- Editorial

- News

- Sources Of Knowledge

- Articles

- Interviews

- Letters

- Columns

- Reviews

- Fiction

- Cartoons

Editorial

- How Do You Know?

Editorial

How Do You Know?

by Rick Lewis

“A little learning is a dangerous thing;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring”

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, 1709.

(In Ancient Greek myth, the Pierian Spring was a sacred spring near Mount Olympus, named after the daughters of King Pierus. It was supposed to be a literal fountain of knowledge.)

It’s a truly fundamental question, and the quintessence of a questioning attitude towards the world. The high priest, imbued with authority by his social status and towering purple headdress, looms over the child and tells her that the Universe was sneezed into existence by the Great Histamine Beast of Traal, and the child asks “How do you know?” She doesn’t deny his claims or make any counter-assertions, she just asks because she wants to understand. Yet the question she timidly asks is perhaps the most subversive imaginable.

In celebration of this question, the theme of this issue is ‘Sources of Knowledge’. (Yes, sorry about that pun on the front cover.) The philosophy of knowledge is a vast subject, known as epistemology, and spills over into the philosophy of science too. Our contributors explore just a few of the lively ongoing controversies in this area and introduce a handful of the thinkers who in the twentieth century transformed the debates about what and how we can know things.

What is it to know something, anyway? Plato, and pretty much everyone after him for thousands of years, held a nice simple straightforward view about this. They said that knowledge is ‘justified true belief’. If you hold some belief about the world that is, as it happens, true and furthermore you hold that true belief not as a result of luck or coincidence or tradition but because of hard evidence, then you can be said to know it. Common sense, right? A rare case of a philosophical claim with a consensus behind it. Well, in 1963 a small child called Edmund Gettier – okay, he was 36, but bear with me here – a small child called Edmund Gettier stared down the high priests of this belief. In a short paper that shook the academic philosophy world he put forward some compelling examples of people holding justified true beliefs in circumstances where nonetheless nobody could really say they knew. Maya Koka will tell you more about all this in her article, and even extend Gettier’s work a little. The following piece by Peter Keeble talks about Gettier too, to introduce a concept he calls the method of exception.

The articles that follow discuss scientific knowledge, its status and how to acquire more of it. Brian King gets that party popping with his piece about Karl Popper, perhaps the only twentieth century philosopher whose name is known to a majority of scientists. Popper proposed a simple test called falsification for distinguishing science and meaningful enquiry in general from pseudoscience, bullshit and waffle. What was it? Did it work? You’ll just have to read the article to find out.

After Popper, various people including his own students pointed out that falsification is all very well, but that it isn’t how most scientific research is actually done, either today or in the past. So they started tweaking his theory in various ways to make it describe the actual history of science. One of them was Thomas Kuhn, who plays a central part in Shirkoohi’s article about the objectivity of science. As if the status of science (in a world pretty much ruled by it) wasn’t a big question already, it leads straight on to others: What does it even mean to know something objectively rather than subjectively? Can we know anything subjectively or merely feel it? We’ve left these tangled questions unanswered as an exercise for the reader.

So how do contemporary philosophers wrestle with practical questions of knowledge and its limits in an age of fake news and subjectivist post-truth rhetoric? We are delighted to include an interview with famous epistemologist Prof Susan Haack, who looks in particular at court cases to explore ideas about certainty and the limits of the knowable.

Our current scientific knowledge is limited in all sorts of ways, but are there any limits in principle to human knowledge? In mathematics, Gödel’s famous Incompleteness Theorems demonstrate that there must be. McGranahan’s article unpacks this for us as he asks, as we all always should: What Would Wittgenstein Do?

In WW2 Kurt Gödel, a refugee from the Nazis, applied for US citizenship. There is a funny story about Gödel’s naturalisation hearing. His close friend Albert Einstein went along too, hoping to support his eccentric-genius buddy and keep him out of trouble. The judge, to put the nervous Gödel at ease, remarked that he must be relieved to finally be in a land where democracy was secure. Before Einstein could shut him up, Gödel blurted out that on the contrary, he’d been closely reading the US Constitution and had spotted a loophole by which it could be legally turned into a dictatorship… I make no point by telling this story, except that it shows Gödel’s unfailing grasp of one vital condition for expanding knowledge: never take anything for granted.

News

- News: August/September 2025

News

News: August/September 2025

Ethics Goes Awry in Humans and AI • The Politics of Reincarnation in Tibet • Early Adopter of Kierkegaard & Tillich Dies — News reports by Anja Steinbauer

Human Ethics: Not Working as Expected

Aristotle (Roman copy of Greek original)

Photo © Alice Ces Creative Commons 2.0

It is satisfying to find a scientific study not only quote but also confirm philosophical insights. Research published by Crystal Reeck of Temple University and Dan Ariely of Duke University is spearheaded by this quote by Aristotle: “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.” And this is exactly what they found. As opposed to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, which understands any single moral choice as embedded in a larger context, it is common for us in our everyday lives to conceive of any moral act as an isolated singular occurrence. At the same time, however, we are rewarded for little dishonesties, the ones that, in themselves, seem to matter little. They often don’t incur important consequences, but make our lives a little easier. Using a set of six experiments, the researchers demonstrated that “Individual dishonest acts are thus not independent events, but rather can compound and perpetuate pervasive unethical behaviour.” This moral detachment is expedited by factors such as unfair financial deprivation, self-serving rewards, and gradual change, while drawing attention to the importance to how of selfish acts matter can hinder it or slow it down. The authors conclude: “our findings suggest that dishonest acts can be super-additive over time and lead to an increase of unethical behaviour to the point where it becomes pervasive and routine.”

AI Medical Ethics: Not Working Quite as Hoped

Much hope rests on the work of AI, increasingly so in areas that require it to make ethical choices. Large Language Models are expected particularly to play a role in medical practice. The authors of ‘Pitfalls of Large Language Models in Medical Ethics Reasoning’, Shelly Soffer, Vera Sorin, Girish Nadkarni and Eyal Klang, have found a weakness: “In recent tests with LLMs, we noted a recurring pattern: these models frequently fail to recognize twists or subtleties. Instead, they revert to responses rooted in familiar associations.” LLMs struggled when tested on lateral thinking puzzles and medical ethics dilemmas: “They often gave the ‘expected’ answer rather than adapting to the specifics of each case.” For example, they presented the LLMs with medical ethics scenarios such as these: “In one case, a patient with HIV had already disclosed their status to their spouse. Despite the twist that the spouse was already aware of the diagnosis, some LLMs failed to recognize this detail. They responded as if the spouse was unaware, returning to the familiar debate about disclosure. Another scenario involved a minor needing a life-saving blood transfusion. We changed the usual details – now the parents agreed to the transfusion. Yet, some LLMs still responded as if the parents were refusing. They failed to recognize that the ethical dilemma was resolved. This seems to indicate the phenomenon of AI model over-training manifesting in rigid responses.”

A Birthday Party and the Future of Tibetan Buddhism

Dalai Lama in 2009

© Sean O’Connor 2009 Creative Commons 2.0

The small town of Dharamshala, nestled in India’s Himalayan foothills saw days of celebration in honour of the Dalai Lama’s 90th birthday. It has been his home and seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile since he fled Tibet during the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese Communist rule. The Buddhist leader’s advancing age throws into stark relief the disagreement between the Chinese government and the Tibetan exiled leader about who has the right to identify the next incarnation of the Dalai Lama after his death. In a recorded message he affirms that his office holds ‘sole authority’ to do so. Tibetan Buddhism involves the belief in a circle of rebirth. An enlightened spiritual leader like the Dalai Lama is thought to be able to see his past and future incarnations and can, when death nears, choose the place and time of his rebirth. The Dalai Lama has stated that his successor, the 15th Dalai Lama, will be born in “the free world”. However, he hopes that this event is still a long time in the future, as he is hoping to live in his current incarnation to the age of 130.

Leaving the USA

Jason Stanley, the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, has written extensively about fascism. Two of his books, How Propaganda Works (2015) and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them (2018), received much attention and have been translated into many languages. However, his most recent book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future is arguably his most explosive philosophical study of current politics. An outspoken critic of the current US government, Stanley has said that "Fascism is what the Trump administration is now doing” and has now decided to go into exile to Toronto. He follows the example of Yale history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, a married couple, who joined Toronto University after the US presidential election. Snyder is an expert on Totalitarianism and the best-selling author of On Tyranny which details “America’s turn towards authoritarianism” under the first Trump presidency.

John Heywood Thomas

Rev Prof John Heywood Thomas, who died at the end of May at the grand age of 98, was a long-retired but still active theologian and philosopher. The son of a blacksmith, he was just leaving school in Llanelli when somebody gave him a copy of a book by Kierkegaard and it changed the whole trajectory of his life. (“So be careful, kids – don’t do philosophy! It’s not big and it’s not clever. OK, sometimes it’s clever.”) He was particularly impressed by Kierkegaard’s existentialist approach to Christian faith. He became a theologian of an existentialist kind, but his writing and teaching was marked by an analytical precision, as well as by modesty and good humour. When he was young, Kierkegaard was underappreciated in the Anglosphere, and Heywood Thomas’ 1957 book Subjectivity and Paradox was perhaps the first in English to really treat two of the Dane’s main philosophical ideas about religion in depth. Later he studied in New York under the German-American theologian Paul Tillich, who called him “my logical critic”; Heywood Thomas then in 1963 wrote the first in-depth appraisal of Tillich’s philosophy in English. He went on to have a long academic career, eventually as professor of theology at Nottingham University. Alongside that, he was a minister in a local church, and a font of encouragement to younger philosophers writing in the Welsh language. This continued long after his formal retirement from academia, and was partly why he was honoured by election to the Learned Society of Wales and the Gorsedd of Bards.

Sources Of Knowledge

- Xuanzang & the Gettier Problem

- The Philosophical Method of Exception

- Popper, Science & Democracy

- Challenging the Objectivity of Science

- Gödel, Wittgenstein, & the Limits of Knowledge

Sources of Knowledge

Xuanzang & the Gettier Problem

Maya Koka journeys through the desert to seek knowledge about knowledge.

The date is 632 AD. The location is Lanzhou, China. The time is precisely 10:00 am. A Buddhist monk named Xuanzang and his companion, a tiger, are journeying through the Gobi Desert. Their mission: to find water. Suddenly they see a valley resembling a blue expanse. Xuanzang turns to his feline friend and remarks, “Look, there is water!” Unfortunately, the glistening blue is a mirage. Yet, when they reach the valley, Xuanzang finds water, hidden beneath a large rock. Did the Buddhist monk know there was water ahead? In other words, is his initial belief that there was water in the valley to be considered knowledge?

This situation of Xuanzang’s represents what philosophers these days call a Gettier case. This is a philosophical problem made famous by Edmund Gettier (1927-2021) in an attempt to critique the traditional Socratic or Platonic theory of knowledge as being ‘justified true belief’. On that account, having a belief that is both justified and true is necessary and sufficient for knowledge. If one has a justified true belief, one has knowledge. However, while justified true belief is indeed a necessary conditions for knowledge, Gettier showed that it is not sufficient. He did this by giving various instances in which an agent has a belief both true and justified, yet which fails to be knowledge. I want to look at a novel formulation of the Gettier problem, and also consider a method to respond to Gettier cases through the instantiation of a fourth condition for knowledge.

First, how can we know that we have any knowledge at all? Let’s once again revisit 632 AD. According to the justified true belief model, Xuanzang has knowledge of there being water in the valley based on the following conditions:

a) Xuanzang is justified in believing there is water in the valley because he perceives a blue hue which he registers as water.

b) Xuanzang believes there is water in the valley.

c) Xuanzang finds water there, so it is true there is water there.

Here ‘justification’ refers to evidential support – such as Xuanzang’s recognition of the blue hue as water. Socrates and later philosophers posited the justification condition to safeguard knowledge claims against luck. A lucky guess doesn’t count as knowledge since there is no good reason to believe it is true.

Xuanzang looking for water 14th C. anon.

However, it seems that although Xuanzang’s belief was true, this was a lucky coincidence, and not a result of his inference from seeing a blue haze in the valley. Gettier spurred widespread philosophical debate by presenting cases of accidental occurrences of true belief, demonstrating that the idea of knowledge as justified true belief cannot ensure against luck (originally in his brief paper ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’, Analysis, 1963). I won’t discuss Gettier’s own cases, but I will apply his findings to Xuanzang. Can Xuanzang’s initial claim to knowledge be ruled out by his finding water being simply luck?

There is no doubt that it is a matter of luck he finds water, as there is no causal relationship between Xuanzang thinking he sees water ahead and his actually finding water. But without a causal relationship between there being water ahead and his belief that there is water ahead, that belief cannot be an instance of knowledge. This underlines the idea that the conditions stated in ‘justified true belief’ are necessary rather than sufficient for knowledge, since knowledge requires more than a belief accidentally being proven correct. Therefore, in response to Gettier cases, several contemporary epistemologists have developed a fourth condition for knowledge: that the truth of a belief must be non-accidental. Theorists such as Alvin Goldman would argue that Xuanzang would only have knowledge if there were a causal connection between his belief that there is water and the fact that there is water (see ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’, Journal of Philosophy, 1967, 64:12). For Goldman, Xuanzang’s initial belief is not knowledge precisely because although it is true and justified, it is not causally connected to the fact that there actually is water. Specifically, when Xuanzang ‘sees’ water, he is not seeing water, and especially not the water that he will soon find. For this reason, such thinkers argue that belief causality should form the basis of knowledge.

This causal theory of knowledge is well-intentioned, of course, but it is not exempt from flaws. According to Grefte and Gebharter in ‘The Causal Theory of Knowledge Revisited: An Interventionist Approach’ (Ratio, 2021, 34:3), even if an individual’s belief is causally connected to the truth formulated by the belief, it is still possible for the believer to lack knowledge. For example, let’s suppose that Xuanzang does not see a mirage ahead, but instead sees a real body of water. Let’s also suppose that due to local climatic conditions in Lanzhou there are numerous mirages, which do not contain any water but from a distance are indistinguishable from real water. By chance, Xuanzang is presently looking at the only genuine lake in Lanzhou. For Goldman, Xuanzang’s belief would count as knowledge, because it is caused by there actually being a body of water ahead. Yet we can plausibly assert that Xuanzang’s belief does not actually qualify as knowledge because it arises out of epistemic luck. If he had been looking at one of the many mirages instead, his belief would have been false. There is, therefore, reason to reject a simple causal theory of knowledge for the same reason we rejected justified true belief, namely its inability to ensure against accidental occurrences.

So even justified true belief plus the causal theory of knowledge fail to sufficiently define knowledge. Yet although Xuanzang never attained knowledge in his journey through the Gobi Desert, his quest marks an illuminating shift in epistemology. Too often, Gettier cases are viewed as philosophical diamonds, unanimously favored in contemporary debates. But the story of Xuanzang illuminates a complex tension between knowledge and epistemic luck, bringing us one step closer to realizing what it means to truly know.

© Maya Koka 2025

Maya Koka is a Foundation Scholar studying philosophy in the International Dual BA program between Columbia University and Trinity College Dublin.

Sources of Knowledge

The Philosophical Method of Exception

Peter Keeble spotlights and critiques a common philosophical technique.

One of the ways philosophy works is this. You define some useful concept, such as knowledge, or morality, or inductive reasoning. Then someone comes along with an example of knowledge, or a moral act, or a property concerning inductive prediction that seems to lie beyond those defining characteristics. This happened not so long ago in all these cases. Knowledge was well established as ‘justified true belief’ until Edmund Gettier’s brief 1963 article ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’ gave apparent counter-examples. Immoral acts, we would always have previously assumed, must involve some harm to someone – until Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons in 1984. Inductive reasoning, though always held in suspicion by philosophers, became doubly so with Nelson Goodman’s Fact, Fiction and Forecast (1955). We want to be sure about what constitutes knowledge, morality, and inductive reasoning, since we use these concepts every day. We think we understand them, but , do we really?

Gettier on Knowledge

Here’s one of Gettier’s counter-examples to knowledge being justified true belief. Smith and his friend Jones apply for a job. At his interview, the CEO strongly suggests to Smith that Jones will be the successful candidate. For some bizarre reason, while Jones is interviewed, Smith counts the coins in his friend’s pocket: there are ten. Smith therefore feels he knows that the successful candidate will have ten coins in his pocket. But it turns out he, not his friend, gets the job. And it just so happens that he also has ten coins in his pocket. It seems therefore that he had a justified true belief that the successful candidate would have ten coins in his pocket. Yet we do not feel it right to say he knew this.

What about this case would enable us to say Smith did not have knowledge? Perhaps it’s that what Smith actually believes is that the successful applicant has ten coins and that it’s someone other than himself. Perhaps Gettier has confused the issue by not stating both these beliefs in full. Moreover, Smith’s curiosity is limited. Many people may carry around ten coins. Had he dug deeper into his friend’s pockets he might have found a £100 note. If Smith did not have such a note, wouldn’t he have been more justified in saying that the successful candidate would have such a high value note? There are degrees of justifiability and they are related to the degree of specificity.

Regardless of what we might say here, many think this is a genuine counter-example to the claim that knowledge is justified true belief.

Parfit on Immorality

It has traditionally been assumed that an act can be immoral only if it harms someone. Against this, in Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit posits the example of a fourteen-year-old girl deciding to have a baby. Now, we imagine that the baby will have a life worth living; but it will not be nearly as good a life as that for some other baby the girl might have ten years later instead of this one. But who has the fourteen-year-old pregnant girl actually harmed if she goes ahead with the pregnancy at fourteen?

This is the ‘Non-Identity Problem’. It arises because the child born to the fourteen-year-old mother cannot, as it were, hang around in limbo waiting to be born ten years later: that would be a different child. So, although by having the baby at fourteen the girl has opted for a less happy child than had she waited ten years, that child is in no way harmed, because that child has no option of waiting for a more satisfactory or happier life in the future: that child cannot be born later. Indeed, if we’re looking at harm, we might say the possible child to be born ten years hence has been harmed because they will no longer be born. But even that problem can be resolved if the girl later has the other child too.

