Your complimentary articles
You’ve read one of your four complimentary articles for this month.
You can read four articles free per month. To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please
Letters
Letters
Meanings & Misses • AI versus Consciousness • Induction versus Free Will • Love Questions • Driving Ambitions • Critiquing Tallis • Literary Criticism & Life
Meanings & Misses
Dear Editor: Job well done to the editors, writers, designers, artists and cartoonists whose insights and aesthetics made for a very engaging and thought provoking Issue 162 (my first as a new subscriber). The Meaning Issue was a welcome sight here in the United States as our summer of political parrying amped up and the entire meaning of a free society dictated by the rule of law seems to be in a tenuous position. Whether we fall into the trap of authoritarianism or continue on our messy, sometimes maddeningly slow journey of democratic governance, we will grapple with the topics analyzed in Issue 162 – significance, meaning, suffering, consciousness, and core values. Through the interconnectedness of these themes, we are able to get a deeper understanding of how humans crave, create, and communicate meaning. Suffering is a constant in human experience, but how we deal with it and create meaning regardless of its horrors is one of humanity’s greatest strengths.
Matt Tanguay, Ann Arbor, Michigan
Dear Editor: It is indeed unfortunate that for many, Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning remains their sole close encounter with the Holocaust, and therefore the horrors are somewhat hidden because of the solace of free will he offers. In PN 162, Georgia Arkell perpetuates Frankl’s insinuation that survival in the camps was correlated with those “with some aim or meaning directed beyond themselves and day to day survival.” Those embedded in this narrative are blind to the reality that survival in Auschwitz was only the result of luck.
Similarly, in the same issue, Patrick Testa reminds us of Frankl’s contention “that human life has purpose and dignity even during the most abject suffering.” How are we to interpret Frankl’s purpose and dignity in the context of starving, disease, and gas chamber selections?
Ultimately, Frankl’s logotherapy falls ill to the same maladies as his philosophy. Because it imposes his proclamation “If there is a meaning in life at all then there must be a meaning in suffering”, there is no room to embrace Levinas’s well-articulated concept of useless suffering. Frankl’s approach necessitates denying the pangs of despair before we deal with them. Do we impose on the dying cancer patient an insistence on finding meaning and purpose?
My therapeutic clients respond more readily to Rogerian concepts of authenticity, positive regard, empathy, and listening, than the logos of cognitive restructuring and reframing. They move toward healing when joined in their wilderness, rather than by being forced into a promised land of the therapist’s creation.
Bob Schindler, Houston, Texas
Dear Editor: I much enjoyed R D Azevedo’s article ‘Significance’ in PN 162, but I think he’s too triumphant about the status of humanity. He concludes, “It may well be that we represent the apex of cosmic evolution, for we have this absolutely evident and at the same time mysterious ability called consciousness to know both ourselves and the universe.” But, given the untold billions of galaxies, it seems overwhelmingly likely that there are life-forms out there that are far more intelligent and knowledgeable than us. So when Mr Azevedo refers to us as ‘the apex of cosmic evolution’ he claims too much. I can imagine some advanced being saying, “O look, how cute! Human beings have discovered quantum mechanics!” in much the same tone that I might say, “O look, how cute! Our Tommy has learned to build a tower with his plastic bricks!”
It seems obvious to me that there are things about the universe not only that we do not know, but that we cannot know. We understand the universe by means of our own percepts and concepts. How could it be otherwise? So we understand the universe as the snail understands his bit of the garden. But Mr Azevedo seems to be offering a sort of secularised version of the old idea that human beings are God’s special creation.
A lovely article, but please let’s have a little more humility and a little less presumption. The words of Ezra Pound come to mind: “Pull down thy vanity.”
Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen, Eastbourne
Dear Editor: In Issue 162 various possibilities are proposed as to what ‘the Meaning of Life’ is. The concept has been around since before the ancient Greeks, so surely we ought to have found the answer by now? Maybe the reason we haven’t is that there’s a fundamental problem with the question. To illustrate this, we could ask similar questions: What is the colour, or the weight, or the radius, of life? All make perfect grammatical sense: the problem is that they make no actual sense. And so, although ‘the meaning of life’ is one of the ‘big questions’, we need to consider whether it’s simply a meaningless combination of words.
As if trying to tell us something from beyond, an obituary of Daniel Dennett appeared in the same issue. Dennett took an evolutionary view of philosophy: all can be explained by natural selection between mutations: our wishes, desires and, especially, religions, which purport to answer the questions of life’s meaning. Dennett considered religion to be merely a self-replicating meme. So there is no meaning of life from an evolutionary standpoint; unless by distorting language you count simple survival as ‘meaning’.
Bill Gates has said that in an AI-driven future our biggest challenge would be a lack of purpose. I suppose we could substitute ‘purpose’ for ‘meaning’, but I’m not sure that works any better in providing us with an explanation for our lives, as we have different purposes at different points in them. As societies, we also change our wishes and aims from one decade to another. The morality asked of us varies with our religion or worldview, too.
