless that country's government is fundamentally responsive to its citizens and their needs (e.g., for healthcare, education, infrastructure, rule of law, etc.). 2. Governments are responsive to their citizens only to the extent that they depend on citizens' support through taxes, votes, and the like. 3. Large amounts of aid (whether direct foreign aid from governments or charitable giving) enable a government to remain in power and attain its goals without citizen support; this undermines the government's reliance on its citizens. 4. Therefore, large amounts of foreign aid make governments unresponsive to citizens. 5. Therefore, large amounts of foreign aid prevent long-term alleviation of extreme poverty and other preventable suffering. Call this the Lack of Government Responsiveness Argument, or LOGRA. LOGRA depends on several controversial empirical claims: (1) that responsive governments are necessary for long-term poverty alleviation, (2) that governments will not be responsive to citizens unless they rely on them for taxes, etc., and (3) that foreign aid enables governments to avoid relying on citizens in these ways. For the sake of argument, assume that these claims are true in at least some cases. Temkin points out that LOGRA may apply even to demonstrably effective giving of the sort endorsed by Effective Altruism (EA). Givers face what (following Derek Parfit) Temkin calls an Each-We Dilemma. These dilemmas are cases in which an individual can bring about the best consequences by the lights of a certain theory by doing one thing, but the overall consequences will be very bad by those same lights if others also do that same thing. An individual donation to an effective aid organization has a massive positive impact on those who are helped and a tiny negative impact on government responsiveness. If we assume that it is better for burdens to be dispersed among many who each bear only a small cost than it is for burdens to be carried by a few who each bear a large cost, then what we ought to do individually is give (so that everyone bears the miniscule burden of a government made slightly less responsive) rather than refrain from giving (so those few who would otherwise be helped bear huge burdens). But LOGRA implies that many donations to effective Journal of Practical Ethics ALIDA LIBERMAN42 aid organizations together risk undermining government responsiveness in a way that inhibits long-term poverty alleviation, which is a massive burden on everyone. Collectively, then, what we all ought to do is refrain from giving. I will argue that if Temkin is right about this, LOGRA has important implications that go beyond what he addresses in his paper. First, I explore how a version of LOGRA might apply to some forms of domestic charitable giving even in highincome countries with generally well-functioning governments. This means that Each-We Dilemmas concerning charitable giving may be more widespread than Temkin suggests. Second, I suggest that there are groups of especially marginalized people to whom LOGRA does not apply, because governments never rely on them for financial or political support, and therefore have no incentive to be responsive to them even in the best of circumstances. It follows that giving that is narrowly aimed at alleviating the suffering of these groups is not subject to the particular Each-We Dilemma raised by LOGRA. 2. EACH-WE DILEMMAS FOR LOCAL GIVING IN AFFLUENT NATIONS LOGRA highlights one way in which foreign aid undermines government responsiveness. I am concerned that other forms of charitable giving can similarly undermine government responsiveness. In both affluent and poverty-stricken countries, private individuals or organizations routinely fill gaps in the provision of essential goods and services that can be effectively provided to all in the long term only through state intervention. Although this meets the needs of some individuals in the short term, it risks seriously undermining the government's ability or motivation to meet all of its people's needs in the long term. While there are multiple examples of this, I will focus primarily on how crowdfunding for medical expenses can undermine the political will to fix a broken healthcare system. My arguments are conditional, as they depend on controversial empirical assumptions that I am unable to defend here. However, even if these particular assumptions are false, a similarly structured argument should apply in a wide range of analogous situations. Crowdfunding typically uses web platforms (such as GoFundMe) to solicit direct donations from friends and strangers. Crowdfunding to cover healthcare expenses is widespread and growing, covering everything from cancer treatment to emergency care to experimental treatments to routine expenses for chronic illnesses. There are Volume 7, Issue 1 Crowdfunding, Marginalization, And Government Responsiveness 43 a number of serious ethical problems with medical crowdfunding. Among other concerns, crowdfunding seems to disproportionately and unfairly benefit those who are tech savvy, have wide social networks, are seen as deserving of help, and whose stories are media friendly; ineffectively distributes aid on the basis of sympathy and luck rather than need; and forces recipients to publicly disclose sensitive health information that they might rather keep private in order to receive funding (see Snyder 2016 and Berliner and Kenworthy 2017 for more on these and other criticisms). Another major worry is that crowdfunding enables governments to shirk their duties. Campaigns are more frequent in areas with less robust health insurance; for example, a randomized survey of GoFundMe crowdfunding campaigns found that "a much larger proportion of campaigns than expected were based in states that chose not to adopt the Medicaid expansion under the ACA" (Berliner and Kenworthy 2017: 237). Jeremy Snyder points out that "the sites allow individuals to address their need for medical care without addressing the underlying causes of these unmet needs" (Snyder 2016: 39). This is exacerbated by the fact that crowdfunding campaigns routinely ignore structural injustice in their pleas for help. For example, a survey of Canadian campaigns found that they focused on the recipient's personal relationships, needs, and altruistic characteristics and "almost universally did not appeal to the perceived injustice of having to resort to crowdfunding by Canadians with an existing entitlement to essential medical care, supporting the concern that medical crowdfunding can obscure systemic injustices" (Snyder et al. 2017 p.367). If we assume for the sake of argument that the following (admittedly controversial) premises are true, we can generate a LOGRA for medical crowdfunding in affluent countries: 1. Healthcare needs can effectively be met in the long-term only through comprehensive government provision of services. 