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Letters
Letters
Discomforting Reflections • Talking About The Conversation • Talking About Nothing • God Debate Lives On • Metaphors & Money • In The Cyber Cave • The Rain Has Gone, But…
Discomforting Reflections
Dear Editor: After reading Edward Hall’s article in Issue 166 about managing migrants, I sat in my warm comfortable middle class Western home with Immanuel Kant’s ethics swirling in my brain. In my fantasy the doorbell rang, and standing outside was a family of immigrants asking to live in my house. They wanted a share of my food, of my shelter, the freedom I enjoyed, and many of the pleasures of life so obvious there. They had some values and priorities different from mine, and others that were the same. They said they would work in my garden to be self-sufficient, but they also wanted a small say in how the household would be run. They wished to contribute to my home budget, but also wanted my assistance with their social and welfare needs. They also wanted me to help defend them from any attacks which threatened outside the house. Kant’s categorical imperative says I should act in accordance with rules that could hold for everyone; but I told them to go back home, and quickly locked the door. Meanwhile they desperately camped on the front porch, and I fed them a few meals through the mail slot in the door. That felt better.
I told myself Kant’s rule only holds for people on my side of the door. But deeper down I felt very bloody guilty.
Michael Hanley, Melbourne
Dear Editor: Dr Edward Hall’s piece on immigration in Issue 166 struck some important points. Concerning the criterion of national sovereignty, certain forms of rhetoric argue that we have a moral duty to protect the borders (and thereby the sovereignty) of countries like the United States. Yet we very rarely see this same rhetoric venture to defend the cohesion of countries like Togo, which have been subject to increasing instability. Even when less powerful countries are on the verge of collapse, as with Sudan, the mainstream tends to ignore them. More recently, some of the voices defending strong immigration controls have likewise abandoned Ukraine. Apparently, this country just doesn’t have the same rights to national determination as the United States. Its borders don’t seem to have the same significance. It is possible to see the drift in this discourse as moving towards a ‘Might is Right’ approach, since as I noted, the idea of national sovereignty only seems to apply to the strongest countries. This idea is also used as a justification for any type of policy, up to and including the invasion of another country.
To put this all another way, morally speaking, if certain countries insist on hard borders and tough immigration policies, their foreign policy must be impeccable. Yet, we seem to witness some of the worst foreign policy go hand-in-hand with closing borders and deporting ‘illegal aliens’. It all suggests that morality has been removed from the practical question of human migration.
One might suggest that the idea of national sovereignty relates to an outmoded political philosophy of nation states. After WWII, we saw broad agreement on the formation of an international community. Nations no longer had the right, at least ideally, to inflict atrocities without consequence. But now we’re faced with a world order that’s gradually disintegrating.
Globalisation has posed philosophical difficulties, especially once we notice that basic human rights aren’t honoured in many different areas. The practical question is how we might move forward. There is some argument for a form of international anarchism, even perhaps for one-world government in the longer term. Certainly, the solution won’t be to retreat back to the logic of the Cold War.
Anthony A. MacIsaac, Paris
Dear Editor: I keep wondering why people are so passive when it comes to inept and/or corrupt governments. It seems that unless you’re French, governments can raise taxes, sell off public assets, underfund public services etc with little or no public pushback. I used to think this was because philosophy is taught in French schools, and therefore the population grasp that their social contract is a two-way deal. However, recently I’ve been toying with a different conclusion. I would like to propose that submissiveness has evolved as a survival trait. Throughout history, if you fight back against tyrannical leaders, then you’re more likely to be arrested, tortured, jailed, killed. So over thousands of years, the meek and obedient have survived to pass on their genes and behaviour, whilst the objectors have faced the bitter consequences of their objections. This leaves many nations with a population of passive individuals, who are incapable of changing the increasingly depressing status quo.
