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• An Analysis of Sam Harris’ Free Will

  Sam Harris says the concept of free will is incoherent. Humans are not free and no sense can be given to the idea that we might be. There are good arguments in philosophical and scientific literature that call into question the ability of humans to make truly free choices. Those arguments generally are rigorous attempts to show that certain necessary conditions for free will can’t obtain or particular sufficient conditions don’t obtain. That is, they unpack a clear definition of what it might mean to be free and then attempt to show that nothing could or actually does fulfill the requirements of the definition. Sam Harris’ new book Free Will takes a somewhat unique, and I think ultimately inconclusive, approach. I will focus mainly on the first part of the book in which Harris lays out his philosophical case. The last part of the book is more about application and I agree with Harris that assuming his philosophical case works, his description of how such a situation would apply to the world seems largely correct. The Lowdown In this section, I summarize what I think is going on in the book and provide a quick analysis of it for those who don’t want to wade through more dense material. For those interested in the fuller story, there’s more in the second section. In this book, Harris argues that the concept of free will makes no sense and so those who believe they act freely and are responsible for those actions are being duped by their biology. When a person make a decision (and then acts on that decision), the thought “I choose a over b” appears in his mind in the same way a pain experience or a desire for chocolate might. The person doesn’t seem to have any control over where the thought comes from—it just appears “out of the darkness.” Further, the person, try as they might, can’t trace where the thought comes from. It’s genesis is a product of a complex nexus of biology and environment about which the person knows very little and does not control. If this accurately describes the situation, how can we say that such a person is free in any sense that would please those who claim the person is responsible for the decisions they make? No coherent answer can be given to this answer so free will must be a false idea. But many of us appear to have a strong feeling that we are in control of the choices we make. We seem to think that when presented with options, we get to decide the way things turn out. Harris admits that this feeling is strong but when analyzed, it breaks down. Everything a person would need to really make a free choice—access to everything that gives rise to the choice and complete control over those things—doesn’t happen. But even if we did have everything Harris says we would need, we still could not claim to make our choices freely. This is because the choice still is the product of what is going on in our brain, influences from our upbringing, and our environment. Any control we would appear to have would still be the product of those things. Our brain and environment is involved in everything we do. Because of this, no account of freedom really makes sense. This is partly why, I think, he says the concept is incoherent.  So there’s a problem here. If Harris is right, there is no way to even describe what it actually would be like for an action to be free. But libertarians (people who believe some human actions truly are free) disagree. They argue that this mysterious “appearance” of the thought to choose one thing over another and this feeling that we do perform free acts is the essence of freedom. The thought is mysterious only if one assumes that there must be a story that involves other causes like brain events and environmental influences and the feeling that we are in control is the basis for believing that it is actually us that brings the thought into existence. The two taken together provide support for the idea that some acts are free in the sense that Harris says can’t be possible. So Harris’ story involves an assumption that everything that happens in the world—including human action—is the product of other events that precede it. Since we don’t have know what those other events are and the cause of the thought involving a choice isn’t something we do—they just seem to appear—we aren’t free. According to libertarians, this assumption is incorrect and our experience of being free along with the fact that we don’t have access to other causes that describe how our thought to choose one thing over another provides a least some reason to think some of what we do is the product of a genuinely free choice. Going Deeper In what follows, I dive into the specifics of what I think Harris is arguing and present a common rejoinder. Familiarity with some of the philosophical jargon and background information related to problems of freedom will help the reader navigate the analysis below. Is the Notion Free Will Incoherent? Before turning to Harris’ core argument, I think there is a bit of confusion about what, exactly, Harris is arguing. For the most part, he seems to be arguing that the very concept of a free act is incoherent. In fact, he states as much at the beginning of the book, “Free will is actually more than an illusion (or less), in that it cannot be made conceptually coherent.” (p. 16). This means that the terms used to define the notion of free will involves a contradiction. Yet, throughout the book, he uses the phrase “free will” as if it is coherent even if false. For example, In the introduction, he states, “The popular conception of free will seems to rest on two assumptions: (1) that each of us could have behaved differently than we did in the past, and (2) that we are the conscious source of most of our thoughts and actions in the present. As we are about to see, however, both of these assumptions are false.” (Ibid.) He even tells us in the next section what it specifically would free will would look like if someone were to have it (p. 24). This is not a trivial issue. If he wants to argue that  this free will is coherent but no one ever exercises it, then an analysis would involve an making an empirical case about whether the things he says must obtain do in fact describe human action. This gives his interlocutor a set of necessary and sufficient conditions to start from and any analysis would focus on the empirical data. However, if his claim is that it’s impossible to articulate a concept of free will that doesn’t involve a contradiction, then any empirical data would be secondary. It’s primarily a philosophical matter and those who disagree with Harris would have to find a coherent notion first (and one that is sufficiently different than Harris’ own case for how human action operates) and then look at any empirical data to see if the necessary conditions are ever met. On my read, I do think Harris is making the philosophical argument that its not possible to make sense of the idea of free will. The empirical data is given to support the philosophical case but I think the interpretation of those data ends up resting on the assumption that his philosophical arguments are sound (and so can’t be used as their support). I’ll describe why I think this is, below. But let’s look first at what a free act might involve. Turn the Light On If You Can Let’s suppose I’m about to climb into bed and realize I forgot my book on the coffee table in the living room. I walk into the dimly lit room to grab the book. The moon is providing enough light that I probably could find the book and head back to bed. But I consider turning on the light to avoid tripping over something. The origin of the idea, “turn on the light” is not all that mysterious. Certainly there is a lot going on in my brain of which I am entirely unaware. But the genesis of the thought is not unanalyzable even by me—it does not appear from whole cloth. It is reasonable to think that it is generated by a host of processes and background beliefs, some of which I have access to. The idea came about because its reasonable (turning on the light will help me avoid tripping), because of past experience (in the past, I’ve tripped while walking through a dark room, light