So then, to believe that there is some ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ to life seems unfounded. Perhaps there is after all no great question to resolve. So maybe we can just get on with living our lives?
Paul Buckingham, Annecy, France
Dear Editor: No-one could argue with Jim Mepham when he wrote in PN 162 that “the value of a life is determined by the liver.” A liver prone to malfunctions such as cirrhosis, hepatitis, or jaundice truly can make life seem not worth the effort, and raise the question of the value of living.
Ian Robinson :-), President Emeritus, Rationalist Society of Australia
AI versus Consciousness
Dear Editor: A few thoughts about the article ‘Reality, Humanity and AI’ by Nafees Malik in Issue 162. It’s true that AI may discover a different reality than that of humans due to the speed at which it works, which is something humans can’t match. But describing the reality of AI as ‘authentic’ is using a value judgement that goes beyond the differences between humans and AI. The success of AI in predicting the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence is a great step forward in biology which would have taken humans alone an enormous amount of time to discover: but is it a more authentic perception?
Kant said that we are restricted by our thought power; but AI is not ‘thinking’ as we do, but processing using algorithms. Our thinking doesn’t consist of algorithms unless we deliberately work through a flow diagram. So compare the quality of human thinking with the use of algorithms in AI: the algorithms can only be as good as the thinking of the humans constructing them. Moreover, ‘quality’ is a judgement by humans, and so AI is also limited by our understanding of quality. Quality and authenticity in science, as I understand it, are about the discovery of an objective reality. The problem of fully capturing objective reality, as Kant notes, is that it depends on what’s captured by our senses. Therefore, quality and authenticity are human limits which AI cannot increase. AI can only increase in the speed of processing algorithms constructed by humans.
The question of subjectivity in AI is even more difficult to connect to algorithms. Subjective experience is consciousness, which is unique to each person who experiences, so I don’t believe it could be built into an algorithm even if we did discover how consciousness works through the brain. And if we wanted to build intelligence, reasoning, and intuition into a machine, we would have to somehow reduce them to algorithms. I don’t see how this is possible, as they all depend on subjective experience. So the idea of AI ‘knowing’ the cosmos makes little sense. Humans have evolved over a very long time, but the step from human to AI is nothing of the sort. The idea is good only for science fiction.
Pamela White, Nottingham
Dear Editor: Although embodiment is often mentioned in relation to machine intelligence, one of the consequences of embodiment is not. I refer to the small matter of death, the inevitable culmination of human frailty and jeopardy. Much of our thinking is coloured by breakdown and recovery, by failure and mistakes. If we’re looking for something like this sort of consciousness, must we not build our robots to move through the world as erratically as we do, and then die?
Chris Tyndale, Devizes
Induction versus Free Will
Dear Editor: In Issue 160, Patrick Brissey claims that we try to find the principles needed to predict future events through logical proofs and induction from past experiences. Following this logic, taking Hume’s example, we can assert that the Sun will rise tomorrow. However, what could prevent this from happening is the addition of an element X – for example, an enormous unknown force. At this point, induction is no longer sufficient to predict the Sun’s behavior. Now, let’s do a thought experiment: imagine a supercomputer able to take into account every particle in the universe and trace the interactions between them. This computer would be able to predict that the Sun would not rise if element X suddenly comes into play, because the computer’s already tracking element X. And if the supercomputer can predict every future event, then it would also be able to predict human behavior, thereby proving free will to be nonexistent. Or, if it still fails to predict the future, it would mean that there are non-computable elements in thought, and free will could still exist.
Andrea Gianoncelli, Italy
Love Questions
Dear Editor: I was fascinated by Ivan Iyer’s piece on ‘Kant & Love’ in Issue 161. It made me wonder about the connection between how we perceive love and how we perceive respect.
We don’t all respect the same people or activities as others do. Stigma and prejudice play a part here. My first question is, Do we admire people for what we aren’t, or admire people for what we are and know, and therefore revere? Aristotle said “each man judges well what he knows.” So would an artist who paints faces admire someone who paints faces to a better standard but a different style, compared to someone who paints faces to the same standard and the same style, or someone who does the same intensity of work but in a completely different field of creativity. such as science? Also, if every art is teachable, is an action aiming at a given good a good unifying aim for art? And do those within a school who respect an artist’s art, and therefore the artist, have the same criteria of what’s good? Or instead, does the disparity of disciplines reflect each practitioners’ individual accumulated work, curiosity and interest? And if we have that same commitment to a person, does it become love? Or maybe love is either the product or the reason for the commitment?
Anna-Maria Amato, London
Driving Ambitions
Dear Editor: Thanks to Rufus Duits for a comprehensive examination of the moral arguments against driving fossil fuelled cars in Issue 162. As someone who has campaigned for many years for better pedestrian and wheeling provision on streets, I have encountered the counterarguments, often deployed in offensive and, on occasion, threatening, ways by people who oppose any further restrictions on drivers, such as, for example, parking controls or low emissions zones. The problem is that the deployment of factual evidence and sound arguments are of themselves insufficient to bring about a change in mindset of many drivers, and the motoring industry.