This is another maddening counter-example: What most of us regard as in some sense immoral – deciding to have a baby at fourteen in the knowledge that a child with a better life could be born ten years later – appears not to harm anyone. How can this be?

Clearly the issue revolves around the fact that the timing of the conception results in a unique individual whose only opportunity for existence is this specific pregnancy. Any such child would not think the mother should have waited to have some other child. But this seems a genuine problem for the idea that immorality must involve harm to someone. Perhaps it means we must adjust some small part of our notion of ethics.

Goodman on Induction

Inductive reasoning goes from observed instances to general rules. For instance, the sun has risen every morning for the past several billion years, so it will rise tomorrow. However, the justification of inductive reasoning has long been bedeviled with accusations of circularity. You cannot call upon the fact that induction has seemed to work well in the past and so is likely to do so in the future, because that reasoning is relying on a description of inductive reasoning itself, thus presupposing the very mode of reasoning we are trying to justify.

In 1955, in Fact, Fiction and Forecast, Nelson Goodman came up with a new argument claiming to show that we cannot logically rely on inductive reasoning. Suppose we have an emerald before us. It’s green, and as with all other emeralds in the past, we expect it to stay green. However, what if this emerald is in fact ‘grue’ – meaning that its colour will suddenly change to blue at a specific date in the distant future? That is fully consistent with its being green up until then. Indeed, are there not an infinity of such possible adjectives that state how things may behave differently in a different time or place for no obvious reason? Grue is just one such property; but all our observations thus far are consistent with the notion that emeralds are grue, not green.

So how do we know that emeralds are green rather than grue? The available evidence seems to support both possibilities equally well. But the ‘grue’ possibility seems to be an exception to any rules of induction we might have, by describing a property that comes and goes with no rhyme or reason.

Not blue yet

Emerald by Didier Descouens 2009 Creative Commons 3.0

This strikes me as an unnecessary complication of the problem of induction. What is added by this new term describing a property that no one’s ever observed, over and above simply asserting the possibility that previously well-behaved objects may behave in unpredictable ways at some stage in the future? Our language has developed to reflect our experience of a rule-based universe, so why invent terms to describe the unexplained breaking of those rules at some unspecified point? Especially when we have the issue of induction we’re already gnawing away at: how can we be logically justified in saying that the past is a good indicator of what will happen in the future?

Moreover, in the case of emeralds, we base our implicit prediction of their stability on more than simple induction. It’s based on the idea that causality works through various known regularities, and these don’t include anything that would suddenly make emeralds turn blue. Certainly, some difficult-to-observe mechanism may be hidden from us because of the limitations of our knowledge and equipment. Certainly there may be miracles in which the normal laws of causality are suspended. But within our current understanding of causality there is no reason to think that emeralds are likely to ever spontaneously change colour.

The Nature of Definition

Each of the above examples appears to show there is something wrong with the descriptions or defining characteristics of our most basic understandings of knowledge, of morality, and of induction, respectively, by highlighting apparent anomalies or exceptions. But I’m beginning to think that there is a problem with this widely-used approach in philosophy; or at any rate, with these three cases. Most of us will think that in the great majority of cases, what we regard as knowledge will be justified true belief; that immoral acts must involve harm to someone; and that there must be some rational basis to induction. These rather convoluted counter-examples should not let us forget such basic understandings. But they do nonetheless appear to be counter-examples. So perhaps the problem lies with our expectation that our definitions and understandings of all phenomena should and could always be water-tight.

One useful way to generate a definition is by using Aristotle’s per genus et differentiam (‘through class and difference’): you take the idea to be defined, and say, first, what sort of thing is it, and second, how it differs from others of that kind. This often works well:

a. What is a sock? An article of clothing (class) worn on the foot (difference).

b. What is jewelry? Ornamental pieces worn for personal adornment.

c. What is a physical object? An entity that is extended in space (unlike fictional objects for example, such as Sherlock Holmes).

However, there are problems even with these definitions. Is not a stocking also an item of clothing worn on the foot? Does jewelry include watches, which for some of us have more a utilitarian than an ornamental function? Are shadows physical objects? They seemingly take up space, but can hardly be said to have physical substance. Are they really extended in space, even?

It appears that we have to accept that our definitions, or our common understandings, are using the imperfect tool of human language. Language is a technology that in broad purposes suits us well, but which may lead us into vagueness, contradiction, or silly inventiveness. And if we can readily accept this in the cases of socks and jewelry, then why not in the cases of knowledge, morality, and induction? Indeed, why should we even expect so evolved a tool as language to match up perfectly with our psychologically-infused notions of what we think we know, how we should act, and what we can predict?

Does this mean that Gettier, Parfit, and Goodman were unwittingly as much participants in a Wittgensteinian exposé of the limitations of language as they were in searches for the true natures of knowledge, morality, and induction? Alternatively, are we really missing something major in our understanding of these concepts just because our language does not readily snuff out a few counter-examples?

Also, of course, we might question whether these are in fact counter-examples. Isn’t widening the description of ‘the successful job candidate’ to incorporate an irrelevant matter of coins in the pocket, somehow illegitimate? Does looking at the benefits of birth to an older mother from the point of view of an imaginary child who snaps out of existence when the mother decides to have a child ten years earlier, really impact our understanding of morality? Does the invention of strange and erratic properties that go against all our understanding really sound the death knell of induction? Indeed, perhaps these counter-examples are describing different phenomena to knowledge, morality, and induction. Why should we not limit those terms to the large majority of cases, where they clearly fit well, and relegate the supposed counterexamples to the set of interesting but exotic phenomena lying beyond the classes of phenomena being considered?

© Peter Keeble 2025

Peter Keeble is a poet, and a retired teacher and local government research officer who lives in Harrow.

Sources of Knowledge

Popper, Science & Democracy

Brian King follows Popper’s idea of the evolution of knowledge, life and society.

In an age in which both science and pseudo-science are more prominent than ever, it is useful to have a way to distinguish between them. The Austrian-British philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper (1902-94) gave us just that, in his 1934 book The Logic of Scientific Discovery. He called it falsification. A truly scientific theory, he said, consists of statements that can be rigorously tested against the evidence and potentially found to be false. Popper claimed that falsifiability is the key feature differentiating science from all other ways of thinking.

Ever since Aristotle in ancient times and Francis Bacon four hundred years ago, inductive logic was thought of as the method by which scientists discovered laws of nature. The sight of one white swan after another leads us to the theory that ‘all swans are white’ – in effect, a generalisation. However, as David Hume (1711-76) noted, the problem is that the generalisation does not logically follow. The more white swans you see, the more you might think the law ‘All swans are white’ is true – but this is just a psychological point about the way we think, not a point about the natural world, or swans. In fact, the only legitimate derivation would be that ‘all swans seen so far are white’. And to argue that the future will always be like the past because it always has been, would be a circular argument – assuming what you are trying to prove. Moreover, the observation of black swans in Australia immediately disproved the law that ‘all swans are white’, showing that inductive generalisations can be disproved with one counter-instance. Popper develops this point in a falsificationist direction by writing,

“as implied by Hume, we certainly are not justified in reasoning from an instance to the truth of the corresponding law. But to this negative result a second result… may be added: we are justified in reasoning from a counter-instance to the falsity of the corresponding universal law… Induction is logically invalid; but refutation or falsification is a logically valid way of arguing from a single counter-instance to – or, rather, against – the corresponding law.”

(The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1934).

Popper’s Theory of Science

Popper’s model for how science develops is that scientists propose a theory that enables them to makes predictions about what will be observed under certain conditions. They then test it by looking to see whether what the theory predicts actually happens. If the observations do not match the predictions then the theory is discarded or modified for another one that will explain both the previous data and the new data that contradicted the earlier prediction. Where a scientific theory comes from is unimportant. The important thing is that the theory is tested not so much to see if it’s right, but to see if it can be shown to be wrong.

Take for instance the phlogiston theory of fire. This once-popular theory said that when things burn they give off an element called ‘phlogiston’. This was found to be wrong by weighing the materials before and after burning, and the overall continuity in weight proved that the theory was wrong. Similarly, in astronomy, the position of Mars was observed to not be where Copernicus’s theory predicted it would be; and Kepler used this to show that planets did not orbit in perfect circles as Copernicus thought. Kepler then used his imagination and a lot of calculation to show that planets move in ellipses. There are many other examples of scientific ideas being disproved by observations. However, one big consequence of all this is that scientific theories are only provisionally true, and the important thing is that we ruthlessly test them to try to disprove them. Only then will a better theory develop that takes account of the observations – including the observations that disproved the previous theory.

In this way, science develops by a kind of ‘natural selection’: by constantly disproving theories, new ones emerge, and we continually get nearer and nearer the Truth. But it does mean that theories have to be falsifiable or refutable in order to be scientific – meaning, that it must be possible that some observation could disprove the theory. If not, then the theory is just a product of the imagination that would fit any possible circumstances – which is precisely what Popper claimed about Freudian psychoanalysis and astrology, among other examples. Due to the clarity and force of this distinction Popper continues to be a highly influential philosopher among scientists today. When you occasionally hear some scientist say “This theory is so bad, it’s not even wrong!”, this is usually what they’re trying to express. The finding of ‘non-scientific because non-falsifiable’ also applies to aspects of world views such as determinism, to some religious views, and arguably (and even more controversially), to the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest’ as the principle driving evolution. These ideas are not testable, in that all conceivable outcomes could be made to fit them. In other words, there is nothing specifically predictable from them, because anything that happens is explainable in their terms. Further, because it is not possible to falsify them, they do not lead to new, better theories. To that extent, they are intellectual dead ends.

Sir Karl Popper by Athamos Stradis

Evolution

Yet Popper does see this process of science gradually explaining more and more, as a kind of survival-of-the-fittest-theory. Life involves problem-solving, says Popper, and when lifeforms don’t solve the problems of their own survival then they die, and better-adapted lifeforms prosper instead.

The similarity between biological evolution and the evolution of science can be seen in terms of knowledge. But Popper means more than just knowledge couched in propositions. He means expectations of the world, which in many lifeforms would be unconscious, and in most cases would be inherited genetically in the form of dispositions to behave in and react to the environment in particular ways – such as a spider’s ability to create a web, or an amoeba’s ability to surround and ingest its food, or a baby mammal’s ability to find its milk source, or a sunflower’s ability to turn towards the sun. This is a form of innate ‘knowledge’, as instinct, or just chemical reaction; but it is knowledge in that it tells the organism what to do to survive. Similarly, in a very rudimentary form, theories are expectations or predispositions to believe and behave. If an organism’s expectations or predispositions are misleading, the organism does not thrive; and the same goes with theories – if they prove to be erroneous, they’re abandoned.

As I mentioned, the origin of a scientific theory isn’t important to Popper – what matters is that is that it can be tested and is capable of disproof. Nevertheless, according to Popper, the earliest origins of our scientific theories are out of what Immanuel Kant called ‘categories’ – that is, innate knowledge that enables our sense of the world to make sense. Popper would include in these kind of (non-linguistic) ideas: the idea that there is a three-dimensional world; that events have causes; that being on the edge of a high structure is dangerous; that there other minds than our own; and so on. These predispositions to think and feel would have been passed down genetically since they had survival advantages. We evolved as animals full of this kind of innate knowledge of our surroundings, in inherited biological systems such as our neural wiring, all of it derived from organisms finding ways to survive long enough to reproduce.

Language, Knowledge and Society

So forPopper the development of life and the development of human knowledge is a continuous process. This implies that the main difference between natural evolution and the evolution of science is that the latter is a conscious process which is made possible by the development of language. A brief discursion on language and thought will be helpful here.

‘Thought’ is a highly ambiguous word. Day-dreaming, enjoying a beautiful view, recalling moments of the past, wishing for a better future, feeling sad, happy, or remorseful, are all aspects of thought, in that they involve consciousness. These aspects seem not to require the use of language. But then there is thinking in a calculated, deliberate way, as when you try to work out the best way to assemble a machine, or to extricate yourself from a bad situation in a game of chess. Unlike the former ‘merely conscious’ aspects of thought, these latter situations require some accuracy and detail for their successful operation – but that does not mean they need words. Finally then, there is the more abstract type of thinking, such as when you’re considering the relative merits of a liberal democracy versus an authoritarian political system in a time of crisis, or whether a clear concept of God would involve self-contradictions, or whether Pythagoras’s proof would work in curved space. These last three examples involve the use of words or numbers for successful thinking. In these examples, thinking is more like talking to yourself in your mind.

But that’s weird: when you talk to someone else, the function is to transfer your thoughts to the other person, but when talking to yourself you presumably already know your thoughts (or you wouldn’t be able to formulate them in the first place); so why do you need to put them into words? Perhaps the function of words is not just to communicate ideas, but also to give your thoughts well defined form. This also enables you to put a complex line of thinking into one concept, denoted by one word – such as ‘love’, ‘justice’, ‘infinity’, etc.

For Lev Vygotsky, a twentieth century Russian psychologist, language use and thought are initially separate systems from birth, merging at about three years of age to produce verbal thought (inner speech). Speech, he argues, is social in origin. It is learned from others, and, at first, used for personal feelings and social functions. He argues that words’ uses develop as the child grows. Crucially, this development is linked to the child’s ability to think in increasingly general ways – in concepts, and using classes whereby words have meanings beyond just referring to concrete objects. In time, the child comes to have a self-directive aspect to his or her thinking, that eventually result in internalized verbal thought. Thus the acquisition of language by children moulds every aspect of their higher mental functions, enabling the emergence of meaning, imagination, action planning, and critical thinking. As Vygotsky says, “A word void of thought is a dead thing, the same way that a thought not accompanied by words remains in the shadows” and “Thought is not merely expressed in words; it comes into existence through them” (Thought and Language, 1934).

So words enable us to control our thinking in a deliberate, intentional way: instead of flights of feelings and the uninhibited flow of images, we have specific ideas couched in words. This is enabled by recursive thinking – the ability to contain one set of ideas labelled by a word within another idea that takes the form of a proposition, then more complex ideas made from many propositions. And once ideas can be grasped by words, then a person can develop critical thinking, which is perhaps the biggest development in human history. Thus language enables rational thinking and criticism. Or another way of looking at this is to consider the function of language, which as the German psychologist Karl Bühler says, gives humans the ability to formulate propositions which purport to describe the world and can be true or false, so the idea of truth is a consequence of the use of language to represent the world. This linguistic ability enables man to consider his assertions, in a more exact and more detached way.

The evolutionary process moves from the organism – homo sapiens – on to the development of thinking and beliefs, formulated in language, and shared so that others can consider their truth in relation to their own observations and beliefs, and if they do not match, to reject or modify them The development of criticism seems to arise with the idea that articulated beliefs can be true or false. And criticism of beliefs can lead to their rejection and replacement by more accurate ones. Progress in knowledge seems to be the result. In this sense, science is simply a more exact and demanding example of the common sense notion that we reject those ideas we do not find to correspond to the world.

Popper endorses the idea that there is an objective world’, and therefore that there are statements which can be objectively true, or at least nearer the truth than other statements. However, language also enables man to tell stories which create emotional resonance, enabling people to feel they share common values, and so belong to a group. So a further new dimension is that people become emotionally attached to ideas, and do not like to reject them – as can be seen with various religious and political ideas (including atheism).

However, things do not always work out socially: sometimes the beliefs behind social or political institutions and interactions can make things worse rather than better. Then, just like a scientific theory, the previous methodology of politics and society needs to be abandoned or adapted to ensure future success. To do this a society needs the ability to be critical of how it conducts its business, and the theory behind it – just as scientists need to be critical of their theories.

If social/political institutions and values, just like scientific laws, are only valid until disproved, then we should not believe in them unquestioningly. A good scientist should be pleased if his or her pet theory is shown to be false; it will afford an opportunity to come up with a better one, and that’s how science progresses. Similarly, people should not hold unquestioningly to political and social ideologies, institutions, or presuppositions, in case they’re preventing progress or blocking happiness. Popper’s call is for modesty and open-mindedness in our knowledge claims, whether about society or science – we all will be wrong somewhere! So we should all question our basic beliefs and values – and society should have institutions which enable us to do this socially. In other words, free speech is essential to a society developing.

Democracy and Open Societies

In The Open Society & Its Enemies (1945), Popper extends his thoughts about falsification into the realm of politics. Popper by this time was living in exile in New Zealand, and unsurprisingly after the traumas of the previous decade, was intensely concerned with how societies should be governed. Regimes are acceptable as long as they work towards man’s happiness. But they do not always do so. To put it mildly.

As we saw, language enable both criticism and storytelling: societies have been held together by ideologies, including religions or loyalty to monarchs and nations. To induce loyalty, these ways of thinking are supported by propaganda. This support can prevent criticism and fossilise societies, often with the aim of preserving the ruling classes. When this is to the extreme detriment of many people, revolutions can occur. But for Popper, revolutions do not work. He ascribes this to a theoretical point about ideal societies; to what he calls ‘historicism’; and also to an empirical point about revolutions.

Researchers in laboratory Rhoda Baer 2008 Public Domain

Popper dismisses the concept of ideal societies because we cannot know what the future will hold, except for the fact that change is inevitable; but this means that we would require some form of dictatorship to ensure people complied with the values of a utopia. Furthermore, the culture of ideal societies, such as a Marxist state, would promote what’s beneficial to the regime at the expense of truth. The propensity of utopian dictatorships to bend truth to conform to party or state interests undermines truth. In contrast with what Popper called ‘open societies’, which develop an inbuilt, institutionalised ability to deal with and adapt to criticism, utopian societies would believe their own propaganda and crush dissent. A utopia would become fossilised, incapable of change, and cruel in its imposition of control.