shows objects in a room I may not be able to see by moonlight), because of the influence of others (mother told me never to walk through a darkened room) and the like. So I have the idea. Let’s say further that I have the idea at a specific time (T1) and the idea is about an action I wish to perform at another time in the future (T3) by a decision I make at an intermediate time (T2). At T1, the decision has not been made so there are two possible states of affairs before my conscious gaze that I believe I have control over: turning on the light or leaving the light off. Suppose I decide to turn on the light. In normal circumstances, I believe I made the choice freely at T2 in that I could have brought about a different state of affairs at T3 had I decided differently. Harris explores what brought about the choice to turn on the light rather than leave it off and asks if we can give any sense to the idea that it was a free action. Harris’ option is that there is some event-causal story, the only coherent story, that we can tell that explains my action. There is a chain of causes consisting of brain events and other influences that can be isolated (in an ideal science) that describe why my body moved in the way it did to flip the switch and turn on the light.  The Libertarian will claim that no such event-causal story applies if the action were truly free. The decision and subsequent action to turn on the light originated entirely from me as a “first cause.” That is, at T1 no set of event causes dictates what will happen at T3. At T2, I, as an agent, make a decision to turn on the light that initiates an event-causal chain at T3. There is a break in the causal chain at T1, I choose as a agent-caused act at T2, which creates a new event-causal chain at T3. It is the second step in this process that Harris says is false (or incoherent depending on how your read him). Problems with causeless acts There are obvious difficulties with this notion of an agent-caused act that can bring about new causal series. How is the brain involved in the act of choosing? What would it mean to say it’s not involved? If an act is not event caused, why did it come about? How do goals and desires relate to the act of choosing? How do we answer the ‘why’ question (why did you choose to turn on the light rather than leave it off)? These problems seem very difficult—and they are. So why bother with them? Why not admit defeat and acknowledge that there are no such things like free acts of will? Harris lists some reason why the topic is worth exploring that I can summarize briefly. First, it appears to us that we act in a responsible way. When I turn on the light, it seems to me that I could have refrained and this “feeling” is very powerful. At the very least, this needs to be addressed. Further, it seems to me that I was not controlled in any way in making my decision. The decision seems to me to be up to me in the sense relevant here. Upon reflection, I may have difficulty describing just how, but the feeling is real and drives many intuitions about moral responsibility and human action. Third, the implications of not being free are substantial, as Harris notes. I don’t think it’s important to decide whether things would be better—Harris thinks they would be—or worse if we conclude we’re not free. Either way, it would be a paradigm shift that would have ramifications for just about every aspect of how we think about our world. So these questions are important and Harris attempts to address some of them. Harris’ Argument Harris sets the foundation for his position by attempting to analyze why it is so many believe they act freely in the first place. I think he does this partly because many defenses of free will start with a phenomenological claim: it seems to us that we do, in fact, act freely and are responsible for those acts sometimes. If Harris can dispense with this experience or at least tell us why the experiences aren’t what we take them to be, he can cast doubt an essential Libertarian starting point which helps his case. In the section titled, “Choices, Efforts, and Intentions,” he discusses the "feeling" of freedom and states that this feeling, while not inconsequential, is not relevant for the actual exercise of a free choice. The root of his claim is this: the experience we have of making a free choice is superficial and collapses under analysis. The feeling of freely choosing a over b appears to be caused by us but when we actually look at what is going on, we see that no sense can be given to the idea of a first cause. All action, including those which we deem freely caused by us are actually caused by a series of events most of which we have no epistemic access to or control over. On first glance, when I have the thought “turn on the light,” it may appear to me that I initiated the thought. I “decide” to turn on the light and it is that act of deciding that “creates” the thought and kicks off a causal chain to move my body in a way that flips the switch. But on closer analysis, Harris argues, it becomes clear that I have no access to the reasons why that thought appears before my mind and not the thought “leave the light off.” I do not bring the choice-thought about. Rather, at T1, I had both ideas before my mind and then at T2, the thought “turn on the light” appears and I don’t know why and so the choice cannot be said to be made freely. In all cases where I appear to choose, I am actually the recipient of the thought not the cause of it. In support of this idea, he writes, “Consider what it would take to actually have free will. You would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors.” (p. 24) We don’t have this so we’re not free. But there is a problem with this claim. Harris seems to be toying with the counterfactual: he gives us what appears to be the necessary conditions for freedom. In other words, Harris seems to be giving us a coherent definition of freedom and then attempts to show such acts never occur. So is the idea incoherent or isn’t it? Well, there is more to the above quote. He finishes it with, "But there is a paradox there that vitiates the very notion of freedom—for what would influence the influences? More influences? None of these adventitious mental states are the real you. You are not controlling the storm, and you are not lost it in. You are the storm." (p. 24) It is this last qualifier—the paradox—that gives credence to his claim at the beginning of the book that the very notion of free will is incoherent. Any story we could give about free will must be an event-causal story and any event-causal story makes the notion of a prime mover impossible. Despite his presentation of what a counterfactual situation involving free acts would look like, it seems clear he thinks such a counterfactual situation is not coherent. Two Background Arguments Kim: The Exclusion Argument Before turning to a possible rejoinder, I want to consider two arguments that may shed some light on the problem Harris is dealing with. The first is by noted philosopher of mind Jaegwon Kim and it has been called “the exclusion argument.” Put simply, Kim argues that the only way to avoid the idea that there are actually non-physical mental states for which there are no corresponding brain states (any variety of dualism) is to argue there are no mental states. That is, there are only brain states and what we call mental states should be eliminated. The difficulty with this view is that many mental events don’t appear to us to be like brain states. If I choose to turn on the light, that decision appears to me to be an “idea” that I can articulate in a language or “image” in my brain and “consider” or “deliberate over” and then act upon. None of these descriptive terms seem applicable to what is going on in the brain at the time I’m doing those things. Mental events appear to me to be distinct from brain events and I access these events through my subjective, conscious life. People that find arguments like Harris’ compelling typically find this idea not only not difficult, but generally unintelligible. “It’s just an appearance,” they say, “and at root its all just brain events.” In fact, this is what Harris says. He writes, “The endurance of this notion [of free will] is attributable to the fact that most of us feel that we freely author our own thoughts and actions . . . . Thus the idea of free will emerges from felt experience.” And in the conclusion, “It is not that free will is simply an illusion—our experience is not merely delivering a distorted view of reality. Rather, we are mistaken about our experience. . . . The illusion of free will itself is an illusion.” At this point, there appears to be an impasse: if if one doesn’t believe subjective experiences like performing free acts that have different properties from brain states, what evidence would convince otherwise?  (I’m reminded of an exchange between John Searle and Daniel Dennett. Searle was attempting to argue that there is something like first-person conscious feelings and experiences. Dennett opts for an “objective” approach to studying the mind, something that Searle thinks amounts to rejecting first-person experience. Exasperated, Searle writes, “Now what am I to do, as a reviewer, in the face of what appears to be an obvious and self-refuting falsehood? Should I pinch the author to remind him that he is conscious?”  (New York Review of Books, Volume 42, Number 20 · December 21, 1995)). So either all mental states have a corresponding brain state and in that case, mental states appear to be superfluous and causally inefficacious. For the brain state could initiate subsequent physical action without the mental states (if both are causes then we have a case of genuine overdetermination says Kim and this is something we want to avoid). Or we deny that all bodily action is caused by a brain state and is actually caused by a mental state (physical or non-physical)—something Harris would flatly reject. A third option is to deny that we have mental states which runs counter to how the world appears to us to be. None of the options appears to be attractive for someone with Harris’ metaphysical commitments but who also wants to maintain some semblance of a common sense view.  Strawson: Freedom and Belief Even if we accept Kim’s argument and end up concluding there are mental states that cause bodily action apart from brain states, Libertarians aren’t necessarily out of the woods. For even if there are mental states that are distinct from brain states, the idea of a free will may be in no less trouble. A powerful argument by Galen Strawson attempts to show that regardless of one’s metaphysics, free will, even on a Libertarian’s own terms, can never yield ultimate responsibility (interestingly, I don’t think he is arguing that the concept itself is incoherent—he just argues that a truly free act for which a person is ultimately responsible can never come about). Strawson argues that individuals cannot ultimately be morally responsible because one’s moral decisions are an outcome of the way one is at the time the decision is made. Strawson is only concerned with the state of one’s mental life at the moment of a moral decision—it doesn’t matter whether determinism is true or indeterminism is true, whether one is a dualist or a materialist. It doesn’t matter because the argument claims that a moral decision is the outcome of the mental state of the person (the development of much of that mental state being out of the persons direct or indirect control) and this is true regardless of one’s metaphysics. He considers a case where one passes a person on the street holding an Oxfam tin asking for money. Suppose you face the decision to put money in the Oxfam tin. The following may be true: You want to help the poor person You believe you can afford it You want to feel better about yourself But suppose the follow also are true You want cake really badly You're tired of people begging for money and don't want to support it You promised your spouse you'd bring home the cake Let’s suppose you choose not to put money in the tin. One could argue that the above six antecedent beliefs and desires are in moral parity for you: they neither determine that you’ll act (put money in the tin) or refrain from acting (withhold money from the tin). Now let’s also suppose that you possess something like an active power over which you have control and that you’re rational—conditions generally considered as necessary for a free act on Libertarianism. Let’s also assume that it makes sense for to say you can choose to act or refrain from acting in this case. This means that your action is not caused by other events but that you choose to act or refrain from acting in order to meet some  not-yet-realized goal. Since the antecedent conditions do not determine your actions, why did you make the choice you did? If we ask why you refrained, there either is an answer to that question or there isn’t (this isn’t merely an epistemological claim—I’m saying there is or is not a metaphysical antecedent that explains the decision). If there isn’t, then the choice appears to be random and violates the third of the three necessary conditions for a free act. If there is a reason, let’s say you acted because you put more value in the second set of beliefs and desires more than the first, then that value judgment would be included in the first of Strawson’s premises in what he calls the Basic Argument: You do what you do—in the circumstances in which you find yourself—because of the way you then are. In this situation, we could capture this by asking, “Why did you value the second set over the first such that it influence your decision?” If your decision was truly yours, it came out of the state you were in at the time of the decision the development of which may be partly or entirely out of your control. How, then, could you be responsible for the choice to value the second rather than the first set and thus for the choice to refrain from putting money in the tin? Free, responsible action seems ultimately illusory. There is a nice summary of this argument here. Strawson lays out his full case in his recent book, Freedom and Belief. Turtles All the Way Down With this background, we can get a bit clearer on the root of Harris’ claims. Putting Harris in conversation with Kim, I think he would claim that all bodily action is an effect of a some process in the brain. That is, human action is a pure case of physical-to-physical causation. Mental states like free choices do appear to be something like epiphenomena for Harris. He writes, “Decisions, intentions, efforts, goals, willpower, etc., are causal states of the brain, leading to specific behaviors, and behaviors lead to outcomes in the world. Human choice, therefore, is as important as fanciers of free will believe… But the next choice you make will come out of the darkness of prior causes that you, the conscious witness of your experience, did not bring into being." (35) Harris doesn’t appear to want to make a distinction between what we might label a mental event and a brain event. But this runs counter to Leibniz’s well established law of identity. So in order to make sense of Harris’ view, I think the most charitable reading is that a mental event is an appearance, an illusion produced by the brain and correlated with a brain state but themselves are causally ineffective. The brain does all the work in moving the body. On the causal side of the story, Harris appears to agree with Strawson. Harris argues that the explanation for an action can be given entirely in terms of one’s bodily state and environment just prior to the action occurring and that state is explanatorily sufficient for determining the action. If we could have full access to that prior state and enough data to enable us to create causal laws about the outcome of states like that, we could, as third party observers, predict your action with close-to-perfect accuracy (allowing for standard deviations in statistical models and the like). On this view, we have to give up the idea that mental events have any causal power over action. But as Strawson shows, even if that’s not the case, free will is no better off. Harris’ presentation is weaker in this regard because he shunts the appearance of a free act to mystery. He aligns to Strawson’s argument in that actions are the result of prior causes and at least claims that one’s metaphysical commitments are secondary (he