Agent Intellect and Black Zones

Philosophy

This essay addresses arguments regarding the âplaceâ or ânon-placeâ in which ideas originate and whether they are wholly transcendental, wholly contingent, or a combination of transcendental and contingent. Far from a resuscitation or recitation of Medieval scholastic disputations, the essay seeks to situate these untimely concerns in the context of spent discursive and ideological systems that support capitalist exploitation of the knowledge commons, exploitation only made possible because of a decisive and historically determined reduction of knowledge to fully contingent status as spectral commodity.

Agent Intellect and Black Zones This essay addresses arguments regarding the "place" or "nonplace" in which ideas originate and whether they are wholly transcendental, wholly contingent, or a combination of transcendental and contingent. Far from a resuscitation or recitation of Medieval scholastic disputations, the essay seeks to situate these untimely concerns in the context of spent discursive and ideological systems that support capitalist exploitation of the knowledge commons, exploitation only made possible because of a decisive and historically determined reduction of knowledge to fully contingent status as spectral commodity. I. Aristotelianism And this is the purpose of all of the sciences, that in all of them faith is strengthened, God is honored, character is formed, and consolations are derived consisting in the union of the spouse with her Beloved: a union that takes place through love, to the attainment of which the whole purpose of sacred Scripture, and consequently, every illumination descending from above, is directed – a union without which all knowledge is empty. – St. Bonaventure To bury spent disciplinary or discursive justifications for knowledge as property and reverse the commodification of the knowledge commons to exploitable and scalable "intellectual property" do we need another Verdun, which Capitalism would appear to be only so happy to supply? Or is it possible to restore the immemorial coordinates of cultural production as formalized in "common law" by turning to the Holy Trinity of conceptual thought proper – that elegant, spare, and wintry tableau that haunts all forms of formative knowledge production? Through T.S. Eliot's bleak visions, operating in apparent reverse, we might reach across centuries to examine Bonaventure's reduction of the liberal arts to theology – theology, not religion; and theology as inter-subjective truth, not dogma. This communitarian spirit of intellectual austerities is the transitional state between gray areas (instrumental reason) and black zones (revelation or reverie). If it passes through subjective night, as Jacques Maritain suggests, via negative or apophatic theology, inclusive of negative dialectics (Adorno, 1978), it does so in service to the impersonal agencies of that anterior sky in which stars and constellations (both old and new "constellations of thought") appear or re-appear out of a proverbial no-where. "La vita nuova," perhaps – but also a strange diminution in the analogical, for/toward the anagogical. Therefore, the strange, wintry, and wonderful – or, Bonaventure's "union without which all knowledge is empty." The problem of Agent Intellect, as controversy, has never quite gone away – with its origins in Aristotle's De anima and its subsequent elaborations and disputations reaching from the Islamic Aristotelians, Averroes and Avicenna, to St. Thomas Aquinas. The issue of whether Agent Intellect is independent of human agency or transcendent to all intellectual activity suggests that this possible impersonal agency is the ultimate ghost in the machinery of thought. The universalizing tendencies of such a power (or source of power) are exceptionally elastic and, ultimately, indeterminate. If it belongs to mankind, as Avicenna thought, and not to individual subjects per se (not embedded within the intellectual capacities of souls), the penultimate question/issue becomes, What or where is such a power? Is this not the very origin of the idea of a knowledge commons? Assimilation to cultural patrimony is quite obviously not the same thing as the assimilation to the circuit of Capital. More critically, How is such a power to be accessed? According to Averroes: "The agent intellect is the last of the celestial Intelligences and moves the lunar sphere; the material intellect receives intelligible forms abstracted by the agent intellect. These intellects are not united to individual man by their substances, but only by their activity" (Nejeschleba, 2004, p. 70). Thus, signatures or intelligences (lights) are what matter. Gray areas shade into black zones, and reverie is birthright whereas instrumentalized reason or abject utilitarianism is a prison-house for Spirit. Notably, Aquinas disputed the Aristotelian views of Averroes and Avicenna (Latin Averroism) and placed Agent Intellect firmly within the bounds of the human soul, differing with other Medieval theologians in the process, yet primarily in terms of the relation between Agent Intellect and Possible Intellect – the latter term connoting mere cognition. Anselm of Canterbury, for example, considered Agent Intellect co-equivalent to angelic intelligences. More importantly, however, is what occurs when one follows the argument backward to the early Franciscan School, prior to Aquinas, when, in effect, 2 the major schoolmen said "Yes" to utterly contradictory statements concerning what exactly Agent Intellect was once it was operative within human cognition proper. The key figures here are Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, the latter a teacher of Bonaventure. For example: In John of La Rochelle's view we can call the agent intellect both God and angel, and part of the soul with respect to different objects of cognition. God is the agent intellect for our knowledge of things higher than the soul, the angel is the agent intellect (in the sense of revelation or instruction) for our knowledge of things on the same level as the soul and, finally, the agent is a light innate in the soul for our knowledge of things that lie within the soul or below it (Nejeschleba, 2004, p. 76). Thus Bonaventure and many Franciscans to follow maintained a dual vigil for the transcendental and contingent conditions for knowledge, both personal and collective: The reason for the double-meaning of the agent intellect lies in the Franciscans' characteristic and wellknown attitude towards theology and philosophy. They tried to reconcile principles of Aristotelian philosophy with the Augustinian fundament of theology. With respect to noetics this means that they had to unify the Aristotelian theory of abstraction and the doctrine of the agent intellect, which Aristotle had already compared to light, with the Augustinian theory of illumination and the division of the human intellect into two faces, the higher, which is illuminated from God, and the lower, which is not illuminated (Nejeschleba, 2004, p. 77). Thus gray areas and black zones, and all of the attendant problems of locating the place and means whereby the Imaginary (Possible Intellect) may be disciplined and/or illumined. Thus the condemned thesis 118 of 1277 proceeds as follows: "That the agent intellect is a separate substance higher than the possible intellect, and that with respect to the substance, potency and operation it is separated from the body, and that it is not a form of human body" (Nejeschleba, 2004, p. 78, with reference to Hissette, 1977, p. 193). This is but one of 219 Averroistic-Thomist theses condemned at Paris after Aquinas' death in 1274. Certainly this dual vision of Agent Intellect (both in its disputatious aspects and in the Franciscan doubling or tripling of its agency proper) suggests that the true issue is not whether it subsists as impersonal agency in the natural world (as a cosmological principle, for example) but, instead, whether it inhabits human intellectual activity and the products of the same. For the ambivalence seems less about whether Agent Intellect is outside of (or transcendent to) all human subjective states, as its other, than whether human agency without Agent Intellect has any merit whatsoever; and, in terms of disciplinarity or the knowledge commons, the question would be as to whether the production of forms of knowledge transcends mere utility and/or supports degraded forms of experience of this larger economy that, on the one hand, is cosmological and, on the other hand, is transcendental. In the latter case, all of the various problems of privileging a universal intelligence collide with worldly endeavors that may, indeed, be productive of virtual prison-houses. The latter state would seem to be the path of Capital today as it serves merely its own interests – not the interest of individuals and certainly not the interest of the commons. In the first instance, language is always the First Instance for suspect motives and/or ideological sleights of hand; for, false claims to transcendental categories via Reason do, indeed, produce monsters. Such is the source of ideology – market ideology or otherwise. In the former case, when Agent Intellect is cosmological, the multiple disciplines of natural science and philosophy (or natural philosophy) take on exceptional importance to the critique of disciplines and forms of knowledge production that purportedly rely on this vision of