Popper also dismisses what he calls historicism – the idea that there is a law, direction or purpose to history, by which we will end up in some kind of better place (as is exemplified in Marxism). Laws of historical development cannot exist, Popper claims, because societies change in unforeseeable ways. This is partly a result of the connection between society and our knowledge, which changes over time in ways we cannot possibly predict. Take science, for instance: we cannot know what future scientific knowledge will be, otherwise we would already know it! Popper does acknowledge that we can have trends or patterns in history – such as the cyclical pattern of downturns in a free market economy – but that cannot be a universal law of history because it depends on a particular economic system, in this case free market capitalism, and we cannot know how long that system will last. We cannot even know that science and technology will continue to grow: they could become forgotten in some future scenarios. So laws governing the process of history are not possible, Popper says.

Popper’s empirical point about revolutions is based on the observation that historically, revolutions involve violence, propaganda, lies, and a utilitarian ethic that justifies whatever wrongs may be committed in order to achieve the revolution’s final success. This in turn this leads to repression and distortions of truth for the sake of ‘ends’. So while some revolutionaries may be more educated and humane than many conservatives (Popper was writing these ideas eighty years ago, and clearly had sympathy for many of the aims of, for instance, Marxists), they often do not take into account the will of the majority, for whom security, loyalty, and other non-revolutionary values are more important than, say, equality or social justice. Indeed, revolutionaries often dismiss the concerns of more conservative people as nothing more than preventing their aims, and so justify violence against them as legitimate.

Popper’s response to utopias such as Plato’s Republic or Marxist states, is that they ask the wrong question. They ask ‘Who should rule?’, and couch the values of the society in terms of peoples’ duties and responsibilities to the state. But for Popper, the questions should rather be, ‘How can we minimise misrule?’ and ‘How can we get rid of bad rulers without violence?’. He suggests that openness to change and criticism is the essential requirement –in other words, free speech imbedded in institutions such as parliaments to ensure both that societies are well governed, and that there are no revolutions. His answer is democracy, to ensure the minimisation of suffering through piecemeal practical reforms.

All this is a continuation of Popper’s ideas regarding the evolution of knowledge and the process of science. By being able to openly criticise theories, institutions, people, and policies, we can ensure that we have a chance of safeguarding the mass of peoples’ interests and the thriving of societies. Open societies can bend with the wind, and improve themselves through small incremental changes and institutions (themselves the result of previous criticisms and changes) which should be respected, but in a critical way. Here Popper sounds very much like Edmund Burke – but with perhaps a more sympathetic ear for socialist thinking. He also sounds very much like Darwin, as his description of societal evolution is based on survival of what works. Tellingly, there is no way future outcomes can be predicted – just as there is no way that the organisms produced by Darwinian evolution can be predicted.

© Brian King 2025

Brian King is a retired Philosophy and History teacher. He has published an eBook, Arguing About Philosophy, and now runs adult Philosophy and History groups via the University of the Third Age.

Sources of Knowledge

Challenging the Objectivity of Science

Sina Mirzaye Shirkoohi observes science to get the facts straight about it.

In his influential 1976 textbook What Is This Thing Called Science?, Alan Chalmers examines how scientific knowledge is acquired and validated, by looking at the methods underpinning scientific inquiry. He presents and explores the idea that science is fundamentally grounded in the acquisition of objective knowledge through direct observation; that sensory data serves as the bedrock upon which scientific understanding is built. Then he describes some of the criticisms of this picture, and various attempts by recent thinkers to build a more accurate model of the development of science. I want to carry this is a little further. The central thesis of my critique is that observations in science are not purely objective: they’re influenced most notably by theoretical frameworks, prior knowledge, and subjective biases that shape how data are perceived and interpreted.

The Traditional View of Science

The traditional view is that science is grounded in observable facts obtained through direct sensory experience. These observations are objective: facts that are indisputable, checkable, independent of the foibles of the individual observer and directly accessible through our senses. This unparalleled level of objectivity, it is widely believed, distinguishes science from other forms of knowledge, making it a beacon of certainty in a world filled with personal biases and unfounded opinions. It shows that the scientific method is an unswerving path to truth, free from the messiness of individual perspectives.

As Chalmers notes, this conception is appealing because it promises a reliable and unambiguous understanding of the natural world. However, he begins to unravel this simplistic portrayal by delving deeper into the nature of observation. If all scientific inquiry is based on what we can observe, then it’s crucial to examine the reliability and objectivity of these observations. He introduces the concept that observations may be theory-laden – and if so, that this may undermine their function as a neutral foundation for science. When we observe a phenomenon, how can we be sure that what we’re perceiving is objective reality rather than an interpretation influenced by our own prior knowledge and theoretical commitments?

The idea of ‘theory-ladenness’ suggests that what scientists observe is significantly shaped by the theoretical frameworks they hold. Indeed, philosopher of science Norwood Russell Hanson famously argued that “there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball” (Patterns of Discovery, 1958, p.6), implying that observation is an active process, involving interpretation. Chalmers himself emphasizes that observations are not made in a theoretical vacuum, and that our sensory experiences are filtered through cognitive lenses shaped by our existing theories and beliefs. This means that two scientists observing the same phenomenon may interpret it differently based on their theoretical backgrounds.

In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), Thomas Kuhn expands on the idea of ‘theory-ladenness’ by introducing the concept of paradigms – frameworks of thinking that guide scientific research, such as the paradigm of evolution, or of quantum mechanics, or of Newtonian mechanics. These paradigms include not only the theories, but also the methods, standards, and values shared by the scientific community using them. According to Kuhn, normal science operates within such paradigms, and observations are interpreted to fit with the theoretical structure of the paradigm. After decades or even centuries, the weight of anomalies and overcomplicated interpretations within a paradigm may trigger a shift to a new paradigm – what he calls a scientific revolution. After that, normal science resumes within the new paradigm and the pattern repeats.

Some might argue that science employs methods to minimize subjective biases, such as standardized measurements, controlled experiments, and peer review processes. These practices aim to ensure that observations are reliable and replicable, reinforcing objectivity. Yet while these methods enhance the rigor of scientific inquiry, they can only partially eliminate the influence of existing theories on observation. As Paul Feyerabend contends in Against Method (1975), methodological rules are themselves influenced by theoretical perspectives, and a strong adherence to strict methodologies may hinder scientific progress by suppressing alternative viewpoints.

The realization that observations are theory-laden has profound implications for science. It challenges the traditional view that science is purely objective and calls for a more nuanced understanding of how knowledge is constructed. Scientific inquiry becomes not merely a straightforward collection of facts, but a dynamic process involving interpretation and reinterpretation within theoretical frameworks.

Illustration © Jaime Raposo 2025. To see more of his art, please visit jaimeraposo.com

Case Study: Galileo’s Observations

An example that highlights the theory-ladenness of observation is Galileo’s use of the telescope to observe the moons of Jupiter. Galileo’s interpretation was influenced by his support for Copernican heliocentrism – the idea of a Sun-centred solar system (The Sidereal Messenger, 1610). Critics of Galileo, adhering to the traditional Earth-centred model, either dismissed his observations or interpreted them differently. This shows how theoretical commitments can influence not only data interpretation, but also the acceptance of empirical evidence. Galileo’s ability to interpret his observations was profoundly influenced by his prior acceptance of the Copernican model, of the planets all revolving around the Sun. He did not merely record visual data through his telescope; he interpreted what he saw. Chalmers emphasizes that Galileo’s observations were not neutral facts awaiting discovery but were imbued with theoretical significance. Without the heliocentric theory as a framework, the movement of Jupiter’s moons might have been dismissed or interpreted differently. That some of Galileo’s contemporaries, such as Christoph Clavius, were skeptical of his observations, illustrates very well how theoretical commitments shape perception. Their refusal to accept the existence of Jupiter’s moons was not due to a failure in observation, but a consequence of the observation conflicting with their entrenched geocentric worldview.

This example underscores the idea that observations in science are not free from theoretical influence. It’s crucial to understand that human perception is inherently active. First, our brains do not passively receive sensory data, but actively organize and interpret it based on prior knowledge and expectations. Cognitive psychology also indicates that perception is a process of integrating new information with existing cognitive structures. One might argue that Galileo’s use of empirical evidence effectively challenged and eventually overturned the dominant geocentric paradigm, demonstrating the power of observation. However, this would overlook the initial resistance his findings faced due to prevailing theoretical biases. It was not merely the observations themselves but the gradual shift in theoretical acceptance, that led to the heliocentric model’s eventual dominance.

Extending the discussion generally, when a researcher peers through a microscope or looks at any data from scientific equipment, what they see is profoundly influenced by their training, theoretical background, and expectations. For instance, in the early twentieth century, the interpretation of atomic spectra was deeply connected to the developing theory of quantum mechanics. Without that theoretical framework, the spectral lines observed would have remained unexplained.

All these examples challenge the notion that scientific facts are simply waiting to be discovered through observation. Instead, they demonstrate that understanding in science arises from a complex interplay between empirical data and theoretical interpretation. Recognizing this interplay is crucial because it acknowledges the human elements in scientific inquiry, which include creativity, intuition, and subjectivity. And as Feyerabend provocatively argued, adherence to strict methodological rules can sometimes hinder scientific progress by suppressing creative and unconventional approaches.

A Critique of Empiricism & Positivism

Empiricism – the view that knowledge primarily stems from sensory experience – has an illustrious history. The influential early empiricists John Locke (1632-1704) and David Hume (1711-76) argued that the human mind begins as a tabula rasa – a blank slate – and that all knowledge is acquired through sensory input. This perspective maintains that all understanding arises from direct interaction with the world. What we can see, touch, hear, and measure forms the foundation of all credible knowledge. The simplicity of this idea is appealing, as it suggests a straightforward path to truth by relying on observable, tangible evidence. In the early twentieth century, logical positivists such as A.J. Ayer expanded upon empiricist principles by claiming that only empirically or logically verifiable statements are even meaningful. They aimed to eliminate metaphysics and focus strictly on propositions that could be tested either through direct observation or logical analysis. This movement reinforced the belief that scientific knowledge is built upon objective facts derived from sensory experience.

However, the empiricist and positivist emphases on sensory data as the sole source of knowledge has been critiqued for oversimplifying the complexity of perception. One significant challenge here is the recognition that our sense organs are not merely passive receptors of external stimuli, but that their responses to stimuli are actively interpreted by the brain. And as we’ve seen, prior knowledge, expectations, and theoretical frameworks influence what we perceive as facts. This means that sensory data are not objective, but are shaped by our cognitive structures. This active role of cognitive interpretation in knowledge acquisition challenges the views of both empiricism and positivism. Moreover, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions Kuhn argues that the paradigms that science operates within define ‘legitimate’ scientific problems and their solutions: observations are interpreted to reinforce the prevailing paradigm, and anomalies may be ignored or dismissed until a paradigm shift occurs that can incorporate them. This idea of scientific progress challenges the logical positivist view that science progresses by accumulating objective facts. Psychological research also supports the claim that perception is an active process. For instance, studies in cognitive psychology demonstrate that what individuals perceive is affected by schemas developed from prior experiences. This suggests that even at the level of primary perception, our minds filter and interpret sensory data.

Again, proponents of empiricism might assert that scientific methodologies are designed to mitigate subjective biases. Techniques such as controlled experimentation, standardized measurement, and peer review enhance objectivity; and experiment replication, and precise instruments are designed to enhance the reliability of observations. However, while these practices undoubtedly do strengthen the scientific process, they can only partially eliminate the influence of theoretical frameworks upon observation.

Another argument by ‘pure’ empiricists might be that science’s predictive success lends credence to the idea of the objectivity of the empirical method. Scientific theories based on empirical data have indeed led to huge technological advancements and astoundingly accurate predictions about natural phenomena. However, as WVO Quine discussed in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (Philosophical Review, 60:1, 1951), the underdetermination of theory by data implies that multiple theories can be consistent with the same set of observations. This implies that theory choice involves criteria beyond empirical observation alone – such as simplicity, coherence, and explanatory power.

These critiques suggest that acquiring scientific knowledge involves a complex interplay between sensory data and cognitive interpretation. Recognizing this complexity doesn’t devalue empirical evidence, but does call for a more nuanced appreciation of how scientific knowledge is constructed.

The Fallibility of Observation Statements

A prevalent misconception is that observations, by virtue of being directly accessible through the senses, provide indisputable facts about the world. However, Chalmers argues that observations are not infallible truths; they are provisional, and subject to revision. They are tentative brushstrokes on the expansive canvas of scientific knowledge, influenced by the observer’s biases, limitations, and the current state of theoretical understanding. He uses the metaphor of trying to read a street sign through foggy glasses to illustrate how our perceptions are affected by our cognitive lenses. Just as foggy glasses obscure vision, preconceived notions and theoretical commitments can distort our interpretation of sensory data. This aligns with Hanson, who argued that all observations are theory-laden and that what we see is influenced by what we expect to see.

Understanding the fallibility of observation statements is crucial because it further challenges the notion that scientific facts are simply waiting to be discovered through observation. Instead, it emphasizes that what we perceive as ‘facts’ are often interpretations shaped by our understanding at the time. More generally, as W.A. Sandoval notes (in ‘Understanding Students’ Practical Epistemologies and their Influence on Learning Through Inquiry’, Science Education, 89:4, 2005), learners’ practical beliefs about knowledge and knowing influence how they interpret and engage with scientific evidence.

So it’s essential to recognize that science is not a static endeavor of collecting immutable external facts. Instead, it is a dynamic, ever-evolving process characterized by continuous questioning, probing, and revising. Making progress involves both the accumulation of observations, and the constant scrutiny and reinterpretation of those observations in the light of new evidence and theories. A good historical illustration of this process is the shift from Newtonian physics to Einsteinian relativity. In Newtonian mechanics, concepts such as absolute space and time were considered empirical truths, supported by the observations and experiments of the era. However, Einstein introduced a new interpretive framework that redefined space and time, and demonstrated that measurements of both are relative to the observer’s frame of reference. A new empirical observation did play a role in this paradigm shift: the 1887 Michelson-Morley experiment's unexpected finding that there was no significant difference between the speeds of light in two orthogonal directions despite the movement of the Earth through space. However, this would have remained a puzzling anomaly without Einstein's daring theoretical reconceptualisation of the notions of space and time. Again, observations are interpreted within theoretical frameworks, and as those frameworks change, so does our understanding of the observations. This highlights the iterative nature of science, where today’s accepted truths may become tomorrow’s outdated concepts.

A counterargument to the idea of the provisional nature of scientific knowledge is that the convergence of independent observations leads to reliable knowledge over time. But although it is true that repeated observations can strengthen confidence in specific ideas, the history of science shows that widely-accepted interpretations can still be overturned. The phlogiston theory of combustion, once a dominant explanation supported by observations, was eventually replaced by the oxygen theory of combustion after Lavoisier’s experiments. This shift occurred not merely due to new observations, but because of a new theoretical framework that provided a better explanation of the phenomena, in turn leading to better experiments.

Conclusion

This critique highlights that the notion of science being purely derived from objective observable facts is an oversimplification. While observations are undeniably crucial to scientific inquiry, they are intricately intertwined with theory, interpretation, and scientists’ personal perspectives. Recognizing that observations are theory-laden underscores that science is not merely about collecting empirical data, but involves a dynamic process of interpreting and re-evaluating findings within theoretical frameworks.

This has profound implications for the philosophy of science. It challenges the traditional view of science as an entirely objective endeavor based solely on sensory data, by emphasizing the essential role of theoretical constructs and human cognition in shaping scientific knowledge. This invites a more nuanced understanding of scientific objectivity, which acknowledges the complex interplay between empirical evidence and theoretical interpretation. Exploring how this interplay influences scientific progress across various scientific disciplines would be valuable for future reflection, and could provide insight into the evolution of scientific knowledge. Such exploration can deepen our appreciation of the intricate processes that drive scientific discovery, and encourage ongoing dialogue about the nature of objectivity and subjectivity in science.

© Sina Mirzaye Shirkoohi 2025

Sina Mirzaye Shirkoohi is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Administrative Sciences of the Université Laval in Québec City.

Sources of Knowledge

Gödel, Wittgenstein, & the Limits of Knowledge

Michael D. McGranahan takes us to the edge of language, mathematics and science.

There are things we can never know. There are questions that have no answer. There will always be uncertainty.

People typically reject these notions. We like to think we can delve into any problem and eventually find the solution, examine any mystery and uncover the truth. But this just isn’t so. There are limits to what we can know about the world. Here I want to explore the convergence of Gödel and Wittgenstein on the limits of knowledge, against a background of Russell, Hilbert, and Heisenberg. We will find that mathematics, logic, and science all lead to the same truth: that not everything is knowable.

Image © Miles Walker 2025 Please visit mileswalker.com

What Can We Know?

Reality is like an image in a cloud. From a distance, things seem clear: surely that’s a rabbit. But move closer and the shape distorts: it looks less and less like a rabbit. Closer still, and the image becomes fuzzier and fuzzier, until eventually it’s a blur. Finally, you’re swallowed up in fog and nothing makes sense. Why is that? Why does a close examination of reality only yield more questions?

Let’s turn back the clock about a hundred years to Kurt Gödel (1906-78) and Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951). It is striking that over a century later we’re still grappling with their insights. Let me say at the outset that these thinkers were dealing with difficult concepts, but we won’t be delving into the gritty details. Instead I’ll summarize their ideas, distilling down to the essential results, and leave it to the curious reader to investigate the details.

We start with Wittgenstein. He fought in WWI, was captured, and while in a prisoner of war camp wrote up the notes that he had scribbled in the trenches. This became his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and was published after the war, in 1921, at the instigation of his friend Bertrand Russell. The book centres around the question, what are the limits of world, thought, and language? When he’d finished writing it, Wittgenstein was convinced he had solved all philosophical problems (he was a confident fellow).

