30 August 2009

ignorant of its terms

The storm clouds that had appeared the previous day finally blew off, and I was able to walk to the neighboring village. The route I normally take is circular and leads past a stucco house occupied by a frail elderly couple. For years they raised rabbits in their front yard, but last summer they either ate them, which is normal in this area, or turned them loose, which is unheard of. Then they got rid of the pen and built in its place a clumsy wooden shed. A few months later a cage appeared on its doorstep. It was the type you might keep a rodent in, but instead of a guinea pig they use it to hold a pair of full-grown magpies. They're good-sized birds—almost as tall as crows—and their quarters are much too small for them. Unlike parakeets, which will eventually settle down, the magpies are constantly searching for a way out, and move as if they're on fire, darting from one end of the cage to another and banging their heads against the wire ceiling.
  Their desperation is contagious, and watching them causes my pulse to quicken. Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless—that's what hell must be like. The magpies leave me feeling so depressed and anxious that I wonder how I can possibly make it the rest of the way home. I always do, though, and it's always a welcome sight, especially lately.

David Sedaris, Aerial (When You Are Engulfed in Flames, 2008: 279-80)

persons quite unstable

He arrived, and found to his surprise, not the honourable lady, but the giddy girl, in the room. She had received him with a certain dignified openness of manner, which she had of late been practising, and so constrained him likewise to be courteous.
  At first she rallied him in general on the good fortune which pursued him everywhere, and which, as she could not but see, had led him hither in the present case. Then she delicately set before him the treatment with which of late he had afflicted her; she blamed and upbraided herself; confessed that she had but too well deserved such punishment; described with the greatest candour what she called her former situation; adding, that she would despise herself, if she were not capable of altering, and making herself worthy of his friendship.
  Wilhelm was struck with this oration. He had too little knowledge of the world to understand that persons quite unstable, and incapable of all improvement, frequently accuse themselves in the bitterest manner, confessing and deploring their faults with extreme ingenuousness, though they possess not the smallest power within them to retire from that course, along which the irresistible tendency of their nature is dragging them forward. Accordingly, he could not find in his heart to behave inexorably to the graceful sinner: he entered into conversation, and learned from her the project of a singular disguisement, wherewith it was intended to surprise the countess.

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Vol. 1 (231-32)

29 August 2009

on this earth

Who never ate his bread with tears,
Through nights of grief who, weeping, never
Sat on his bed, midst pangs and fears,
Can, heavenly powers, not know you ever.

Ye lead us forth into this life,
Where comfort soon by guilt is banished,
Abandon us to tortures, strife;
For on this earth all guilt is punished.

Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen as,
Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte
Auf seinem Bette weinend sas,
Der kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Mächte.

Ihr führt ins Leben uns hinein,
Ihr laßt den Armen schuldig werden,
Dann überlaßt ihr ihn der Pein;
Denn alle Schuld rächt sich auf Erden.


Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Vol. 1 (165)

25 August 2009

we intend

... the capacity to impose functions on natural phenomena [is] remarkable, but equally remarkable is the fact that functions may be imposed quite unconsciously, and the functions once imposed are often—so to speak—invisble. So, for example, money may simply have evolved without anyone ever thinking, "We are now imposing a new function to these objects"; and once money has evolved, people may use money to buy and sell without thinking about the logical structure of imposed function. However, for all cases of agentive function, someone must be capable of understanding what the thing is for, or the function could never be assigned. At least some of the participants in the system of exchange must understand, consciously or unconsciously, that money is to buy things with, screwdrivers are for driving screws, and so forth. If we assign a function that is totally apart from human intentions, it would have to fall in the category of nonagentive functions. Thus suppose someone says that the intended agentive function of money is to serve as a medium of exchange and a store of value, but money also serves the hidden, secret, unintended function of maintaining the system of power relationships in society. The first claim is about the intentionality of agentive function. The second claim is about nonagentive function. To see this, simply ask yourself what facts in the world would make each claim true. The first claim is made true by the intentionality with which agents use objects as money. They use it for the purpose of buying, selling, and storing value. The second claim, like the claim that the heart functions to pump blood, would be true if and only if there is a set of unintended causal relations and these serve some teleology, even if it is not a teleology shared by the speaker.