Lydia Masseron
Talking About The Conversation
Dear Editor: ‘Truth, Trust & Political Conversations’ in Issue 166 was an incisive, pertinent, and necessary, if sobering, examination of the particularly fraught political landscape, one microcosm of which is, regrettably, the United States. Nonetheless, the author implicitly adopts a distinctly deontological approach to morality – that is, a Kantian, ‘always act in such a way that you treat others as an end, not merely a means’ approach. The implications and merits of such a perspective clearly constitute the premise of the article. It sees truth as intrinsically, rather than instrumentally, valuable and this being necessary both for love and morality. It condemns politicians relying on sophistry, beguilement and propaganda to deceive the populace and advance their aims at the expense of the electorate. However, I do feel that the flip side of the moral coin, utilitarianism – do what maximises the happiness of the most people – could have at least been acknowledged. While it would undermine (and indeed is diametrically opposed to) the approach the author is advocating, he need not defend it to recognize it. I for one believe that the ends justify the means if the ends do indeed represent the greater good; the complication and nuance is determining what exactly that is, and how far one can morally go in achieving it. This would have supplied the reader with a more rounded knowledge of the issue at hand – even if, as the author argues, the solution to the ills that so besiege our politics might very well be a renouncement of utilitarianism, if indeed it exalts arrogant self-righteousness to the detriment of honest and open-minded discussion and debate.
Billy Cuozzi
Dear Editor: I write in response to the article ‘Truth, Trust & Political Conversations’ in PN 166. While I found much to enjoy in the article, I took issue with his use of a term that has been much abused: ‘safe spaces’.
The first time I heard this term was in 2006, when I was nineteen and in the first year of my degree. The phrase followed me throughout my undergraduate career, but it was never used to deplatform or silence unpopular opinions. Instead, the term was used as an agreement by everyone in a classroom, lecture hall, or seminar roundtable, to approach every idea with curiosity rather than judgment or condemnation. It was also an agreement to see the humanity in a person who disagrees with you. So a safe space was a place to voice ideas – any ideas – without fear of social retribution, because everyone in the space was in alignment in the goal of coming to a deeper understanding of the topic. A safe space was never somewhere a student would only hear ideas they agree with. In fact, it was never a space that shunned ideas at all. The safety was for the ideas themselves, not those who heard them and disagreed. So I believe the safe spaces I once inhabited are the types of places that would lend themselves to the kind of discourse the author advocates.
Alex Clark-McGlenn
Talking About Nothing
Dear Editor: I would like to argue against a point Raymond Tallis made in Issue 166. He said that his existence depended on the improbable emergence of something from nothing. I don’t think that there is anything improbable about the existence of something rather than nothing, and I don’t think something emerged from nothing anyway.
It would be contradictory for nothing to exist. To help explain this, imagine that nothing breathes. That would mean ‘no breathing occurs’. On the same principle, if nothing exists, then no existing occurs. But if existing doesn’t occur, then a state of affairs that nothing exists cannot exist either. So it cannot be true, without contradiction, that nothing exists. And for the same reason, there can never have been a time when nothing existed. So, far from being improbable, the existence of something rather than nothing is unavoidable. Also, since there has never been a time when nothing existed, it cannot be true that something emerged from nothing.
However, this conclusion raises another problem. It suggests that something has existed for ever, and so the past extends infinitely far back. But there are problems with that idea. For example, if reality had to pass through an infinite period before reaching the present, it would never have arrived at ‘now’.
This just leaves the following option: Time itself had a beginning, and as there was never a time when nothing existed, something existed at that beginning. This raises a question; what caused the existence of this first thing? We habitually think that things must be caused by previous things. But that explanation of causation has a problem concerning whether or not the chain of causation extends backwards for ever. However, we might be able to answer the question about the first thing in a different way. If it did exist, and we ask the question ‘Why did it exist?’, my answer is that it would be contradictory if something that existed did not exist.