says, “It is important to recognize that the case I am building against free will does not depend on philosophical materialism . . . even if the mind were made of soul-stuff, nothing about my argument would change. The unconscious operations of a soul would grant you no more freedom than the unconscious physiology of your brain does.”). But he assigns any apparent free act to a product of mystery: the brain (or soul) on any conception of free will would be an unconscious change about which we are not aware and so could not be free. I think the cases he gives to support this are of a weaker variety. He could have used stronger cases. But I believe he uses a particular class of examples to support his claim that choice-ideas are outside of the agent’s direct control. For example, he talks about needing to buy a present for his daughter and not knowing what to get her and a case where your life goes off track and you need to figure out how to get things right. These are cases where the options one needs to consider may be unknown and ideas, “simply arise unauthored.” (p. 35) But the cases most interesting for the Libertarian are those where the options one is considering are clear (choosing between chocolate and vanilla ice cream) or where the decision is to act or refrain from acting (turn the light on or leave it off). I suspect that Harris would say using these examples make no difference to his case. And it might not particularly if he does align with Strawson’s causal story. But it does shed some doubt on his claim that the decisions that are paradigmatic of a free act actually do appear out of darkness and are entirely mysterious to us. I may not have any awareness of where the idea to get a tropical fish for my daughter comes from but I do seem to have some awareness of the factors involved in deciding to turn the light on or leave it off.  Ultimately the cause of that thought may be a product of my prior beliefs and desires, but it seems there is at least a possibility that I could analyze this and however crudely, trace the idea’s pedigree—something that doesn’t seem possible on Harris’ model. So Harris differs from Strawson in that Harris’ argument grounds the inability of a person to act freely in an apparent inability to know all the factors that ground intention. His apparent counterfactual to the efficient causal story entails that we “would need to be aware of all the factors that determine your thoughts and actions, and you would need to have complete control over those factors.” Because we are not so aware, we can’t be free. And it is just this appeal to mystery that leaves Harris’ argument open to attack. If the decision to turn the light on “comes out of the darkness” and is ultimately unanalyzable, couldn’t this just be what the exercise of a free choice by something like a first-casual agent is like? I may not know everything involved in how or why I make a choice. But the experience of making that choice seems to me to be under my control. The fact that I don’t know all those factors doesn’t in any way diminish the experience. In fact, this is precisely what Libertarians claim. From the perspective of third-person analyses (i.e. a scientific analysis), a free choice would be mysterious. A free choice is not reducible to an efficient-causal story and the genesis of the thought to turn on the light appears to come out of the darkness just because the agent herself created the thought—she made the decision. If it does “pop into the mind” it doesn’t do so without the agent being involved. It “pops” because the agent exercises a causal power to bring it about. And there is an enormous amount of experiential data (the feelings Harris references) to support this idea. That feeling should contribute to the overall empirical data we should consider, not be dismissed by hand waving. What It Means To Be An Agent In fact, this is essentially what Libertarians say. For most of his career*, philosopher Roderick Chisholm was a committed Libertarian and gave some of the more clearer descriptions of a free act and libertarian agency.  In van Inwagen’s and Zimmerman’s Metaphysics: The Big Questions in an article titled “Human Freedom and the Self,” Chisholm describes the Libertarian scenario as one where an event is not caused by another event but by an agent. This, he says, is not incoherent but simply ascribes the “cause” of that event to something that has the power to bring events about. “We must not say that every event involved in the act is caused by some other event; and we must not say that the act is something that is not caused at all. The possibility that remains, therefore, is this: We should say that at least one of the events that are involved in the act is caused, not by any other event, but by something else instead. And this something else can be the agent—the man.” (p.359) Why would we come up with such a thing if our experience of observing causes always seems to involve event causation? In fact, says Chisholm, our concept of event causation (which Hume showed cannot be derived from observing the world alone), probably comes from our experience of being causal agents. He writes, “How, then, do we derive [our idea of event causation]? The most plausible suggestion, it seems to me, is that of Reid, once again: namely that ‘the conception of an efficient cause may very probably be derived from the experience we have had . . . of our own power to produce certain effects.’ if we did not understand the concept of immanent [agent] causation, we would not understand that of transeunt [event] causation.” (p. 362) The point here is that Harris is claiming that the thought to act on a rather than b appears in the mind without the agent having any kind of access to where the thought came from and this means that the agent is not acting freely. But if you ask the agent where the thought came from, the answer will be something like, “I just decided.” The phenomenology includes the mysterious but very present sense that somehow the person themself was the source of the decision in spite of (perhaps because of) the inability of that agent to give an exhaustive event-causal story. It is the very fact that such a story cannot be given that grounds the idea that the agent herself brought it about. It seems to me that only if one assumes that the story is event-causal must one demand that the agent must have access to that story in order to be free. If one abandons that assumption, then decisions (thoughts that involve choosing) along with the phenomenology that one feels as if one chose is adequate to ground at least a prima facie belief that one is responsible. Of course the counterfactual to this is the scenario that Harris says is not possible—at least not now: an exhaustive material account that is very highly predictive of action. If such an account could be given, then it could be reasonably claimed that the phenomenology is a phantom and there is no mystery where thoughts involving choices come from. But such a story does not exist and such a story does not seem forthcoming. Conclusion Harris’ short book is intriguing and accessible. It’s a good primer on key ideas in physicalist theories of freedom and the will, written for a broad audience. Many of the ideas are challenging and he does a good job of articulating what is as stake. I think the way he frames his core argument is a bit too breezy, though he could tighten it up fairly easily by adopting some of Strawson’s framework. Given Harris’ wide following, the book will be important and hopefully start more conversations on this important subject. * At the end of his career, a single article appeared in a collection on free will where Chisholm appears to have backed away from his commitment an agent-caused act as being sui generis. He subclasses agent caused acts under event causality since the agent’s actions is an event of some sort. He does not appear to abandon agent causality but he does appear to modify his view that agency is something unique in the world. The rather obscure but important article appears in Timothy O’Connor’s excellent collection Agents, Causes, and Events: Essays on Indeterminism and Free Will ** Edited for grammar and readability on 5/26/12 - 11 days ago