2. Governments will provide comprehensive healthcare services to all only if politically pressured by their citizens to do so. 3. Citizens will politically pressure governments to act only if they perceive a pressing need. 4. Medical crowdfunding undermines citizens' perceived need to advocate for comprehensive government provision of healthcare.1 1. If crowdfunding primarily benefits those who are most skilled at advocating for themselves, it risks undermining the perceived need to advocate for government provision of services among those who are best situated to do this sort of advocacy in particular. Journal of Practical Ethics ALIDA LIBERMAN44 It follows that donors in affluent countries who crowdfund the medical expenses of their friends and neighbors risk undermining the responsiveness of their government in a way that collectively leads to much worse results: 5. Therefore, medical crowdfunding prevents citizens from politically pressuring their governments to provide comprehensive healthcare coverage. 6. Therefore, medical crowdfunding removes incentives for the government to provide comprehensive coverage, which prevents the meeting of long-term healthcare needs. Snyder rightly notes that "the contribution of any one campaign to these problems is minimal, creating a strong argument that the gain to each user offsets the systemic effects of medical crowdfunding" (Snyder 2016 p.41). He goes on to suggest that "as a result, it is difficult to make the argument that those seeking access to essential medical services through crowdfunding ought not to do so" (ibid). But this argument moves too quickly, because individual donors to medical crowdfunding campaigns potentially face Each-We Dilemmas. Individually, donating to a campaign clearly does good (although surely not the most good you can do with your money in EA terms). Collectively, though, donating to medical crowdfunding campaigns risks undermining the only sustainable long-term solution to meeting everyone's healthcare needs. This is not to say that we should ignore the dire appeals of our family, friends, or strangers for help with their healthcare. With Temkin, I am not ready to "sacrifice the current needy on the altar of need minimization" (Temkin 2019). But we cannot ignore the fact that medical crowdfunding might lead to counterproductive negative effects. We must consider whether our individually good actions are leading to a collectively terrible result, and continue to grapple with the ethics of Each-We Dilemmas in determining whether and how to give to medical crowdfunding campaigns. Even if medical crowdfunding does not in fact undermine government responsiveness in the area of healthcare, it is worth exploring whether Each-We Dilemmas of this structure arise for other kinds of giving that risk undermining government responsiveness narrowly in other areas (such as funding for scientific research or the arts). For example, consider U.S. billionaires who make major donations to support K-12 public education, such as Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million gift to Newark, N.J. Volume 7, Issue 1 Crowdfunding, Marginalization, And Government Responsiveness 45 public schools,2 or the Gates Foundation's support of public education aimed at improving outcomes for Black, Latino/a, and low-income students.3 For the sake of argument, assume the (admittedly controversial) claim that the only long-term solution for improving educational outcomes across the board for underrepresented students is state intervention (such as divorcing public school funding from property taxes and providing increased and equitable funding across geographic regions through redistributive taxation). Assume also the (again controversial) claim that well-publicized support of equitable public education initiatives by a handful of billionaires dramatically lessens Americans' perception of the need for different tax policies, and that this makes the U.S. government less responsive to educational inequality. If these claims are true, these billionaire philanthropists face Each-We Dilemmas, and risk undermining the only feasible long-term solution to educational inequality. The worry that private giving might undermine the political will to solve entrenched social problems is not new. For example, J. A. Hobson wrote in 1914 that Every act of charity, applied to heal suffering arising from defective arrangements of society, serves to weaken the personal springs of social reform... by the softening influence it exercises on the hearts and heads of those who witness it. It substitutes the idea and the desire of individual reform for those of social reform, and so weakens the capacity for collective self-help in society (Hobson 1914 p.296). This echoes socialist and leftist critiques of EA which suggest that it ignores institutional factors and "lets capitalism off the hook" with its tendency to "obscure that the ordinary workings of capitalist markets create and exacerbate poverty" (Gomberg 2002 p.55).4 LOGRA points out a different way in which charitable giving risks undermining institutional effectiveness: not by supporting an exploitative capitalist system, but by preventing capitalist governments from functioning as well as they could. 2. The impact of Zuckerberg's gift has been controversial; see https://www.wsj.com/articles/ newarks-100-million-education-debate-1441752228 [Accessed 22/5/19]. Thanks to Alex Dietz for suggesting this example. 