universal, non-ideological intelligence. In both cases, there are as many problems as possible virtues, insofar as, since the divorce of theology and natural science, the orphaned middle ground has most often been moral philosophy and ethics. One very obvious analogue for the potential fusion of these discordant worldviews is to incorporate the intelligence embedded in natural systems directly and without mediation into human systems, which need not to be at odds with that larger universal economy (a semi-divine economy). Yet the inordinate nightmare of entropy follows upon every attempt to build synthetic systems that absorb and/or privilege natural systems alone, and the technocratic bias of contemporary culture betrays, repeatedly, any accord between competing visions, provoking the endless recourse to Apocalypse. II. Franciscanism The first image he told me about was of three children on a road in Iceland, in 1965. He said that for him it was the image of happiness and also that he had tried several times to link it to 3 other images, but it never worked. He wrote me: one day I'll have to put it all alone at the beginning of a film with a long piece of black leader; if they don't see happiness in the picture, at least they'll see the black. – Chris Marker This Medieval debate is interesting today if only because then the problem was the differing worldviews of the Augustinians and the Thomists – with the Augustinians and Franciscans privileging black zones, and the Thomists privileging gray areas. In terms of historical merit, the debate has lasted well into the first quarter of the twenty-first century primarily because there was no unitary, Medieval "scholastic" worldview (as there is no unitary Modern worldview), despite attempts to claim such – and the debates at the University of Paris Faculty of Arts in the thirteenth century concerned not so much the production of canon or dogma but the relationship of philosophy to theology (notwithstanding the various attempts by the authorities to shut down debate, plus warnings to theologians not to become philosophers). Indeed, it would seem that the chief argument between Bonaventure and Aquinas had to do with whether these two forms of knowledge (what we would today call disciplines) are different, and whether they should be different. Aquinas seems to have solidified the separation, perhaps unwittingly, while the Augustinians and the Franciscans were arguing for the preservation of philosophy (and metaphysics) as theology – and a proper study of whether this truly meant philosophy as subordinate to theology, or not, would resolve many of the petty arguments that persist in terms of what constitutes knowledge and what constitutes mere instrumental reason. Subsequent skirmishes generally further developed the schism, while around 1900 the argument returned in terms of the historiography of the Medieval world system and the various forms of high scholasticism that dealt with the issue of the created (eternal) world, best described as the focus of the sciences, and the uncreated (ideal) world, the realm of ideas and the source for knowledge per se, inclusive of all of the associated questions and non-answers attributed to not-knowledge, or revelation, always more or less left unaddressed due to the failure of language to properly reflect what was, after all, subjective, inter-subjective, and onto-subjective, pre-conscious experience. (Regarding the preconscious self, see Maritain, 1954.) If Bonaventure and the Franciscans could say "Yes" (or "All of the Above") to whether Agent Intellect "subsides" within human cognition, outside of it (in angelic beings, in the cosmos, etc.), or with a transcendent (absent) God, it is more than apparent that they were attempting to preserve the sacred province of affective thought as such – or thought undivided (precluding the production of two contradictory, and historically antithetical realms). "Hence, according to [Étienne] Gilson, the philosophy of Aristotle compelled the thirteenth-century theologians to reexamine the proper relation of natural reason to Christian revelation; as a consequence, the great scholastic systems were born" (Quinn, 1973, p. 23). Nevertheless, Gilson's most controversial conclusions may be said to revolve around his quarantine of Bonaventure and his claims that the Franciscan harbored an irresolvable antipathy to Aristotelianism. According to Gilson, Bonaventure evaluated Aristotelian philosophy as "one who has understood it, seen through it, and passed beyond it" (Gilson, 1924, paraphrased by Quinn, 1973, p. 24). By 1270 the verdict was in. Bonaventure refused Thomism and Aquinas committed himself to the elaboration of an autonomous philosophy, one according to Bonaventure that exposed him to inevitable error. That Aquinas would dramatically stop writing altogether on December 6, 1273 suggests that Bonaventure was, after all, right. Several differences of opinion between Bonaventure and Aquinas in the controversy concerning Agent Intellect are instructive in terms of the critique underway here of knowledge production and the biases given most especially to singular disciplines that rely on so-called objective knowledge (or natural reason), converting everything in the process to spectral commodity. For, as it has been said, in times of crisis Augustine almost always makes a re-appearance. Thus, the Augustinianism of Bonaventure (and the term Augustinianism was only coined during the controversies of the thirteenth century) is the key. According to Gilson, Bonaventure was safeguarding certain traditional, patristic principles against creeping Aristotelianism. The main issue was what might be called the cosmological worldview that almost always signals the Medieval mindset anyway. The Agent Intellect controversy was part and parcel of a larger set of disagreements that only were resolved by the separation of Philosophy and Theology. "By founding his doctrine on the self-consciousness of the soul, Bonaventure clung to the Augustinian tradition while grounding his Christian philosophy in the experience of his interior life" (Gilson, 1924, paraphrased by Quinn, 1973, p. 25). The struggle between Bonaventure and Aquinas (and they were, after all, colleagues) was quite simply about what constitutes the highest form of knowing anything. While they both reverted to revelation, they also did 4 so in different ways. "Bonaventure, Gilson stated, did not formulate his theology according to the norms of Aristotelean science. Following rather the Augustinian tradition, he recorded his personal experience of the Christian life without expressing it in an objective, or scientific, manner. . . . Bonaventure modelled his theology after the ideal of Augustinian wisdom; so he developed a theological wisdom which was inseparable from his own experience" (Quinn, 1973, p. 41). Accordingly, Bonaventure's and Aquinas' worlds collide in the manner in which the outer, objective world and the inner, subjective world are dealt with. The role of intellect is central – Augustinians reserved knowledge (truth) for the internal tableau of direct illumination from the divine, not Aristotelian abstraction as such, nor an operation of the intellect. Here Pascal's two infinities come into view. Bonaventure resisted permitting illumination (revelation) to be a guarantor of natural reason (Aristotelian abstraction); and, again, it required a certain acceptance of paradoxes, or the rejection of attempting to rationalize or reconcile discordant principles that effectively underscored that knowledge is not unitary (see Quinn, 1973, p. 39). As a result, "to solve some problems in the natural order, [Bonaventure's] philosophy relied on a supernatural principle" (Quinn, 1973, p. 39). One exceptional example is the concept of the necessity of grace for all creatures to merely exist. In the case of animals, Bonaventure simply resorted to Augustine's doctrine of seminal principles. In the case of humans, Bonaventure kicked the entire question upstream, placing infallibility out of reach of contingent intellect. Far from hedging his bets, in the case of the status of human existence, Bonaventure simply jettisoned the need to rationalize what was, in effect, a transcendental category of experience (Being as such). But he again turned to Augustine for support, this time utilizing the well-known metaphor of the double mirror that permits divine illumination to reach contingent intellect, if the latter is turned in the direction of the divine. This judgment of cognition as black mirror, a type of internal Claude Glass, is the very image of black zones (and revelation as path to knowledge). The path taken by Aquinas and Duns Scotus was the path not taken by Bonaventure. "Bonaventure withheld from the human intellect a power which would be sufficient for knowing truth with certitude" (Gilson, 1924, paraphrased by Quinn, 1973, p. 40). According to Gilson, Bonaventure was safeguarding a particular worldview (an interior vista) "to protect a Christian understanding of creation, divine providence, illumination and moral guidance" (Gilson, 1924, paraphrased by Quinn, 1973, p. 41). The Neo-platonism is palpable, and an intermediary world of semi-divine ideas seems to be the key nonetheless. If both Bonaventure and Aquinas more or less grappled with Aristotle's natural philosophy in different ways, and if each retained that which Aristotle rejected (the Platonic theory of divine ideas), the matter