... What is the relation between singular and collective intentionality, between, for example, the facts described by "I intend" and "We intend"? Most efforts I have seen to answer this question try to reduce "We intentionality" to "I intentionality" plus something else, usually mutual beliefs. The idea is that I intend to do it in the belief that you also intend to do it; and you intend to do it in the belief that you also intend to do it; and you intend to do it in the belief that I also intend to do it. And each believes that the other has these beliefs, and has these beliefs about these beliefs . . . etc., in a potentially infinite hierarchy of beliefs. "I believe that you believe that I believe that you believe that I believe. . . .," and so on. In my view all these efforts to reduce collective intentionality to individual intentionality fail. Collective intentionality is a biologically primitive phenomenon that cannot be reduced to or eliminated in favor of something else. Every attempt at reducing "We intentionality" to "I intentionality" that I have seen is subject to counterexamples.
  There is a deep reason why collective intentionality cannot be reduced to individual intentionality. The problem with believing that you believe that I believe, etc., and you believing that I believe that you believe, etc., is that it does not add up to a sense of collectivity. No set of "I Consciousnesses," even supplemented with beliefs, adds up to a "We Consciousness." The crucial element in collective intentionality is a sense of doing (wanting, believing, etc.) something together, and the individual intentionality that each person has is derived from the collective intentionality that they share. Thus, to go back to the earlier example of the football game, I do indeed have a singular intention to block the defensive end, but I have that intention only as part of our collective intention to execute a pass play.
  We can see these differences quite starkly if we contrast the case where there is genuine cooperative behavior with the case where, so to speak, by accident two people happen to find that their behavior is synchronized. There is a big difference between two violinists playing in an orchestra, on the one hand, and on the other hand, discovering, while I am practicing my part, that someone in the next room is practicing her part, and thus discovering that, by chance, we are playing the same piece in a synchronized fashion.
  Why are so many philosophers convinced that collective intentionality must be reducible to individual intentionality? Why are they unwilling to recognize collective intentionality as a primitive phenomenon? I believe the reason is that they accept an argument that looks appealing but is fallacious. The argument is that because all intentionality exists in the heads of individual human beings, the form of that intentionality can make reference only to the individuals in whose heads it exists. So it has seemed that anybody who recognizes collective intentionality as a primitive form of mental life must be committed to the idea that there exists some Hegelian world spirit, a collective consciousness, or something equally implausible. The requirements of methodological individualism seem to force us to reduce collective intentionality to individual intentionality. It has seemed, in short, that we have to choose between reductionism, on the one hand, or a super mind floating over the individual minds, on the other. I want to claim, on the contrary, that the argument contains a fallacy and that the dilemma is a false one. It is indeed the case that all my mental life is inside my brain, and all your mental life is inside your brain, and so on for everybody else. But it does not follow from that that all my mental life must be expressed in the form of a singular noun phrase referring to me. The form that my collective intentionality can take is simply "we intend," "we are doing so-and-so," and the like. In such cases, I intend only as part of our intending. The intentionality that exists in each individual has the form "we intend."

John Searle, The Construction of Social Reality (1995: 21-26)

20 August 2009

the want of proper actors

"Oh that I might never hear more of nature, and scenes of nature!" cried Philina, so soon as he was gone: "there is nothing in the world more intolerable than to hear people reckon up the pleasures you enjoy. When the day is bright you go to walk, as to dance when you hear a tune played. But who would think a moment on the music or the weather? It is the dancer that interests us, not the violin; and to look upon a pair of bright black eyes is the life of a pair of blue ones. But what on earth have we to do with wells and brooks, and old rotten lindens?" She was sitting opposite to Wilhelm; and, while speaking so, she looked into his eyes with a glance which he could not hinder from piercing at least to the very door of his heart.
  "You are right," replied he, not without embarrassment: "man is ever the most interesting object to man, and perhaps should be the only one that interests. Whatever else surrounds us is but the element in which we live, or else the instrument which we employ. The more we devote ourselves to such things, the more we attend to and feel concern in them, the weaker will our sense of our own dignity become, the weaker our feelings for society. Men who put a great value on gardens, buildings, clothes, ornaments, or any other sort of property, grow less social and pleasant: they lose sight of their brethren, whom very few can succeed in collecting about them and entertaining. Have you not observed it on the stage? A good actor makes us very soon forget the awkwardness and meannness of paltry decorations, but a splendid theatre is the very thing which first makes us truly feel the want of proper actors."