3. See http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/what-we-do/ [Accessed 22/5/19] 4. For further discussion of institutional critiques of EA (and an argument that the only plausible versions of these critiques are consistent with EA principles), see Berkey 2018. Journal of Practical Ethics ALIDA LIBERMAN46 3. LOGRA AND ABSOLUTE POLITICAL MARGINALIZATION In making his case for LOGRA, Deaton writes, "the need to raise funds exists everywhere, and it will often constrain the ruler to pay attention to the demands of at least some of the population" (Deaton 2013 p.295, [my emphasis]). However, neither Deaton nor Temkin pays sufficiently close attention to the fact that governments are responsive only to some of the people residing in their countries. Every government is most responsive to certain constituents (e.g., their wealthy political donors). But there are some groups to whom governments are not responsive at all. Call them the absolutely politically marginalized. Because they are ineligible to vote and/or do not contribute tax dollars or other material support to the state, governments that are focused on self-preservation will have no direct incentive to be responsive to them in any circumstances, even without any financial bolstering from foreign aid. They may have indirect incentives if foreign allies put politically pressure on them, or if politically powerful people mobilize on their behalf. But these indirect incentives will likely not lead to the same degree of responsiveness as would direct incentives. Different groups of people are absolutely politically marginalized in different societies, including (but not limited to): undocumented immigrants, refugees, and those denied citizenship (e.g., the Rohingya in Burma); felons in jurisdictions with felony disenfranchisement; people who do not pay taxes and systematically lack political power (e.g., the chronically homeless and unemployed); and people who are enslaved. Non-human animals are absolutely politically marginalized in an even more extreme way: they have few to no legal rights, and are incapable of directly giving financial or political support to the government. Even if LOGRA succeeds in establishing that foreign aid has serious negative consequences for a country as a whole, it does not follow that aid that is narrowly aimed at alleviating the suffering of the absolutely politically marginalized has the same negative consequences for those marginalized people. For we must consider what would have happened had the aid not been given. Most people will be worse off if an otherwise responsive government becomes unresponsive as a result of aid. But the absolutely politically marginalized cannot be made worse off in this way, since the government is not otherwise responsive to them. And so even large amounts of narrowly targeted aid will not harm them, which means that donors who provide such aid do not seem to face Each-We Dilemmas. Temkin suggests that one way to avoid LOGRA is focusing aid not on low-income countries with poor governance, but on poor people in middle-income counVolume 7, Issue 1 Crowdfunding, Marginalization, And Government Responsiveness 47 tries with decent governance, such as China and India. We should also consider focusing our aid efforts on supporting the absolutely politically marginalized in any country. And since it is likely that they will remain in the margins unless their governments become more responsive to them, we must also think more carefully about the value of engaging in political action to encourage governments to become more responsive to the absolutely marginalized. This usually happens only insofar as voters and taxpayers advocate on their behalf: undocumented immigrants protesting their own poor treatment will not motivate a self-interested government to change, but politically powerful people protesting this same poor treatment might. Non-human animals are incapable of advocating for themselves, but the activism of their human supporters has led to major gains in animal welfare laws. However, we must be cautious that private aid to absolutely marginalized groups does not unintentionally undermine the political will to pressure the government to become responsive to these groups. For if aid groups step in where governments fail in a way that prevents voters from perceiving the dire needs of the absolutely politically marginalized and pressuring their governments in light of this, we risk another version of LOGRA, in which giving to the absolutely marginalized ensures their ongoing marginalization. Ultimately, the implications of LOGRA are potentially both broader (ruling out medical crowdfunding and perhaps other forms of charitable giving in the developed world) and narrower (ruling in giving to the absolutely politically marginalized, unless this itself makes governments less responsive) than it may first appear. Acknowledgements Thanks to Brian Berkey, Josh Crabill, Alex Dietz, and Jeremy Snyder for helpful feedback on this paper. REFERENCES Berkey, B. (2018) "The Institutional Critique of Effective Altruism." Utilitas 30(2): 143-171. Berliner, L. and Kenworthy, N. (2017) "Producing a Worthy Illness: Personal Crowdfunding Amidst Financial Crisis." Social Science and Medicine 187: 233–243. Deaton, A. (2013) The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gomberg, P. (2002) "The Fallacy of Philanthropy." Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32(1): 29-66. Journal of Practical Ethics ALIDA LIBERMAN48 Hobson, J. A. (1914) Work and Wealth: A Human Valuation. New York: MacMillan. Snyder, J. (2016) "Crowdfunding For Medical Care: Ethical Issues in an Emerging Health Care Funding Practice." Hastings Center Report 46(6): 36-42. Snyder, J., V. Crooks, A. Mathers, and P. Chow-White. (2017) "Appealing to the Crowd: Ethical Justifications in Canadian Medical Crowdfunding Campaigns." Journal of Medical Ethics 43: 364-367. Temkin, L. (2019) "Being Good in a World of Need: Some Empirical Worries and an Uncomfortable Philosophical Possibility." Journal of Practical Ethics. 7: