Philosophy

Final Draft – January 20, 2006 1 The (Alleged) Inherent Normativity of Technological Explanations Jeroen de Ridder Delft University of Technology, Department of Philosophy Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands phone: +31 15 2785141, fax: +31 15 2786233 email: firstname.lastname@example.com Abstract Technical artifacts have the capacity to fulfill their function in virtue of their physicochemical makeup. An explanation that purports to explicate this relation between artifact function and structure can be called a technological explanation. It might be argued, and Peter Kroes has in fact done so, that there is something peculiar about technological explanations in that they are intrinsically normative in some sense. Since the notion of artifact function is a normative one (if an artifact has a proper function, it ought to behave in specific ways) an explanation of an artifact's function must inherit this normativity. In this paper I will resist this conclusion by outlining and defending a 'buck-passing account' of the normativity of technological explanations. I will first argue that it is important to distinguish properly between (1) a theory of function ascriptions and (2) an explanation of how a function is realized. The task of the former is to spell out the conditions under which one is justified in ascribing a function to an artifact; the latter should show how the physicochemical make-up of an artifact enables it to fulfill its function. Second, I wish to maintain that a good theory of function ascriptions should account for the normativity of these ascriptions. Provided such a function theory can be formulated - as I think it can - a technological explanation may pass the normativity buck to it. Third, to flesh out these Note that these are my old contact details! To contact me, please use: firstname.lastname@example.com Final Draft – January 20, 2006 2 abstract claims, I show how a particular function theory - to wit, the ICE theory by Pieter Vermaas and Wybo Houkes - can be dovetailed smoothly with my own thoughts on technological explanation. Keywords technical artifacts, explanation, mechanisms, normativity, proper function, 1. Introduction To introduce the topic of this paper, here are two observations about technical artifacts. First, technical artifacts have proper functions; that is the very reason behind our designing, making, and using them. They have their functions partly in virtue of their physicochemical make-up. One cannot reasonably ascribe the function to f to an artifact, which one knows to have an utterly inappropriate physicochemical constitution - a pencil cannot function as a laptop computer. Hence, there must be some sort of explanatory link between an artifact's function and its physicochemical make-up (or, for short, its 'structure'). When one wants to understand how it is that artifact x has the function to f, there will be mention of x's structure at some point. Second, the notion of proper function is a normative one. It makes sense to say of an artifact that it ought to exhibit certain behaviors, namely those associated with its function. Such claims do not make sense for normal physical objects, such as stones, solar systems, or sugar molecules.1 There can be discrepancies between an artifact's proper function and its actual behavioral capacities. An artifact can have the function to f even though it cannot f. A 1 At least not in as strong a sense as for artifacts. Of course we can express our (sometimes strongly) inductively supported beliefs about the behavior of physical objects in terms of normative 'ought to'-claims, but it is not as if we have some sort of right to expect physical objects to behave as we desire - as is the case for technical artifacts (cf. Franssen 2006). More on this in sections 4 and 5. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 3 broken television set still is a television set and the proper function of a worn-out light bulb still is to provide light.2 If we combine these two observations we arrive at the conclusion that there is something peculiar about technological explanations - i.e. explanations that account for an artifact's function in terms of its structure. Since (1) there must be an explanatory link between an artifact's function and its structure, and (2) the notion of artifact function is normative, it seems to follow that technological explanations are special by being inherently normative. Or so Peter Kroes (1998; 2001) argues. It is my aim in this paper to scrutinize this argument for I think it runs together a couple of different points about artifact functions and explanations. In the next section, I will present Kroes's arguments in more detail. Section 3 contains internal criticism of his arguments, and in section 4 I will argue that there is a more fundamental confusion underlying Kroes's arguments and I will show how we can dispose of this confusion by analyzing his endeavor in two separate projects. We need to distinguish between a theory of artifact functions on the one hand and an account of technological explanations on the other. The former should deal with the normativity of functions, so that the latter can then pass the buck. The rest of the paper serves to flesh out this reply; in section 5 I will present a specific theory of artifact functions and show how it can be combined with an account of technological explanation in the way I envisaged in section 4. Section 6 contains the conclusion. 2 There are limits here; one would be hard-pressed to still call a television set that has been smashed to a thousand pieces with a jackhammer a television set. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 4 2. Kroes on Technological Explanations and Normativity3 To argue his point about the peculiarity of technological explanations, Kroes first observes that technical artifacts have a dual nature. They are physical objects, but they also have intentional or functional properties essentially. As a result, we can give both functional and physicalistic descriptions of artifacts, with either description partially or wholly black-boxing the other. A clock is any time-keeping device, whatever its exact physicochemical make-up and, alternatively, someone without any experience with pencils cannot deduce that a 6-inch hexagonal elongated piece of wood with a lead inside is for writing (though she might discover that it can be used for writing). The two descriptions are logically independent and, as a result, it is impossible to deduce function from structure or the other way around. Standard deductive-nomological explanations are barred. Next, he presents an example of a technological explanation that involves the Newcomen steam engine. The main function of Newcomen steam engines was to drive water pumps. They did so by means of the up-and-down movements of their great beam. The great beam itself was driven by the actual steam engine that consisted of a boiler, a steam valve, and a cylinder with moving piston (see Figure 1). Roughly, the explanation of these engines has three ingredients. (1) Physical laws or phenomena, e.g., that steam occupies a much larger volume than does water, that rapid condensation of steam in a closed vessel creates a partial vacuum, that atmospheric pressure exerts a force on the piston. (2) The physical make-up and configuration of the engine, e.g., the boiler, steam valve, movable piston, and great beam. 3 This section summarizes sections 4 and 5 of (Kroes 1998). Final Draft – January 20, 2006 5 (3) Dynamic behaviors and causal interactions of the components, e.g., heating and expansion of water and steam, opening and closing of the steam valve, injection of cold water, condensation of water, creation of a partial vacuum, and movements of the piston. Kroes rightly observes that it does not follow from an explanation along these lines that the function of the steam engine is to drive pumps, nor that it is to move the great beam up and down. All that follows is that the steam engine can be used to drive pumps, that it is a means to that end, or that it has the capacity to drive pumps. It is impossible to get the normative explanandum containing the ascription of a proper function from the purely descriptive explanans. He concludes that the explanation as presented is not a technological explanation since it does not properly account for the steam engine's function in terms of its structure. Kroes (2001: 38-9) contains a sketchy possible repair. Perhaps, says Kroes, the relation between explanandum and explanans can be conceived in terms of pragmatic rules of actions that are grounded in causal relations. For example, if one's goal is to drive a water pump, and a steam engine has the capacity to do so (i.e., something like the following causal conditional holds: If the steam engine is put to use properly in appropriate circumstances, it will drive a water pump), then one can infer the following rule of action: To drive a water pump, use a Newcomen steam engine. In this context of action, the steam engine is a means to an end and acquires a function. The engine's physical structure still figures indirectly, since the rule of action is formulated on the basis of a causal conditional that was derived from the engine's structure. Kroes concludes: "A technological explanation, therefore, is not a deductive explanation, but it connects structure and function on the basis of causal relations and pragmatic rules of action based on these causal relations." (2001: 39). So, in sum, Kroes's points are: (1) a technological explanation must account for an artifact's function in terms of Final Draft – January 20, 2006 6 its structure, (2) 'standard' explanations (along the lines of the D-N model or a somewhat loosened version of it, as in the example above) cannot accomplish that task, and (3) using the notion of action rules, it seems possible to construe a more adequate account that does connect structure and function in the desired manner. Figure 1 – Newcomen's steam engine 3. Kroes's Arguments Reconsidered In my opinion, there is something seriously wrong with these arguments. I will argue that Kroes's arguments do not show what they purport to show, even on their own terms, and, in the next section, that his construal of technological explanations runs into trouble because it conflates two rather different projects. As a result, Kroes's effort has to satisfy a set of inconsistent requirements and is doomed to fail. I can be relatively brief about the first point. It is not clear which of the following claims Kroes aims to establish: Final Draft – January 20, 2006 7 (1) A technological explanation of Newcomen's steam engine does not fit the mold of the D-N model of explanation. (2) Most or all technological explanations do not fit the mold of the D-N model. (3) Most or all technological explanations do not fit any of the currently available models of explanation. I think he should be interested in (3), because that would be a good reason to think that there is something truly peculiar about technological explanations. If the currently available accounts of explanation (such as the D-N account, unification accounts, and causal accounts) are capturing important aspects of what it is to be an explanation, and if technological explanations do not conform to any of these accounts, then they might represent an interesting new species of explanation worthy of philosophical attention. Unfortunately, however, the only claim Kroes establishes with some plausibility is (1). To be fair, I should add that if (1) is correct and the explanation of the steam engine is a representative example of technological explanations in general, the truth of (1) lends inductive support to (2). So to the extent that this inductive argument is compelling, the plausibility of (2) is established as well. But the plausibility of (2) does very little to prove (3). For that, it would have to be shown that technological explanations fit none of the currently available accounts of explanation, e.g. Friedman's and Kitcher's unification accounts, Salmon's, Woodward's, and other causal accounts, Van Fraassen's pragmatic account, and Cartwright's simulacrum account. Even accounts of intentional explanation might be relevant if one thinks artifact functions are intrinsically related to agents' intentions. Or accounts of social explanation, if one is of the opinion that artifact functions are inherently social phenomena. I am not saying that this cannot be done, but Kroes has certainly not done it. He has only shown that