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Vol.1

15 August 2009

the capacity alone

"In truth, the sale of that cabinet grieved me very much at the time; and often since I have thought of it with regret: but when I consider that it was a necessary means of awakening a taste in me, of developing a talent, which will operate far more powerfully on my history than ever those lifeless pictures could have done, I easily content myself, and honour destiny, which knows how to bring about what is best for me, and what is best for every one."
  "It gives me pain to hear this word destiny in the mouth of a young person, just at the age when men are commonly accustomed to ascribe their own violent inclinations to the will of higher natures."
  "You, then, do not believe in destiny? No power that rules over us and directs all for our ultimate advantage?"
  "The question is not now of my belief, nor is this the place to explain how I may have attempted to form for myself some not impossible conception of things which are incomprehensible to all of us: the question here is, What mode of viewing them will profit us the most? The fabric of our life is formed of necessity and chance: the reason of man takes its station between them, and may rule them both; it treats the necessary as the groundwork of its being; the accidental it can direct and guide, and employ for its own purposes: and only while this principle of reason stands firm and inexpungnable, does man deserve to be named the god of this lower world. But woe to him who, from his youth, has used himself to search in necessity for something of arbitrary will; to ascribe to chance a sort of reason, which it is a matter of religion to obey. Is conduct like this aught else than to renounce one's understanding, and give unrestricted scope to one's inclinations? We think it is a kind of piety to move along without consideration; to let accidents that please us determine our conduct; and, finally, to bestow on the result of such a vacillating life the name of providential guidance."
  "Was it never your case that some little circumstance induced you to strike into a certain path, where some accidental occurrence erelong met you, and a series of unexpected incidents at length brought you to some point which you yourself had scarcely once contemplated? Should not lessons of this kind teach us obedience to destiny, confidence in some such guide?"
  "With opinions like these, no woman could maintain her virtue, no man keep the money in his purse; for occasions enough are occurring to get rid of both. He alone is worthy of respect, who knows what is of use to himself and others, and who labours to control his self-will. Each man has his own fortune in his hands; as the artist has a piece of rude matter, which he is to fashion to a certain shape. But the art of living rightly is like all arts; the capacity alone is born with us; it must be learned, and practiced with incessant care."

Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship Vol. 1 (82-84)