then returns (and rests) in where and how ideas are accessed; the result is a battleground between immutable, universal truths and contingent knowledge (or the mere administration of things). It might be argued that the historically determined triumph of the administrative intellect sponsored the emergence of capitalism. It is possible, then, to see the entire scholastic operation sliding downhill and the mere description and administration (manipulation) of things and people becoming the entire point. The great scandals coming, of course, were named Giordano Bruno, Galileo, and Copernicus, plus Savonarola. (Regarding this period, see Hallyn, 1990.) Furthermore, it is possible to detect in the shadows the instantiation of new models of power and control, with the ascendance of Thomism unnecessarily burdened with the incipient power struggles within the Church between secular and sacred concerns. Thomism could be seen in such a light as a threshold crossed historically, never to be re-crossed other than personally (or existentially) – a metaphysical Rubicon. Augustinianism (as the antithesis), in turn, shelters a certain generous latitude within thought that privileges immemorial reserves within subjectivity (almost always the enemy and victim of power). The return (and/or the suppression) of the singular subject is, in this way, a constant theme in the symphonic histories of knowledge production and humanist disciplines. And the singular subject or, in modern terms, "citizen" is the foundation of both polis and commons. It is for this reason that the approach of Capital, or for that matter any exploitative ideology, to the gates of subjectivity is utterly frightening (Harris, 2017). It is ideational Franciscanism that merits a closer look today for traces of an alternative. And it is the "right to have no rights" that merits utmost scrutiny – a coinage credited to Hugh of Digne concerning the early Franciscan refusal of property and an elective embrace of Holy Poverty (Agamben, 2013). This highly principled embrace of Christian virtue defined subsequent anarcho-Christian forms of selfgovernment and is not entirely inconsistent with anarcho-socialist agendas. That a schism between the Conventuals and the Spirituals centered on ownership of property (as the Franciscan order began to receive major gifts from generous patrons) only further underscores the significance of the renunciation 5 of worldly rights for higher rights – the latter generally reducible to the right to live where and as one wishes. The chief merit of this renunciation of rights is, notably, that in renouncing such rights the arrogation of those rights by anyone else is impossible. An extended citation from Einzige und sein Eigentum (1844) by Max Stirner, bête noire of Karl Marx (Derrida, 1994), is instructive: The time was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for "political intrigue", and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took the least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionary, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? Why was he not a liberal? Because he expected no salvation from a change of conditions, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionary, like Caesar, but an insurgent: not a state-overturner, but one who straightened himself up. That was why it was for him only a matter of "Be ye wise as serpents", which expresses the same sense as, in the special case, that "Give to the emperor that which is the emperor's"; for he was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. Not less indifferent to him than the government were its enemies, for neither understood what he wanted, and he had only to keep them off from him with the wisdom of the serpent. But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionary, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an insurgent who lifted himself above everything that seemed so sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to, and who at the same time cut off the sources of life of the whole heathen world, with which the established state must wither away as a matter of course; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator; for he walled it in, confidently and recklessly carrying up the building of his temple over it, without heeding the pains of the immured (Stirner, 1995, pp. 280-81). III. Coda In terms of "prior art," or the contorted logic of the legal arguments for subsuming previously existing forms of knowledge, Agent Intellect is the foundation for immemoriality, immemoriality is the foundation for the commons and "common law," the commons and "common law" are the foundation for statutory law, and statutory law is the foundation for intellectual property rights (patents, licenses, and copyright). Given the above arguments, Franciscanism and "the right to have no rights" may be seen as an early, yet pivotal attempt to protect immemoriality itself (in Platonic terms, the dynamic field known as anamnesis) and the attendant internal prospects for individuals and free subjectivity. In terms of the rights of citizens and the commons, this same logic suggests that the subjective conditions here denoted "black zones" are the foundational state for access to the "Kingdom of God" (which is always within), however that is defined and however that is experienced. Capital would appear, then, to have its sights set on controlling and monetizing Pascal's and Kant's two infinities. Indeed, "God did not die, He was transformed into money" (Agamben, 2014). The great copyright robbery underway since around 2000 (Hugenholtz, 2000) races ahead as technology permits regimes of surveillance for collecting tribute or imposing fines, while the surveillance state takes care of negating civil rights or the rights of citizens. This dual campaign, by Capital and by State, represents a turning point for the very concept of the commons and civil society. The double threat for resistance or insurgency is the usual threat – Apocalypse (a new Verdun). A version of this essay first appeared as Section I of Part I, Essay III, "Mnemonics: Elegant, Spare, Wintry," in Gavin Keeney, Not-I/Thou: The Other Subject of Art and Architecture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). REFERENCES Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1974). Giorgio Agamben, The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life, trans. Adam Kotsko (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013). Giorgio Agamben and Peppe Savà, "'God Didn't Die, He was Transformed into Money': An Interview with Giorgio Agamben," Libcom, February 10, 2014, https://libcom.org/library/god-didnt-die-he-wastransformed-money-interview-giorgio-agamben-peppe-sav%C3%A0. Avicenna, Liber de anima seu sextus de naturalibus, I:5, ed. Simone van Riet (Louvain and Leiden: Peeters and E.J. Brill, 1972). 6 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994). Étienne Gilson, La philosophie de saint Bonaventure (Paris: J. Vrin, 1924). Fernand Hallyn, The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler, trans. Donald M. Leslie (New York: Zone Books, 1990). Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2017). Roland Hissette, ed., Enquête sur les 219 articles condamnés à Paris le 7 Mars 1277, Philosophes Médiévaux, XXII (Louvain and Paris: Publications Universitaires and Vander-Oyez, 1977). P. Bernt Hugenholtz, "The Great Copyright Robbery: Rights Allocation in a Digital Environment," Institute for Information Law, University of Amsterdam, 2000, https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/thegreatcopyrightrobbery.pdf. Hugh of Digne, "De finibus paupertatis," Archivium Franciscanum Historicum 5 (1912): pp. 277-90. Jacques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry, A.W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts (Cleveland, OH: Meridian Books, 1954). Armand A. Maurer, CSB, Medieval Philosophy, Revised edition (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, 1962). Tomáš Nejeschleba, "Thomas Aquinas and the Early Franciscan School on the Agent Intellect," in Verbum VI:I (2004): pp. 67-78. John Francis Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973). St. Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure, trans. J. De Vinck, 5 vols. (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1960-1970). Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own, ed. David Leopold (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/agent-intellect-and-black-zones/2018/03/


Why inequality matters: luck egalitarianism, its meaning and value.

Philosophy

I review Shlomi Segall's book 'Why Inequality Matters'. I argue that it conclusively establishes that alongside egalitarians, prioritarians and sufficientarians must sometimes regard a prospect as better (in at least one respect) when it is not better (in terms of well-being) for anyone. Sufficientarians and prioritarians must therefore relinquish a treasured anti-egalitarian argument. It also makes a powerful case that among these three views, egalitarians are in the best position to explain such departures from what is in each personâs prudential interest. For egalitarians can point to the natural idea that it is unfair when, due to pure chance, some fare much better than others. By contrast, it remains unclear what value, if any, sufficientarians or prioritarians can appeal to in order to justify their departures from what best promotes peopleâs well-being.

Shlomi Segall, Why Inequality Matters: Luck Egalitarianism, Its Meaning and Value, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 256 + x pp., $99.00 (hbk), ISBN 9781107129818. Reviewed by Alex Voorhoeve, U.S. National Institutes of Health and London School of Economics. Shlomi Segall's Why Inequality Matters contains many novel ideas. It should engage researchers with an interest in debates between luck egalitarians and two of their principal opponents, prioritarians and sufficientarians.1 While, as I shall argue below, not all of its arguments succeed, it also makes contributions which deserve to profoundly influence debates on distributive justice. I proceed as follows. In Section 1, I summarize the book's central points; in Section 2, I evaluate some of its arguments. 1. Segall's project is to offer a theory of the value of a distribution of well-being. This theory is meant to establish what a decision-maker should do insofar as their proper aim is to maximize this value (or to maximize expected value, if they are deciding under risk). It therefore sets aside non-consequentialist concerns such as people's rights and obligations. It also sets aside social egalitarian concerns with the nature of people's relationships. This singular focus on the goodness of distributions allows Segall to make substantial progress on some thorny issues. But it also means that the theory offered can be only one part of a full theory of justice. In Parts I and III of the book, Segall develops the following central theses about equality. Inequalities in how well people's lives go are intrinsically bad both: (a) when these inequalities are not due to people's choices; and (b) when they are due to choices that it would not have been reasonable to expect them to avoid. Equalities, by contrast, are never bad, even between people who have made very different choices. The badness of inequality, Segall argues, is not merely impersonal-it is also bad for a person (albeit in a non-well-being affecting way) that they are unfairly less well off than others. Furthermore, while inequalities in final well-being (also known as "ex post" inequalities) are bad, inequalities in expected well-being (also known as "ex ante" inequalities) are not. In Part II, Segall discusses rivals to egalitarianism. His arguments against sufficientarianism and ex post prioritarianism draw on an example of a kind proposed in Otsuka and Voorhoeve (2009). Suppose a tenyear-old child, Ann, will have just a tolerable quality of life unless we assist her in one of two ways. Action A will improve her quality of life to the point at which it meets the standard of sufficiency. Action B is riskier: it will either leave her with a tolerable quality of life or with a truly excellent life, with either outcome being equally likely. Also suppose that the potential upside of B is just large enough that, considering only Ann's possible fates in isolation from how anyone else fares, one ought to prefer B on Ann's behalf. Following a standard (Von Neumann-Morgenstern) measure of well-being, we can then say that the move from a merely tolerable to a "good enough" life involves a marginally smaller 1 Roughly, prioritarianism holds that: (i) an increment of well-being has more moral value, the lower the level of well-being from which this increment takes place, and (ii) the value of an increment of well-being depends only on the absolute level of well-being to which it is added, and not on others' levels of well-being. Sufficientarianism holds that it is especially important that people have enough to lead a good life, and that inequalities in well-being in themselves do not matter. 2 increment in well-being than the move from this good enough life to a truly excellent life. Equivalently, we can say that B offers Ann somewhat higher expected well-being. What would it be best for us to choose? In cases of this kind, Otsuka and I have argued that, if we consider only Ann's fate, we have no grounds for departing from what we have most reason to choose on her behalf (see, e.g., Otsuka 2015). The best course of action is therefore B. Since we are considering Ann's situation in isolation from how others fare, egalitarians will see no reason to disagree. (Indeed, a pluralist egalitarian who cares about improving people's prospects as well as reducing inequality will recommend B.) Sufficientarians and ex post prioritarians, however, must demur. For sufficientarians, ensuring that Ann has a good enough life has special value; this makes A the more valuable prospect. Meanwhile, ex post prioritarians will favor A, because the gain in well-being from the tolerable life to the good enough life is morally more valuable than the gain in well-being from the good enough life to the excellent life. Segall points out that both these views must therefore hold that while B has greater prospective personal value for Ann, it has lesser prospective impersonal value. To put it in Sidgwickian terms: sufficientarianism and prioritarianism must hold that "from the point of view of the universe"-although not from the point of view of Ann's interests-it is more important to avoid a merely tolerable life for Ann than to give her a shot at an excellent life. Segall leverages this result in two innovative ways. The first concerns a favorite argument against egalitarianism, the levelling down objection. (This runs as follows: egalitarianism implies that a diminution in the well-being of the better off that benefits no one but reduces inequality is good in one respect; but such "levelling down" is not good in any respect; therefore, egalitarianism is false.) Segall argues that sufficientarians and prioritarians are not in a position to wield this argument, since they are committed to something very similar: the claim that prospect A is better than B in at least one respect even though it is prospectively better for no one. Segall's second novel contribution is to carefully examine whether the views in question can offer a plausible account of the impersonal value that, by their lights, can conflict with a person's well-being. What, he asks, is impersonally valuable about achieving sufficiency (or about improving well-being from a lower level)? In the case of sufficiency his answer is: nothing. Sufficientarianism, he concludes, is groundless (pp. 144-5). In the case of priority, however, Segall is prepared to extend an olive twig to his disarmed opponent: he grants that there is impersonal value in improving a person's lot from a lower level of well-being (p. 162). However, contrary to leading prioritarians such as Matthew Adler (Adler 2012), Segall argues that this impersonal value has nothing to do with improving lifetime well-being from a lower level; instead, special prioritarian value inheres only in improvements to those whose wellbeing is currently low, e.g., because they are in pain (chapter 7). 2. In my view, two of the most important ideas in the book are Segall's move to strip sufficientarians and prioritarians of the levelling-down objection and his interrogation of distributive views that recommend actions that are to no one's prospective advantage. However, while the former is exceptionally well executed (pp. 164-77 are a highlight), I was not persuaded that we ought to embrace "time-slice" prioritarianism. To bolster this view, Segall (pp. 199-201) argues that we have special reason to alleviate pain, even if the sufferer has a good life overall. But this reason does not, in fact, support time-slice 3 prioritarianism. For this form of prioritarianism is indifferent to whether improvements in well-being result from the alleviation of suffering or instead from the receipt of some other benefit. Moreover, this form of prioritarianism must hold that it is more important to give a benefit of a given size to someone who is now moderately well off rather than to someone who is now extremely well off, even when neither is suffering. And that conclusion cannot be justified with an appeal to the special importance of alleviating pain. Segall's other important ideas concern equality. One is that while unequal well-being that does not result from people's choices from equal opportunity sets is always bad, equal well-being is never bad. Segall therefore rejects the idea, sometimes attributed to luck egalitarians, that equality itself demands that people should bear the costs of their choices. Now, I agree with Segall that a basic egalitarian premise should be understood simply as the claim that inequalities that arise from unequal opportunity sets are unfair. I also agree that this premise implies nothing about inequalities that result from people's choices from equal opportunity sets. Importantly, this means that egalitarians can, without compromising this core commitment, adopt any of a wide variety of what we might call "principles of responsibility" to decide which, if any, inequalities due to choices from equal opportunity sets they should countenance. This idea has been emphasized by several authors, including Segall in previous work (Segall 2010, pp. 78-80; see also Olsaretti 2009). In this book, Segall contributes to this project by arguing persuasively that egalitarians should also object to inequalities that are due to choices that we could not reasonably expect individuals to avoid (such as clearly advantageous gambles, pp. 237-40). But his claim that an egalitarian should find nothing objectionable in any equality of condition goes further. For Segall finds nothing objectionable in a case in which Andrew has far superior opportunities to Carolyn, but makes poor use of these opportunities and ends up as well off as Carolyn (pp. 82-3). However, it seems to me that an egalitarian should find something to object to in this case. Carolyn can rightly claim that it is unfair that she never had the opportunities that Andrew had. This inequality in the distribution of initial opportunities is not, I submit, rendered irrelevant merely because she happens to end up no worse off than Andrew. Egalitarians, I conclude, should object not merely to inequalities in well-being that result from unequal opportunities, but also to unequal opportunities themselves, even when they do not lead to inequalities in well-being. I was also unpersuaded by Segall's argument that chances are of no consequence for distributive justice. Unfortunately, the way he introduces the topic is not ideal. In an attempt to illustrate the "clash" between equal chances and equal outcomes, he asks: "Is it better (...) that one individual dies prematurely (say, at 40 years) and the other lives till 80 years, while [each has] an equal chance to be [in] one or the other [position], or is it better that they both live, with certainty, to 55 years?" (p. 19). But, of course, in this case, individuals have equal chances either way; so chance equality does not speak in favor (or against) either scenario, while outcome equality favors the latter. The following case (adapted from p. 219) better illustrates the intended contrast. Suppose Gina and Helen will both die at 40 without treatment. One can either extend Gina's life to 79 and Helen's to 41 or instead toss a fair coin for a treatment that leaves the winner with 80 years and the loser with 40. It seems to me clear that the latter is fairer because it gives each at least something of equal value-namely, their prospects at the moment of decision-and thereby recognizes their equal claims to the good. Following Broome (1990), I would also say that this equalization of prospects makes the eventual outcome of the coin toss fairer than the outcome of giving it to Gina outright, despite the fact that the latter contains less inequality in final well-being. 4 Segall offers an alternative explanation of the judgment that we should flip a coin in this case, namely that this is a way of avoiding partiality towards Gina or Helen (p. 221). I do not think this explanation succeeds. For, in this case, choosing the coin flip would not demonstrate such impartiality, since it would also be one's preferred option if one were biased towards Helen. Segall also directly attacks the idea that chances contribute to fairness. He argues that since both the winner and the loser of the coin toss have been given something of the same prospective value, the toss cannot be said to compensate for the resulting inequality in final well-being (p. 218). But this observation does not threaten a view on which fairness is determined by inequality in the distributions of two goods: expected well-being and final well-being. And since the coin toss generates far less inequality in the first of these goods, it may be fairer despite the fact that it generates marginally greater inequality in the second of these goods. To give an analogy: if both the distribution of apples (expected well-being) and the distribution of oranges (final well-being) matters for fairness, then the overall distribution in which Gina gets 79 apples and 79 oranges and Helen gets 41 apples and 41 oranges can be less fair than one in which Gina and Helen each get 60 apples and one of them gets 80 oranges and the other 40 oranges. These points of disagreement notwithstanding, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book to scholars of distributive justice. In my view, it conclusively establishes that alongside egalitarians, prioritarians and sufficientarians must sometimes regard a prospect as better (in at least one respect) when it is not better (in terms of well-being) for anyone. Sufficientarians and prioritarians must therefore relinquish a treasured anti-egalitarian argument. It also makes a powerful case that among these three views, egalitarians are in the best position to explain such departures from what is in each person's prudential interest. For egalitarians can point to the natural idea that it is unfair when, due to pure chance, some fare much better than others. By contrast, it remains unclear what value, if any, sufficientarians or prioritarians can appeal to in order to justify their departures from what best promotes people's wellbeing. References Adler, M. (2012). Well-Being and Fair Distribution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Broome, J. (1990). "Fairness," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 91: 87–101. Olsaretti, Serena (2009). "Responsibility and the Consequences of Choice," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society CIX, Part 2: 165-88. Otsuka, M. (2015). "Prioritarianism and the Measure of Utility," Journal of Political Philosophy 23: 1–22. Otsuka, M. and A. Voorhoeve (2009). "Why It Matters that Some Are Worse Off than Others: An Argument against the Priority View," Philosophy and Public Affairs 37: 171–199. Segall, Shlomi (2010). Health, Luck and Justice. Princeton: Princeton University Press.