• LOVE146: Philosophy in Action

  When we hear the word “slavery”, most people think of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade that occurred from the 16th to the 19th century. They think that slavery is no longer a problem that plagues modern society. This is not true. There is a modern day slave trade and an estimated 27-30 million people are enslaved worldwide. At the heart of today’s slave trade are the many forms of enslavement such as debt bondage, forced labor, forced child labor, child soldiers, sex slaves, and child sex slaves. According to UNICEF, “As many as two million children are subjected to prostitution in the global commercial sex trade…. The trafficking and sexual exploitation of children produces horrible consequences in the lives of these children such as physical and psychological trauma, diseases (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unintended pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and death.” Slavery clearly is one of the plagues of modern society. Thankfully, the hope of abolition is a reality. LOVE146 is an illustration of this reality. LOVE146 is a US based non-profit organization whose vision is to abolish child sex slavery and exploitation through prevention and aftercare solutions while contributing to a growing abolition movement. LOVE146 was founded in 2002 (as Justice for Children International) and continues to be recognized as a leader in the fight against modern day slavery. One of the vehicles through which LOVE146 carries out its mission is through the formation of local task force groups which I have recently joined. The local task force is a means by which members can demonstrate their passion for human rights by bringing awareness of the slavery issue to their local communities. In doing this, the local LOVE146 task force groups are a demonstration of philosophy in action. Human rights organizations (HROs) like LOVE146 educate, promote, and protect human rights along with reporting on human rights worldwide. These universal and egalitarian norms, known as human rights, help protect people from political, legal, and social abuses and organizations such as LOVE146 are at the forefront of protecting the oppressed, the weak, and the vulnerable in society. Just as significant, HRO’s are the epitome of the practical implementation of philosophy. The mission of HROs are built upon the philosophical foundations of human rights, particularly the meaning and function of human rights. Subsequently, these foundations serve to build the HRO’s belief that human rights are part of society’s expectations for their members. Without this belief, HROs would have nothing to promote or protect. For instance, LOVE146 correctly believes that children should not be exploited for sexual purposes and this is a universal right for all children that society accepts. Subsequently, LOVE146 can advance their specific mission, the abolition of child sex slavery. This is translated down to the local task force groups who play their part in the practical application of philosophy. One of the most important events in the history of modern human rights was the drafting and adoption of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. This declaration displays the philosophy, behind not only the UN’s human rights endeavors, but also the philosophy advocated by numerous HROs. This document has greatly influenced HROs in the late 20th to early 21st century. It contains statements such as, “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world…”, “Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom…”, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” These statements have philosophical significance for HROs today and are part of the mission statements and values advocated HROs. The concepts of human equality, human dignity, and liberty mentioned in The Universal Declaration undergird the work done by these organizations. Furthermore, these concepts are held by people who are serious about putting an end to the evils of slavery and human trafficking. These evils must be abolished because every human being is created equal, created with worth and dignity, and subsequently warrants liberty in their life. Not everyone agrees philosophically on the details of these axioms. For instance, the concept of liberty is intertwined with the metaphysical concepts of free will and determinism and the political concepts of the state and its relation to its constituents. There may not be agreement about these details but there is agreement among the human rights community (includes HROs and all those who work or volunteer for these organizations) about the existence of equality, dignity, and liberty in mankind. The vision of LOVE146 is “The abolition of child sex slavery and exploitation. Nothing less.” The mission of LOVE146 is “Abolition and Restoration! We combat child sex slavery & exploitation with the unexpected and restore survivors with excellence.” LOVE146 needs your support but, most of all, the victims of sex slavery and exploitation need your help. The vision and mission statements of LOVE146 are powerful and bold but, more importantly, allow these statements to be inspiring to you. Allow them to provoke you into action to reach these goals advocated by LOVE146 and other HROs out there. After all, when you are part of today’s abolition movement, you are the epitome of philosophy in action. - 4 weeks ago