Peter Spurrier, Halstead, Essex
God Debate Lives On
Dear Editor: Issue 165 tackled the problem of why an almighty and benign God allows the innocent to suffer so grievously, both from natural disasters and from the cruel actions of others. Philip Goff suggests that God is not almighty and cannot prevent suffering. But what is the relevance of a God who is powerless to prevent natural evils? Andrew Likoudis suggests that there must be a creator God because it is unlikely that the universe would by chance allow intelligent creatures to evolve. But our universe may be one of countless many that have spontaneously appeared, each with different physical laws. However, a benign God would not care whether we were atheists or believers, only about how well we treated others. Indeed the multiplicity of religions and interpretations of God’s wishes effectively means that we’re obliged to decide for ourselves how to behave.
We’ll never agree about the existence, nature, or the wishes of God, and certainty in these matters is unjustified. We can usefully discuss only practical issues our actions can affect, including: 1) Whose distress should we preferentially relieve? 2) What methods may we use to achieve those goals? 3) At what cost to ourselves or to others should we act? 4) Should we decide these matters for ourselves, or accept the dictates of some authority?
Allen Shaw, Leeds
Dear Editor: In the section exploring questions about God in Issue 165, several contributors consider the problem of evil: the idea that God cannot be good because he allows suffering in the world.
Our view of suffering is affected by the proportion of our lives lived in its clutches. If after living ninety years we were to look back on our time and recall eighty years of suffering, we’re likely to think we endured a terrible existence; if we experienced suffering for a week and the remaining time was happy, then we might believe we had lived a fortunate life. Imagine a God who creates humans with immortal souls and allows them to go to heaven after they die. In this case would the suffering they experience on earth and their eternal happiness in heaven, taken together, show that this God cannot be good? Would not the problem of evil lose some of its force as an argument after thousands of years of happiness?
Of course, most do not believe in immortal souls or heaven. But that’s not relevant to the claim that suffering refutes the notion that God is good. If we say God cannot be good because of suffering on earth, we must also consider how the claimed immortality of the soul would affect our argument.
None of this is intended to diminish the significance of suffering. Nor does it address religious systems which have a hell as well as a heaven; nor suffering in theistic systems which make no claims about an afterlife. My argument is simply that if a God is said to provide an afterlife, we must include that claim when considering if earthly suffering makes that particular God implausible. If we do not, then we are not making a case against the God in question, and that straw man argument does not show that such a God cannot be good.
Colin Walsh, Dublin
Dear Editor: In certain respects I practice ‘theistic existentialism’, so I’m very open to the idea of a God of limited power, as described by Philip Goff in PN 165 Unlike the majority of friends and classmates of my age, I received no religious instruction. The majority around me were Protestant. I would hear some things about God from them. That God is omnipotent was ‘known’ by me then.
Years later in college – at which time I considered myself an agnostic – I wrote a scorching satirical essay about religious faith. The professor suggested I read William James, which I did, and my viewpoint was forever changed. To use James’s own term, he made faith possible to me, whereas it had been a ‘dead wire’.
About this time I also read the Bible for the first time, and although specific verses speak of God’s omnipotence, that God has limitations jumped out at me. Just one chapter into Genesis, and God needs a day of rest. Rest? For an omnipotent being? Later, in Job, God has to ask Satan what he’s been up to. Wouldn’t he know? So limited power makes sense. It also defangs the problem of evil.
David Wright, Sacramento, CA
Dear Editor: I am always amazed when writers think that moral acts need to be grounded in some external authority, as most people, I believe, act without reference to external authorities. Instead, they know in the actual instance what the right thing to do is. And if asked why they do it, they answer that it is the right thing to do, perhaps backing up their opinion with moral arguments, such as that they wouldn’t want to harm someone, or that it’s good to help others. Whether an external authority would say they’re doing the right thing is of no importance.
Many people live their lives without any reference to deities. Often atheists have a non-religious morality, humanism; but even those who don’t still live moral lives. Morality is part of normal human social interaction.