technological explanations cannot be construed as D-N explanations. While that may be perfectly true, it is Final Draft – January 20, 2006 8 hardly a reason for distress, since for many the D-N model has by now been relegated to the domain of philosophical relics. In fact, as I will make clear in due course, there is every reason to think that his construal of technological explanations suffers from internal inconsistencies to such an extent that no account of explanation ought to fit it, on pain of being inconsistent itself. As far as I can see, the suggestion to construe the relation between explanandum and explanans in terms of action rules is not successful either. The step from a causal relation to a rule of action is relatively unproblematic: If one wants a certain effect and one knows one or more sufficient cause(s) of this effect, then, given the usual ceteris paribus clauses for causal relations and some hedging assumptions about the proportionality of the means in relation to the end, it is perfectly rational from a practical point of view to bring about this effect by bringing about one of these sufficient cause(s). If Newcomen's engine can drive a water pump if it is operated properly, one could use it to pump water if one wants so, but - and this illustrates the chief difficulty - in the same vein we can add that, if it can be used to tear stuff apart, one could use it to tear stuff apart if that is what one wants. One can use an electric guitar to play licks, and if one so desires, it would be rational to use it for that purpose, but if one is in a rockstar-type of mood, a guitar can also be used to smash loudspeakers, and it would be no less rational to use it to that end. None of this, however, goes to show that Newcomen's steam engine is for tearing stuff apart or that smashing loudspeakers is an electric guitar's proper function. Although the fact that something has a number of capacities that can be expressed in terms of causal conditionals warrants inferences to various rules of action (under the assumptions mentioned), nothing supports one of these rules in particular as the proper one, and neither does the artifact considered in isolation give you any reason to suppose that one of these causal capacities is the artifact's proper function, as opposed to an accidental or system Final Draft – January 20, 2006 9 function, i.e. just something it can do. While causal knowledge may underpin rules of action, I do not see how it could sustain proper function ascriptions. In the end, the suggested repair is not much of an improvement over Kroes's initial proposal. All that can be inferred from action rules is that if a certain artifact can be used to accomplish some end, then it is rational to use it to that end, but that follows virtually analytically (again, given some background assumptions) from the fact that it is a means to that end, and that was already established in the initial proposal. 4. Functions: To Ascribe and to Explain Given that Kroes's project leads to a dead end considered by its own lights, let us now take a step back and turn to the second point. I will argue that there is a more fundamental confusion vexing the project. Unearthing this confusion will also enable us to see why his project really was a non-starter. Kroes stipulates that a technological explanation is an explanation that accounts for an artifact's proper function in terms of its physicochemical make-up. This construal is, I think, seriously misguided because it runs together two rather different projects, to wit (1) that of giving an account of proper function ascriptions and (2) that of explaining how, in virtue of its physicochemical make-up, an artifact can fulfill its function. The result of (1) is a set of necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for the truth or assertibility of claims like 'artifact x has proper function f.' It is fairly obvious that this set will contain more conditions than just those related to the x's physicochemical make-up - that is in fact the negative result of Kroes's argument: claims about proper functions cannot be deduced solely from information about the artifact's physicochemical make-up. But it is not so obvious that something like a highly detailed account of x's workings must be among these conditions, for that would mean that no one except highly knowledgeable engineers could ever be justified or correct in claiming that an artifact has a proper function. Project (2), on the other hand, provides an account of how an artifact's physicochemical make-up enables it to exhibit the Final Draft – January 20, 2006 10 behaviors required for its proper functioning and here the notion of mechanistic explanation immediately springs to mind. What Kroes tries to do, however, is to get the results of both project (1) and (2) while drawing exclusively on the means for project (2). That is an impossible task. An analogy will help to clarify the reason why. Suppose we want to explain why the function of the heart is to pump blood, or, more precisely, to determine whether the proper function of the heart is to pump blood. Surely, an elaborate scrutiny of hearts and their behavior by itself will not allow us to conclude that their proper function is to pump blood, yet this is the only option open to us on an extrapolated version of Kroes's proposal, since he seems to be thinking that an item's proper function could be determined just by looking at its physicochemical make-up. Instead, we should distinguish the project of spelling out the truth or assertibility conditions for "The function of the heart is to pump blood", from that of explaining how the heart is able to pump blood. Accounting for the fact that the function of the heart is to pump blood is not the same as accounting for how it can pump blood. The first project will involve more than just the heart's 'intrinsic' properties. Biological function theories disagree on exactly what more; some suggest synchronic relational properties such as the heart's current contribution to organism fitness (Walsh 1996; Lewens 2004), others look at diachronic relational (historical) properties such as the heart's ancestors contribution to ancestor fitness (Millikan 1984, 1993; Neander 1991a, 1991b). The outcome of the second project, however, will look more like Kroes's proposed explanans. It will explicate how the physicochemical make-up of the heart and its constituent parts in their particular configuration leads to dynamic behaviors that, in the appropriate environment, add up to pumping blood. The crucial point is that accounting for an item's proper function, on the one hand, cannot be done without taking the item's environment into account, be it its current ecological niche, Final Draft – January 20, 2006 11 its history, its ancestors, its users, its designers, or their intentions and/or (justified) beliefs. Proper functions are not among the intrinsic properties of an item and therefore they cannot be discovered by solely looking at the item itself, isolated from its environment. An item's capacities and its behaviors, on the other hand, are among its intrinsic properties and can be explained by looking just at the item's physicochemical constitution and mereological makeup. The two projects are largely independent. One can be justified, even correct, in ascribing proper functions to organs or artifacts without knowing how they are able to perform that function, and, alternatively, one can explain how it is that organs or artifacts (or their parts) have the capacities they have or show the behaviors they show without knowing that one of these capacities or behaviors is associated with a proper function. Of course, one is typically interested in an explanation of how an organ or artifact can perform the behavior associated with its proper function, since that tends to be its most interesting feature (that computers can function as paperweights is not the reason people buy them). What I have said so far should not be taken to imply that the projects are entirely unrelated; I have only argued that it is unwise to try and tackle them in one fell swoop. I now want to look at possible connections, two in particular. The first one is that an explanation of how something is able to perform its function might pop up in the justification for its having that function. Roughly, the intuition is that function ascriptions must have something to do with the actual behavioral capacities an object has, at least for paradigm exemplars of the object. In order to justify the claim 'x has proper function f' (where x is a normal exemplar of its type) there must be evidence that x can in fact f, and an adequate explanation of how x can f would be very good evidence, albeit not the only permissible type of evidence. Naïve theories of artifact functions overlook this intuition. Consider a theory that defines the function of an artifact to be what the designer intended the artifact to do. Such a theory lacks the evidencerequirement and thereby fails to link claims about proper functions to (evidence of) actual Final Draft – January 20, 2006 12 capacities. As a result, it allows for crazy function ascriptions. A mad designer's intention to build a spacecraft from a bunch of matchsticks does not warrant the conclusion that the result he produces is a spacecraft, for there is no way in which matchsticks could ever compose a spacecraft, at least not by current scientific lights. So the first way in which the two projects are related is by way of justification. An explanation of how something can fulfill its function can be among the justificatory grounds for the claim that an artifact has that proper function. The second connection appears in malfunction cases: situations where an item still has a proper function, even though it cannot perform that function. I assume that such cases do exist, both in biology and technology; malfunctioning hearts are still for pumping blood, and the proper function of a worn-out light bulb still is to provide light.4 For malfunction cases, the second project I identified takes on a slightly different form, since the question of how the artifact can perform its function is obsolete when we know that it cannot perform its function. What can be explained, however, and what is not obsolete, is how the artifact was supposed to perform its function. An answer to that question will look a lot like the answer to the original explanatory question, except that it will be phrased in normative or counterfactual terms. It explicates how the various parts ought to be configured, behave, and interact, or how they would have been configured and how they would have behaved and interacted, were the artifact to function properly.5 Even if one does not think that this answer is valuable in and of 4 One might argue over whether cases of worn-out artifacts properly belong under the heading of malfunction. For example, light bulbs are apparently designed so as to stop working after a certain amount of burning hours. I can see that one might interpret this as evidence that wearing out is in fact part of the proper function of a light bulb. For brevity's sake I will ignore this terminological quibble while taking it to be uncontroversial that a worn-out artifact still has a proper function. 5 Establishing the truth of counterfactual claims is a notoriously troublesome issue, which I cannot hope to address to any satisfactory extent here. I rely on an intuitive way of thinking about it, but will Final Draft – January 20, 2006 13 itself, it should be obvious that it has instrumental value as background knowledge for determining the causes of malfunction. Only in contrast to how the artifact was supposed to work will it become possible to find out how it malfunctions. Unlike scientific explanations of natural phenomena, technological explanations can inherit the normativity of function ascriptions. Although we might claim that photons 'ought' to behave as particles, this only goes so far as the theory from which we infer this claim has been inductively supported or as our previous experiences lend inductive support to such a claim. Such claims merely express inductively supported expectations about phenomena. Technological explanations, however, can incur an extra and stronger type of normativity in that there are independently ascertainable and objective facts of the matter as to how the artifact and its components ought to behave. These facts are grounded in the justified beliefs, intentions, and communicative actions of the designer(s) who devised the artifact or in the beliefs, intentions, and actions of the (group of) users who put the artifact to a new use that has gradually become widespread standard use.6 Under the assumption that she is competent, i.e. broadly rational and skillful and in possession of appropriate justification for the beliefs upon which she acts, a designer objectively determines an artifact's proper function. That fact entitles us to objective claims about what this proper function is, even in the face of malfunction. Note that the competence assumption is essential: only if designers tend to have add one important qualification. The possible worlds taken into account must be limited to those close to our own with roughly similar laws of nature. Without this constraint, it may be possible to think of worlds where materials and artifacts have very different properties and capacities so that, say, a bunch of matchsticks could compose a spacecraft. If this brief remark does not satisfy the reader, my advice is to forget about the counterfactual reading altogether and focus on the normative reading. 