On a Loophole in Causal Closure

Philosophy

On a Loophole in Causal Closure Johan Gamper1 Received: 10 July 2015 /Revised: 9 November 2016 /Accepted: 24 November 2016 / Published online: 15 February 2017 # The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Standard definitions of causal closure focus on where the causes in question are. In this paper, the focus is changed to where they are not. Causal closure is linked to the principle that no cause of another universe causes an event in a particular universe. This view permits the one universe to be affected by the other via an interface. An interface between universes can be seen as a domain that violates the suggested account of causal closure, suggesting a view in which universes are causally closed whereas interfaces are not. On this basis, universes are not affected by other universes directly but rather indirectly. Keywords Causal closure . Philosophy ofmind . Philosophy of physics 1 Introduction Let us say that a universe is a domain of things of a certain ontological status, e.g., physical things or mental things. Causal closure, then, concerns the possibility that there may be more than one universe. In this paper, we in principle go back to Descartes and Princess Elisabeth and their discussion of the relation between substances of mind and body. We implicitly address the question of whether there are nonphysical objects and therefore one or more domains of non-physical objects. Are there, e.g., purelymental objects ormathematical objects? Explicitly, however, we address the question of whether we can save causal closure without giving up on the possibility of pluralism. The structure of the argument is as follows: Causal closure seems to cause serious problems.Whenwe consider causal closure of the physical domain, one problem is that it does not seem to reach the cause of a very first physical event. Additionally, this problem affects any universe. If there is a domain of mental objects and causal closure is true, then Philosophia (2017) 45:631–636 DOI 10.1007/s11406-016-9791-y * Johan Gamper email@example.com 1 Department of Philosophy, School of Culture and Education, Södertörn University, Alfred Nobels allé 7, 141 89 Huddinge, Sweden it seems that we are unable to find the cause of a first mental object.What may beworse is that causal closure prevents us from coming into contact with other potential universes. If there are mental objects, whereas 'we' are physical, then any contact seems impossible. Additionally, a consistent argument for our inhabiting a physical domain is as strong as a consistent argument for our inhabiting any non-physical domain. Simultaneously, however, the soundness of causal closure seems analytical: The domain of, e.g., the physical on a conceptual level should contain the things that any physical thing causes and, vice versa, all things that cause any physical thing. The suggested loophole is found by disentangling from this 'analytical' truth and then seeking an alternative without letting go of what seems necessary with causal closure. Therefore, the 'universes' that are discussed have 'substances' or contents, but any two universes have contents that cannot causally interact. For instance, you cannot move the things on your desk by thought. The question that is addressed concerns the possibility that, nevertheless, there is some type of causal connection between some two different universes. The key, actually, will be found in an alternative way of stating the first sentence in this very paragraph: 'Therefore, the Buniverses^ that are discussed have Bsubstances^ or contents, but any two universes have contents that cannot causally interact'. Above, we assert that a universe is a domain of things of a certain ontological status. Without stating any existential claims, we can exemplify this point with, first, 'a domain of physical things', D1, and, second, 'a domain of mental things', D2. The first sentence in the previous paragraph, then, claims that no set of things in D1 has any causal bearing on any set of things in D2 (and vice versa). The key now is to take a step back and suggest that it is sufficient for causal closure that D1 and D2 have no causal interaction, leaving it open as to there being any 'causal bearing' between the two. Naturally, this concept appears paradoxical, but it is our starting point towards the 'loophole' that arises whenwe change perspective fromwhere the causes are to where they are not. According to a standard view of causal closure, the causes of the things in the domain of the physical are in that very domain. If we alter this way of understanding causal closure and examine the alternative that the causes of the things in the domain of the physical are not in any other domain (of some non-physical things), then the loophole emerges if there are interfaces between domains of things that themselves are not domains of things. Next, we focus on a standard definition of causal closure. 2 Causal Closure 1.0 One way of stating the principle of physical causal closure is this: If you pick any physical event and trace out its causal ancestry or posterity, that will never take you outside the physical domain. That is, no causal chain will ever cross the boundary between the physical and the nonphysical. (Kim 1998, p. 40). Kim has elaborated on this principle, arguing that the mind seems physical. To push it a step further, if we assume that we are physical (to any degree), then everything that we causally interact with is physical. Although this principle is common in many camps, it has an odd feature. First, if we generalize the principle, i.e., any domain is 632 Philosophia (2017) 45:631–636 causally closed, then it is neutral as to what we are and everything around us is. For instance, if we, to any degree, are mental, then everything we causally interact with is mental. Additionally, if something we causally interact with is mathematical, then everything we causally interact with ends up being mathematical. Actually, Tegmark (2008) has given an account that takes our physical world to be mathematical: 'I argue that with a sufficiently broad definition of mathematics, it [the External Reality Hypothesis] implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis [...] that our physical world is an abstract mathematical structure' (p. 101). The External Reality Hypothesis is the common sense view that '[t] here exists an external physical reality completely independent of us humans' (p. 102). Tegmark shows that this hypothesis implies the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis, which is the view that '[o] ur external physical reality is a mathematical structure' (p. 102) and '[a] mathematical structure is ... abstract entities with relations between them' (p. 104): the conventional approach holds that a theory of mathematical physics can be broken down into (i) a mathematical structure, (ii) an empirical domain and (iii) a set of correspondence rules which link parts of the mathematical structure with parts of the empirical domain. If the [Mathematical Universe Hypothesis] is correct, then (ii) and (iii) are redundant in the sense that they can, at least in principle, be derived from (i). (Tegmark 2008, p.140). The eventuality that our world is mathematical is also noted by Dorr (2010): Perhaps we cannot even rule out a priori the even more radical hypothesis that some or all of the objects of our acquaintance are themselves mathematical objects, as in the 'hyper-Pythagorean' views entertained by Quine (1976) and Tegmark (2008). (p. 141). Therefore, Kim's generalized principle does not permit us to know where (in what type of universe) we are. Additionally, if the principle is true, then there may be other types of existences, but we can never come into contact with them. The lesson is that the principle is not that informative. In the next section, we specify a causal closure definition and attempt to alter it to improve on the situation. 3 Causal Closure 1.1 For Steinhart (2009), '[a] universe is causally closed iff all causes of events in the universe are in the universe, and all effects of events in the universe are in the universe' (p. 43). This definition permits events to be cause-less. To improve on Steinhart's definition, we can consider causal closure from the perspective of a potential multitude of universes. The principle of causal closure, evidently, is about one universe, not about there being only one universe. From this perspective, it seems sufficient to focus on the first condition of Steinhart's definition. If we alter 'the universe' to 'a/the same universe', then we obtain 'all causes of events in a universe are in the same universe'. Now, it seems superfluous to add the second, modified condition that 'all effects of events in a universe are in the same universe' since the causes of events do not leave the Philosophia (2017) 45:631–636 633 particular universe. If 'an effect of an event in a universe were in another universe', then that would contradict the principle that 'all causes of events in a universe are in the same universe' since the event in this case is clearly a cause. Therefore, on the multiverse view, we can define causal closure as 'all causes of events in a universe are in the same universe'. To improve on this definition, we will actually make it less strong. First, we conclude that if there is only one universe, then we do not need to concern ourselves with closure principles. Next, we focus on whether, if there is more than one universe, we can state the weaker principle that no cause of another universe causes an event in our universe. On this view, if there is only one universe, then we are secure as to where the causes come from; additionally, if there is more than one universe, then we are safe from having causes that come in from any of the other universes. 4 A Loophole Another odd feature of both Kim's principle and Steinhart's definition is that on those bases, a very first thing or event in a universe cannot be caused. If all causes of events are in the universe, then the cause of the first event is also in the universe but that is impossible, given that this event did not cause itself (if we take it that causes are prior to their effects). If we adopt the updated definition of causal closure, however, then we have potential access to a 'causal closure loophole'. With the weaker claim that no cause of another universe causes anything in our universe, we gain the possibility of an interface between universes. If all causes of events in a universe belong to either the universe itself or an interface between the universe itself and another universe, then the principle that no cause of another universe causes an event in our universe is not violated. For instance, if we view the frequently conjectured event of the Big Bang as an interface between universes, then with the altered definition, we are allowed to view the universe as causally closed, even though the cause of the Big Bang is external to the universe because the Big Bang is not part of our universe. Thus, on this view, causal closure permits the one universe to be affected by the other via an interface. On this basis, universes are not affected by other universes directly but rather indirectly. To obtain a clear view of this picture, we recapitulate our discussion. Steinhart's (2009) standard definition of causal closure tells us that '[a] universe is causally closed iff all causes of events in the universe are in the universe, and all effects of events in the universe are in the universe' (p. 43). On the one hand, this definition leaves a very first event in a universe cause-less unless it causes itself (or has its cause preceding it). On the other hand, this definition permits cause-less events, which seems to have the effect that we can and must abandon any inquiries into a first event of a (our) universe. However, if we alter this definition, focusing on where the causes are not instead of where they are and state that a universe is causally closed if and only if no cause of another universe causes an event in our universe, then we are free to look closer to the possibility that a first event in a universe has a cause. Naturally, this cause of a first event of a universe cannot belong to another universe. However, on the 'loophole' view of causal closure, there is another possibility. We can add a disjunct to the phrase 'all causes of events in a universe belong to the very 634 Philosophia (2017) 45:631–636 universe' and state that 'all causes of events in a universe belong to the universe itself or to an interface between the universe itself and another universe' without violating the updated version of causal closure. 5 Interfaces between Universes An interface between universes, first, cannot be a universe. This assertion calls for investigations into what a universe is and what a universe is not, work that must be postponed. Second, we nevertheless have some facts to consider. On the 'loophole' view, universes have 'events', 'causes' and 'effects'. For instance, D1 and D2 above have these occurrences. When we examine an interface, however, it appears as though we have the same ingredients (why the 'loophole' view perhaps could end up being incoherent1): If the cause of an (first) event in our universe comes from an interface, then that interface contains a cause. Additionally, if we were to utilize the updated definition, it should be possible to consider a cause of an event in the interface, supposedly implying the existence of an 'effect' in the interface. If the cause, the effect or both constitute an event, then we have the triad of 'event', 'cause' and 'effect' in the interface. That we have the same elements in a 'universe' and in an 'interface' does not necessarily imply that the 'loophole' is closed. A resolution can be conceived in terms of, e.g., quantity. A mathematical point, e.g., consists of the kind 'points' just as the mathematical line does. Nevertheless, the mathematical line is not a point and vice versa.2 Another alternative for the possibility of interfaces of the kind discussed is that universes have dimensional properties that are not shared with interfaces. An obvious possible scenario is that an interface is not causally closed. If we say that a universe is causally closed and that an interface is not, then we immediately observe that an interface is not a universe. Additionally, if something in the interface has its cause outside it, it is true that the interface is not a universe. Additionally, we can let the updated definition of causal closure come to work and observe how it makes sense that the cause of something in the interface comes from somewhere else. With the updated version of causal closure, it is not necessary that the effects of causes in a universe take place in that universe: Provided that we move with universes, the effects of causes in a universe stay in that very universe since any other universe has no effects with causes coming from it. If we move with a mixture of universes and an interface, however, then it is fully appropriate to consider that an event in a universe causes an effect in an interface. An effect in a universe with its cause coming from an interface is also permitted on the loophole view, as noted above in regard to the Big Bang. 1 It would be incoherent if it stated that 1. there is at least one interface between universes and 2. the stating of an interface between universes is inconsistent. On the contrary, the 'loophole' view (implicitly) states only that causal closure is consistent with the possibility of an interface. If an interface, per se, is impossible, then we should drop the second disjunct in the updated definition of causal closure ('all causes of events in a universe belong to the universe itself or to an interface between the universe itself and another universe'). 2 For an analogy in this vein, regard an incidence axiom of Hilbert: 'There exist at least three points that do not lie on the same line'. Concerning a universe, we could postulate that it contains at least x (x > 1), e.g., 'causes', whereas an interface could be postulated to contain, say, one 'cause'. Philosophia (2017) 45:631–636 635 Thus, it is not necessary that interfaces be universes. However, whether there are any interfaces at all, is another story. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. References Dorr, C. (2010). Of Numbers and Electrons. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (2 pt2):133–181. Kim, J. (1998). Mind in a Physical World: An Essay on the Mind-Body Problem and Mental Causation. MIT Press. Quine, W. van. Orman 1976: 'Whither Physical Objects?'. In R. S. Cohen, Paul K. Feyerabend, and Marx W. Wartofsky (eds.), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos, pp. 497–504. Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Steinhart, E. (2009). More Precisely: The Math You Need to do Philosophy. Broadview Press. Tegmark, M. (2008). The mathematical universe. Foundations of Physics, 38, 101–150. 636 Philosophia (2017) 45:631–


Philosophy

/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 1/12 Dallas Willard ARTICLES BOOKS RESOURCES & EVENTS DALLAS DWM SEARCH Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory WRITTEN WITH BARRY SMITH FOR THE ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY, LESTER EMBREE, ED., KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, 1995. There is an inherent phenomenological tendency in British moral theory, especially from JOHN LOCKE <1632-1704> onward. The purpose of his Essay<1690> was, he said, to consider the discerning faculties of a man, as they are employed about the objects which they have to do with. This is language that might serve well in a general description of the work of Husserl and other phenomenologists. In carrying out his purpose, LOCKE developed his Empiricist theory that all our "ideas," and hence all knowledge, originate from "experience," a type of conscious act or event which he never adequately characterized, but simply divided into sensation (sense perception) and reflection (the 'feeling' of our own mental acts and ☰ 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 2/12 states). He and numerous subsequent British philosophers then made significant application of this essentially unclarified ((Empiricism)) to the moral judgment, assuming that our ideas and knowledge about those states, acts and powers or dispositions of the self that are subject to moral assessment must derive from reflective awareness of such states and acts. Frequently the moral judgment itself is treated as something graspable by ((reflection)). While this phenomenological tendency is never systematically exploited or methodologically clarified in the manner of HUSSERL, etc., it often comes sharply into play against the speculative and constructionist claims of moral theorists such as THOMAS HOBBES <1588-1679> and JEREMY BENTHAM <1748-1842>, who fairly represent the anti-phenomenological in British moral theory. On occasion it gives rise to what certainly has the character of (("eidetic")) analyses of the moral judgment or experience and its objects. In his theory of knowledge LOCKE lays a foundation for a phenomenology of the moral life, but does little to build upon it. The morally central conceptions of good and evil, virtue and law are all explained by him with a mixture of stipulation, dogmatism, speculation and unrefined introspection that have almost as little to do with his announced Empiricist methods as it does with phenomenological ones. Still, the general outlines of his thought, and especially his "ideas of reflection," open the way for the many later "psychological" appeals in moral theory to what one 'finds' in oneself upon reflection--especially as they concern the balance between egoistic, altruistic and other motives and the nature and object of the moral judgment. HENRY SIDGWICK <1838-1900> states that SHAFTSBURY (ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER <1671-1713>) was the first moralist who distinctly took 'psychological experience' as the basis of ethics, and that this approach was carried onward through BUTLER, HUTCHESON, HUME and 19th Century Utilitarianism. That is basically correct, though we need to add that the earlier thinkers on this list