03 August 2009

unmingled with any sadness

It is quite commonplace for moralists to warn people against supposing that sensual pleasure, fame, and money are genuine or unequivocal goods. It is worth looking in some detail, however, at the particular critique of these attractions that Spinoza offers. Of sensual pleasure he says this: "By sensual pleasure the mind is enthralled to the extent of quiescence, as if the supreme good were actually attained, so that it is quite incapable of thinking of any other object; when such pleasure has been gratified it is followed by extreme melancholy, whereby the mind, though not enthralled, is disturbed and dulled." Spinoza is clearly not talking about the sort of pleasure one gets from a brisk walk in the country. That is not the sort of activity which enthralls us to the point of quiescence or whose appeal drives out all the thoughts of other things. Nor is it common, or even understandable, that an activity of that sort should be followed by melancholy, much less by "extreme melancholy." A bit further on Spinoza asserts that sensual pleasure is followed not merely by melancholy but by repentance. This only confirms the strong impression that, whether or not he is clear about this himself, Spinoza is describing sexual pleasure, which he evidently finds extremely enticing but which he also finds to be mixed characteristically with unpleasant experiences of depression and guilt.
  Spinoza's initial point about money and fame is a somewhat different one. It is that there is no limit to how much of those things people who care about them desire; indeed, the more people have of them the more they tend to want. The pursuit of sensual pleasure is limited by our susceptibility to fatigue or to the exhaustion of our capacity for engaging in, or for enjoying, whatever activity is in question. But no limitation of this kind is inherent in the pursuit of money or the pursuit of fame, which are by nature endless and uncompleteable and which will continue as long as they are not limited by something outside themselves—some goal which defines how much money or how much fame is enough. Spinoza finds that these goods cannot of themselves bring satisfaction, because there is no particular amount of them which is inherently satisfying. Moreover, pursuing either of them is inevitably competitive and leads inescapably to undesirable experiences, such as those of envy, hatred, fear, and disappointment. People who are committed to the pursuit of conventional goods, Spinoza warns, expose themselves to extremes of contradictory emotion. They swing from intense pleasure to feelings of melancholy and guilt; and their satisfactions are often mixed with frustration when they discover that attaining what they desire serves only to arouse a further desire for more than they already have.
  As Spinoza elaborates these points, the quality and tone of his account undergo a conspicuous change. The conventional goods, he says, are not only unreliable and unsatisfying. They are actually evil and extremely dangerous to us; and anyone who devotes himself to them is "in a state of great peril." As he goes on, Spinoza seems to be more and more carried away. The peril to which he refers turns out to be not just a danger of moral corruption of of misery or of some sort of deterioration of the soul. He insists that it is literally a peril of death. And then it becomes not only a peril but even a certainty of death! Conventional goods often cause the deaths of those who possess them, Spinoza declares, and they always cause the deaths of those who are possessed by them. The context makes it unmistakably clear, by the way, that these references to death are not metaphorical. Spinoza's statements really are just as wild as they seem.
  Spinoza never completed the Treatise on the Improvement of the Understanding. He clearly had some notion of completing it, however, since he made a number of notes in the margin of his manuscript concerning changes to be made in a subsequent version which he never actually wrote. One of those notes occurs at the point where he makes the remarkable—indeed, incredible—claim that giving in to or allowing oneself to be possessed by desires for sensual pleasure, money, or fame brings certain death. His note to himself reads: "These considerations should be set forth more precisely." Indeed! Evidently he became aware of the exaggeration into which he had permitted himself to be swept, caught himself up short in his marginal admonition to himself, and intended one day to give a more measured and less fantasy-ridden account of his subject.
  ... In discussing desires for money and fame, Spinoza attributes much of the unsatisfactory quality of these objects as ends in themselves to the fact that they are necessarily scarce. Since there cannot be enough of them to satisfy all possible desires, the satisfaction of one person's desires diminishes the chances of satisfaction for others. Those who desire money or fame are therefore inevitably in competition with others who are also ambitious to acquire them. It is the inevitability of competition which leads Spinoza to regard the value of attaining these goods as inextricably compromised by the evils of hatred, envy, fear of loss, and other disturbances of the mind.
  ... What is the cure for all this? How are we to avoid these disturbances of the mind, which obstruct and interrupt the sustained serenity and joy which Spinoza seeks? The secret, he declares, is to care deeply only for what is eternal and infinite—in other words, for what is neither transitory or scarce. The enjoyment of something of that kind will be, he assures us, unmingled with any sadness; no contrary pain will be inherent in the pleasure it brings. Now, it is pretty clear that being eternal and infinite is not really enough. After all, the number six is eternal; and even if we add all the other positive integers, so that we get an object that is not only eternal but infinite as well, this hardly solves the problem of how to achieve perfect happiness.
  Of course Spinoza has something more particular in mind, which comes out when he begins to describe the ideal condition of human life. Here is the paragraph in which his central claim emerges:
All things which come to pass, come to pass according to the eternal order and fixed laws of Nature. However, human weakness cannot attain to this order in its own thought, but meanwhile man conceives a human character much more stable than his own, and sees that there is no reason why he should not himself acquire such a character ... What that character is we shall show in due time, namely that it is the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.
  It is clear enough what eternal and infinite object it is that Spinoza identifies in this passage as capable of playing a fundamental role in the achievement of human happiness. It is "the eternal order and fixed laws of Nature." But the observation Spinoza makes next is sometimes misunderstood. After referring to the eternal order and fixed laws of Nature, he observes that we are too weak to attain this order in our own thoughts. Now this has been construed by some readers as a lament over our inability to arrive at a totally comprehensive knowledge of Nature ... we are simply not intelligent enough to grasp the eternal order in all its details.
  Spinoza himself makes it rather clear, however, that his attention is not focused primarily on our intellectual limitations. After alluding to human weakness and to the incapacity it entails, he declares that "man conceives a human character much more stable than his own," and that this conception of a more stable character provides the ideal goal toward which human endeavor must strive. The ideal is not formulated in terms of intelligence or of knowledge or of understanding, but as a matter of stability. In other words, what we conceive as the ideal character for ourselves is not one distinguished primarily by greater knowledge than we possess, but one which emulates the characteristics which Spinoza has just been ascribing to Nature—namely, order and fixity or, to use the his word, stability. Our aim is to be rid of the disturbances which unbalance our condition, interrupt the evenness of our thoughts and feelings, and make us suffer passively the effects upon us of forces with which we do not identify and which we experience as alien to ourselves.
  How does Spinoza imagine this stability can be achieved? There, of course, is where knowledge comes in. We achieve stability by understanding "the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature"—that is, by recognizing ourselves as products of forces which are generated systematically and in a lawful manner according to the fixed nature of the world, and by understanding that what goes on within us is by no means random or unintelligible but that it is (like everything else that happens) a necessary consequence of the fundamental substance and structure of the universe. The more we come to see the events of our own lives—and especially the events of our minds—as manifestations of an eternal and fixed order of natural law and natural necessity, the more intelligible they become to us and the less we are beset by emotions which breach and undermine the order of our nature and the stability of our existence. This reduces our sense that the power of the universe is alien to us and that we are merely passive with respect to it.

Harry Frankfurt, Necessity, Volition, and Love (1999:48-52)