6 For brevity's sake, I will ignore such user-imparted proper functions for the rest of this section, but a story very similar to the story I am about to tell can be told about them. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 14 correct beliefs about the workings of the artifacts they devise, skillfully build the artifacts they devise (or see to it that this gets done), and truthfully communicate about functions, will we have additional reasons, beyond mere past experience or other inductive support, for claiming that artifacts ought to behave such-and-such. Looking at the kinds of justification involved can further bring out the difference. The justification for ought-claims about malfunctioning artifacts differs in kind from the sorts of justification we might have for normative statements about the behavior of natural objects. Of course, designers base their beliefs on scientific theories or practical experience with the materials they use and in this sense their knowledge about artifacts parallels the sort of knowledge scientists have about natural phenomena. An engineer's claim that an iron bar ought not to buckle under a specific pressure does not differ in kind from the claim that a photon ought to behave as a particle; both are supported by normal scientific evidence. For non-designers, however, another story must be told. Provided the competence assumption mentioned above is warranted - as it certainly seems to be in our society - they can take the designer's word7 as support for claims about proper functions and hence about how the artifact and its components ought to behave. What is more, because of social, economical, and legal arrangements in our society, users have legal rights vis-à-vis designers with regard to claims about what artifacts ought to do. Warrant for the competence assumption is officially institutionalized, so to speak. Designers are expected to be trustworthy and reliable in what they do, i.e. they are expected to be competent. Failing these expectations leads to sanctions. Because of all this, non-designers are entitled to objective normative claims about the proper functions of artifacts. The justification for such claims consists of beliefs about what the designers wanted an artifact to do. These beliefs screen off other types of justification, such as 7 Or something derived from that through a chain of communication, e.g. what the label on the box says, or the salesperson, or your sister who just bought the artifact. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 15 experience with the artifact, testimony about successful artifact use, or even a theory about the artifact. Of course, non-designers sometimes also have these latter justifications for a claim that artifact x ought to f, but my point is that they do not need it in order to be justified in claiming so. All they need for that - still under the competence assumption - is knowledge or justified belief that the designer intended x to be for f-ing. This screens off other types of justification and provides just the extra normative force that adheres to proper function claims and that can be inherited by explanations of how a malfunctioning artifact ought to function. To round off this lengthy excursion about the normativity of proper function claims, let me give an illustration. Say I have been commuting happily in my car every day for the past year, but then one morning when I turn the key it will not start. I want to claim that my car still has its proper function (say, personal motorized transportation) and that it ought to start if I turn the key, even though it presently malfunctions. What sort of evidence do I have for this claim? Obviously my past experience with the car, but that is not crucial. What is more important is that I have every reason to believe that my car was designed and built by competent engineers with the purpose of designing and building something that has the proper function of providing personal motorized transportation. Therefore, the normative claim that my car ought to start carries with it an extra and stronger normative force beyond that offered by the mere past experience induction. If I were to not have had that experience, I would still have been entitled to claim that my car ought to start. Compare this with my successfully and regularly lulling a child to sleep by the monotonous sound of driving. If one day the child will not go to sleep, I might also claim that my car ought to lull the child into sleep, but this claim clearly carries a smaller normative force because it lacks the additional support of claims related to proper functions. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 16 What does all this mean for the (alleged) inherent normativity of technological explanations? Let me spell out the ramifications of what I have said. (1) Proper function ascriptions have a normative force in that they can be correct of an artifact even when that artifact cannot perform its proper function. Malfunctioning artifacts still have proper functions.8 (2) An adequate theory of artifact functions - the result of what I dubbed project (1) - should account for this normativity, i.e. it should reproduce the better part of our intuitions about which malfunctioning artifacts nonetheless have proper functions. (3) An account of technological explanation - the result of project (2) - may pass the normativity buck to the theory of artifact functions and need not account for normativity itself. (4) Technological explanations can inherit the normativity of function ascriptions. If an artifact functions properly, a good technological explanation truthfully explains how it does so. If an artifact malfunctions and still has a proper function, a good technological explanation explains - in equally truthful ought-claims or counterfactuals - how the artifact was supposed to function, had it not been malfunctioning. The obvious question is whether the two projects I have outlined are feasible. It is one thing to formulate a set of requirements that a theory of functions and an account of explanation ought to satisfy, but quite another thing to show that these requirements can be met. That is why I will use the next section to sketch a theory of functions and an account of technological explanation - the former borrowed, the latter of my own making - that, for all I can see, satisfy the requirements I have submitted. 8 One might argue over whether the notion of malfunction presupposes that of a proper function so that every malfunctioning artifact necessarily has a proper function. Nothing much depends on this for me, so I leave the question undecided. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 17 5. Making It Work Wybo Houkes and Pieter Vermaas have developed a theory of artifact functions which seems to me perfectly suitable for the present purposes (Houkes and Vermaas 2004; Vermaas and Houkes 2006). First, a bit of background. On this theory, artifacts are embedded in the actiontheoretical notion of a use plan: a series of considered actions undertaken to realize a practical goal desired by an agent, in which at least one of the actions involves the manipulation of the artifact. By exercising one or more of its capacities an artifact contributes to the realization of the overall goal of the plan. Designing engineers devise use plans when they design artifacts, but users are free to invent their own alternative use plans, which may subsequently become new standardized uses. The theory itself, then, is a theory about when agents are justified in ascribing functions to artifacts. Here is what it says. An agent a [justifiably, JdR] ascribes the capacity to f as a function to an artifact x, relative to a use plan p for x and relative to an account A, iff: I. the agent a has the belief that x has the capacity to f, when manipulated in the execution of p, and the agent a has the belief that if this execution of p leads successfully to its goals, this success is due, in part, to x's capacity to f; C. the agent a can justify these two beliefs on the basis of A; and E. the agents d who developed p have intentionally selected x for the capacity to f and have intentionally communicated p to other agents u. (Houkes and Vermaas 2004: 65, with slight notational adjustments) A few remarks for clarification. First, on this account functions are relativized to use plans; the latter is the more fundamental notion. Having a function means for an artifact to be embedded in a use plan that privileges one (or a few) of its many capacities as special, i.e. as Final Draft – January 20, 2006 18 its proper function(s). Secondly, the beliefs that x can f and that its doing so contributes to the realization of the use plan's goal need to be justifiable on the basis of an account A (which is itself subject to normal standards of justification). This account can take on a number of forms; for new, inexperienced users it can be simple testimony or observation (having heard that this contraption is a laser pointer, or having read the inscriptions on the package), for technically savvy users who enjoy taking apart their electrical appliances, it can be practical insight in their internal workings combined with experiential knowledge, and for engineers, it will typically be full-fledged technological and scientific explanations, often combined with practical experience from prototype tests. Thirdly, as foreshadowed in the previous sections, the notion of function turns out to be a relational one. To put it somewhat crudely, artifacts by themselves do not have functions; they acquire functions in a context of use plans, users and designers, and their justified beliefs, intentions, and actions. Does this function theory account for the normativity of proper function ascriptions? Its creators think it does and I am inclined to agree with them. For brevity's sake, I will not laboriously go over a host of examples that the theory successfully covers, but limit myself to an outline of its general strategy for coping with the normativity of function ascriptions and a discussion of one worry.9 Since agents only need justified beliefs, as opposed to knowledge, about the artifact's capacities, the theory allows for cases in which an agent's beliefs are defeated by later evidence. In this way, one can ascribe functions to malfunctioning artifacts. I may have every reason for believing that my phone has the appropriate capacities to allow me to call my mother and fulfill all the other conditions laid down by the theory and, by that token, be justified in ascribing the function of allowing for conversations at a distance to it, 9 A more elaborate discussion of the theory can be found in (Houkes and Vermaas 2004, 2005; Vermaas and Houkes 2006). Final Draft – January 20, 2006 19 but if - unbeknownst to me - a practical joker has removed the microphone from my phone, it will nonetheless malfunction. This example, however, does raise a concern, for the theory seems to imply that once I have learned of my phone's malfunctioning, I can no longer ascribe the same proper function to it because I no longer have the belief that it has the capacity to transmit my voice to the other end of the line. That is a counterintuitive result. To deal with cases like these, we must modify condition I. The agent does not have to have the belief that x can f but may also have the overriding belief that x would have been able to f, had particular counteracting interferences not occurred, or that it ought to be able to f given what the designers communicated about x. In short, condition I should read: agent a has the belief that x has or should have the capacity to f, etc. (and, of course, a must be able to justify this belief too). With this modified condition in place, I can still ascribe the function of teleconversation to my phone after learning about the removed microphone, for I am justified in believing that it would have had that capacity, had someone not been playing this joke on me.10, 11 So far so good then. The next task is to see if this function theory matches up with an account of technological explanation in the way I envisaged. Not unexpectedly, I think it does. As I argued above, such an account of explanation must deal with explanations that explicate how artifacts are able to exhibit various behaviors, and the behavior associated with their function in particular. I think the resources for this are available in the literature on mechanistic explanation, although they have not always been clearly recognized and 10 To be complete, I should add that for situations where an artifact malfunctions due to normal wear and tear, the I-condition must be modified to include something like 'agent a knows that x used to have the capacity to f but has now stopped having that capacity due to normal wear and tear'. 