were freer from domination by assumptions about what must be the case in moral experience and judgment than the later ones. BENTHAM and JOHN STUART MILL <1806-1873> in particular, the two main Utilitarians, are 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 3/12 more characterized, in their writings on moral theory, by psychological constructions and dogmatism than by description. SHAFTSBURY actually opens his Inquiry<1699> with abstract reasoning about the good in terms of part, whole, and end. But he soon moves to the descriptive finding that when actions and affections come before the mind as objects there arises another kind of affection, one bearing upon those very actions and affections themselves. They become the subject of a new liking or disliking, based upon their character as benefiting or harming the human species or public, inclusive of the agent. Moral worth and the virtues of persons consist in their having a properly balanced and overall inclination toward the good of the social system of which they are a part and the individual's good in that system. While the presence of this 'new' moral liking or moral sense seems to be a discovery of reflection, most of what SHAFTSBURY presents remains within the domain of abstract reasoning from concepts. FRANCIS HUTCHESON <1694-1747> provides what is essentially a development of SHAFTSBURY's system. However, in his Inquiry<1725> he flatly identifies virtue, or the object of the moral affection, with benevolence. The kind affections of rational agents immediately evoke an esteem or perception in us that is different in kind from all other appreciations of goodness that may occur. In particular, it has no connnection with personal advantage or desire to possess. While he offers many arguments against opposing views or moral distinctions, the existence of this special "moral sense" and the determination of what its object is is clearly something that Hutcheson rests upon reflection. As he says, "Our hearts must decide the matter," and we read our hearts by reflection. JOSEPH BUTLER <1692-1752> provides us with some of the best ((descriptive)) points in the history of British moral theory. He certainly argues, and often from abstract conceptions, such as that of a systematic whole and the roles of its parts--especially as found in the human being. But the specifically Butlerian points usually come to rest upon appeals to descriptive differences in experiences and their objects and to reflection upon such differences. The opening 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 4/12 paragraphs of his Dissertation on Virtue<1736> makes the strongest possible statements to the effect that we have a specific capacity for reflecting on actions and characters, or for "making them an object of our thought," that such reflection naturally gives rise to approval or disapproval of its peculiar objects, and that the existence of the capacity or faculty "is certain from our experiencing it in ourselves and recognizing it in each other"--that is, from a certain meta-reflection. (Cp. Sermons<1726>, #1) He proceeds with detailed elaboration of this faculty and its objects, concluding that there is a wide range of actions and states which find approval from the reflection faculty, including self-interested actions and those that arise from particular appetites and passions, in appropriate circumstances. Often BUTLER's descriptions and inferences are so intermingled that one must take great care to sort them out. But his whole line of argument can be supported only on what from the phenomenological point of view are rightly called descriptions of ((essence)). One of his retorts to psychological egoism, for example, is that pain and pleasure have nothing essentially to do with self-love (egoism), that "the feelings themselves, the pain of hunger or shame, and the delight from esteem, are no more self-love than they are anything in the world." The famous Butlerian dictum, "Everything is what it is, and not another thing"--so badly used by G. E. MOORE's association of it with his own views in Principlia Ethica<1903>--walks hand in hand, as BUTLER understood it, with the phenomenological slogan, "To the things themselves." The essential distinctions between conscious states or acts and their objects that are relevant to moral theory are ultimately, for BUTLER, to be determined by an ((intuitive)) reflective awareness that gives us their essences. DAVID HUME <1711-1776> is close to BUTLER in this respect, and bases much of his moral theory on reflective analysis. Section I of his Enquiry<1748> concerning morals states his aim of settling the question about "the true origin of morals," and of finding the universal principles that form the "foundation of ethics," by analysis of the complex of mental qualities which form what he called "Personal Merit." To settle any doubt as to whether a given quality enters into Personal Merit is a simple matter: "One needs only enter his own 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 5/12 breast for a moment" to determine if one would desire to have the quality ascribed to oneself. The "experimental" method which HUME proposes to follow, in imitation of the natural sciences of his day, proceeds then to deduce general maxims of morals from a comparison of particular cases. The parallels with the eidetic analysis peculiar to phenomenology are obvious, though HUME retains his nominalism. He takes his 'inner observations' to show that all mental traits which evoke the sentiment of moral approval are useful or immediately agreeable, either to oneself or to others. This is his primary generalization in the foundation of ethics. It obviously presupposes that the moral sentiment of approval is capable of being independently identified for what it is in its own right--perhaps in the manner of redness, sweetness and pain. Likewise for the mental qualities that make up Personal Merit. All that is left, then, is to observe, by reflection on the course of our experience, how that approval (or disapproval) does or does not show up in response to the various mental qualities (e.g. justice, benevolence) contemplated in people. Needless to say, such a procedure could never yield a basis for true generalizations apart from some ((essentialist)) framework. HUME's procedure and conclusions suggest that he is in fact presupposing such a framework in reaching the moral theory he does, regardless of his official rejections of it. Descriptive analysis comes into play at many other points in HUME's discussions of morals. For example, when he gives in the Treatise<1739> an explanation of why people are misled into thinking that reason is practical because calm passions, which do influence the will, resemble reason so greatly that they are mistaken for it. Or when he claims, in that same work, that you cannot find vice in an act of willful murder, but do find 'it' when you "turn your reflections into your own breast, and there discover a sentiment of disapprobation, which arises in you, toward this action." In these and multitudes of other points of detail he shows his reliance upon descriptive distinctions of essence. HUME's views have been criticized sharply by contemporaries and by successors in British moral theory, up to the present day, but rarely on 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 6/12 the basis of descriptive analyses of moral experience and its objects. ADAM SMITH <1723-1790> actually does disagree with HUME about the basic structure of Personal Merit on the bases of descriptive analyses of moral phenomena. He holds that there is an underivative sense of propriety that is more fundamental to moral distinctions than utility is. THOMAS REID <1710-1796> and RICHARD PRICE <1723-1791>, in opposition to HUME, treat the moral sense or faculty as a cognitive faculty, not a sentiment, and hold that our ideas are not confined to what we can derive from "experience" in LOCKE's sense. They, unlike SMITH however, really do belong in the earlier Platonist tradition of HENRY MORE <1614-1687>, RALPH CUDWORTH <1617-1688>, and SAMUEL CLARKE <1675-1729>, as well as the later tradition of "Intuitionism" from WILLIAM WHEWELL <1794-1866> and SIDGWICK to G. E. MOORE and W. D. ROSS in the 20th Century. The Essentialist aspect in all of these thinkers is quite at home in the eidetic atmosphere of phenomenology. MORE, in his Enchiridion Ethicum<1666>, even uses the term (("noema")) to apply to the directly evident axioms of all ethical reasoning. But this tradition is not strong on descriptive analyses of experience, to say the least. REID and PRICE, however, seem to have learned something from the practice of their Empiricist adversaries. One occasionally finds important passages in their works where descriptive analysis of moral experience plays a crucial role. For example, in REID's discussions of "the esteem which we have for a man on account of his moral worth," in Ch. 7 of the 3rd essay On The Active Powers<1788>, and in PRICE's discussion of what sense (sensation) consists of in Section ii of Ch. I of his Review<1758>. Price on occasion shows astonishing similarities to HUSSERL's practice and understanding of essence analysis, but without any corresponding methodological sophistication. We have mentioned BENTHAM and MILL as paradigm cases of nonphenomenological moral theorists. HUME's Treatise was a major influence on the young BENTHAM, but only because he found HUME's idea of utility to be a core around which he could organize a theory of morality that would serve as a basis for legal and social reforms he saw to be necessary. He dropped the subtleties of HUME's 'psychological' analyses and conclusions, specified utility to be the only moral 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 7/12 consideration, and added Hedonism as a theory of value. BENTHAM is like HOBBES in that he presents constructions or stipulative definitions as if they were general truths that have been established and tries to throw the burden of proof onto those who would say his views are wrong. (See Ch. I of Principles of Morals and Legislation<1789>.) MILL is, certainly, a far more