Here is Wittgenstein’s basic approach in the Tractatus: The world consists not of objects, but of facts. Facts are states of affairs, both actual and possible, with the actual comprising the world. We can make logical pictures of facts, which we call thoughts, and these thoughts when written down are propositions. A sentence about the world – a proposition – creates a picture of the world, and the proposition is true if the picture corresponds to the facts. These language pictures were a crucial and innovative concept: they consist of elements, and each element represents an object, or part of an idea. You put the elements together to form propositions (sentences). Descriptions of the world arise out of propositions, and these can be either true or false. True propositions agree with reality, false ones do not. Here are some ideas from the Tractatus about knowledge:

1. “The book will… draw a limit to… the expression of thoughts; for in order to draw a limit to thinking we should have to be able to think both sides of the limit.” (Preface). Here Wittgenstein observes that to think both sides of this ‘limit’ to thought, we would have to think what cannot be thought, which is impossible. Therefore…

2. The limit can “only be drawn in language and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense” (Preface).

3. Later, Wittgenstein observes that “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” (5.6).

4. “Propositions can represent the whole reality, but they cannot represent” the logical form of their own nature. “To be able to represent the logical form, we should have to be able to put ourselves with the propositions outside logic, that is outside the world” (4.12).

5. Accordingly, “That which expresses itself in language, we cannot express by language” (4.121).

6. Finally, “What can be said at all can be said clearly; and whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (Preface). This presages the book’s famous final proposition: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” (7.0).

In between these ideas are a great many details, propositions, and arguments, and considerable confusion. We will come back to Wittgenstein in a minute, but first, Gödel.

Gödel

Kurt Gödel published his remarkable (that is, shocking) Incompleteness Theorems in 1929. Ernest Nagel and James Newman, in their book Gödel’s Proof (2005), say that incompleteness “has not been fully fathomed” – and this is still true today. Incompleteness is deep and esoteric; and yet it reveals simple, profound insights.

Gödel’s investigation harkens back to the Principia Mathematica, the magnum opus of Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead published between 1910 and 1913. In it, among other things, Russell and Whitehead attempted to solve the paradoxes that plagued mathematics, with an aim to establishing a solid foundational system for all of mathematics. Following Russell and Whitehead, the mathematician David Hilbert (1862-1943) went a step further to propose a type of the mathematical system specified in the Principia Mathematica – one which contained no contradictions and was also complete – meaning, every true mathematical statement could be derived from within the system. These philosopher-mathematicians, Russell, Whitehead, and Hilbert, sparked many investigations, including Gödel’s. He hoped to prove the completeness of mathematics, but ended up doing the opposite.

But first, a few definitions:

Formal System: A system of logical axioms equipped with rules of inference. An axiom is a self-evident truth that requires no proof (it’s a universally accepted rule).

Consistency: A formal system is consistent if there is no statement such that the statement itself and its negation are both derivable from it. That is, there are no contradictions.

Completeness: A formal system is complete if for every statement within the language of the system, either the statement, or its negation, can be derived (that is, proved) by the system. More simply, in a complete system, every true statement is provable.

The first two definitions are obvious: you must begin with a system, and no one would start with an inconsistent system that has built-in contradictions. The question, then, is about the completeness of such systems.

Gödel’s First Incompleteness Theorem proves mathematically that any consistent formal mathematical system within which a certain amount of elementary arithmetic can be carried out, is incomplete – meaning, there are one or more true statements that can be made in the language of the system which can neither be proved nor disproved in the system. This finding leads to two alternatives: Alternative #1: If a set of axioms is consistent, then it is incomplete. Alternative #2: In a consistent system, not every true statement can be proved in the language of the system. Notice the possibility of many true statements being provable – just not all true statements: at least one statement will be unprovable.

Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem is simply this: No set of axioms can prove its own consistency.

With the First and Second Incompleteness Theorems, Gödel effectively ended the search for a consistent and complete mathematical system. It logically cannot exist. As John von Neumann told Gödel, “your result has solved negatively the question: there is no rigorous justification for classical mathematics” (Collected Works V.S. Feferman, et al, 2003, p.339).

Referring to the First Incompleteness Theorem definition above, with particular attention to “one or more true statements… which can neither be proved nor disproved…”, let me present a back-of-the-napkin ‘demonstration’ of the plausibility of the idea, as follows. The inclusion of a Liar’s Paradox (e.g. ‘This sentence is false’) does not render a system of ideas inconsistent. Rather, the paradox cannot be proved. Therefore you now have a consistent system with at least one true statement that is unprovable. The system, then, is incomplete.

Granted, this ‘demonstration’ is fast and loose. However, it is this sort of epiphany that led Gödel to his rigorous proof. He began by transforming the paradox into a metamathematical statement, which he then ingeniously mathematized, to use it to prove mathematically that not everything in mathematics is provable. So knowing something is true, and proving it, are two different things.

Wittgenstein, Gödel, & Russell

Perhaps you can see why I started with Wittgenstein. His propositions 4 and 5 above overlap somewhat with Gödel’s findings.

Bertrand Russell – yes, the same Bertrand Russell who co-authored the Principia Mathematica (which was itself the impetus for Gödel) – wrote the Introduction to the Tractatus. There he states that a logical proposition has a certain logical structure in common with a fact, and that:

“It is this common structure which makes [a proposition] capable of being a picture of the fact, but the structure cannot itself be put into words, since it is a structure of words, as well as the fact to which they refer. Everything, therefore, which is involved in the very idea of the expressiveness of language must remain incapable of being expressed in language, and is, therefore, inexpressible in a perfectly precise sense.”

Wittgenstein, then, has a problem: he’s trying to pin down an elusive concept using words, but his logic says that words cannot be relied upon to do so. Even Gödel himself, with Alfred Tarski, completely independent of Wittgenstein, observed that “a complete epistemological description of language A cannot be given in the same language A, because the concept of truth of sentences of A cannot be defined in A” (Gödel’s Theorem in Focus, ed S.G. Shanker, 1988, pp.104-105).

We begin to see a convergence of ideas and themes. Gödel seems to have encountered the same problems as Wittgenstein, but he tackled them using only mathematics, while Wittgenstein was exploring the limitations of everyday language.

Of logic, and by extension, mathematics, Wittgenstein said that “Tautology and contradiction are without sense” (4.461). He follows this with “Tautology and contradiction are, however, nonsensical” (4.4611). The difference between ‘without sense’ and ‘nonsensical’ is not obvious – which illustrates the very language problem of which we speak. Regardless, these propositions yield Wittgenstein’s conclusion that mathematics (if tautology and contradiction will be allowed to stand for mathematics), is nonsense. He says, “Mathematical propositions express no thoughts” (6.21).

This is shocking and has been much discussed and debated. He reaches this conclusion because, in his logic, mathematical formulas are not bipolar (true or false) and hence cannot form pictures and elements and objects, and thus cannot describe actual states of affairs, and therefore, cannot describe the world.

What Can We Not Know?

There would seem to be a conflict between our two great thinkers. Gödel relied solely on mathematics, and yet Wittgenstein said math is nonsensical. Who is right?

The Incompleteness Theorems raised many questions. Philosophers had to rethink many assumptions. Yet science and music are based on math, so how can it be nonsense ?

Gödel, too, was troubled by mathematics and its origins. What is mathematics, and where does it come from? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that Gödel thought that either the human mind limitlessly surpassed the power of any machine – because it could know truths that could not be proved – or there must be unsolvable mathematical problems. The alternative, he said, was that mathematics was not merely a human creation; that it existed independent of the human mind – say, in Plato’s realm of Ideas. Meanwhile, Hilbert said of his program to find a complete mathematical system: “as a condition for the use of logical inferences and the performance of logical operations, something must already be given to our faculty of representation, certain extralogical concrete objects that are intuitively present as immediate experience prior to all thought. This is the basic philosophical position that I consider requisite for mathematics and, in general, for all scientific thinking, understanding, and communication” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, emphasis added). In other words, Hilbert rested on Immanuel Kant’s concept of a priori knowledge and mental categories whose operation precedes thought.

With this foundation, Hilbert concluded that a consistent and complete mathematical system was possible. But Gödel proved him wrong (and, by inference, perhaps his Incompleteness Theorems cast doubt on Kant’s epistemology). Nevertheless, we see from Gödel’s comments that he was conflicted on this subject. In spite of, or perhaps because of Hilbert, Kant, and Plato, he wasn’t sure how to classify mathematics. Did humans invent it, or does it exist independently, waiting to be discovered, in Plato’s realm of Ideas or somewhere else? Do we know and understand it intuitively because it’s part of the fabric of reality, there somehow without needing to be invented?

Gödel didn’t know, and nor do we.

Reaching the Limit by Paul Gregory

Language, Mathematics, & Uncertainty

Quantum mechanics was in its infancy at the time of Gödel and Wittgenstein. Now Werner Heisenberg (1901-76) is well known for his Uncertainty Principle. The principle says that it is impossible to determine with complete precision at any given moment both a particle’s position and its momentum, and that the same applies to various other pairs of properties. In fact, he wrote, “We cannot know, as a matter of principle, the present in all its details” (from ‘On the physical content of quantum theoretical kinematics and mechanics’, 1927). So here’s yet another demonstrated limit to knowledge.

In his Chicago Lectures (published as The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory, 1930), Heisenberg warns that human language permits the utterance of statements which have no empirical content but nevertheless produce pictures (á la Wittgenstein) in our imagination. One picture shows light as a wave, another as a particle; but these are only analogies. The two analogies are complementary, but neither is an accurate or complete picture of reality. Nevertheless, Heisenberg says they “may be justifiably used to describe things for which our language has no words.”

Language is a limiting factor in human experience. But what of mathematics? Does the language of mathematics hold throughout the universe? If yes, then we must assume that the universe is a consistent system, in the Gödel sense. In other words, there must be no impossible contradictions in the universe. But if this is true, it implies that the universe itself is an incomplete system, because, according to the First Incompleteness Theorem, any consistent formal system is incomplete. This would mean that like consistent systems, Wittgenstein’s system, Hilbert’s program, complementary properties – all of existence, for that matter – are incomplete and ultimately unsolvable.

Conclusion

Logic, mathematics, and science, all point to the fact that ‘the unknowable’ is a built-in feature of existence. Reality is mysterious at some deep level, and search as we might, we will never entirely solve the mystery. A Theory of Everything, should it be discovered, will answer many questions, but will be unprovable; therefore, it won’t really be a theory of everything. The genius of Gödel and the insights of Wittgenstein showed us this.

I’m reminded, in closing, of the Iris Dement song, Let The Mystery Be:

“Everybody’s worrying’bout

where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done,

but no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me,

I think I’ll just let the mystery be.”

© Michael D. McGranahan 2025

Michael McGranahan got a BS in Geology (San Diego State), an MS in Geophysics (Stanford), then spent ten years in oil and gas exploration before making a career change. He is a lifelong student of science, philosophy, and history.

Articles

- The Centennial of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial

- A Crisis of Attention

- Weltschmerz and the World

- The Meaning of a Good Life

- What Makes A Work Of Art Great?

- Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995)

Articles

The Centennial of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial

Tim Madigan on the creation and the evolution of a legend.

The prominent philosopher Lewis White Beck (1913-1997), a leading authority on Kant’s work, was born in Griffin, Georgia, in the heart of the Bible Belt. Like many Americans of that era, he had vivid memories of a seminal event in the mid-Nineteen Twenties: the trial of John T. Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution in the state of Tennessee. Beck writes:

In 1925, I was awakened from my dogmatic slumber by newspaper accounts of the ‘Monkey Trial’. John T. Scopes was found guilty of breaking a law of the state of Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. Reading accounts of both sides of the trial made me admit that Mr. Scopes was indeed guilty – there was no question about that – but made me see that the law itself was foolish. I bought and read The Origin of Species, which confirmed what became a new dogmatism for me. . . . By the age of twelve, my education as the village atheist was essentially complete (Falling in Love with Wisdom: American Philosophers Talk about Their Calling, 1993, p. 13).

Beck was by no means alone in finding the trial to be a legal farce, and yet ultimately a vindication for the theory of evolution as well as a defeat of Biblical Fundamentalism. It remains a milestone in United States legal history. And yet, the trial itself was, to say the least, unorthodox.

It is safe to say that unlike Professor Beck, who had firsthand knowledge about the trial, most people’s awareness of it comes primarily from a single source, the 1955 play Inherit the Wind as well as the 1960 film version of that work. Given that 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the trial it’s not surprising that the play is currently being revived throughout America. I myself recently attended an excellent production starring actor and former U.S. House Representative Fred Grandy and directed by his Love Boat co-star Ted Lange.

Ironically, though, Inherit the Wind was not originally written to reopen debate over the Scopes Trial. The playwrights, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, were both strong social libertarians. Another of their collaborations, for instance, is entitled The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, and deals with the topic of civil disobedience. They first conceived writing a play inspired by the Scopes trial (the title taken from Proverbs 11: 29, “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind”) in 1950, during the height of the McCarthy hearings, when many Americans had their loyalties questioned and were accused of being communist sympathizers or even traitors. The playwrights were appalled at the ways in which Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy and other U.S. government officials used the law to try to silence dissent. Much like Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, written around the same time, the two collaborators utilized an event from the distant U.S. past to reflect upon the present-day situation.

Spencer Tracy as Harry Drummond and Fredric March as Matthew Brady in a courtroom scene from the 1960 movie Inherit The Wind

Still from a trailer for Inherit The Wind, 1960

Lawrence and Lee were careful to make clear that their play was not a literal depiction of the Scopes Trial. They changed the names of the main participants (John Scopes for instance, became Bert Cates, William Jennings Bryan became Matthew Harrison Brady, Clarence Darrow became Henry Drummond, and H.L. Mencken became E.K. Hornbeck). While thinly disguised, the characters were not meant to be one-to-one correspondents to the real-life individuals who participated in the 1925 trial. The playwrights wrote in their introduction to the work that “ Inherit the Wind is not history. The events which took place in Dayton, Tennessee, during the scorching July of 1925 are clearly the genesis of this play. It has, however, an exodus entirely its own.” They conflated events, simplified issues, and overemphasized the roles of Darrow and Bryan, leaving out several other important attorneys involved with the case. Most importantly, they changed the significance of the trial itself, making it seem as if the citizens of “Hillsboro” (standing in for Dayton) were universally religious fundamentalists, which was not the case. For those who wish to know more about the actual trial, I highly recommend Brenda Wineapple’s 2024 book Keeping the Faith: God, Democracy, and the Trial that Riveted a Nation.

As the play begins, Bert Cates is in jail. His fiancée (the daughter of the local minister) visits him there and pleads with him to admit he was wrong to teach evolution. Meanwhile, outside the jail cell, the local citizens are up in arms against him, and want to ride him out of town on a rail. As Lawrence and Lee well knew, none of this was true. Scopes never spent a day in jail, he was not engaged to the local minister’s daughter, and the townspeople – while not necessarily pro-evolution – were on friendly terms with him. Indeed, the town leaders had asked him to be the defendant for a trial which they hoped would bring national attention to Dayton, thus helping the local economy, and were grateful to him for agreeing to do so.

Wineapple details the reasons why the state of Tennessee had passed the so-called Butler Law, forbidding the teaching of evolution, and how the little town of Dayton, with barely 3,000 citizens, became the focal point of protest against it. Named after representative John W. Butler, who first proposed it, the law stated: “That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower form of animals.” The governor of Tennessee, who was actually in favor of teaching evolution, signed it, since he needed the legislature to pass other laws he considered more important, including one for furthering financial support for the state’s growing educational system. Like other politicians at the time, he hoped that the law would never actually be put into effect, but his hope was quickly squashed.

There was a confluence of events in the mid-1920s that led to the Scopes Trial. First of all, the rise of the public school system made education itself a controversial topic. The number of pupils enrolled in American high schools had leapt from about 200,000 in the 1890s to over two million in 1920. Home schooling was becoming a thing of past, and laws were enacted which mandated compulsory schooling for children throughout the United States. Parents and ministers feared what the pupils were being taught in these nonsectarian schools. Who had the right to determine the curriculum?

Secondly, the rise of the Fundamentalist movement in response to modernism and ‘higher criticism’ of the Bible was another phenomenon of the Nineteen Twenties. In 1919, 6,000 conservative Christians attended the World Christian Fundamentals Association (WCFA) conference. Originally founded to defend so-called Biblical fundamentals in churches and divinity schools, the WCFA, as well as other related organizations, quickly saw the public schools as the new battleground for defending the faith, with evolution as the chief enemy. This was the impetus for enacting legislation such as the Butler Law. Sensing the growing political clout of the newly roused and newly named ‘Fundamentalists’, elected officials took the hint and started passing such laws, hoping that would be sufficient to appease the movement.

A third strand leading to the Scopes Trial was the rise of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). At the end of the Woodrow Wilson Administration, in response to the Communist Revolution in the Soviet Union and the fear of a similar uprising in the United States, political radicals were arrested or exiled. The Socialist leader Eugene Debs was imprisoned for criticizing America’s entry into the First World War, the anarchist firebrand Emma Goldman was deported to Russia, and U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer launched a national campaign – along with his ally, the very young J. Edgar Hoover – to weed out Bolsheviks and other ‘unAmericans’ throughout the land. This Post-World War I period has come to be called ‘The Red Scare’, and has many similarities with the post-World War II McCarthyism era. In response to the Red Scare, the ACLU was formed, to defend freedom of dissent and the rights of minorities. Its leaders particularly feared the way that the tyranny of the majority could dictate what could be taught in the nation’s schools. They were looking for a test case to combat the criminalization of teaching evolution, which they saw as the first wedge in a growing campaign to destroy educational freedom. The ACLU wanted a Supreme Court decision, which would standardize the question of whether educators or legislators determined curriculum content throughout the United States. They advertised for a test case, and finally found one – or so they thought – in Dayton.

The 2025 Scopes Trial Centennial Conference took place on July 18-20, 2025 in Tennessee, close to the location of the original trial. The courthouse can still be seen, and there are statues of Darrow and Bryan. Our correspondent Kenneth Marsalek was there, and took this photo of a conference attendee passing Darrow’s statue. You can read more about the entire program of centennial celebrations at scopes100.com.

© Kenneth Marsalek 2025

Edward J. Larson, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1997 book Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, argues that the state of Tennessee was not a Fundamentalist hotbed. The citizens of Dayton were primarily Methodist, not Baptist, and many had opposed the Butler Law. But the town fathers saw a chance for national publicity by agreeing to make Dayton the site of the proposed ACLU test case. John Scopes was asked to be the defendant by the local prosecutors, including his friend Sue Hicks (a man named after his mother and supposedly the basis for the Johnny Cash hit song ‘A Boy Named Sue’). Scopes himself was a native of Kentucky who was only a substitute science teacher, and he was planning to leave Dayton for good in the fall. He was asked to be the defendant because the town leaders didn’t want to imperil the career of the full-time science teacher. Ironically, Scopes wasn’t sure if he had actually taught the theory of evolution, but supposed that he must have done so, and good-naturedly agreed to accept the challenge.

But it is the legal antagonists, rather than Scopes himself, who are the most famous individuals in the trial, particularly defense attorney Clarence Darrow and prosecuting attorney William Jennings Bryan. Both were celebrities of the day, noted for their rhetorical skills and their own love for the limelight. And yet, neither of them was initially involved in the decision to hold the trial at Dayton. In fact, their participation upset the plans of both the Dayton town fathers and the ACLU, neither of whom anticipated just what a circus the trial would become. The publicity for Dayton became mostly negative, thanks in part to the vituperative writings of Baltimore newspaperman H.L. Mencken, and the ACLU’s own involvement in the case was overshadowed by the towering presence of Darrow.

Henry Drummond, the Inherit the Wind character obviously modeled upon Darrow, is the hero of the play. But Darrow had in reality invited himself onto the Dayton defense team. Most of the ACLU leaders didn’t want him involved. In their view, he was too controversial. Just the year before, he had successfully defended two child murderers, Leopold and Loeb, which had made him a vilified figure in the eyes of many. More to the point, Darrow was a vociferous agnostic, who delighted in making fun of organized religion. He saw the upcoming Dayton trial as a chance to focus attention on the ridiculousness of Biblical fundamentalism; the ACLU, on the other hand, wanted to contest the state’s right to dictate what could be taught in general. They didn’t want to antagonize religious believers, and had devised a legal strategy that would avoid the religious controversy. Darrow most decidedly wanted to make religion the focal point. After much internal debate, the ACLU was forced to accept Darrow on its legal team, after he made an end-run around them by getting Scopes to agree that he wanted the famed ‘Attorney for the Damned’ to represent him.

In a somewhat similar fashion, William Jennings Bryan joined the prosecution by also essentially inviting himself onto the team, after letting the national press know that he would be delighted to help out. Bryan was notorious for his ability to generate publicity, and had become the leading critic of ‘Darwinism’ in the United States, so he seemed a natural to be involved in the case. While the Inherit the Wind character Matthew Harrison Brady comes across as something of a blowhard, Bryan himself was a more complicated figure than the play presents. As Michael Kazin points out in his 2007 biography A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, he was a champion of many progressive social causes and a defender of the rights of the dispossessed. In fact, his nickname was ‘The Great Commoner’, and for millions of Americans he represented the little man in the battle against Big Business and unbridled capitalism. A three-time unsuccessful presidential candidate, Bryan was a democrat with a capital ‘D’. As a social reformer, he believed strongly in direct political action, and advocated the view that citizens had a right to decide what should be taught in the public schools. A pacifist, he had resigned as Wilson’s Secretary of State when it became clear to him that the president was leading America into the First World War. While undoubtedly a devout Christian, Bryan was not himself a fundamentalist, i.e. a literalist when it came to understanding the Bible. For him, the teachings of Christ needed to be applied to making the world a better place. His antagonism to evolution was directly connected with his opposition to so-called Social Darwinism, the belief that poverty was a character flaw which should not be relieved through governmental intervention. In fact, he and Darrow had often been on the same side politically, over such issues as women getting the right to vote, support for labor unions, and the fight for the direct election of U.S. senators. There was, however, one topic other than evolution over which they vehemently disagreed: Prohibition. Bryan had been in the forefront of the campaign to pass the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting the sale of intoxicating liquors. Darrow was an opponent of the recently enacted amendment, as was the hard-drinking Mencken, whose sarcastic articles about the Scopes trial played a large role in making both Bryan and the citizens of Dayton look like yahoos. Mencken, who is depicted in Inherit the Wind as the cynical E.K. Hornbeck, came to Dayton to cover the trial, but didn’t stay until its end, as Hornbeck does in the play.

Inherit the Wind does quite accurately depict the most memorable moment of the trial – Darrow’s cross-examination of Bryan, in which he lured the increasingly flustered Bryan into defending, or at least trying to explain, some of the more questionable stories from scripture, such as Cain finding a wife, Joshua making the Sun stand still, and Jonah being swallowed by a whale. Lawrence and Lee took much of this scene directly from the actual trial transcripts. However, Darrow’s strategy ultimately didn’t really have much bearing on the case, and went against the wishes of his ACLU allies. The judge struck Bryan’s testimony from the record, and the jury found Scopes found guilty. This, after all, had been the ACLU’s desire in the first place, for without a guilty verdict they would not have been able to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. Darrow’s shenanigans, while making for great theater, were beside the point, and helped to make Bryan a martyr figure for fundamentalists, particularly when the latter died just a few days after the trial’s end.

The debate continues over who really ‘won’ the Scopes trial. Upon appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the Butler Law, but cleverly overturned the Scopes conviction on a technicality. Thus, the ACLU was unable to take the case further. And yet, while other states had also passed similar anti-evolution laws, eventually they were all overturned. By the time Lawrence and Lee came to write Inherit the Wind, the anti-evolution crusade seemed a thing of the distant past. For them, the teaching of evolution was a settled issue. The Scopes Trial itself became a metaphor for the continuing battle over intellectual freedom. As they wrote in their introduction to the play: “The collision of Bryan and Darrow at Dayton was dramatic, but it was not drama. Moreover, the issues of their conflict have acquired new dimension and meaning in the thirty years since they clashed at the Rhea County Courthouse. So Inherit the Wind does not pretend to be journalism. It is theatre. It is not 1925. The stage directions set the time as ‘Not too long ago’. It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.”

It is ironic that the play remains relevant today in a way Lawrence and Lee themselves did not anticipate. By the time they were able to mount the play on Broadway, in 1955, the worst of McCarthyism was over. And when the movie version, starring Spencer Tracy as Drummond and Fredric March as Brady, came out in 1960, the Communist scare itself seemed a thing of the past.

And yet, the issues debated at the Scopes Trial in the mid-Twentieth Century are once again front-page news in the mid-Twenty First. Now, instead of laws outlawing the teaching of evolution, equal time is being demanded for the teaching of ‘Intelligent Design’ (ID), which is claimed to be scientific. Unlike Darrow, many of today’s defenders of evolution are unskilled in rhetoric, while opponents continue to have Bryan’s gift of persuasion.

In contemporary America, not just in the Deep South but throughout the country, there is often a de facto omission of discussing evolution in textbooks and courses, in order to avoid controversy. Home schooling is also an increasing phenomenon, particularly among conservative Christians. And in 2025 the public school system itself is one of the targets of political conservatives, just as it was in 1925, and for much the same reasons. Most frightening of all is the political alliance between the Republican Party and religious Fundamentalists, which has helped to polarize the United States along sectarian lines, and led to renewed attacks on the separation of church and state.

What would Bryan have thought about this state of affairs? One never knows, but it is important to remember that he was a Democrat in all meanings of that term, as well as a vocal critic of Big Business. The alliance of Biblical inerrancy with rapacious capitalism would surely have disturbed him. A type of ‘Social Darwinism’ has been revived, with the view that the Godly will prosper economically and no social safety net is needed for those unable to make it in the struggle for survival. On the other hand, as Wineapple, Larson, and Kazin all demonstrate, Bryan – unlike Darrow – was a White Supremacist who opposed integration (one of Scopes’ other lawyers, Arthur Garfield Hays, would later write the ACLU’s brief in support of the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education case). His populism was not allied with the fight for racial equality, and, as critics at the time such as W.E.B. Du Bois noted, many opponents of evolution were appalled by the view that humans might have come from a ‘common stock’ originating in Africa. Behind many of the religious objections to evolution there lay a virulent racism.

What can be done to address the contemporary campaign against the teaching of evolution? Interestingly enough, Inherit the Wind provides one answer. It remains an important play precisely because it continues to generate discussion on the need to defend freedom of thought. At the end of the play, Cates asked Drummond if he had won or lost.

Drummond: You won.

Cates: But the jury found me –

Drummond: What jury? Twelve men? Millions of people will say you won. They’ll read in their papers tonight that you smashed a bad law. You made it a joke!

Cates: Yeah. But what’s going to happen now? I haven’t got a job. I’ll bet they won’t even let me back in the boarding house.

Drummond: Sure, it’s gonna be tough, it’s not gonna be any church social for a while. But you’ll live. And while they’re making you sweat, remember – you’ve helped the next fella.

Cates: What do you mean?

Drummond: You don’t suppose this kind of thing is ever finished, do you? Tomorrow it’ll be something else – and another fella will have to stand up. And you’ve helped give him the guts to do it!

Little did Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee realize, when penning their protest against McCarthyism and anti-Communism, that the ‘something else’ coming down the road would be exactly the same battle they were using as a metaphor. Inherit the Wind remains a timely work.

© Prof. Timothy J. Madigan 2025

Tim Madigan is Professor of Philosophy at St John Fisher University. His greatest regret is that he never appeared as an actor on The Love Boat.

Articles

A Crisis of Attention

Paul Doolan attends to our culture of attention demanding.

‘Listen’ is composed of the same letters as ‘silent’. Listening to another person means falling silent while the other speaks, opening yourself up to what they have to communicate. The philosopher Byung-Chul Han describes this as ‘a special receptivity’ (The Disappearance of Rituals, 2020). Kieran Setiya argues that the path to strong relationships comes through cultivating the art of listening; forging new friendships often begins with the simple act of paying attention to the other person (Life is Hard, 2022). Too often, however, we fail to gift the other our attention or our time. I’ll admit that personally, this rings too true. I am a master of some widely practiced anti-listening habits: leaping into the pauses left by my interlocutor; finishing their sentence; rehearsing my own response while acting like I’m listening; replying in a way that shifts the focus of attention onto me… I’m guilty of them all. These days, it seems like we don’t have the time to pay attention.

The economist Herbert Simon characterised attention as a scarce resource: “In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else; a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is … the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” (Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, pp.40-41, 1971). So when we pay attention, what we’re paying for is information. In this uneven exchange our attention is limited but the supply of information is limitless. So we need to be wise when we decide what we’re going to spend our limited currency on; after all, the quality of information varies enormously.

Since Simon penned his work, the battle for our attention has been transformed through the growth of online communication. Information circulates freely now, in a worldwide data-flow, and, vampire-like, sucks up our attention. Platforms vie with each other to provide us information in exchange for our attention. This has produced a crisis of attention.

Image © Susan Auletta 2025 Please visit instagram.com/sm_auletta

What is Attention?

‘Attention’ is derived from the Latin ad tendere, ‘to stretch toward’. Attention is directional – reaching to a physical object in the external world, or pointing inward towards a mental object (a feeling, idea, or concept). ‘Attention’ is also closely related to the French word attendre, ‘to attend’ or ‘to wait for’. So attention combines an active ‘stretch toward’ with a passive ‘wait for’ – as when we stretch toward a work of art or another creature, and we wait for it to disclose its secrets.

Attention works in two main ways. Involuntary attention is when your attention is captured by the unexpected or novel. You’re studying in a library and someone sits at your table, and you involuntarily notice their appearance or odour; or you’re listening to the sound of the waves on the beach when your smartphone pings and so you check another cute cat video on your feed. Your attention involuntarily travels in a new direction. Or attention may stretch toward a physical or mental object as a result of deliberation. You close your eyes in order to direct your attention to the music; or you put away your phone in order to give your attention to your dinner partner. Sometimes this act of voluntary attention can stretch for extended periods, forgetting all sense of time and even a sense of self. This deep attention enables a sense of rapture, described by Winifred Gallagher as “completely absorbed, engrossed, fascinated.” Rapt attention “simply makes you feel that life is worth living” (Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, p.10, 2009). This is the result of effort. It needs practice. So in the current climate, where attention is simply the currency we pay to receive data, our capacity for rapture is in danger.

Distraction, Danger, Damage

We live in an age of distraction, which might also be called an age of madness – after all, we describe someone as ‘looking distracted’ when we mean they look mad; or when I need to justify a temporary bout of madness, I argue that I was ‘driven to distraction’.

James Williams, a former advertising strategist at Google, quit his job and went to Oxford to train as a philosopher. He argues that the struggle to win back control of our attention is ‘the defining moral and political struggle of our time’ (Stand out of the Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, p.xii, 2018). He was motivated to become a philosopher when he realized that he was suffering from a ‘new mode of deep distraction’ (p.7), and immersed in a ‘proliferation of pettiness’(p.57). He points out that Big Tech is involved in a major reorganization of our attention, and that we’re in danger of losing control over our attention processes by pursuing the diversions presented to us by Silicon Valley billionaires.

Yuval Noah Harari coined the term ‘dataism’ to describe the new secular religion that places freedom of information above all else. For the dataist, maximizing the dataflow and linking everything to the internet are the chief commands to be followed. We once sought meaning by looking inside ourselves; but the dataist connects to the dataflow in order to produce meaning, and a valuable life is no longer measured in meaningful experiences but by conspicuously sharing in the free-flow of data (Homo Deus, 2017).

To understand the dangers inherent in our distraction, we could do worse than turn to the aphorisms of seventeenth century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. In his work Pensées (Thoughts, 1670) we find a convincing articulation of the negative effects of what he called ‘diversions’. Pascal characterises humans as fragile creatures dignified by the possession of consciousness. Alas, humanity’s default condition is one of boredom and anxiety, and we endeavour to escape our boredom and depression by seeking distraction in diversions. Thus we are fooled by ‘the charms of novelty’ (aphorism 44), and end up paying too much attention to ‘things that do not really matter’ (aphorism 93).

Our chief motivation for this is fear of death. We seek distraction and excitement in order to avoid thinking about our inability to avoid death. Here Pascal asks us to imagine ourselves as one of a group of chained prisoners. Each day, some members of the group are picked out and butchered within sight of the others. One day it will be our turn. Such is the lot of humans. And yet, we flee from this truth by throwing ourselves into mindless diversions. Hence, the popularity of Instagram, Netflix, Snapchat, TikTok… We pursue distraction to seek consolation from our miseries, too; but distraction proves to be the deepest of miseries, because distraction, being a flight from reality and a denial of our mortality, ‘leads us imperceptibly to destruction’ (aphorism 414).

Pascal recommends placing one’s faith in a benevolent God, but we have largely replaced God with online entertainment. Netflix and other ‘opportunities’ leech away our attention so that we do not need to direct it toward uncomfortable truths. Moreover, in neo-liberal capitalism, with its focus on production, accumulation, and growth, death is banished because, in Han’s words, it ‘counts as absolute loss’ (The Agony of Eros, p.21, 2017).

Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other (2011) demonstrates the damage incurred through digital distraction, and warns that children suffer from a deficit of human attention, as increasingly they complete with screens for their parent’s attention, so suffering from the phenomenon of parents who are physically close but mentally far away. Teenagers, meanwhile, are aware of how little attention they receive from friends because they know how little they give; yet according to Turkle, what every young person longs for ‘is the pleasure of full attention, coveted and rare’ (p.266). But the smartphone has transformed us into conversational narcissists. The smartphone and earbuds are the killer of small talk. Turkle claims that teenagers flee from making an actual phone call “because it demands their full attention” (p.188). And Han argues that communication technologies promote a superficial, scattered form of attention that he calls ‘hyperattention’, and in this noisy world, “the ability to grant deep, contemplative attention” becomes “inaccessible to the hyperactive ego” (The Burnout Society, p.13, 2015).

Sacred Attention

Simone Weil

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Simone Weil (1909-43) are two very different philosophers, but one thing they share is the importance they give to the faculty of attention. For Nietzsche, voluntary attention can make us god-like in a Godless universe, while for Weil, contemplative attention gives us access to God. Weil argued that the only serious goal of education should be to train attention, for attention alone produces “beautiful art, truly original and brilliant scientific discovery… philosophy which really inspires to wisdom and… true, practical love of one’s neighbour” (An Anthology, p.273, 2000). In Twilight of the Idols (1889), Nietzsche argued that education should focus on learning to think, speak, and write; but ‘learn to see’ should take precedence. He explained that true seeing means “habituating the eye to repose, to patience, to letting things come to it; learning to defer judgement, to investigate and comprehend the individual case in all its aspects… not to react immediately to a stimulus”, adding, “all vulgarity is due to the incapacity to resist a stimulus… one has to react” (p.65). However, today, smartphones always within reach, we react immediately to a variety of involuntary stimuli, and measure our productivity by the speed with which we react.

Like Weil, Han argues that deep, contemplative attention produced “the cultural achievements of humanity” (The Burnout Society, p.13). And like Nietzsche’s deferred judgement, Hans stresses the need for engaging with the hard work of “freeing oneself from rushing, intrusive Something” (p.24). But the unending stream of information does not lend itself to providing a calm centre in our lives. Rather it turns us into ‘data fetishists’ (Non-things, p.2, 2022). Voluntary attention – that which produces art, philosophy, science, and care for others – is eroded and replaced by involuntary attention, which reacts in a distracted manner to the river of tweets, snapchats, BeReals, WhatsApps, and text messages.