11 The suggested modifications are in line with what Houkes and Vermaas say, but not explicitly theirs. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 20 presented. I have given the contours of this account of explanation in another paper (De Ridder 2006) and I will briefly summarize my ideas here. To explain a particular piece of artifact behavior, there are two general strategies available, leading to two different complementary types of understanding (cf. also Bechtel and Richardson 1993: 18). I have tried to capture these strategies in the following descriptions. Top-down strategy: take the behavior to be explained and decompose it into more basic sub-behaviors, reiterate this step if possible - it should become clear how the complex behavior being explained is realized by simpler behaviors in a specific spatiotemporal configuration - and for all the sub-behaviors, indicate which component(s) take(s) care of them. Bottom-up strategy: identify the structural components of the artifact and give information about their physicochemical make-up and spatial configuration, show how their physicochemical features and configuration result in various behaviors and then describe how these behaviors, in their spatiotemporal configuration, together make up the behavior to be explained. The first strategy focuses on behaviors; it explicates how a complex behavior is realized by ever-simpler sub-behaviors by decomposing the overall complex behavior in its constituent sub-behaviors. It provides purely functional12 understanding, solely in terms of behaviors, thereby black-boxing the physicochemical make-up of the artifact and components that exhibit these behaviors. The second strategy opens up the black box; it starts from the structural decomposition of the artifact by identifying its component parts, and then describes 12 Note that, in this context, the term 'functional' has the weak sense of 'having to do with inputoutput relations only'; it does not refer to the richer notion of proper function. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 21 their relevant characteristics (morphological, physical, and chemical properties relevant for the behavior being explained), and how these characteristics enable particular behaviors (under appropriate circumstances). Finally - and here it overlaps the first strategy - it shows how these behaviors add up to the complex behavior being explained. The second strategy offers structural understanding of the artifact's workings. So while the first strategy starts from a decomposition of the behavior and subsequently indicates how the structural parts fit into this functional, or behavioral, decomposition, the second strategy starts from the structural decomposition and works its way upwards to the behaviors exhibited by the structural components, showing how the behavioral decomposition maps unto the structural decomposition. Although the two strategies are complementary I do not think they should be merged into one. The demands that this merged strategy would place on a good technological explanation are too strict. Explanations that only provide functional understanding would automatically be disqualified as incomplete, whereas I am convinced - although I will not argue the point here - that they are perfectly good explanations in many contexts, not just in the pragmatic sense of being acceptable to the person with the explanatory request, but also in the stronger sense of being an objectively good explanation. I hope this brief sketch suffices to give the reader an impression of what this account of technological explanation looks like. Let us now move on to the last part of the paper and see if this account lives up to the standards I set for it in the previous section. The crucial question is whether it can grapple with the normativity issue for malfunction cases. If we ascribe a proper function to a malfunctioning artifact on the basis of the modified ICE conditions there are three options: (1) we have a false but justified belief that the artifact has the capacity to function, (2) we have a justified (and true) belief that the artifact should have the capacity to function (in the sense described earlier), or (3) we know that the artifact used to have the capacity to function, but that it is now worn-out. In all three cases, it seems to me perfectly Final Draft – January 20, 2006 22 possible to give an explanation of how the artifact is believed to work, supposed to work or how it used to work. In each case and for both explanatory strategies, the explanans will be phrased in normative or counterfactual terms, e.g., this component should sit here and interact with that other one right there so that they would have shown such-and-so behavior, thus contributing to the proper functioning of the artifact. Or: this light ought to go on when I hit that switch. Or: this spring used to push that thing back. Like explanations of properly functioning artifacts, these explanations can be evaluated in terms of truth, justification, acceptability, or whatever else is deemed appropriate. I don't see any particular problems about normativity left here that an account of technological explanation could not pass on to a function theory. Someone may worry about circularity, though. If part of the justification for ascribing a function is a technological explanation and if an account of technological explanation passes the normativity buck to the function theory, doesn't that land us in some sort of justificatory circle? Not if we look closer at the exact justificatory relations. Typically, professional engineers or technically savvy 'laypersons' will have at their disposal more or less elaborate technological explanations as justifications for (some of) the function ascriptions they make. That means that they will have justified beliefs about the physicochemical properties of the artifact and its components, the components' configuration and interactions, and their behavioral capacities. But the justification for these beliefs, and hence for the explanation, in no way depends on the function ascription; instead it is based on the normal justificatory mechanisms for beliefs about stuff in the world: observation, experiments, experience, and testimony. So if an engineer ascribes a function to a malfunctioning artifact, the normativity of this ascription is in the end epistemic, derivative of the normativity of epistemic justification. Although the justification for a function ascription will, for some persons, rely Final Draft – January 20, 2006 23 on a technological explanation, the justification for this explanation in its turn does not rely on the function ascription and therefore there is no justificatory circularity here. Persons lacking access to technological explanations who make function ascriptions justify these ascriptions by observation, experience, or testimony. In addition to the normative force of good justifications, these laypersons have an additional normative claim that entitles them to say that an artifact ought to have a certain proper function and fulfill it properly, as elaborated in the previous section. The epistemic division of labor in our society is such that professional engineers are entrusted with the task of designing properly functioning contraptions for various purposes. Laypersons have a legal and 'social-epistemic' right to expect engineers to have true beliefs about the workings and functions of the artifacts they make and to trust their testimony.13 Whatever the details of this arrangement, we do not stumble on a justificatory circle here and that is the point I wanted to argue. The circularity worry is misplaced and the combination of the ICE theory of function ascriptions and my account of technological explanation can bear the burden. For all I can see, the two together deal adequately with the normativity of proper function ascriptions and technological explanations. 6. Conclusion Against Peter Kroes I have argued that technological explanations are not necessarily special because they have to deal with the normativity of proper function ascriptions. Kroes's argument rests on a confusion of two rather different projects: that of giving a function theory and that of giving an account of technological explanation. The first project should grapple with the normativity of function ascriptions, i.e. it should explicate the conditions under which malfunctioning artifacts have proper functions. The second project can then pass the 13 I owe this point to Wybo Houkes, cf. also (Houkes and Vermaas 2005) esp. chapter 8. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 24 normativity buck to the first project. The principal reason for distinguishing these projects is that the property of having a proper function is relational, or extrinsic, whereas the property of having the capacity to exhibit a particular behavior is intrinsic. Consequently, accounting for the property of having a proper function must take the artifact's context into account, while accounting for the property of having a behavioral capacity can be done by looking just at the artifact itself. I have also argued that my way of framing the problem is more than wishful thinking, because Vermaas and Houkes's ICE function theory and my account of technological explanation do a good job in meeting the requirements I set out for the two projects. Besides, they fit together fine in the way I envisioned at the beginning of this paper. References Bechtel, William, and Robert C. Richardson. 1993. Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. De Ridder, Jeroen. 2006. Mechanistic artefact explanation. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). Franssen, Maarten. 2006. The normativity of artefacts. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). Houkes, Wybo N., and Pieter E. Vermaas. 2004. Actions versus functions: A plea for an alternative metaphysics of artifacts. The Monist 87 (1): 52-71. ---. 2005. Artefacts: From Functions to Plans of Use. Book manuscript. Kroes, Peter A. 1998. Technological explanations: The relation between structure and function of technological objects. Technè 3 (3): 18-34. ---. 2001. Engineering design and the empirical turn in the philosophy of technology. In The Empirical Turn in the Philosophy of Technology, edited by P. A. Kroes and A. W. M. Meijers. Amsterdam: JAI (Elsevier Science). Lewens, Tim. 2004. Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Millikan, Ruth. 1984. Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Final Draft – January 20, 2006 25 ---. 1993. White Queen Psychology and Other Essays for Alice. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Neander, Karen. 1991a. Functions as selected effects: the conceptual analyst's defense. Philosophy of Science 58 (2): 168-184. ---. 1991b. The teleological notion of 'function'. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69 (4): 454-468. Vermaas, Pieter E., and Wybo N. Houkes. 2006. Technical functions: A drawbridge between the intentional and structural natures of technical artefacts. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). Walsh, Denis M. 1996. Fitness and function. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 47 (4): 553-574.


Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche's Psychoactive Drugs

Philosophy

An exploration into the reciprocity between Nietzsche's drug use and his philosophy.

Antichrist Psychonaut: Nietzsche and Psychedelics – Peter Sjöstedt-H – '... And close your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.' So ends the famous fragment of Kubla Khan by the Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He tells us that the poem was an immediate transcription of an opium-induced dream he experienced in 1797. As is known, the Romantic poets and their kin were inspired by the use of psychoactive substances such as opium, the old world's common pain reliever. Pain elimination is its negative advantage, but its positive attribute lies in the psychedelic ('mindrevealing')1 state it can engender – a state described no better than by the original English opium eater himself, Thomas De Quincey: O just and righteous opium! ... thou bildest upon the bosom of darkness, out of the fantastic imagery of the brain, cities and temples, beyond the art of Phidias and Praxiteles – beyond the splendours of Babylon and Hekatómpylos; and, "from the anarchy of dreaming sleep," callest into sunny light the faces of long-buried beauties ... thou hast the keys of Paradise, O just, subtle, and mighty opium!2 Two decades following the publication of these words the First Opium War commences (1839) in which China is martially punished for trying to hinder the British trade of opium to the Chinese people. Though opium, derived from the innocent garden poppy Papavar somniferum, may cradle the keys to Paradise it also clutches the keys to Perdition: its addictive thus potentially ruinous nature is commonly known. Today, partly for these reasons, opiates are mostly illegal without license – stringently so in their most potent forms of morphine and heroin. Holy dread: the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche took opium, this milk of Paradise, sometimes confessedly in dangerously high doses. He was also a heavy user of other psychoactive drugs including potassium bromide, a mysterious 'Javanese narcotic', and most unremittingly, chloral hydrate, a known hallucinogen. This narcotic aspect of Nietzsche's life is neglected; it is the aim of this text to reveal the extent of his drug use and its effects, including a report of one of Nietzsche's psychedelic trips. Moreover we shall see how this drug use inspired his philosophy – and how his philosophy inspired this use. Nietzsche was born in 1844 to a Lutheran pastor who died five years thereafter, at the age of thirty-six, due to a 'softening of the brain'. This fatal malady of his father's was to worry Nietzsche, as a possible hereditary condition, until his own mental collapse in 1889. Friedrich Nietzsche did suffer severe afflictions of the brain and body, beginning in childhood. At the age of thirteen, the severe headaches which were to plague him for the rest of his life began in earnest.3 So strong were these headaches that near to a whole school semester was lost as the young pupil was prevented from excessive reading by his mother. However, as a bright student, the young Nietzsche surged on and was awarded a place at Schulpforta, a boarding 1 'Psychedelic' is a term coined in 1957 by psychiatrist Dr Humphry Osmond to emphasise the psychotherapeutic value of certain psychoactive drugs, notably LSD. The etymological conjuncts are psyche (mind) and dēloun (to reveal), the latter from dēlos (visible, clear). I use the term 'psychedelic' broadly in this text to refer to a chemically--‐induced state of mind that brings forth extraordinary representations. 2 Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater, pleasures, p. 195. 1821AD. 3 Curtis Cate, p. 13. 2 school renowned for its classical studies. Nietzsche wore spectacles as he was very myopic even at this early stage. A doctor in the school once examined his eyes and called attention to the possibility that Nietzsche may go blind at an advanced age.4 This foresight virtually bore reality, with Nietzsche complaining that in 1879, 'in the thirty-sixth year of life, I arrived at the lowest point of my vitality – I still lived, but without being able to see three paces in front of me.'5 As Nietzsche's mother, sister, and others believed6, it was his poor eyesight combined with his lust for reading that caused his initial migraines. To counter the pain, Nietzsche eventually turned to drugs. This in its turn may have exacerbated the problem due to the toxicity, addiction, and withdrawal symptoms those nineteenth century drugs produced. Nietzsche experimented with drugs early on in life. At the beginning of the 1860s, in Schulpforta, he snorted prohibited snuff with his fellow pupil Paul Deussen,7 and in his fifth year he joined the 'Wild Clique': a fraternal club that endorsed smoking and drinking and spurned studiousness. Nietzsche, however, came to scorn alcohol but not before he was demoted from his years-long supervisory position as head of class due to an incident of excessive drinking.8 Whilst a student of philology at Leipzig University in 1868, Nietzsche took time out to join the Prussian military machine, training on horseback. As the best rider of the new recruits, he was given the wildest steed to tame. The steed, however, was not for taming: a jump caused Nietzsche a grievous blow to the chest as it cracked into the pommel of the saddle. Ten days of acute pain were relieved by morphine.9 In 1869, at the mere age of twenty-four, Nietzsche is appointed chair of classical philology at Basel University10 a month before he is awarded his doctorate (from Leipzig) – awarded, furthermore, without examination. A year later Nietzsche takes leave of his position to serve as a medic in the Franco-Prussian War. He is taught how to administer chloroform – a popular anesthetic at the time. After chloroform's discovery in 1831 it was also used recreationally as it produced euphoria. Euphoria, however, was the furthest state of Nietzsche's mind as he treated the war wounded, a depressing mental state that could only have worsened as he himself became ill there. As Nietzsche writes to his friend Karl von Gersdorff: I fell very ill myself and quickly developed a severe attack of dysentery and diphtheria. ... After I had been dosed with opium and injections of tannin and silver nitrate for several days, the worst danger was over.11 As well as contracting these intestinal, bacterial diseases, it is believed that he may have caught syphilis here too, if not in a brothel a few years before. It is a matter of (much) dispute as to whether Nietzsche's general malaise and cognitive downfall in 1889 was caused by this mostly sexually transmitted bacterial infection. As we have seen, however, his headaches had started from a young age, and his father may have passed the problem down to his son. Whatever the case may be, Nietzsche's suffering only increased after 1870 leading to increased drug use to ease the pain. But it was more than pain relief that the drugs caused. 4 Paul Deussen, 1859--‐1864. Conversations with Nietzsche, p. 15. 5 Ecce Homo, Wise, §1, p. 38. 6 Elisabeth Förster--‐Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. II, ch. XXVII. 7 Paul Deussen, 1859--‐1864. Conversations with Nietzsche, p.10. 8 Paul Deussen, 1859--‐1864. Conversations with Nietzsche, p.15. 9 Letter to Erwin Rohde, 3rd April 1868. 10 Incidentally where Paracelsus is believed to have re--‐introduced opium (as Laudanum) to Europe in the sixteenth century. 11 Letter to Karl von Gersdorff, 20th October 1870. My italics. 3 Before Nietzsche had become a professor at Basel, he had become an ardent disciple of the atheist, Idealist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In a sentence, Schopenhauer asserted that the world we perceive is but a human representation of the inner essence of everything, which is will. Schopenhauer inspired Nietzsche's first published book, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, and he arguably returned as inspiration for Nietzsche's later works. As a highly creative individual, Nietzsche could not have overlooked these words from Schopenhauer: By wine or opium we can intensify and considerably heighten our mental powers, but as soon as the right measure of stimulus is exceeded, the effect will be exactly the opposite.12 The double role of opium as a medicinal sedative and as an intellectual, artistic catalyst was well known, and Nietzsche was certainly well aware of the creative possibilities of such substances. In his 1870 essay The Dionysian Worldview, a precursor to the extended Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche begins by stating that, There are two states in which man arrives at the rapturous feeling of existence, namely in dreaming and in intoxication.13 He then identifies these two states with the gods Apollo and Dionysus, respectively. Loosely speaking, these are in turn identified with Schopenhauer's world of representation and of will. Apollo, commonly adorned with the opium poppy, is valued as signifying ordered beauty, whereas Dionysus, the forest god of wine and trance, is valued as signifying the chaotic drive of unfettered lust and the primal loss of self. In antiquity, Dionysus was regarded as an exotic god who led a procession of bearded satyrs and wild women: the maenads. There were a number of Dionysian cults in ancient Greece involving much sex, drugs and loss of control – later to become the orgiastic Bacchanalia against which the Roman authorities legislated under threat of death. Under his supposed epithet of Iacchus, Dionysus is also closely associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries, beloved of those in psychedelic circles. The son of Zeus, Dionysus is reborn after death – a story that bears equivalences to Christ. In Nietzsche's later works, however, Dionysus becomes explicitly equated to the Antichrist, as we shall show. In Nietzsche's early description of the Dionysian state, one cannot help but compare it to a psychoactive drug report with its consequential come down: For the rapture of the Dionysian state with its annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence contains, while it lasts, a [will-less] lethargic element in which all personal experience of the past became immersed. This chasm of oblivion separates the worlds of everyday reality and the Dionysian reality. But as soon as this everyday reality re-enters consciousness, it is experienced as such, with nausea: an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fruit of these states. ... In the consciousness of awakening from intoxication he sees everywhere the terrible and absurd in human existence: it nauseates him. Now he understands the wisdom of the forest god.14 The link between his coinciding opium-treated illnesses in the Franco-Prussian war and his work on Greek tragedy cannot be overlooked. Indeed Nietzsche made the connection in the later critical preface/postscript he produced for his first book, stating that, 12 Arthur Schopenhauer, Essay on the Freedom of the Will, ch. III. 13 The Dionysian Worldview, §1. 