Changing attitudes requires more than facts and reasoned argument – which is not to say that it is impossible, but that it requires a range of approaches.
Politicians and advertisers are fairly successful in influencing attitudes, although they’re not always moral in their methods. Indeed, they’re often wilfully immoral. In my more cynical moments I’ve thought that many politicians and others take Philosophy, Politics and Economics courses at university not for the moral benefit philosophy provides, but to learn how to deploy rhetoric and fallacies in plausible ways! Changing attitudes in a moral way was the theme of a dissertation I wrote as part of my Master’s degree course around 40 years ago. It entailed using The Taxonomy of Educational Objectives in the Affective Domain (Bloom et al) and A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Festinger). Gestalt Psychology had some interesting insights, too.
Alasdair Macdonald, Glasgow,
Critiquing Tallis
Dear Editor: In his article in Issue 162, Raymond Tallis seems to reject panpsychism [the view that literally everything is in some sense conscious] based on Philip Goff’s version of it. Perhaps Tallis is right that Goff errs in stating that we live in a panpsychist world that has a purpose. What Tallis is not clear about are his own assumptions. For example, I might disagree with his assertion, “Expressions of purpose in my life – and, I have no doubt, in yours – are localized, transient, and often conflicting.” I very well might express that I have a sense of universal purpose. And I suppose I might do this without feeling any need to elaborate, much as Tallis does in expressing the opposite. I might also ask if Tallis’s purpose is to point out that our lives have no purpose. But if Tallis does not feel a sense of purpose, is the fault with the world, or with him?
W. Faulkner, Alberta, Canada
Dear Editor: I always enjoy the articles by Raymond Tallis. He has an intelligence and wit which I admire. He normally supports his assertions with references and logical argument, coupled with personal reflections. It therefore struck me as unusual that in Issue 162 he makes the sweeping statement ‘the notion of a universe regulated by a deity has been displaced’. As a theist, I find this inaccurate both personally and as a social science statement, considering the billions who today still believe this ‘irrational’ notion. Perhaps his subjective ideas, supported by the cultural circles within which he moves, have led him to this opinion – but please Raymond: either own your ideas, or at least stick to saying things of which you have justification.
Michael Hanley, Melbourne
Literary Criticism & Life
Dear Editor: F.R. Leavis was sceptical of the worth of philosophy; one collection of his essays published after his death was even called The Critic as Anti-Philosopher (1983). In view of this, it was good to read Colin Stott’s essay on this now unjustly neglected literary critic in Issue 161. However, I don’t think that Stott penetrates the full depths of Leavis’s thought on what makes a classic novel. It’s true that Leavis ‘took up [Matthew] Arnold’s moral crusade for literature’, but he extended and deepened that Victorian poet and critic’s sense of what makes a great novel. It’s not just a question of ‘great writing’ (whatever that means) or of an elevated subject matter.
Part of the trouble is that while Stott gives proper attention to Leavis’s book The Great Tradition (1948), he ignores the developments in Leavis’s thought as he increasingly engaged with the writings of D.H. Lawrence, a novelist who became overwhelmingly important to him. In the books D.H. Lawrence: Novelist (1955) and Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence (1976), Lawrence’s key concept, ‘life’, in all its complexities and suggestiveness, becomes a vital component in Leavis’s thought about literature. For both the novelist and the critic, the word takes on what one can only call sacred connotations. Far from being simply a biological designation, life becomes something vitally and centrally human, not merely a set of attributes open to scientific interrogation. For Lawrence, and so for Leavis, it’s the very opposite of what the machine represents and all the ways in which the language of mechanisation has been used to describe human existence. Lawrence nags away at this in his poetry as well as his novels: “Man invented the machine /so now the machine has invented man.” What he would make of transhumanism, or the reductionism which reigns in the biological sciences, where life is seen as a kind of mechanism?
The development of the ‘sacred’ idea of life in Leavis and Lawrence is discussed in The New Religion of Life in Everyday Speech (1999) by radical philosopher of religion Don Cupitt, who sees this understanding of ‘life’ as being developed by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche before Lawrence and Leavis. Certainly Nietzsche had a considerable influence on Lawrence, and, following him, Leavis makes ‘life’ almost a critical principle, notably when attacking T.S. Eliot’s despair of life. But neither the critic nor the novelist use the word in a ‘philosophical’ way. Lawrence explores it especially in his masterpieces The Rainbow (1915) and Women in Love (1920). As Leavis says in Thought, Words and Creativity: “A major creative writer knows that in composing and writing a major creative work his concern is to refine and develop his profounder thought about life”. So the great novel is of vital significance because it rescues language from the reductiveness of scientific usage and show how its use at the centre of human existence creates new meaning, possibility, and understanding, and a novel is great to the extent that it keeps alive a proper sense of life quite different from seeing humans as slabs of animated meat governed by DNA. Great novels ask what it is we live by and for.
Dr John A. Florance, Newark-on-Trent, Notts
Advertisement