• Week of April 23, 2012: Week in Review

  On the uselessness of philosophy. Lawrence Krauss, a theoretical physicist, apparently agrees with Steven Hawking, that philosophy is past its prime and is being supplanted by the hard sciences. In an interview for The Atlantic, he claims that physics progresses and philosophy does not. Physics unpacks truth about the universe and philosophy is only interesting to other philosophers. “Philosophy is a field that, unfortunately, reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke, ‘those that can't do, teach, and those that can't teach, teach gym.’” Philosophy, according to Krauss, is only useful when it informs other disciplines which actually do all the heavy lifting, epistemically speaking. That was on Monday. On Friday, he “updates” his comments in response to a letter he received by his friend Daniel Dennett. In the Scientific American, Krauss admits that he did not intend to come across as denying that philosophy is completely useless. It’s effective in some areas—like telling us where we ought to start to study the world—but still, as a discipline that gets at truth about the universe, it’s not much good. “When it comes to the real operational issues that govern our understanding of physical reality, ontological definitions of classical philosophers are, in my opinion, sterile.  Moreover, arguments based on authority, be it Aristotle, or Leibniz, are irrelevant.” he writes. He apologizes (for what is unclear) but then has a recommendation: “To those who wish to impose their definition of reality abstractly, independent of emerging empirical knowledge and the changing questions that go with it, and call that either philosophy or theology, I would say this:  Please go on talking to each other, and let the rest of us get on with the goal of learning more about nature.” And no, this isn’t satire. Self-replicating, synthetic nucleic acids. For those who agree with Krauss’ philosophy, perhaps this article on self-replicating, synthetic nucleic acids might be more interesting. According to the article, this research, has “implications not only for the fields of biotechnology and drug design, but also for research into the origins of life—on this planet and beyond.” Questions of teleology and  the relation of scientists who created these nucleic acids to the existence of them and what that might mean for biology best not enter your thinking. That is, no doubt, far too philosophical to be helpful. The prisoner’s dilemma tested. Interesting real-world take on the prisoner’s dilemma. Thanks to Andrew Smith for the pointer. See your logical fallacies. Cool interactive site on logical fallacies. They have a nice, downloadable poster as well. Thanks to Pete Harris for the pointer. You can’t get there from here. My former professor J.P. Moreland was involved in a debate with Michael Shermer recently on the question of whether there is life after death.  After the debate, Moreland posted to his website a response to a claim he didn’t get to respond to in the debate. He argues in this piece that claiming that evolution can be a reasonable explanation for intrinsic values and moral laws runs into a significant logical problem. I attempted to post a reply to this argument on his website but apparently he (or his webmaster) didn’t think it was worth accepting. So I’m posting it here. Here’s what I wrote in response: “This argument has teeth only if we first assume that ‘moral laws’ exists outside of whatever beliefs and practices have been developed by evolutionary processes and are things that beliefs must correspond to. Objectivity and a moral statement being ‘lawful’ need not entail this. Suppose humans believe the following to be a moral law: it is wrong to treat people as means. On evolution, what might make this a moral law just is the fact that humans believe (consciously or unconsciously) that this practice is conducive to survival (and the belief is a product of evolutionary processes including social and environmental programming). Objectivity does not need to be any broader than the idea that the belief is shared and publicly analyzable and it's can be considered a law only to the extent that it continues to be a practice humans believe to be conducive to survival. Over time, evolution may rewire our brains such that this is no longer considered to be valuable for survival and it would cease to be a moral law. That doesn’t seem to have any impact on the value or force of what we call a moral law today. To say that on evolution, our moral beliefs and practices wouldn't track truth assumes what it's seems to want to prove: that moral laws are something outside of the human mind that beliefs must correspond to. Given the enormous fluidity of the moral code across generations and cultures, there seems to be little reason to believe that.” New logic text worth checking out. My good friend and colleague, Dr. Paul Herrick, just released his new logic text with Oxford University Press. I had the privilege of reading the entire text prior to publication and giving feedback and helping shape the text a bit (even got a mention in the acknowledgements). The final product turned out extremely well and is worth the look. Check out Herrick’s Introduction to Logic. Ethics and politics Dr. Seuss style. - 4 weeks ago

• Week of April 16, 2012: Week in Review

  Like questions? Got answers? You should spend a day at the park. John Horgan, writer for the Scientific American,  doesn’t like Sam Harris’ view on free will very much. It’s doubtful whether he likes Sam all that much either.  Blogger Alan Litchfield for The Malcontent’s Gambit recently interviewed Dr. Peter Boghossian for his premier podcast. The title of the piece is “Faith: A Barrier to Rational Thought”. In this interview, Alan surveys the growing body of content surrounding Peter’s recent talks, interviews, and articles asking how he responds to many of the critical claims made against him. This interview is a nice rollup of Peter’s ideas and the response of some of his detractors. A rabbit bemoans the lowly state of the humanities. A new, groundbreaking argument proves that philosophy does not exist. I learned about a new type of cognitive bias this week: Rhyme as reason effect – if something is said in the form of a rhyme, you’ll tend to believe it every time. An amazing song worth thinking about. Lyrics. Buy from Amazon. Tips for improving memory. I like this list because it covers biology, psychology, and technique. Favorite quote of the week: “If we imagine that some candidate criterion of rationality is perfectly accessible, then we are always likely to prefer that criterion; but once we recognize that perfect accessibility is quite generally an unattainable ideal, we can learn to live with an imperfectly accessible criterion. We have nothing else to live with. Provided that one’s evidence is more accessible than the truth-values of the hypotheses under investigation, the former can still serve as a useful guide to the latter. Real life is messy.” Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits Follow Philosophy News on Twitter: @philosophynws - 5 weeks ago