14 The Dionysian Worldview, §3. 4 slowly convalescing from an illness contracted in the field, [I] gave definite form to The Birth of Tragedy...15 This book puts forward the theory that the origins of Greek tragedy lie in the Dionysian chorus that emerged from the older Dionysian mystical festivals. When fused with the more ordered Apollonian Greek element, the play structure resulted, with Dionysus at first always the tragic protagonist. The true Dionysian state that the tragic play sought to symbolize was one of rapture, of Rausch: the rush of intoxication. Thus Nietzsche begins his philosophical career arguing for the emergence of an art form, Tragedy, from intoxicated inspiration. Nietzsche's understanding of this state is gleaned from literature including that of Schopenhauer, and perhaps his own intoxication at the time. Schopenhauer argued that all individuality is but a representation (the principium individuationis) and that in its essential depths, our individual will is not separate from the single universal will at the basis of reality. The Dionysian state causes a dread-inducing fragmentation of one's represented individuality, conducing a dispersion of oneself into that deeper metaphysical unity. Nietzsche continues, If we add to this dread the blissful ecstasy which, prompted by the same fragmentation of the principium individuationis, rises up from man's innermost core, indeed from nature, we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the nature of the Dionysiac, most immediately understandable to using the analogy of intoxication. Under the influence of the narcotic potion hymned by all primitive men and peoples, or in the powerful approach of spring, joyfully penetrating the whole of nature, those Dionysiac urges are awakened, and as they grow more intense, subjectivity becomes a complete forgetting of the self.16 In his later postscripted preface to the book, Nietzsche argues that this Dionysian 'madness' might be a 'neurosis of health' – that is, a healthy madness which would only appear to be an oxymoron to a culture in decline. In this added section he writes, Might visions and hallucinations not have been shared by whole communities, by whole cult gatherings? And what if ... it was madness itself, to use a phrase of Plato's, that brought the greatest blessings upon Greece?17 Hence Nietzsche, from the outset, was enthused about narcotic, psychedelic intoxication and its value, whilst simultaneously he himself was becoming increasingly intoxicated as his illness progressed. Progress it did: severe insomnia, stomach and intestinal pains, eyestrain and increasing blindness creeps up upon his person. In 1876 he is granted a long period of absence from Basel due to his sickness. Many of his personal letters complain of his ailments, to the extent that one judges him to be a 'justified hypochondriac', if that also be not an oxymoron. In 1879 he was forced to completely end his professorship and life at Basel University due to frequent and excessive headaches, nausea, vomiting and seizures.18 As a result, Nietzsche was now free to pursue an unlimited life of philosophy, which had progressively become his ideal. Though he left, his ailments did not. The beginning of the 1880s were in fact his most intense period of pain. As well as suffering physiologically, he was saddened by the loss of his friendship with Lou Salomé and Paul Rée. Just before he begins to write what he considered 15 The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt at a Self--‐Criticism, §1, p. 3. 16 The Birth of Tragedy, §1, pp. 16--‐17. 17 The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt at a Self--‐Criticism, §4, pp. 6--‐7. 18 See Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 280. 5 to be his masterpiece, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,19 he writes to his two formerly close friends the following: My dears, Lou and Rée: ... Consider me, the two of you, as a semilunatic with a sore head who has been totally bewildered by long solitude. To this, I think, sensible insight into the state of things I have come after taking a huge dose of opium – in desperation. But instead of losing my reason as a result, I seem at last to have come to reason. ...20 Over a decade later Lou Salomé writes in her book, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, that intoxication and dreams were a central inspiration to Nietzsche's life and philosophy. She writes, Nietzsche ... was convinced that especially during conditions of intoxication and dream, a fullness of the past could be revived in the individual's present. Dreams always played a great role in his life and thinking, and during his last years he often drew from them – as with the solution of a riddle – the contents of his teachings. In this manner he employed, for instance, the dream related in Zarathustra (II, "The Soothsayer"), which came to him in the fall of 1882 in Leipzig; he never tired of carrying it about him and interpreting it.21 With his concurrent opium use one can compare the inspiration derived from such opiuminduced dreaming with that of the Romantics, to whom Nietzsche was ostensibly averse. Nietzsche was also, famously, averse to alcohol – which he compared unfavourably to opiates in his 1882 book, The Joyous Science: Perhaps Asians are distinguished above Europeans by a capacity for longer, deeper calm; even their opiates have a slow effect and require patience, as opposed to the disgusting suddenness of the European poison, alcohol.22 The reverence and inspiration that Nietzsche derives from opium can also be witnessed in the second edition of that same work, in two poems inspired by poppy-derived opium: ... Only on my bed flailed, Poppy and good conscience, those Trusted soporifics, failed. ... One hour passed, or two, or three– Or a year? – when suddenly All my thoughts and mind were drowned In timeless monotony: An abyss without a ground Opened up – not one more sound. ...23 19 Published in January 1883. 20 Letter to Lou Salomé and Paul Rée, mid--‐December 1882. 21 Lou Salomé, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, ch. III, p. 144. Also note especially in Zarathustra these chapters: Of Great Events, the coffin--‐of--‐masks nightmare in The Prophet, The Stillest Hour, Of The Three Evil Things, and The Intoxicated Song. 22 The Joyous Science, Book I, §43. 23 The Joyous Science, Appendix, The Mysterious Bark, p. 359. 6 Such opium pipe-dream poetry ranks alongside those of the Kubla Khan clan. In a subsequent poem, Nietzsche poses the problem of his pain with provision of poppies: ... Pain writes with daggers that are flying Into my bones: "World has no heart; The fool bears her a grudge and groans." Pour poppies, pour, O fever! Poison in my brain! You test my brow too long with pain. Why do you ask, "For what reward?" ... You fever, I should bless?– 24 Nietzsche's ills were treated by him as both a superficial curse and as a deeper blessing. It was the ailments that necessitated the opiates and other drugs, which in turn further inspired his thought. A physiologically healthy Nietzsche may have dissipated into the shadows of history. In this respect his drug use was a vital condition of his profound, earth-shattering philosophy which uncovered and uprooted the morbidly entrenched covert legacy of Christianity in western society. Nietzsche pushed himself to, and perhaps beyond, the limits of human intellectualization. To fuel this heroic drive even opium-injected dreams may not have sufficed. As Lou Salomé, to whom Nietzsche twice proposed, continued to write in her biography of the man: And yet, the tranquil dream is insufficient for that quest. What is needed is a much more real, effective, and even more terrible experiencing, namely through orgiastic Dionysian conditions and the chaos of frenzied passions – yes madness itself as a means of sinking back down into the mass of entwined feelings and imaginings. This seemed for Nietzsche the last road into the primal depths imbedded within us. Quite early Nietzsche had brooded over the meaning of madness as a possible source for knowledge and its inner sense that may have led the ancients to discern a sign of divine election.25 Did Nietzsche seek to induce divine madness so as to fully intuit the depths of the psyche? With this in mind, his famous maxim "What does not kill you makes you stronger"26 takes on a form applicable to the intake of psychoactive substances. Did Nietzsche take hazardous mixes and doses of psychoactive drugs? Yes. It may have made his philosophy stronger, but it may have killed him as a philosopher too – this was certainly the view of his mother: He used all the sleeping medications that have ever been invented, said the professors. His worst one was chloral. That one practically killed him.27 Chloral, and its admixture with water, chloral hydrate, was a common sedative in the nineteenth century, now a controlled substance. More than opium, this drug appears to be 24 The Joyous Science, Appendix, Rimus remedium, p. 365. 25 Lou Salomé, Friedrich Nietzsche in seinen Werken, ch. III, p. 145. 26 Twilight of the Idols, Maxims, §8, p. 33. 27 1893, as reported by Heinrich Lec in Conversations with Nietzsche, §75, p. 230. 