Studying the art of the ancient Etruscans led D.H. Lawrence to argue that the act of ‘vivid attention’ was religious in its origin, an attempt of mankind “to draw more life into himself”, gaining vitality and “blazing like a god” (Etruscan Places, p.84, 1932). Thus Lawrence likened the purest form of attention to prayer or divination. Weil also argued that offering one’s full attention to another is a form of prayer, involving faith and love (Anthology, p.232). Really giving attention to the other involves transcendence of oneself. This distinguishes sacred attention from the sort of grasping attention that simply uses the other for one’s own benefit – the instrumentalised attention that’s simply a projection of oneself. The grasping form of attention is “bound up with desire”, but sacred attention “is so full that the ‘I’ disappears” (p.233). The proper application of attention produces ‘authentic and pure values – truth, beauty and goodness’ (p.234). For Weil, the worst outrage is the confinement of the worker’s attention to production processes, which ‘drains the soul of all save a preoccupation with speed’ (pp.275-276).

Iris Murdoch borrowed the word ‘attention’ from Weil to express “the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality” (Existentialists and Mystics, p.327), and said that what was needed in modern times was ‘a new vocabulary of attention’ (p.293). Like Weil, she equated attention with a type of prayer. And like Weil, she argued that attention should be directed outward, away from the self, and that this was done by developing the capacity for love. In words that reflect Nietzsche, Murdoch wrote, “It is the capacity to love, that is, to see, that the liberation of the soul from fantasy occurs” (p.354).

The Forest & Solitude

Some people favour the idea that technology can solve the problem that technology has wrought by providing the antidote to the distraction produced by the technology. This idea reinforces the myth of the technical fix – a belief in the magic of technology. Here we would do well to remember Plato’s warning that deception seems like a form of bewitchment (Republic, Book III, 413c, c.400 BCE). Communication technology enchants and seduces with its hyperreal simulation of the real and its unlimited promise to make our lives effortless. The sleek, smooth form of the smartphone or tablet bewitches us and draws us in, like Narcissus drawn to stare at the smooth surface of the dark pool, captivated by his own reflection.

The most popular digital detox app is ‘Forest’. By opening the app and setting down your device, you can grow a digital tree. If you give in to temptation and pick up your device too soon, the tree withers and dies. Yet rather than leading to you spending more time in the non-digital world, Forest gamifies and contaminates our lives with further digitalization. Much better to leave Forest at home and enter a non-monetized actual forest.

Romantic poets such as Coleridge and Wordsworth popularized the idea that walking in the forest or elsewhere in nature enhances our powers of deep attention. Nietzsche trekked over mountains and found his most productive refuge in the Swiss village of Sils Maria. Heidegger, who wrote that what is needed is “less philosophy, but more attentiveness”, retreated to his hut in the Black Forest to chop wood and to think. And according to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s biographer Ray Monk, it was in his hideaway in Norway that Wittgenstein had his most productive period: “the beauty of the countryside… produced in him a kind of euphoria” (Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius, p.94, 1991).

John Kaag argues that walking has been intrinsically “tied to creation and philosophical thought. Letting one’s thoughts wander, thinking on one’s feet, arriving at a conclusion” (Hiking with Nietzsche, p.27, 2020). Just so, the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson tried to maintain a regime of walking in the woods every day. In a lecture in 1838, he recommended that a scholar must embrace solitude ‘as a bride’ in order to “become acquainted with his own thoughts”: temporary solitude is a necessity for the poet or philosopher who wishes to remain independent of the crowd. According to Emerson, one needs simplicity, silence, and seclusion to “pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being” (p.176). Likewise, Weil argued that the practice of deep attention is “impossible except in solitude” (Anthology, p.76).

Emerson’s student and friend Henry Thoreau built his own cabin on the secluded banks of Walden Pond, where he remained for nearly two years. In the solitude of the forest he developed a profound level of attention. He then reflected on his time and penned the classic Walden (1854).

Erling Kagge went quite a few steps further than Thoreau. He traversed Antarctica on foot, alone, claiming he could hear and feel the silence, and that nature “spoke to me in the guise of silence” (Silence in the Age of Noise, p.12, 2018). When he stopped for a break, “I experienced a deafening silence. When there is no wind, even the snow looks silent.” The result of this solitude: “I became more and more attentive to the world of which I was a part” (p.14).

Philip Koch says the type of solitude experienced by Thoreau and Kagge is characterised by three features: physical isolation, social disengagement, and reflectiveness. However, Koch argues that only one of these features – social disengagement – is necessary for solitude. He writes, “solitude is the state in which experience is disengaged from other people” (Solitude: A philosophical encounter, p.44, 2015). Even in close physical proximity to others and without the compulsion to engage in reflection, we can create moments of solitude, disengaged from other people, and enhancing our attention.

Aesthetic Attention

The best poetry is often the result of intensive attention. Poetry also often requires a manner of attending that sharpens and refines our capacity to listen, see, and feel. Poetry is not only a technique for tuning and refining attention, but also a way to interrogate the conditions and limits of attention.

Elisabeth Bishop’s poem The Fish opens with the line “I caught a tremendous fish”, and then describes him in detail. Her description of his eyes is the culmination of a great attention that shapes the reader’s perception:

I looked into his eyes

which were larger than mine

but shallower, and yellowed,

the irises backed and packed

with tarnished tinfoil

seen through the lenses

of old scratched isinglass.

They shifted a little, but not

to return my stare.

– It was more like the tipping

of an object to the light.

Fish blue Diego Delso 2020 Creative Commons 4

Bishop then writes, “I stared and stared”. The attentive, devotional gaze she offers is an example of Nietzsche’s admonition to learn to see: it leads inevitably to the last line, “And I let the fish go.” So the poem is a demonstration of a kind of sacred attention – a gifting and a prayer; and what’s received in return for deep attention is a lesson that goes far deeper than data: it teaches us that how we look alters what we see, and it teaches compassion for the other.

In a gallery, one is surrounded by the silence and stillness of art. It is the very stillness of paintings and sculpture that make them a challenge to look at when we’ve been conditioned by Netflix, YouTube, or our Instagram feed into a type of serialized looking – restless, superficial, and fleeting. A painting demands lingering. It takes time. In fact, according to Bence Nancy, all aesthetic experiences have one thing in common, namely “the way you’re exercising your attention” (Aesthetics: A very short introduction, p.22, 2019). Nancy argues that normally our attention is focused on a specific object, which leads to ‘intentional blindness’ – like when we’re so focussed on counting the number of basketball passes that we don’t even notice a person wearing the gorilla suit walking across the court (look up ‘selective attention test’ on YouTube if you don’t know what that’s about). But when we look carefully at an artwork we engage in ‘open-ended attention’ – not looking for anything in particular. This, according to Nancy, “liberates our perception” and we “let ourselves be surprised”. It directs our attention away from ourselves, and we discover what the art says to us – including that artists do not simply mimic reality, they select and highlight and thereby draw our attention to an otherwise unnoticed aspect of it. Eventually we turn away from the canvas, and see reality through new eyes. Alas, Nancy admits that the practice of open-ended attention “might be on its way out in our current smartphone obsessed times” (p.38).

The 2010 exhibition ‘The Artist is Present’, from performance artist Marina Abramowi ć , demonstrated the power of the human gaze and the profound experience of giving another person your prolonged, deep attention. Over the course of three months, Abramovi ć sat in silence at a table in New York’s Museum of Modern Art for eight hours a day, while members of the public lined up to take turns sitting opposite her. The audience member and the artist would then gaze at each other in silence. Some visitors sat with Abramowi ć for a minute, while others lost all sense of time and sat for well over an hour. Some were moved to laughter; many were moved to tears. I cannot think of another work of art that so emphatically emphasises the power of attention.

Conclusion

Setiya frames the loving attention of Weil and Murdoch as being an effort ‘to appreciate what’s there’ (Life is Hard, p.128). However, we no longer linger, because new information is constantly demanding our attention. Han argues that anything that is time-consuming ‘is on the way out’ (Non-things, p.6). Intense forms of attentiveness are being banished by destructive hyperactivity.

We give our attention away to a constant stream of trivial information. While the fish is still alive, we need to take the time to look into its eyes, recognize its creatureliness, attend to its suffering, then set it free. Then we need to spread the message of attending, before we descend into complete madness.

© Dr Paul M.M. Doolan 2025

Paul Doolan taught philosophy in international schools in Asia and in Europe, and is the author of Collective Memory and the Dutch East Indies: Unremembering Decolonization (Amsterdam University Press, 2021).

Articles

Weltschmerz and the World

Ian James Kidd takes a realistic and global view of the history of pessimism.

The most famous pessimist in the history of philosophy is surely Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). In his most important work, The World as Will and Representation (1818) he describes our existence as ‘a mistake’ and ‘the worst of all possible worlds’, explaining that, except in occasional moments of artistic delight, humans are trapped in an endless painful cycle of desire, frustration, and boredom. For Schopenhauer, “pain, not pleasure, is the positive thing, pleasure being merely its absence” and life, if properly understood, “ought to disgust us”. Alongside suffering and distraction, our overall moral condition is also terrible: other than a few ‘beautiful souls’, people are dominated by “vices, failings… of all sorts”, and the social world is a “den of thieves”. Suicide is morally ruled out, so our only path to redemption is to try, however futilely, to transcend the will that relentlessly drives all things. True to his pessimism, though, this transcendence is confined by Schopenhauer to an elite group – to ‘saints and geniuses’ – condemning the rest of us to the hell of human existence. While Schopenhauer is the most famous pessimist, he was not the only pessimist in nineteenth century Germany, nor was he considered the most important at the time. Excellent recent studies of the history of pessimism – such as Frederick Beiser’s Weltschmerz (‘ World-pain’, 2016) – challenge the Schopenhauer-centred picture, reminding us of other, now-forgotten figures.

Arthur Schopenhauer by Woodrow Cowher

The ‘Pessimism Controversy’ of late 1800s Germany had many such figures, and their worries about ‘the value of existence’ did not come out of nowhere. New and powerful forms of the problem of evil, the rise of materialist philosophies, and a crisis in Christian faith brought about by higher Biblical criticism, all helped to reactivate questions about the meaning and value of human life as old as the Greeks. Sophocles (496-406 BCE), for instance, posed the stark possibility that the best thing for a human is ‘never to have been born’ – an attitude recently revived by anti-natalist philosophers, led by David Benatar, perhaps the most famous living pessimistic philosopher.

The history of pessimism, then, is much wider than the life and work of Arthur Schopenhauer. It goes back at least to the Greeks. Other more recent candidates for the title ‘pessimist’ include Montaigne, Rousseau, and Hobbes, and the early Church Fathers, who saw the human condition as an ill one, dominated by ‘vices and crimes’. Other exemplars include Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837), the Italian poet who regarded humanity as ‘necessarily unhappy’, and the Romanian aphorist Emil Cioran (1911-95), whose pessimism is apparent in the titles of his books, such as The Heights of Despair (1934).

Plenty of pessimists, then, ancient and modern.

Pessimism Pervasive

The pessimists disagree on what is wrong with being human and what to do about it. For instance, many Christians hope that a life of trusting in Christ ensures redemption; but we still have to toil through ‘the misery of the human condition’, as St Augustine called it. Nor are all pessimists committed to offering paths to redemption. Eduard von Hartmann, for one, advised ‘universal suicide’, and Reddit is full of nihilistic pessimists who eagerly await human extinction. It’s an extreme view, for sure, but in a world which seems to warrant pessimistic conclusions, they should not be perfunctorily dismissed.

Suffering and nihilism, worries about suicide, and questions about the meaning of life in a world apparently without divine redemption but with human evils – this is all part of what Joshua Dienstag calls the ‘problematic’ of pessimism (Pessimism, 2006).

It’s clear the West has tried to describe and cope with the pessimism problem. For sure nineteenth century Germany was, as Beiser judges, “ the era of pessimism, the epoch of Weltschmerz.” What about other cultures, though? Can we find pessimistic themes outside of post-Christian Europe? Are there non-Western pessimists, who were not grappling with theism and the problem of evil, but who, nonetheless, recognised the misery of the human condition?

I think the answer to these questions is ‘Yes’, and that this matters to our thinking about pessimism. Pessimism is not confined to the Western philosophical tradition, and there are lots of other sources. Some involve Christianity or theism more generally, but others don’t. Some sorts of pessimism insist that life lacks meaning, others don’t.

If we take a more multicultural perspective, we’ll find other instances of philosophical pessimism. Even better – if that’s the right word – we will appreciate that pessimism isn’t an existential ‘problem’ unique to Westerners. It’s a conclusion on the nature of human life that has been reached by many reflective people around the world. But first, we need a working definition of ‘pessimism’.

What Is Pessimism?

What is pessimism? It’s too broad to say that a pessimist is someone who calls attention to the dark sides of life. All but the most zealous optimist can do that. It would also, however, be too narrow to define pessimism as a response to a sense of the meaninglessness of life in a world where people now must struggle to answer the question of why they should live if God is dead.

Inevitably, philosophers offer different definitions of pessimism. One thing that’s crucial, though, is that philosophical pessimism is not an emotion or a character trait. Rather, pessimism is a judgement – a rational appraisal of the human condition, grounded in experience and reflection. Of course, like any value judgement, a pessimistic one can express itself in emotions. Disquiet, despair, frustration, bitterness, and sadness are all mentioned by philosophical pessimists (as are positive emotions and moods such as acceptance and calm).

If pessimism is a judgement, this implies that no one is born a pessimist. After all, no one is born with a philosophical appraisal of the human condition. It will take years of reflection, deliberation, and maybe study, before a person can come to that judgement. There may however be people temperamentally inclined toward ways of thinking that can lead to pessimistic judgements. Dienstag suggests pessimism begins in a ‘sensibility’ that directs attention to the darker sides of life, which if dwelt on, becomes the basis for pessimistic thoughts. Those without this sensibility are, however, still capable of reaching pessimistic verdicts.

In his recent book, Pessimism, Quietism and Nature as Refuge (2024), the British philosopher David E. Cooper argues that the pessimistic judgement on human life in fact involves two distinct judgements. The first is that the human condition has entrenched features that are destructive of the possibility of achieving and sustaining deep human goods – happiness, meaningfulness, or tranquility, say. These features could include the ‘absurdity’ described by some existentialists, the various miseries and sufferings described by Schopenhauer or Leopardi, or the whole variety of the pains, distractions, frustrations, and other negative experiences that are woven into human life. Yet although different pessimists disagree on what the relevant features are, they will agree that they’re built into the human condition and constantly thwart our efforts to achieve a satisfying life.

A second crucial pessimistic judgement, according to Cooper, is that there is little to no chance of these features changing, or being changed, for the better, at least through human activity. For the pessimist, the human condition is a bad one and it’s not going to get better to any significant degree. There may be relatively small improvements that human beings can make on a personal scale, such as cultivating certain virtues or achieving certain kinds of tranquility. But these are fragile, and even when successful, fall short of constituting a significant overall improvement in the human condition. (Interestingly, some pessimists allow that there could be a significant change in the human condition for the better, just not one brought about by human beings. For instance, in his later writings, Martin Heidegger cryptically suggested that “only a God can save us”; and Christian pessimists do anticipate a coming Kingdom of God. Alternatively, some modern eco-pessimists suggest that while this civilization is finished, its end could initiate a moral renaissance for humanity. In that scenario, future people would be free of the competitiveness and greed that make our condition such a bad one.)

For Cooper, holding these two judgements – of there being entrenched negatives in life, and of there being no evident possibility of imminent change – are necessary for a person to count as a philosophical pessimist. One attraction of this account is its ability to accommodate a whole range of pessimistic philosophies. It’s also neutral with reference to the specific implications of pessimism for human life. A conviction that the human condition can’t be substantially improved, for instance, is consistent with nihilism, but doesn’t require it. It could also be used to justify anti-natalist policies, but not necessarily. Cooper’s account also lacks some features that certain pessimists want to add, such as the anticipation of deterioration – the conviction that the human condition will get worse over time. Van der Lugt calls this ‘future-oriented pessimism’. It can be justified by appeal to cosmology, the poor track record of human beings, or claims about human nature. However, anticipation of deterioration need not be built into philosophical pessimism. It is, after all, very difficult to justify confident claims about the future course of human events.

I’d say that philosophical pessimism consists of Cooper’s pair of judgements on the human condition, while the exact content of a pessimistic doctrine is supplied by the specific philosophy or religion in which it occurs – Christianity, German metaphysics, and so on.

Indian Pessimism

With a definition of philosophical pessimism in place, a proper global search can begin for philosophical accounts of the human condition as intrinsically bad and not likely to improve.

Buddhist wrathful deity Andrea Kirkby 2015 Creative Commons 2

Ancient India is a good place to start. Pessimism largely characterises ancient Indian philosophy and religions. Only one school, the Lokāyata, rejected gloomy appraisals of human life. Materialists and hedonists, they apparently dismissed concerns for salvation, believed in neither heaven nor hell, and urged us to choose ‘delicious food’ over ‘penance and fasts’. However, the majority of India’s darśanas (schools) agreed that the condition of most people is bad, dominated by dukkha – a term widely translated as ‘suffering’, ‘dis-ease’, ‘alienation’, or ‘pain’. Since most of us are trapped in powerful webs of ignorance and illusion, our prospects for escape are dim. Different schools, naturally, express this idea differently. In Advaita Vedānta, what’s needed to overcome delusion and sorrow is appreciation of Brahman: ‘supreme and unconditioned’ reality. But there is an even better example of Indian philosophical pessimism – the discourses of the Buddha.