• Argument Proves That Philosophy Doesn’t Exist

  Copenhagen – Two philosophers based in Denmark have apparently come up with a proof that shows that philosophy doesn’t exist and their discovery is rocking the philosophical community. For centuries, philosophy has been at the core of just about every discipline and has provided a foundation for most of Western thought. From Plato to Kripke, philosophers have been tackling the universe’s toughest problems. But in 2012 Dr. Soren Filosht and another thinker who wants to be known only as “Dagmar” have developed a complex argument that ostensibly shows that philosophy is merely the product of wishful thinking and has no basis in reality. The two Danes are arguing that disciplines like metaphysics and epistemology are a crutch that the weak-minded have used to better understand the world. And their proof casts serious doubt on whether these things actually exist. “It’s necessarily true that everything is just real and reality consists of properties, relations, sets, and facts and you can study them. No metaphysics required.” claims Dagmar. Epistemology too is a chimera and these thinkers are calling on all philosophers to give it up. “Look, we just know stuff. If you are justified in believing a statement is true, then you know it. People who believe they’re doing ‘epistemology’ just confuse the matter and the sooner they come to believe that, the better off we’ll all be.” They developed their proof while sampling the wide variety of local plant life in Christiana (a small community inside of Copenhagen). As with most discoveries of this kind, they weren’t looking for it. They were functioning as working philosophers developing a paper that attempted to show that Kripke’s possible worlds have no basis in anything actual. “We were close. Real close.” Dagmar recalls. “Then we got a brainwave, as if we were in some kind of psychotic hallucination.” Not only are possible worlds not actual, they hit upon a the striking fact that philosophy itself isn’t real. “We kind of felt like modern-day Descarteses; we thought philosophy out of existence: cogito ergo non philosophia.” Filosht added, visibly shaken as he spoke.  Perhaps the most significant outcome of their discovery is the claim that logic has no place in the life of a rational person. “Logic is bullshit,” argues Filosht “and we can prove it. If you attempt to get at reality using the rules of logic, then you will not be getting at reality at all. Most philosophers attempt to get at reality using logic. It should be clear then that they’re not getting at reality at all! It’s so simple, I’m embarrassed that we didn’t see it until now.” Legal Matters The Danes have begun working through the legal system in Europe in an attempt to remove all philosophy books from public schools and course curricula. “It’s immoral that we’re teaching ethics to all these impressionable minds. Teachers approach the subject as if ethics means something and that’s just wrong given what we’ve discovered.” Politicians seem willing partners in this effort. Most of the politicians the philosophers have discussed this with have never heard of philosophy and the notion of thinking about problems was foreign to many. Still, the politicians agreed that if people were using public money to teach an idea that has now been shown to be false, they would throw their hat in the ring to put a stop to it. Interior minister Hans Mikkelsen is leading the charge on this project. “Haven’t you heard that the state should be separate?” he exclaimed at a news conference. When asked what the state should be separate from, Mikkelson pointed to his head and said, “Exactly.” The minister was appalled when he opened a logic book (his first time) and found the disjunction symbol. “Looks like the Devil’s widows peak if you ask me.” He also added that the conditional symbol is “far too phallic” for his tastes and added, “Hitler must have studied logic.” He admitted that he didn’t really understand Filosht and Dagmar’s proof but now that he’s seen what schoolchildren are being exposed to, it doesn’t matter. “I was like Play Dough, making shadow puppets on the wall of the cave, but my eyes have been opened. It’s the third day and time to resurrect the prisoners.” he said. Philosophers Enraged Filosht and Dagmar have not convinced everyone that their proof is sound. English thinker Dr. Bernard Quinn questions their motivation claiming that philosophy has been under attack for centuries. “Socrates was given the Hemlock for corrupting the youth with his teachings. Do these two think Socrates drank that Hemlock for nothing?” When asked about their proof, Quinn admitted that he believes there’s a simple logical problem somewhere but he has yet to find it. “Arguments like these are tricky and subtle. But given enough time, someone will find the error in their reasoning.” American philosopher John “Supabad” Johnson also demurs. He recently wrote a paper titled “Denmark’s Dagmar is Dumb(ing Down Society)” noting that he added the parenthetical to avoid an ad hominem. The paper attempts to show how Dagmar’s supporting argument, which is designed to demonstrate the non-existence of the peer review process, lacks adequate support from the philosophical community. Johnson’s core argument centers around the claim that Dagmar’s thesis appears to be made up and that the lack of any footnotes or a bibliography should create a skeptical response in her readers (though Johnson admits his argument is only probabilistic). Johnson’s paper is currently in peer review and he expects it to be available sometime towards the end of 2014. Other philosophers are taking a more practical approach. Sim Shipping of the University of Washington heads the XPhi program there and is nonplussed by the work coming out of Denmark. “I’m just going to keep philosophizing. I don’t see how it hurts anyone.” Shipping argues that philosophizing is a personal matter and that arguments against its existence are beside the point. “It’s a first-person subjective experience and most likely properly basic. I don’t need an argument that it exists.” he added. Next Steps Filosht and Dagmar will continue to tell their story and work to change people’s thinking on the matter but have already looked beyond this issue to their next project. When asked what that would be, Dagmar replied,  “We’re thinking long and hard about that.” Copyright © Philosophy News If you liked this article, you may also like, “Waking Up Now Found Linked to Death” - 6 weeks ago

• April 2, 2012: Week in Review

  The Huffington Post published an interesting piece by Dr. Robert Klitzman, a medical doctor. The article, with the provocative title, “Am I My Genes? The Question of Fate, Free Will and Genetics” considers the implications of human genetic analysis on our views disease and death. If we know in advance what diseases we’re likely to get or pass to our kids, how will that change the way we think about life and reproduction? He writes, “In a few years, most, if not all of us will have our full genomes mapped, whether we like it or not. We will learn what mutations we each have, and what diseases we may get. . . . the fact that these tests provide information about one's future - even if just partially --prompts searches to understand what exactly this predictiveness means, and how to interpret it and incorporate it into one's life.” We posted our latest podcast: an interview with Drs. Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray. In this podcast, Murray and Schloss discuss whether evolutionary theory (which they take to be largely a correct view of biological development), undermines religious belief. They talk about recent work that attempt to construct evolutionary explanations of religious belief and practice and talk about why they don’t believe such explanations have a negative effect on either truth or value of religious belief. A nice infographic of common informal fallacies. The image breaks fallacies down into six, color-coded categories and includes an image for each fallacy, the name of the fallacy, its description, and an example. Very nicely done. (There’s a link at the bottom where the authors attempt to apply the fallacies they define to an argument against same-sex marriage by Cardinal O’Brien. While many of the Cardinal’s claims are more rhetorical in nature than they are propositional, the authors violate another logical principle in applying the fallacies to his claims: the principle of charity. This principle states that a person’s claim should be taken in the best possible light and then analyzed for truth value. I don’t think the authors do this. In many cases, they assume the worst possible interpretation of a given claim and then call it a fallacy. This is a good example of using fallacies as a rhetorical rejoinder instead of attempting to determine whether the best possible reading can yield a good argument. Frankly, the same kind of analysis can be done for many arguments for same-sex marriage (see this “argument” for example) if the claims in those arguments are taken in the worst possible light.) Dr. Peter Boghossian published his March 2012 newsletter. You can download that here. The newsletter includes information about recent publications, speaking dates, and upcoming events. You can subscribe to receive the newsletter at peterboghossian.com. Peter also made the cover of The Portland Mercury this week (and a plug from Richard Dawkins). More Peter Boghossian: Alan Litchfield for The Malcontent’s Gambit talks about Peter’s work and has some nice things to say about Philosophy News. Quote of the week: “Here is the crux of the matter, and I come back to the case of the learned theologian… For whose sake is it that proof is sought?  Faith does not need it; aye, it must even regard that proof is its enemy. But when faith begins to feel itself embarrassed and ashamed, like a woman for whom her love is no longer sufficient, but who secretly feels ashamed of her lover and must therefore have it established that there is something remarkable about him – when faith thus begins to lose its passion, when faith begins to cease to be faith, then a proof becomes necessary so as to command respect from the side of unbelief. And as for the rhetorical stupidities that have been perpetuated by clergymen in connection with this matter, through a confusion of the categories – alas, let us not speak of them.” Soren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript Cool wind map of the United States. Not philosophical but cool enough that I wanted to share it. (Thanks to Matthew Snider for the pointer.) - 7 weeks ago