7 Nietzsche's preferred poison. In a letter to his friend and former colleague, Franz Overbeck, he writes in 1883: I realized that in the last two months I have consumed 50 grams of chloral hydrate (pure). I never slept without this drug! But I have slept, now, after fourteen days in a row oh what bliss!28 In one of her biographies of her brother, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche – who at times took care of Nietzsche – remonstrates against his abuse of chloral: In the winter of 1882-3, owing to that terrible influenza, he had for the first time used chloral regularly, in large doses. He was so unfavourably impressed with its peculiar effects that in the spring of 1883 he did his best to cure himself of the habit. ... [When] he took chloral before going to bed, it led next morning to a curiously excitable condition, in which men and things appeared to him in a totally false light. Towards noon, he thought, this condition vanished, and more "philanthropic sentiments" returned. Accordingly he had become very careful, although the sleep produced by chloral seems to have been remarkably pleasant – not dull and heavy but filled with delightful dreams. ... If only he had kept to this one drug, however, the result might have been less serious.29 So his mother and sister both maintained that it was the effect of large doses and mixtures of drugs that brought Nietzsche his cognitive ruin, his madness.30 Chloral hydrate was synthesised in 1832, and since 1869 had been used for hypnotic or sedative purposes, i.e. for sleep induction and pain relief. It is now known to be potentially hazardous with a risk of death in the case of intoxication. It is not commonly considered a psychedelic drug, yet it can produce visions and auditory 'hallucinations'. One of Nietzsche's students reported that, Insomnia, which was not improved by repeated overwork, by chloral or potassium bromide, but made worse, excruciating headaches, and other neuralgic ailments tormented his life.31 Potassium bromide is an anticonvulsant (anti-seizure) and sedative drug, and is used today in veterinary practice, and in Germany is still administered to human beings. Nietzsche's dual use of chloral and potassium bromide is notable because it was this combination that led to the bewildering experiences of the English author Evelyn Waugh. These effects affected him to such a degree that they provide the content to his peculiar autobiographical work, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold. This concocted sleeping-draught caused auditory and conceptual hallucinations, often in a terrifying manner, with voices suggesting suicide. When Waugh was admitted to St Bartholomew's Hospital for treatment, his regular chloral was immediately withdrawn and replaced with paraldehyde, a move that immediately stopped the hallucinations.32 28 Letter to Franz Overbeck, 1st February 1883. 29 Elisabeth Förster--‐Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. II, ch. XXVII. 30 His sister may have had an ulterior motive to promote this narcotic view of the cause of his madness: to dismiss claims that syphilis was to blame (see, e.g., E. F. Podach). But as we see, it was not only his sister who spoke of his excessive use of chloral – and besides, madness onset by ongoing drug abuse is hardly more respectable than student--‐era brothel debauchery. 31 H. Göring, Conversations with Nietzsche, §38, p. 100. (My italics.) 32 See Selina Hastings, Evelyn Waugh: A Biography. 8 The well-known neurologist Oliver Sacks has also written of the psychedelic experiences that chloral hydrate caused him: Depressed and insomniac, I was taking ever-increasing amounts of chloral hydrate to get to sleep, and was up to fifteen times the usual dose every night. ... [But] for the first time in several months I went to bed without my usual knockout dose. ... [Upon] waking , I found myself excruciatingly sensitive to sounds. ... I went across the road, as I often did, for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. As I was stirring the coffee it suddenly turned green, then purple. I looked up, startled, and saw a huge proboscidean head, like an elephant seal. Panic seized me; I slammed a five-dollar note on the table and ran across the road to a bus on the other side. But all the passengers on the bus seemed to have smooth white heads like giant eggs, with huge glittering eyes like the faceted compound eyes of insects – their eyes seemed to move in sudden jerks, which increased the feeling of their fearfulness and alienness.33 In the end Sacks discovered that it was the fact that he had stopped taking chloral that caused the hallucinations, a case of delirium tremens. Thus we see that chloral hydrate is addictive, toxic, and directly and posteriorly hallucinatory. Taken in large doses and mixed with other drugs, the effects can only be potent. There is an account of a psychedelic experience Nietzsche had in mid-August 1884. His friend Resa von Schirnhofer decided to visit Nietzsche in Sils-Maria, Switzerland. After an absence of one and a half days, von Schirnhofer ventures to his house and is led into the dining room – then: As I stood waiting by the table, the door to the adjacent room on the right opened, and Nietzsche appeared. With a distraught expression on his pale face, he leaned wearily against the post of the half-opened door and immediately began to speak about the unbearableness of his ailment. He described to me how, when he closed his eyes, he saw an abundance of fantastic flowers, winding and intertwining, constantly growing and changing forms and colours in exotic luxuriance, sprouting one out of the other. "I never get any rest," he complained...34 Von Schirnhofer also tells of Nietzsche's unorthodox and deviant means of acquiring his drugs: In Rapallo and in other places of the Riviera di Levante, where he had spent his times of worst health, he had written for himself all kinds of prescriptions signed Dr Nietzsche, which had been prepared and filled without question or hesitation. Unfortunately I took no notes and the only one I remember is chloral hydrate. But since Nietzsche, as he expressly told me, had been surprised never to be asked whether he was a medical doctor authorized to prescribe this kind of medication, I conclude that some dubious medicines must have been among them.35 So Nietzsche, a user of the addictive substance opium since at least 1870, a heavy chloral hydrate user, and a proponent of the intoxicated Dionysian state, uses his doctoral title to prescribe himself the drugs he wants. If ever the term drug fiend were applied to a true philosopher, Nietzsche would fit the case. 'Psychonaut' certainly fits, a name coined by 33 Oliver Sacks, Hallucinations, ch. VI, pp. 115--‐116. 34 Conversations with Nietzsche, §52, p. 164. 35 Conversations with Nietzsche, §52, p. 163. 9 philosopher Ernst Jünger,36 whom Heidegger called 'the only genuine continuer of Nietzsche'.37 Von Schirnhofer speculated over whether Nietzsche also used hashish, stating that his intensive reading of French authors must have included Charles Baudelaire who wrote of hashish and opium trances in Artificial Paradises, and in The Flowers of Evil. In Ecce Homo, his autobiography, Nietzsche writes, If one wants to get free from an unendurable pressure one needs hashish. Very well, I needed Wagner.38 This suggests Nietzsche was not a hashish user, at least not a frequent one. But with Nietzsche's somewhat haughty position, his belief in a necessary 'pathos of distance'39 between people, and his championing of great men of intellect and art, he must have felt endeared and perhaps tempted by Baudelaire's words on the drug: I am not asserting that hashish produces in all men all of the [fantastical] effects I have described here. I have more or less recounted the phenomena generally produced, except for a few variations, among individuals of artistic and philosophical bent. ... But there are others in whom the drug raises only a raucous madness, a violent merriment resembling vertigo ... [yet it can conduce] the extreme development of the poetic mind...40 Whether or not Nietzsche took hashish he certainly exhibited an extreme development of the poetic mind. In a passage in his autobiography, Nietzsche speaks of the singular, overwhelming type of inspiration with which he is bequeathed. Though he does not connect Nietzsche's 'inspiration' to his drug use, the Nietzsche biographer Curtis Cate asserts of this passage that 'his description of the hallucinating moments of inspiration during which he felt powerless and "possessed" merits a place in any good anthology of mystical experiences'.41 When we consider the view that psychedelic experiences are mystical experiences, in the vein of William James' varieties thereof,42 we can agree with this assessment. As we saw with Waugh and Sacks, chloral hydrate can cause auditory and visual hallucinations, a drug we know Nietzsche self-prescribed and used in high doses. It is highly plausible then that Nietzsche's 'inspiration' was drug-induced hallucination – and no less valuable for that. In fact, his revelations can be witnessed as testimony to the potential supreme value of psychedelic chemicals within the right mind: Has anyone at the end of the nineteenth century a distinct conception of what poets of strong ages called inspiration? ... If one had the slightest residue of superstition left in one, one would hardly be able to set aside the idea that one is merely incarnation, merely mouthpiece, merely medium of overwhelming forces. The concept of revelation, in the sense that something suddenly, with unspeakable certainty and subtlety, becomes visible, audible, something that shakes and overturns one to the depths, simply describes the fact. One hears, one does not seek; one takes, one does not ask who gives; a thought flashes up like lightning, with necessity, unfalteringly 36 See his Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch (Approaches to Drugs and Intoxication), 1970. In Nietzsche's Daybreak, §575, he refers to himself as an 'aeronaut of the spirit'. 37 Gesamtausgabe Band 90, 227. 38 Ecce Homo, Clever, §6. 39 See On the Genealogy of Morality, bk I, §2. 