As to the concept of God, what is left after one’s body has died? The soul? The subject of our experiences? But what’s that? And what part of me lives on if I have had brain damage or dementia?
Richard Challis Bousfield
Metaphors & Money
Dear Editor: Having worked in finance, being the only arts grad in the village, so to speak (phil-lit, Warwick Uni, ages ago), I stumbled across ‘Metaphors & Creativity’ by Ignacio Gonzalez-Martinez in Issue 165 with some excitement. Maybe, finally I could find a practical application for my degree (and hobby) – aside from the secret benefit of being able to out-think my fellow mathematicians and economists.
It’s a surprising fact that despite being in a numbers-focused industry, finance is actually largely about words. Emails, contracts, regulations, articles, presentations, proposals, speeches… I’d never have guessed the City of London was so literary before I arrived there in 1999! Yet despite the deluge of words engulfing financiers, we’re not always the best communicators. That’s partly because what we do is so heavily abstract – particularly investing. Investors live in a world of numbers on screens, numbers in charts, numbers in graphs, numbers in tables… and we expect our clients to understand the value in those numbers. So we desperately try to bring our cherished numbers to life with colourful charts to make them feel real.
But as Ignacio explains, the key to good communication, particularly when explaining abstractions, is metaphor. I’d forgotten that we use metaphor all the time without realising it (cf ‘the price is too high’), and that they’re central to how language and learning works. It’s most effective when metaphors combine to form a well worked analogy. Indeed, the language of investing is already littered with metaphor (we ‘grow’ money like farmers). But over the coming months I’m determined to put Ignacio’s article to work.
Bob Campion, Hampshire
In The Cyber Cave
Dear Editor: I enjoyed reading Seán Radcliffe’s article in Issue 165. Plato’s Cave is a good allegory to explain social media replacing reality, as it blurs the space between the shadowy symbolic world and the reality of the outside world. In Plato’s allegory, except for a few, people in the cave do not even have a chance to see reality, as they are unable to leave the cave. However, in contrast, with social media, users are not only part of this symbolic (or, in Jean Baudrillard’s sense, ‘hyperreal’) world, but still have access to the actual physical world too. That’s why for me Baudrillard’s idea of a simulacrum – a copy of something that’s not even connected to the physical world – fits better as a description of social media. In this case it’s not merely a shadow. For some, it creates a more truthful and better reality than the physical world itself – despite their inability to touch grass.
Lukáš Papco, Prague
The Rain Has Gone, But…
Dear Editor: The reference to the Molyneux problem in the article ‘Seeing & Knowing’ by Shashwat Mishra (PN 165) brought to mind a passage from the Gospel of St Mark. In Ch.8, Mark narrates how Jesus restores the sight of a blind man, by first smearing spittle on his eyes. Jesus asks him, “Can you see anything?” He replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees to me, walking about!” Jesus touches the man’s eyes again, and, as Mark writes, “He… could see everything clearly and distinctly.” So Jesus enables the man to recognise what he’s seeing after a second laying on of hands: the restoration of sight was insufficient in itself.
A more up-to-date example of the phenomenon is the case of a man from California named Mike May, who had been totally blind since the age of three. In the year 2000, at the age of 43, he underwent an operation which restored sight in his right eye: but he could not interpret what he was seeing. He had to reach out and touch things to find out what they were. In 2015, researchers from the University of Washington found that even fifteen years after having his sight restored, he performed significantly worse than a sighted control group. May himself said, “Where motion or colours might be clues, I use my vision. Where details might be required, like reading print or recognising who someone is, I use tactile and auditory techniques.”
Two instances, two thousand years apart, appear to confirm that a blind person who gains sight cannot immediately, or, in May’s case, even after a long period of time, recognise what they are seeing.
Fr Michael Henesy, C.SS.R, Bishop Eton Monastery, Liverpool
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