In the modern West, depictions of Buddhism are solidly optimistic. Most of these focus on positive themes such as mindfulness and ecological concern, and the rhetoric is of wisdom, compassion, and joy. All this is very distant from the Buddha’s own teachings as found in the Pali Canon. Like his Indian contemporaries, the Buddha (c. sixth century BCE) described the lives of ‘uninstructed worldlings’, like you and me, in grim terms – ‘burning’ with the ‘fires’ of hatred, greed, and self-delusion, feeding ‘suffering, anguish, and disaster’. Unenlightened existence is compared to being trapped in a whirlpool, or like a dog chained to a post, desperately trying to escape. Existence, the Buddha taught, is suffering, since anxiety, ‘grasping-desire’, and disappointment cannot be removed from our ignorant forms of life. Worse, all unenlightened people are corrupted by ‘cankers’, ‘defilements’, and failings of all kinds. For the Buddha, unenlightened human existence is full of features – from ‘grasping-desire’ to ignorance to ‘cankers’ and ‘defilements’ – that make it a bad one.

The Buddha also responds to the optimistic thought that enlightenment, and hence release, are possible. For most of us, though, enlightenment is a dim and distant prospect, and the long, hard path to it, demands degrees of commitment and sacrifice few possess. Indeed, the Buddha is clear that enlightenment is fantastically rare. Most of us, therefore, remain trapped within forms of life dominated by anxiety and craving, frustration and ignorance – ‘taints and wrong views’ which intensify one another in a ‘fire’ without end. The Buddha also accepted the optional pessimistic conviction that the moral and spiritual state of the world will deteriorate: over time, the Buddha will be forgotten, his Dharma (teachings) distorted, and the Sangha – the monastic community – will fall into corruption and disorder: a dire result the Buddha called ‘the death of the Dharma’.

Far Eastern Pessimism

Looking further east, pessimism was also central to classical Chinese philosophers, and not simply because they were living in the Warring States Period (c.475-221 BCE). During this time, both Confucianism and Daoism lamented the decline of the Way, even if their analyses of the wrongs of the world differed.

For Confucius, virtue and harmony were failing in the face of jealousy and competitiveness, the corrupting lust for power, the abandonment of reverence for the wisdom of tradition, and the philistine contempt for edifying arts, such as music. Worse still, such vices and miseries seemed inescapable. Daoists, by contrast, saw the world as dominated by zeal for artifice, cleverness, and the imperative to impose our own ways onto people, creatures, and natural environments. In the Daodejing, this idea is presented in terms of a narrative of deterioration, as people increasingly abandon the Way of Heaven.

The Daoist philosopher Zhuangz i (c.369-286 BCE), too, offers us bleak assessments of the human condition – as restless, acquisitive, relentless – and laments ‘How sad!’ But while Confucius advised earnest efforts to reinstate virtue and goodness, Zhuangzi’s stance is quietist, Let go of the world, abandon plans and schemes for moral reform, and exercise humility, spontaneity, and other quietist virtues.

Other classical Chinese philosophies endorse pessimist perspectives on human existence too, especially tough-minded ‘Legalists’ like Han Fei (280-233BCE).

A Pessimistic Conclusion

So pessimism is present in different forms in both the Indian and Chinese traditions. My claim is not that all the Indian darśanas and Chinese schools were pessimistic. Lokāyata is one exception in India, and Mohism may be another in China. Still, there were philosophical pessimists in ancient India and China, which would prove that the pessimistic ‘sensibility’ or ‘problematic’ isn’t confined to Westerners of the last three hundred years.

The history of philosophical pessimism is, then, a global history. It should include ancient Greeks, medieval Christians, the more recent European pessimists, as well as figures and traditions from India, China, and elsewhere. The history should also include Mesoamerican traditions. According to their surviving texts, the Nahua (Aztecs) depicted human life as ‘slippery’; happiness is precarious and the wise person ‘weeps’ and feels ‘deep sorrow’.

A world history of pessimism, while interesting, would also confirm a disquieting truth: reflective men and women around the world, with significantly different assumptions and concerns, consistently arrive at pessimistic conclusions on human life. But whether we endorse or challenge those conclusions, there is more to pessimism than the specific Western Weltschmerz of people suffering ‘the death of God’.

© Dr Ian James Kidd 2025

Ian James Kidd teaches and researches philosophy at the University of Nottingham, and is writing a book on misanthropy. His website is ianjameskidd.weebly.com.

Articles

The Meaning of a Good Life

Following the sad news of Alasdair MacIntyre’s death recently, AmirAli Maleki argues that he and Miskawayh al-Razi shared a similarly Aristotelian vision of the way to live.

What does it mean to live well? Although separated by centuries and cultures, Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025) and Miskawayh al-Razi (c.932-1030) offer remarkably convergent perspectives on the nature of the good life. For both MacIntyre and Miskawayh – two thinkers deeply rooted in the Aristotelian tradition – living well is not simply about personal satisfaction or material success. Rather, it’s about the cultivation of virtue and the formation of moral character through the embedding of one’s life within a community that nurtures ethical flourishing. Both thinkers reject the individualism of modern moral philosophy and emphasize that virtue and human flourishing are inherently social pursuits. MacIntyre, in his critique of modern ethical frameworks, further argues that the fragmentation of moral discourse in the West has led to the loss of a shared understanding of human purpose. To counter this he revives a tradition-based approach to ethics, where the concept of virtue is central to achieving eudaimonia, which is Aristotle’s notion of human flourishing. Miskawayh, a Persian philosopher of the Islamic Golden Age, similarly drew upon Aristotelian ethics to outline a vision of self-cultivation, also arguing that the perfection of human character requires the integration of reason, discipline, and communal life.

Here I want to consider the striking parallels between MacIntyre’s and Miskawayh’s conceptions of the good life. By placing their ideas in dialogue, we also gain insight into how the ideas Aristotle developed over 2,300 years ago continue to offer an enduring framework for understanding the ethical life – one that transcends historical and cultural boundaries.

Alasdair MacIntyre & the Pursuit of a Good Life

How can one achieve a truly fulfilling and meaningful life? In an age of fractured moral discourse and rapid social change Alasdair MacIntyre offers a compelling answer: a good life is rooted in virtue, shaped by tradition, and embedded within a moral community. His revival of Aristotelian ethics includes arguing that human flourishing, or eudaimonia, is inseparable from the social structures that cultivate it.

Alasdair MacIntyre in 2009

© Sean O’Connor 2009 Creative Commons 2

MacIntyre’s critique of modern moral philosophy begins in his best-known book After Virtue (1981), in which he famously argues that contemporary (Western) ethics has lost its coherence, leaving us with emotivism – where moral claims are emotional preferences rather than the result of rational discourse. He also contends that the Enlightenment’s attempt to construct morality on abstract principles failed to provide a meaningful foundation for ethical life whilst severing our connection to the religious traditions that once anchored moral reasoning. Aristotelian virtue ethics, by contrast, offers a richer, more integrated vision, in which moral development happens within a tradition. So for MacIntyre, virtues are not merely personal attributes; they are social practices, cultivated through shared narratives and communal engagement.

Later, in Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988), MacIntyre explores how different traditions shape our understanding of justice and rationality, arguing that moral inquiry must be rooted in historical and communal frameworks rather than in detached reasoning. Individuals do not simply invent their own moral frameworks: they inherit them, refine them, and pass them on. Moreover, in After Virtue, MacIntyre states outright that “to enter into a tradition is to inherit not only the practices and virtues associated with it but also the debates and conflicts that shape its evolution” (p.146). In this sense, virtue is not a static state, but an ongoing process deeply embedded in the historic fabric of human life.

Yet MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism is far from a nostalgic retreat into the past. It is, fundamentally, a radical critique of modern individualism. In Dependent Rational Animals (1999), he challenges the notion that human beings are purely autonomous agents, emphasizing our fundamental dependency on others, arguing that moral development requires relationships of trust, care, and mutual recognition: “The virtues necessary for individual flourishing are those that enable us to recognize our dependencies upon one another and, in so doing, form relationships of accountability and care” (p.78). A good life, then, is not one of isolated self-sufficiency, but one of participation in a community that fosters virtue.

MacIntyre’s work challenges us to rethink the nature of a good life – not as a solitary pursuit, but as a shared endeavour, shaped by history, sustained by tradition, and realized through virtue. This vision raises profound questions for contemporary ethics. Is tradition a necessary foundation for ethical life, or can morality be constructed independently of historical narratives? Can virtue survive in an age of moral pluralism? And perhaps most importantly: if human flourishing depends on communal structures, what happens when those structures erode?

Miskawayh al-Razi & the Vision of a Good Life

For Miskawayh ethical development also lay in virtue, the cultivation of moral character, and social harmony. Deeply influenced by Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Miskawayh presented a vision of the good life strikingly similar to MacIntyre’s modern revival of Aristotelian ethics. He too rejects the notion of isolated individualism, arguing instead that human flourishing is inseparable from communal life.

In Tahdhib al-Akhlaq (The Refinement of Ethics), Miskawayh offers a civil (rather than religious) interpretation of philosophy, emphasizing that man is inherently a social being: his perfection, both moral and intellectual, depends on his relationships with others. Again a good life is not merely a personal achievement but a shared endeavour – one in which the happiness of others ultimately contributes to one’s own happiness:

“Since the virtues and human goods are numerous, and no individual can fulfill all of them alone, it is necessary for many people to engage in practicing these virtues and striving for goodness. Therefore, a large community of individuals must support one another in the pursuit of perfection.” (pp.14-15)

Miskawayh’s ethical framework is also built on the idea that moral refinement is a gradual process, requiring discipline and education alongside active participation in society. As he further states in The Refinement of Ethics :

“Perfection is only possible through civic engagement, life within the city, and the support of virtuous individuals and sincere friends. These needs are numerous, and attaining them requires great effort. Therefore, one must not neglect this path but instead persevere with patience, avoiding the lure of comfort-seeking, which is among the greatest vices, and striving alongside the people of society. Those who fail to do so – like those who withdraw from society and live in mountains and deserts – fall into barbarism and remain untouched by civilization.” (p.168)

Like Aristotle, Miskawayh believes that virtues are developed through habituation – one becomes just by consistently acting justly, courageous by practicing courage, and wise through the pursuit of knowledge. Yet Miskawayh’s vision of the good life is not merely a repetition of Aristotelian thought, it is also deeply rooted in the intellectual traditions of Islamic philosophy. So while Aristotle emphasizes rationality as the foundation of virtue, Miskawayh integrates this with a spiritual dimension, arguing that the perfection of the soul is the ultimate goal of human existence:

“It must be understood that human beings, unlike pure souls – those free from bodily needs – do not require only physical happiness. Rather, they seek spiritual fulfillment, which consists of eternal intelligibles and is, in essence, wisdom itself. However, as long as a person remains human, their happiness cannot be complete unless both conditions – worldly and eternal – are attained together. These two states cannot be fully realized except through means that facilitate the attainment of eternal wisdom. Thus, the truly fortunate individual is one who possesses a balanced share of both aspects.” (pp.82-83)

So Miskawayh’s ethical system bridges the gap between Greek philosophy and Islamic moral thought, offering a synthesis that remains relevant in discussions of virtue ethics today.

The Endless Climb

Another thing MacIntyre and Miskawayh agree upon is that human happiness is never a static achievement but an ongoing process, a continuous striving toward moral perfection. To live well is not simply to reach a final state of virtue, but to remain engaged in the pursuit of it, refining one’s character, and adapting one’s moral framework to new circumstances.

In Alasdair MacIntyre’s Modernity (2015), Robert B. Pippin provocatively likens the ethical life to the myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned by Zeus to push a rock up a hill forever – a ceaseless effort, an endless push toward meaning, Sisyphus knowing full well that the rock will roll back down the hill again so that he’ll have to start again the next day. And indeed, MacIntyre and Miskawayh’s shared Aristotelian vision does suggest that the cultivation of virtue is a lifelong endeavor, never truly complete. But here’s the difference: Sisyphus had no goal. His task was meaningless repetition. The ethical journey, in contrast, is a purposeful striving shaped by evolving moral challenges and new dimensions of human experience. Virtue is not a singular destination but a shifting horizon, such that what it means to be good at twenty is not the same as at forty; nor is wisdom at sixty reducible to the lessons of youth. The good life is always being remade, always rediscovered in new contexts tied to the relationships and communities that shape our moral commitments. A life lived in pursuit of virtue is not futile, it is dynamic. So unlike Sisyphus, whose labor was doomed to emptiness, MacIntyre and Miskawayh see ethical growth as a meaningful progression, not a pointless cycle. The metaphor of Sisyphus doesn’t work here. Instead of endlessly rolling a boulder up the same hill, perhaps instead we are explorers, tracing new paths toward eudaimonia, never reaching an absolute summit, but always moving forward. And the virtue-seeker, unlike Sisyphus, believes in the journey – not as an act of despair, but as the very fabric of human flourishing:

“It is in the course of the quest and only through encountering and coping with the various particular harms, dangers, temptations and distractions which provide any quest with its episodes and incidents that the goal of the quest is finally to be understood. A quest is always an education both as to the character of that which is to be sought and in self-knowledge.” (After Virtue, p.186)

© AmirAli Maleki 2025

AmirAli Maleki is a philosophy researcher, he works in the fields of political philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and hermeneutics and is the Editor of PraxisPublication.com.

Question of the Month

What Makes A Work Of Art Great?

Each answer below receives a book. Apologies to all the entrants not included.

Great art must score highly on four measures: emotional impact (visual and visceral); technique (masterful and harmonious); concept (relevant or timeless); and originality (of medium, subject, or treatment). There are many ways each of these criteria can be satisfied, both subjectively and objectively, but the media are open-ended. One can build great architecture; paint on canvas or a wall; sculpt wood, rock, or beach; project an image on a building or the Moon; make an installation; stage a happening… The media extend to literature, music, stage, and film. Even engineering is not entirely bound to functionality. A ship, aircraft, or bridge can satisfy all the ‘great art’ criteria, even if stirring emotion was no part of the designer’s intention.

To be art, a work has to be made deliberately by a person (assuming AI art is necessarily derivative), and witnessable in principle by anyone. To have meaning it needs a context wider than its content. An abstract canvas needs a perceptive apparatus. A painting or photograph whose natural subject has been carefully selected owes to the physical setting and human expectations. Does this mean there are boundaries to what anyone should consider art? The way art has developed historically, though decoration, statuary, performance, religious scenes, portraiture and landscapes, to conceptual art – supports this. But boundaries evolve, and then the question is, how far? An entertainment in sixteenth century Paris involved collecting cats in a bag, hoisting them up in a public square, and lighting a fire underneath. Was that art? Emotion stirred ought not be at the expense of anything living. Blowing up a shed can be art; blowing up a building with people in it is not generally considered art. Banksy is the master of street art. His concept is topical comment, his treatment of subjects original, his medium the entire urban environment. He aims to stir an emotion in the viewer. But what of a banana taped to a wall? The concept and technique are original, if deliciously simple. The emotional effect is more comple. Are we to conclude from it that, at base, art is imitating a life that is absurd, pretentious, meaningless, transient? Whatever values one ascribes to them, where great engineering or great philosophy leave a tool, great art leaves an impression.

Nicholas B Taylor, Hove

Works of art can be pleasing, beautiful, life-enhancing, shocking, offensive, and subversive, even dangerous. They may be ephemeral, fleeting, or more lasting, even more or less permanent. They may be carefully crafted or spontaneous, singular (present at only one experience), or endlessly reproducible and repeatable. They may also be variously valued as anything from ‘objectionable’ to ‘great’. The following features, not in any order of importance, may contribute to a work’s greatness:

Impact: Capturing the attention of, and engaging, recipients.

Emotional response: Moving the recipients in some fundamental way – potentially in many different ways: for example, prompting sensations of beauty, love, tragedy, horror, compassion, guilt, transcendence, sublimity, harmony…

Striking a chord: Resonating in some way(s) with the observer’s worldview or feelings.

Depth : Allowing different levels of interpretation and appreciation, of knowledge and understanding, and embodying different (even potentially contradictory) meanings – thus, in a sense, reflecting the complexity of human experience.

Formal structure: Whether or not formal aesthetic devices are used – such as, say, the Golden Mean, Aristotle’s Unities, or conventional symphonic form – the work should have some appreciable structure (even if only apprehended unconsciously by the observer). Formlessness, chaos, or overwhelming discordance, are unlikely to be conducive to greatness in art.

Universality : Attracting, engaging, and being appreciated over time by people of very diverse backgrounds and cultures.

Durability: Although being ephemeral or fleeting don’t preclude the possibility of greatness in a work of art, nonetheless, a work which continues to interest and provide pleasure or satisfaction over time, especially if to people in different contexts and times, may by virtue of that durability be considered great.

Ingredients which qualify for greatness may occur within an otherwise lesser work. Only a few such embedded nuggets may arguably leave a sense of greatness for the whole.

Peter McNaughton, Formby, Merseyside

What constitutes ‘Great Art’? As an expressionist paint artist and gallery volunteer at a world-class art institution (the Detroit Institute of Arts.), I am often intrigued by, and occasionally obsessed with, this question.

First we need to define art. All human behaviors meet some perceived need, at either the conscious or subconscious level. The need to create art represents the need to express the often-powerful states of the inner being. Much like the mind itself, art may be beautiful, ugly, evil, good, ordered, or absurd. Simply put, art – whether paint, clay, words, or music – is energy expelled from the human mind, to be shared with other humans and the world.

But what makes it great? Here there exists a social component, a mere construct. At the gallery where I volunteer, visitors always ask for works by the same ‘great artists’: Monet, Van Gogh, Degas. They seem to never realize that the dusty old work by John or Jane Doe sitting in their attic could be just as wondrous as a self-portrait by Van Gogh. My point is that the fame or cost (often immense) of a work has nothing to do with its greatness. Rather, greatness in a work of art is its correlation with the sublime, meaning it expresses elements of vastness. (It is no coincidence that the Wikipedia essay on the sublime carries a picture of the painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich. It is also no coincidence that your magazine carries expressive figurative art on its pages. Thank you). And yes, works by Van Gogh and Degas also portray elements of the sublime – which might be theistic, metaphysical, or mysterious.

Just for the record, the question I’m most asked at the Detroit Institute of Arts is “Where’s the bathroom?”