• Evolution and Religious Belief

  Does evolutionary theory undermine the truth of religious belief? There have been many books published in recent years whose authors have attempted to develop an evolutionary explanation of religious belief. Pascal Boyer in Religion Explained claims, “The explanation for religious beliefs and behaviors is to be found in the way all human minds work.” Boyer’s effort at explaining religious belief is an evolutionary one. Similarly, Daniel Dennett in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon writes, “Religion is natural as opposed to supernatural, … it is a human phenomenon composed of events, organisms, objects, structures, patterns, and the like that all obey the laws of physics or biology, and hence do not involve miracles.” Dennett’s view, too is that religion is a product of evolution. Many go further claiming that an evolutionary explanation of religious belief at the very least undermines the truth of the claims of religion (claims such as God exists) and may even undermine the value of religious belief. If evolution explains religious belief, so the argument goes, it is at best an unnecessary by product of evolutionary processes.  Even if there are viable evolutionary explanations of religious belief, does this mean that the central claims of religion are false and does it mean that religious belief should be discarded? Dr. Michael Murray and Dr. Jeffrey Schloss addressed these and other questions in the second annual Bellingham Lectures in Philosophy and Religion held in February 2012 on the campus of Western Washington University in Bellingham. In this podcast, we interview Drs. Schloss and Murray about their talk and about their perspectives on the impact of evolutionary theory on how we ought to think about religious belief and practice. Philosophy News interviewed Dr. Alvin Plantinga in 2011 for this series. Dr. Schloss answers first. Listen: murray_schloss_final.mp3 Michael Murray is a Senior Visiting Scholar at Franklin and Marshall College and Jeffrey Schloss is a T.B. Walker Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Philosophy, Faith, and the Life Sciences at Westmont College. Excerpt: “In the [19]70s up through the mid-90s, a lot of attention was focused on a different but not unrelated issue which has to do with the altruistic or moral behavior in humans and other organisms. So that at least seems to be a Darwinian puzzle because if what evolution is all about is to advance your own fitness and well being, then there are sorts of behaviors that look like organisms are trying to assist others at their own expense and that seems counter-intuitive or puzzling given the the theory. So there’s a lot of attention devoted to explaining that. I think that very naturally leads one to look at other kinds of pervasive forms of belief and behavior which also seem to be counter-intuitive on the Darwinian picture and religious belief looks like an example of that. Not because it’s false if in fact you think it is (which many scientists do) but rather because there are significant costs involved with religious belief and behavior…. This has led to a different kind of Darwinian puzzle and I think researchers began to turn their attention to that. That spawned new accounts, many of which have a lot of empirical support, and I think the initial reaction a lot of people have to those accounts is that there’s something troubling for religious belief here. ” _________________________ Copyright © 2012 Philosophy News Photography by Pete Harris of Pete Harris Photography Special thanks to Dan and Frances Howard-Snyder and the philosophy faculty of Western Washington University for hosting this interview.     Drs. Murray and Schloss visited Western as a part of the Bellingham Lectures in Philosophy and Religion series which is supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation - 7 weeks ago

• March 26, 2012: Week in Review

  Thank you to all our readers who helped us break the 1000 “Likes” mark for the first time ever on one of our posts (in fact, as of this writing, the post has over 4000 likes!). If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the “PSA” warning parents to protect their kids from philosophy before it’s too late. Stephen Law reposted this gem on why getting a philosophy degree may be a better choice than getting a degree in business. At the very least, if one is going to get a degree in business, she should double major and study philosophy too. If you’re not sure why, consider this piece on the value of philosophy. Thanks to Andrew Smith for the pointer. Brian Leiter posted this article about the FBI questioning a philosophy prof over his syllabus. While I’m not clear how terrorists work, it seems fairly obvious that if the professor was going to do something violent, he probably wouldn’t have put the intention in his syllabus (though he says he does encourage his students to break “unjust” laws). More in the “confirmation bias” category: a young girl captures a flying object on her video camera and thinks it might be a UFO. It actually was a UFO – until the local authorities identified it. Thanks to skeptics.com for the pointer. Philosophy Now has a interesting survey of recent philosophical work being done on the implications of delaying death – they consider the prospect and impact of humans living 200-300 years. They point out both the benefits and the unintended consequences. I read a book a while ago called The Next Fifty Years in which the contributors consider possible advances humans will make by 2050 long life being one of those.  One important consideration is whether death becomes more of a psychological factor (and problem) when one lives a long life because one has much more at stake. Loss at 80 of a person who has had an important impact on the world is difficult. Loss at 280 would seem to be exponentially so. I just started reading Robert McKim’s new book, On Religious Diversity which appears to be an expansion of a core argument of his excellent Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity. The latter book was very instrumental in helping me form some of my core ideas about religious belief and I’m expecting this new book to continue to refine that thinking. The Howard-Snyders and Ryan Wasserman just released a new edition of their excellent logic text, The Power of Logic. This is a fine text that I’ve used in logic courses before. Very helpful aids throughout the book, solid use of color coding to help students find relevant material for reference, and extremely thorough. The text can be used for introductory or advanced courses. Favorite quote of the week: “In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” Frederick Nietzche - 2 months ago