40 Charles Baudelaire, Artificial Paradises, On Wine and Hashish (1851), §V, p. 23. 41 Curtis Cate, Friedrich Nietzsche, ch. 38, p. 541. 42 See William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, ch. XVI. 10 formed – I have never had any choice. An ecstasy whose tremendous tension sometimes discharges itself in a flood of tears, whilst one's steps now involuntarily rush along, now involuntarily lag; a complete being outside of oneself with the distinct consciousness of a multitude of subtle shudders and trickles down to one's toes; a depth of happiness in which the most painful and gloomy things appear ... Everything is in the highest degree involuntary but takes place as in a tempest of a feeling of freedom, of absoluteness, of power, of divinity. ... This is my experience of inspiration; I do not doubt that one has to go back thousands of years to find anyone who could say to me "it is mine also".43 As Lou Salomé intimated, Nietzsche may have pushed himself to the edge of madness to overcome the common condition of man to taste divinity. Was it his psychedelic inspiration that caused both his psychological apotheosis and his physiological downfall? With regard to his downfall, his sister believed that, The correct diagnosis, perhaps, would be this: a brain exhausted by overstrain of the nerves of head and eye that could no longer resist taking drugs to excess, and thus became disabled.44 Nietzsche's infamous45 sister also describes another drug that she blamed for his stroke into mental destruction in 1889: the Javanese narcotic: Above all I regard two sleeping draughts, chloral and Javanese narcotic, as responsible for his paralytic stroke ... [In] 1884, so far as I remember, he got to know a Dutchman, who recommended him a Javanese narcotic, and presented him with a fairly large bottle ... The stuff tasted like rather strong alcohol and had an outlandish smell ... The Dutchman impressed us with the fact that only a few drops should be taken at a time in a glass of water. I tried it, and observed a somewhat exhilarating effect. ... Later, in the autumn of 1885, he confessed to me that on one occasion he had taken a few drops too much, with the result that he suddenly threw himself to the ground in a fit of convulsive laughter. ... During the early days of his insanity he used often to say in confidence to our mother that he "had taken twenty drops" (he did not mention of what), and that his brain had then "gone off the track." ... Perhaps the worst of it all was that he used both chloral and the Javanese drug at the same time.46 The island of Java was part of the colonized Dutch East Indies. In 1875 coca plants were introduced to Java, eventually leading to the Nederlandsche Cocaïne Fabriek in 1900, the year of Nietzsche's death. The Javanese coca leaf was not as potent as its Peruvian sibling in Nietzsche's time, but it was cheaper.47 The Javanese narcotic his sister spoke of thus likely 43 Ecce Homo, Zarathustra, §3. See also Nietzsche's description of a philosopher in Beyond Good and Evil, §292. 44 Elisabeth Förster--‐Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. II, ch. XXVII. 45 Walter Benjamin sees the lady in this light in his own psychedelic mescaline experience: 'From the cracks of the Förster House grow tufts of hair. The Förster House: (she [Elisabeth Förster--‐ Nietzsche] has turned the Nietzsche Archive into a Förster House [forester's lodge]) the Förster house is of red stone. I am a spindle in its banister: an obdurate, hardened post. But that is no longer the totem pole – only a wretched copy. Chamois' foot or horse's hoof of the devil: a vagina symbol.' (On Hashish, ch. XI, 22nd May 1934.) 46 Elisabeth Förster--‐Nietzsche, The Life of Nietzsche, vol. II, ch. XXVII. 47 See Toine Pieters' Java Coca and the Dutch Narcotics Industry: An Almost Forgotten 20th C. History of Drugs Story: https://pointsadhsblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/java--‐coca--‐and--‐the--‐ dutch--‐narcotics--‐industry--‐an--‐almost--‐forgotten--‐20th--‐c--‐history--‐of--‐drugs--‐story/ 11 contained traces of cocaine, and possibly the assorted herbs of the traditional Indonesian healing concoction Jamu. It would be unconvincing that combining this combination with chloral, opium, potassium bromide, etc., would not lead to hallucinations, madness, mental breakdown, and apotheosis: Nietzsche signed off final letters of 1889 with the name Dionysus,48 whom he had recently identified as the Antichrist: Who knows the true name of the Antichrist? – with the name of a Greek god: I called it the Dionysiac.49 In Nietzsche's mature work, Dionysus becomes the representation of the overman figure: a type that affirms and revels in pain and destruction, the polar contrary to the Christian type who only values joy in peace and comfort. In 1888 Nietzsche exclaims: Affirmation of life even in its strangest and sternest problems, the will to life rejoicing in its own inexhaustibility through the sacrifice of its highest types – that is what I called Dionysian ... beyond pity and terror, to realize in oneself the eternal joy of becoming – that joy which also encompasses joy in destruction ... I am the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus.50 After The Birth of Tragedy, Dionysus returns to Nietzsche's philosophy in 1886 in Beyond Good and Evil. Now, rather than subservient to Schopenhauer's unwitting Christian values, Dionysus represents Nietzsche's radical revaluation of those values that lie hidden beneath western culture, and thus does Dionysus denote a new form of thinking – without doubt a dangerous form to many. In this extreme opposition to such sacerdotal ideology, one understands why Dionysus is the Antichrist, both of whom are Nietzsche. He is the Antichrist Psychonaut: his pagan philosopher forest god of intoxication speaks to him – perhaps in the mode of his aforementioned 'inspiration', or black revelation: "...I often think how I can help [mankind] go forward and make them stronger, deeper, and more evil than they are." "Stronger, deeper, and more evil?" I asked, frightened. "Yes," he said once again, "stronger, deeper, and more evil – more beautiful too." And at that the tempter god smiled his halcyon smile, as if he had just uttered a charming compliment.51 A new Dionysian cult based on Nietzsche's reformulation of the god might very well suffer the same capital jurisdictive fate as that which befell its Roman predecessors. Whatever the future yields, Nietzsche's philosophy will be a significant factor thereof. His philosophy has already, a century on, had a decisive impact upon history. That this philosophy was provoked, in a degree hitherto undiagnosed, by reveries occasioned by chemical measures exposes one to the realization of the great power of these substances, powers guiding history. Nietzsche risked himself, his sanity, his life, so to touch the heavens and taste the Hades of human mentality – he may thereby have destroyed himself. But destruction is a joy to Dionysus, a deity who shall be born again. 48 E.g. to Cosima Wagner: 'Ariadne, I love you. – Dionysus' (Early January, 1889). In Beyond Good and Evil, §295, (1886) Nietzsche writes, 'Dionysus ... once said, "In certain cases I love human beings" (and he was alluding to Ariadne, who was present)...' 49 The Birth of Tragedy, Attempt at a Self--‐Criticism, §5. 1886. 50 Twilight of the Idols, Ancients, §5. A Dionysian will thus welcome the 'bad trip', and desire its eternal return. 51 Beyond Good and Evil, §295. 12 © Peter Sjöstedt-H MMXV Bibliography Baudelaire, C. (1860/1996) Artificial Paradises, New York: Citadel Benjamin, W. (1927--‐34/2006) On Hashish, Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Breazeale, D. – Ecce Psycho: Remarks on the case of Nietzsche (International Studies in Philosophy XXIII/2) Cate, C. (2002) Friedrich Nietzsche, London: Random House De Quincey, T. (1821/1994) Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Ware: Wordsworth Classics Förster--‐Nietzsche, E. (1915/2007) The Life of Nietzsche–Volume 2, The Classics Gilman, S. L. (ed.) (1987) Conversations with Nietzsche, Oxford: Oxford University Press Greenfield, R. (2006) Timothy Leary: A Biography, Orlando: Harcourt Books Hastings, S. (1994). Evelyn Waugh: A Biography, London: Sinclair-Stevenson James, W. (1902/1985) The Varieties of Religious Experience, London: Penguin Jünger, E. (1970/1980) Annäherungen: Drogen und Rausch, Stuttgart: Klett--‐Cotta im Ullstein Taschenbuch Khazaee, M. K. – The Case of Nietzsche's Madness (Existenz, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2008) Lippit, J. & Urpeth, J. (ed.s) (2000) Nietzsche and the Divine, Manchester: Clinamen Press Middleton, C. (ed.) (1969/1996) Selected Letter of Friedrich Nietzsche, Indianapolis: Hackett Nietzsche, F. (1870/1997) The Dionysian Worldview (Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 13, Spring 1997, pp. 81 – 97) Nietzsche, F. (1871/1993) The Birth of Tragedy, London: Penguin Nietzsche, F. (1881/1997) Daybreak, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Nietzsche, F. (1882/1974) The Gay Science, New York: Vintage Nietzsche, F. (1883/1969) Thus Spoke Zarathustra, London: Penguin Nietzsche, F. (1886/2008) Beyond Good and Evil, Oxford: Oxford University Press Nietzsche, F. (1887/1998) On the Genealogy of Morality, Indianapolis: Hackett Nietzsche, F. (1888/1992) Ecce Homo, London: Penguin Nietzsche, F. (1889/1990) Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist, London: Penguin Nietzsche, F. (1906[ph]]/1968) The Will to Power, New York: Random House 13 Nussbaum, M. C. – The Transfigurations of Intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus (Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Third Series, Vo. 1, No. 2, Spring 1991, pp. 75 – 111) Sacks, O. (2012) Hallucinations, New York: Random House Salomé, L. (1894/2001) Nietzsche, Illinois: Illinois Schopenhauer, A. (1818/1966) The World as Will and Representation, volume 1, New York: Dover Schopenhauer, A. (1839/2005) Essay on the Freedom of the Will, Mineola: Dover Waugh, E. (1957/1973) The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, London: Chapman & Hall www.nietzschesource.org www.philosopher.eu