careful thinker; but he is hardly any stronger in willingness or ability to do justice to the 'descriptive facts' of moral experience and its objects. SIDGWICK began his work as a disciple (his term) of Mill, but he was unable to accept MILL's account of our duty to choose the general happiness. He soon found himself forced to base that duty on a special intuition, not on Utilitarian considerations. He adopted much of BUTLER's account of moral experience, which allowed various motivations--personal happiness, the general good, as well as "particular appetites and passions"--all to be morally acceptable under appropriate circumstances. In working out a modified form of Utilitarianism in his Methods, one that rests on the above and other non-Utilitarian intuitions, he gives an analysis of the meaning of moral judgments that contains significant phenomenological elements. He provides arguments against the view that "ought" and "right," and judgments containing them, deal with physical or psychical facts, "facts of the sensible world." Thus Naturalism, including Hedonism, is rejected. But for a positive understanding of what 'oughtness' or 'rightness' is, "appeal must ultimately be made to the reflection of individuals on their practical judgments and reasonings." The basic moral concepts are "too elementary" to admit of any formal definition. "Ought" refers to a relation that must be "taken as ultimate and unanalyzable." Some clarification of it can be gained by plotting its relationships to other concepts, but ultimately we can know what it is only by viewing it reflectively and grasping its essence by ((abstraction)). Once we know what "ought" refers to, three general principles--of Justice, Prudence and Rational Benevolence--exhibit at least a degree of self-evidence, "immediately cognizable by abstract intuition." But "direct reflection" also shows us that certain more specific propositions, such as "I ought to speak the truth," are not selfevident and require justification from appropriate premises. The role 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 8/12 of direct reflection and abstractive intuition in SIDGWICK's analyses of moral phenomena and the meanings of moral concepts and judgments is so great that he stands second only to BUTLER and HUME among British moralists in the weight he gives to essentially phenomenological considerations. Although some have regarded the "meaning analysis" characteristic of British moral theory from SIDGWICK up to the last quarter of the 20th Century as strongly similar to phenomenological analysis in terms of (('intentionality')), the actual practice of analytic philosophy is radically distinct from phenomenology in a way that the work of earlier British moralist clearly was not. BIBLIOGRAPHY Becker, Lawrence C., & Charlotte B., A History of Western Ethics, New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. See especially Chapter 8, "Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Ethics," by J. B. Schneewind, and Chapter 9, "Nineteenth-Century British Ethics," by Marcus G. Singer. Mackintosh, Sir James, On the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, Chiefly during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, 4th edition, edited by William Whewell, Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1872. A 19th Century interpretation of, mainly, British moralists, by one deeply influenced by Butler and Hutcheson. Mandelbaum, Maurice, The Phenomenology of Moral Experience, Glencoe, IL.: The Free press, 1955. A minimally successful attempt to develop a phenomenology of moral experience within the context of 20th Century analytic philosophy. Proposes a moral psychology, little informed by standard phenomenological methodology. Raphael, D. D., editor, British Moralists 1650-1800, in two volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. A broader selection than in SelbyBigge, representing a different interpretative scheme. 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 9/12 Schneewind, J. B., editor, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant, in two volumes, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Contains lengthy selections from the figures discussed in this article, with useful 'Introductions' to each one. Selby-Bigge, L. A., editor, British Moralists: Being Selections from Writers Principally of the Eighteenth Century, in two volumes, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897. Valuable not only for the selections, but also for Selby-Bigge's general Introduction, a late 19th Century interpretation of the British moralists. Sidgwick, Henry, Outlines of the History of Ethics, with an additional chapter by Alban G. Widgery, Boston: Beacon Press, 1968. [First edition 1886 (London: Macmillan)]. By far the best treatment of the history of ethics, and of the British moralists in particular in Chapters IV and V. Addendum by L. Embree: As to the role of British moral theory in the phenomenological tradition, one must note, first of all, the degree to which BRENTANO and his successors were aware of an essential affinity between their own descriptive analyses of experience and the work of the British empiricists. Brentano's Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (1874) is heavily indebted in its methodology to the work of Locke, Mill, Hamilton and Bain, and Brentano continues to embrace a psychological approach in his writings on ethics. The ethical work of Brentano and his students also evinces, however, a component that is absent from the British tradition: a concern with intrinsic value, and with the laws governing "correct" and "incorrect" emotion. This psychologically -based axiological approach to ethics and valuephenomena is further elaborated by Alexius MEINONG and by Edmund HUSSERL in his lectures on ethics and value theory. In the latter we find a detailed state of the parallelisms between formal axiology on the one hand and formal logic and formal ontology on the other. Husserl in addition criticizes what he sees as the PSYCHOLOGISTIC character of Humean empiricism, because the latter does not allow the sciences of experience to be grounded in a priori necessities. He defends instead an "absolutist" ethical theory, and especially in his political philosophy 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 10/12 he comes close to Hobbes and to a view of the philosophy of the state as found on a priori principles analogous to those of geometry. Perhaps the most systematic treatment of ethical categories on the basis of the phenomenological description of experience is put forward by Max SCHELER in his Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913/1916). Phenomenology, as Scheler conceives it, is a way of doing philosophy that allows us to grasp the value and significance which is, in his eyes, endemic to the world of human experience. We cannot try deliberately to observe these meanings or values in intellectualistic fashion, and we cannot try to use the instruments of logic and science in order to build up theories about these things. For in order to use logic or thinking to observe entities of the given sort, we should have to have grasped them already, and the only way we can grasp them is via feeling and intuition. In his Essay on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), Thomas Reid (1710-1796) develops a doctrine of what he calls 'social operations' or 'social acts', which concern the systematic ways in which human beings use language non-descriptively or 'non-propositionally'. This occurs for example in questioning, in plighting, threatening, supplicating and bargaining, in acts expressing acceptance or refusal, in acts of giving testimony, and above all in commands and promises. Adolph REINACH, too, developed a theory of "social acts" (later called "speech acts" or "performative utterances" by John Austin (1911-1960) and John Searle) in his "Die apriorischen Grundlagen des bürgerlichen Rechts," published in Husserl's Jahrbuch in 1913. Like Reid, Reinach takes the phenomenon of promising as the central object of his a priori descriptive analyses, and he sees the setting out of the essential connections governing this phenomenon as the basis of an a priori theory of the entire domain of social interaction. Reinach criticizes the Humean analysis of promising as the expression of an act of will, and he points out that the quasi-legal formations of claim and obligation associated with every promise can never be reduced to mere habits, feelings or beliefs. On the other hand, in his 1911 essay "Kants Auffassung des Humeschen Problems" (English translation in Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 7, 1976), Reinach defends Hume 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 11/12 against common misinterpretations and shows that Hume had a sophisticated understand of the a priori connections governing basic mental phenomena. In this respect too, therefore, the affinity is maintained between British empiricism and phenomenology as descriptive analyses of experience. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1986, Brentano and Intrinsic Value, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Duncker, Karl 1940, "Pleasure, Emotion and Striving,"Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1, 391-430. Eaton, Howard O. 1930, The Austrian Philosophy of Values, Norman Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press. Husserl, Edmund 1988, Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 19081914 (Husserliana XXVIII), U. Melle (ed.), Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Mulligan, K., ed., 1987, Speech Act and Sachverhalt. Reinach and the Foundations of Realist Phenomenology, Dordrecht/Boston/London: M. Nijhoff. ARTICLE TAGS phenomenology, morals & ethics 12/10/2019 Phenomenological Tendencies in British Moral Theory | Dallas Willard www.dwillard.org/articles/individual/phenomenological-tendencies-in-british-moral-theory 12/12 @DallasAWillard firstname.lastname@example.com DWillard.org is co-sponsored by the family of Dallas Willard, Dallas Willard Ministries, and FiveStone. Follow @dallasawillard 48.6K followers