Tim Strutz, Harrison Township, Michigan

Before identifying great art, I’ll start by dividing artists from artisans. An artisan is a skilled craftsman who can produce items of exceptional quality. A painting by an artisan will be a close replica of a person or a landscape; an artisan writer will accurately describe a situation, or perhaps a philosophical idea. But in both cases there will be no attempt to code any further information within the work. The piece may have artistic merit, but this was not the intention of the creator. In the case of art, an emotion or another aspect of humanity’s condition is encoded deliberately by the artist. A view is expressed on reality and on what it means to be human in this reality. In Van Gogh’s Starry Night paintings we are not seeing a replica of the night sky but an abstract expression that speaks directly to our sense of wonder when we look up on a clear balmy night. In music our spirit can be stirred by either the French horns of Sibelius’s Karelia Suite bringing to mind the vast open snowy wastes of Finland, or an Aboriginal didgeridoo creating images in our mind of Uluru under the soft then blazing red Australian sunrise. In terms of writing, the classic realist novels of the late nineteenth century such as Moby Dick or Middlemarch communicate so much more about the human spirit than their settings of whaling or an English market town might suggest. And the alliteration, metaphors, similes and onomatopoeia of poetry conjure visions, thoughts, and feelings in ways that even the poet cannot imagine.

But what makes great art? Any art that does not create any new ideas (such as AI-generated art), can be immediately classed as bad or mediocre. Admittedly, much art is a reworking of previous ideas; but a good artist will always bring new ideas to the work. This may only contribute a small amount to it, but it creates a new perspective. Moreover, in all good art, the audience is stimulated to bring their own feelings and experiences to the work. So, what distinguishes great art is the combination of the artisan’s technical mastery with the imagination and creativity to create an ever expanding range of intriguing and absorbing ideas, and feelings and thoughts that arise with each new encounter with it.

Philip Brown, Bury St. Edmunds

‘Art’ can be defined as the collection of all possible artworks in any field. A work of art is created by an artist, so it’s also necessary to define what an ‘artist’ is. My definition uses the concept of community, and I distinguish two types: A community of non-expert art lovers who are spontaneously touched by a work of art, and a community of art experts who use technical criteria when judging a work of art. An artist then is a person (or AI) who posits themselves as an artist or is considered as such by at least one of these communities. What, then, makes any work of art great? I consider greatness to be a quantitative variable, and I’ll use our two communities to illustrate this. Members of the community of non-expert art lovers share their thoughts and feelings towards a work of art in the public domain through a multitude of media. The greatness of that work of art is determined here by the amount of shared favourable thoughts and feelings towards that work. The emphasis is on the immediate experience as shared with others, and implies no objective stance towards a work of art. Members of the community of art experts, meanwhile, judge the greatness of an artwork by applying their sets of technical criteria, and make their assessments available in specialist productions in the public domain, such as in art books or art magazines. But the quantification of greatness can also be determined here by the amount of shared favourable judgments. It will be a scientific discipline to work out either quantification. Moreover, as both communities interact in the public domain, they will be able to reinforce or critique each other’s perception of the greatness of a work of art.

Teije Euverman, Rotterdam

The question presumes there are identifiable criteria for greatness. ‘Great’ rather than just ‘good’ also suggests we’re talking about art with symbolic heft and influence, not just aesthetic appeal. Art is so various, from cave paintings to Baroque masterpieces, from sculpture to video, that defining objective, coherent criteria for its greatness would be impossible. Greatness like this is not an abstract universal quality inherent in some artworks but not others. Rather, great art is made, and ultimately mythologised, through the actions of the Art Establishment, which is a sort of ecosystem of opinion-formers in national and private museums and galleries, and includes critics, collectors, curators, academics, and the commercial market. To see how little greatness has to do with the art itself, one only need consider the changing reputations of some artists. Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime. His work was not fashionable, and it certainly wasn’t ‘great’ at first. Turner, Bacon, and Lowry were also dismissed before later being ‘discovered’ and canonised.

The views of the Art Establishment are always selective, and in flux . Linda Nocklin the art historian nailed the politics of greatness in her paper ‘Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?’. One might also ask why is there so few ‘great’ artworks by artists of colour, working class artists, or those working outside the Western European tradition? When it comes to art, greatness is a façade suspended on institutional scaffolding.

This scaffolding is not only ideological, it’s also economic. High auction prices, blockbuster exhibitions, and steep insurance premiums, don’t just reflect an artwork’s importance, they build it. When a painting sells for £80 million, the market isn’t just measuring cultural worth, it’s creating it. Price creates mystique. Cultural symbolism adds another layer – when an artwork is shorthand for something bigger than itself. Being emblematic of Japan, the greatness of Hokusai’s Great Wave grows. But even here greatness is not intrinsic to the artwork, it’s retrofitted. It’s questionable whether we’d be as moved by the Mona Lisa if it were not so famous. So greatness in art is not an inherent quality. It is a contingent consensus. We do not simply experience greatness, we manufacture it.

Mike Nicholson, London

There’s a deeply subjective answer to this question, and a somewhat objective (or more precisely, quantifiable) answer.

Subjectively, I’d say art needs to inspire the mind or, poetically speaking, the heart. A painting may be utterly perfect from the standpoint of its technique, but also ‘cold’, awakening no emotions within a viewer. Another painting may be technically inferior, but still elicit deep feelings. I might add that technique can really only be compared for analogous works: say, two 1970s abstract paintings, or two Renaissance altar pieces. Moreover, an altarpiece might generate deep religious feelings or leave the viewer indifferent, or an abstract work may be viewed simply as an ensemble of geometric lines, or inspire a sense of wonder. And one must also recall that the criteria for a ‘proper’ technique, as defined by art schools or critics, varies, apparently nearly on a daily basis. I’ll add a personal note. I own two recordings of Mozart’s Requiem, both performed by world-renowned orchestras (the Berliner and Wiener Philharmonikers), and both directed by world-renowned conductors (Herbert von Karajan and Riccardo Muti). Given the calibre of the performers, both are technically perfect – but one is somewhat aseptic, while the other definitely conveys the greatness of the mystery of death (I’ll let the reader guess which is which, so as not to attract the ire of either camp!). Returning to the issue of technique, classical music is widely viewed as being of a higher technical standard than pop or rock, and usually is much more complex. However, there’s some pretty interesting heavy metal or folk music (for instance) whose elaborateness might be on par with classical counterparts. Perhaps then complexity could be a complementary benchmark for greatness?

As for the objective or quantifiable criterion for greatness: will a specific artwork ‘say something’ to viewers or listeners across the ages? In my humble opinion, if a Renaissance altarpiece touches the hearts of both fifteenth century Flemish worshippers and today’s contemporary secular museum-goers, then, perhaps, it may be considered to be a great work of art.

Dr Fabio Noviello, Cardiff

The best way to approach this question is to start with how art works in any medium. We tend to think of it as reflecting the world, but as Deleuze and Guatarri argue in A Thousand Plateaus (1980) concerning books, artworks don’t reflect the world so much as they form a rhizome with it. Their rhizomatic approach imagines a complex matrix of roots that comes from all directions and has no center – as compared to an arborescent approach (based on tree-like structures), in which there is a first cause or base – something like a trunk from which the branches and foliage break away. As an example, think about Alice in Wonderland. You may tend to imagine it in a Tim Burton kind of way: a lush, colorful landscape, like the art of Henri Rousseau. But when you read the books, the prose is actually threadbare and only gives you the minimal information needed – a room, a table, a cake, Alice growing bigger and smaller with each bite – as well as a lot of absurd dialogue. All the detail was added as it made its way through history, spreading out with cultural filaments into new ideas and takes. But it remains significant within the matrix it works in. That same dynamic is at work in every other work we consider great. This is why the term ‘greatness’, like the term ‘genius’, is best left to historians. If something an artist creates is designated ‘great’, it means it blew people away in that given moment. That would be flattering in itself; but that effect can pass. If historians are still talking about it a hundred years later, it’s only if it remains a significant node within the rhizomatic network. In short: artistic greatness is what maintains its position in the general discourse.

D E Tarkington, Bellevue, Nebraska

One could argue that great art endures over time and continues to speak to future generations, but that’s too simplistic. When we try to define what the concept of ‘greatness’ entails in art, we come to various qualities such as originality (though not for its own sake, as Roger Scruton aptly noted, but that which emerges from the creator’s meaningful engagement with tradition); technical mastery; the power to make us see the world – and ourselves – differently; the ability to evoke a cathartic experience; and, of course, beauty. Yet beauty, as E.H. Gombrich pointed out, is not a fixed category – what moves one generation aesthetically may seem merely sentimental to another. Moreover, in the twentieth century beauty lost its privileged status in Western art to values such as imperfection and asymmetry. We arguably now live in a post-beauty era, where traditional harmony has given way to fragmentation and experimentation.

The issue grows more complex when we consider the concept of taste. According to Immanuel Kant, aesthetic judgements are subjective yet they claim universality. This raises the question: must we cultivate taste to recognize greatness? History shows critics often praised works that faded while overlooking others that since entered the canon. As John Berger famously proposed, the way we see art is always conditioned by cultural and ideological frameworks.

Does this mean that greatness is merely a cultural construct? Is ‘aesthetic relativism’ our only conclusion? And yet our intuition resists this. We return, again and again, to particular works: the epics of Homer, the ink-wash landscapes of Sesshu Toyo, the music of Bach, and the ancient guqin melodies of China. These works seem to move us meaningfully towards a deeper understanding of what it means to be a human being.

Perhaps, then, philosophicalness is what makes a work of art truly great. Art moves us for various reasons: its beauty, craftsmanship, or even its capacity to shock. However, some art enacts a kind of philosophy by inviting us to dwell in life’s mysteries, or by helping us to cope with its tragedies, such as the proximity of death. Thus, I can’t help but conclude that great art endures not because we declare it so, but because it perpetually returns us to the timeless question of what it means to be human.

Milda Varnienė, Vilnius, Lithuania

This question is difficult partly because people react differently to the same work of art. One person may look at the work of an artist such as Picasso and step back in awe, another recoil with horror. So I incline towards Benedetto Croce’s concept of ‘intuition’: we seem to have an instinctual reaction to what we feel is great art, focusing upon how we personally identify with it, and what we believe it expresses. Furthermore, we may emphasise different criteria in a work of art as what makes it great: regarding a certain painting, some may emphasis the composition, others the use of colour. Although this may imply the platitude that ‘all art is subjective’ – that whether a work of art is great or terrible is a matter of personal taste – I don’t think it necessarily does. There is often consensus on great art that transcends national and cultural boundaries. The work of Shakespeare is globally widely considered amongst the greatest theatre ever created, and it has been adapted many times in forms far removed from the original. The films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, Throne of Blood and Ran, based upon Macbeth and King Lear respectively, are considered amongst the greatest-ever versions of these plays.

Furthermore, art is often complex and multifaceted, so our reaction is not likely to be as one-dimensional as outright love or hate. Even if someone (like me) is not a great fan of Wagner, they may admit that his Ring Cycle deals with great themes (including hubris, greed, faithfulness) and should be appreciated for this: they just don’t like the music. This might suggest that universal human themes within the artwork are what makes a work of art great. As Aristotle says, the study of history is less important than that of art, as the first is concerned with the specific, the second, the universal. Many people who have looked at a Byzantine mosaic, listened to a medieval madrigal. or watched a performance of an ancient Greek tragedy, and felt deeply, and intuitively, that they have experienced great art, are liable to concur with Aristotle’s sentiment.

Jonathan Tipton, Penwortham, Lancashire

Art’s private or public commissioning and curating in historical, economic, social, and cultural contexts significantly affects its reception, that is, its perceived significance and value. But what makes an artwork great can be explained using Aristotle’s four causes: the material, efficient, formal and final causes. These causes suggest an approach that covers a range of significant factors bearing on a work of art being great. Since artworks comprise a considerable range of features, this is desirable.

Artworks typically have material properties sourced from the physical world, comprising animal, vegetable and mineral elements treated and combined to provide the medium. The hard- and software of digital technologies have supplemented material resources, too. Then, through the consummate application of craft and technical skill, artists and their collaborators can engage with their medium in creatively unprecedented ways, These creative features are Aristotelian efficient causes, meaning, they’re concerned with how the artwork comes about through time.

The formal cause has to do with the nature of the work considered in the abstract. The manifestations that an artwork can take are first conceived by anticipating the particular structure and design that will instantiate the artwork. The form also characteristically relates to different overall configurations of the arts, including movements, schools, and styles – as encompassed, say, by Realism, Romanticism, Classicism, and Modernism. Great art can also result in the formation of unprecedented forms. The final cause – the purpose of a work of art – is realised in diverse ways – which have been explored in the many contributions that have sought to address what constitutes great art, including cultural history, sociology, aesthetics, criticism, and curation.

Opinions range from those supportive or celebratory of represented cultural values and beliefs (e.g. Ken Clark in Civilisation), and those which are critical of them, such as John Berger. The protagonists of such apparently opposing positions then dialogue within an ‘aesthetic dimension’ (Marcuse) to establish what contingently comes to be regarded as ‘great art’.

Colin Brookes, Loughborough

Defining an objective measure of greatness seems a forlorn task. Not only do people not agree on which characteristics are criteria of value, even when they do they can disagree on whether a particular work meets those criteria.

Some have argued that the value of a work depends on its organic unity, by which they mean the way it combines diverse elements into a coherent whole. However, adopting this view does not settle disagreements as to whether or not unity has been achieved. It also seems to preclude miniatures (in any medium) from being great.

Although no work receives universal approval from all those who experience it, there are common responses to works that people describe as great: it can cause a visceral reaction, such as tears or whoops of joy (though some might say that sentimentalism can do this, so it’s not evidence of greatness); it inspires a drive to re-experience the work; each experience of the work feels new and reveals new detail, although it may initially be hard to appreciate; it seems (close to) unimprovable; and it is experienced as uplifting in some way. If a work of art induces the ‘this is great’ response in a significant number of people – enough for it to find an enduring audience – then maybe this indicates that it has a kind of objective greatness. I don’t much care for the symphonies of Mahler, for example, but many people sincerely regard them as great, so maybe I should accept that they are.

Paul Western, Bath

No art can be considered great

Except that which moves the heart to ache:

The slip of paint, the canvas wet

That forest or face we can’t forget.

No art should be considered great

Unless it stirs the mind to wake:

Great art conveys the verb ‘to be’

In personal philosophy,

Shows the opened eyes new ways to see

Beyond commercialism monetary.

Greatness of art is judged by you and me:

Form and figure, expression, line,

Shades that shape the sweet sublime,

For art reflects who we are

In image, beauty, mask and mirror.

Let no expert henceforth decree

What art should mean to you and me:

Nothing usurps subjectivity

In the meaning-making of creativity.

For as the great philosophers knew,

The act of making gives life value.

Readers, therefore, make no mistake

Be bold, be free, in joy create,

Art with passion and purpose defines what’s great.

Bianca Laleh, Totnes, Devon

Next Question of the Month

The next question is: What Are Proper Limits Of Free Speech? Please give and justify your answer in less than 400 words. The prize is a semi-random book from our book mountain. Email the Editor. Subject lines should be marked ‘Question of the Month’, and must be received by 13th October 2025. If you want a chance of getting a book, please include your address.

Brief Lives

Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995)

Robin Attfield looks at the life of a dedicated promoter of African philosophy.

The philosopher Henry Odera Oruka was born in 1944 at Ugenya in western Kenya. In his youth he became well acquainted with the customs and traditions of the Luo people. Having won a scholarship, he first encountered philosophy while studying for an undergraduate degree at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, under the supervision of Ingemar Hedenius. This experience proved crucial for his subsequent development.

Around the time of Oruka’s graduation, Hedenius was appointed to a Professorship at Wayne State University, Detroit, and arranged for Oruka to be awarded a post there as a graduate assistant. This allowed Oruka to study for a master’s degree, which was awarded in 1969. He wrote his thesis on punishment; after that he travelled back to Uppsala to study for his doctorate, on liberty. Then, being eager to foster philosophy in Kenya, which had recently become independent from Britain, he returned there. Soon he began teaching philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Nairobi, and in or around 1971 he founded the Philosophical Association of Kenya. The following year he was appointed to a permanent lectureship in that department, despite the opposition of Bishop Stephen Neill, Head of Department. Oruka was able to persuade the appointing committee that he had experience of teaching a much wider range of branches of philosophy than Bishop Neill had led them to credit. Given Oruka’s commitment to spreading philosophy in Africa, this appointment was central to the rest of his career, and he was still working in the same department at the time of his death late in 1995. Or rather, he was still working in the Philosophy Department, which, as a result of his advocacy, became a separate department from 1980.

I became Oruka’s colleague at the University of Nairobi for a term in 1975. By that time he was a well-established figure in the Department. He drew to my attention a paper presented at the World Congress of Philosophy of 1973, held in Bulgaria, in which the Australian philosopher Richard Routley argued for a new environmental ethic. Reading this led to my involvement in environmental philosophy. Subsequently, when Oruka had become a Professor, I participated in the World Conference of Philosophy he organised at Nairobi in 1991, and later in the World Futures Studies Conference he organised there in the summer of 1995, shortly before his death.

During the 1970s and 80s, Oruka led a number of field expeditions to interview traditional Kenyan sages (who included Oruka’s own father), to record their wisdom while it was still possible. These sages were, he argued, not mere expositors or defenders of traditional beliefs and practices, but frequently criticised established traditions in the manner of philosophers. Specifically, often the way they criticised established traditions reminded Oruka of the Pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece, who adopted a comparably critical attitude to the traditions that they themselves had received. Oruka thus seized nearly the final opportunity to record this traditional variety of African philosophy, and defend it against those who considered Africans to lack philosophical traditions. These expeditions, then, were not a mere exercise in ethnography, but a contribution to practical philosophy in Africa. Oruka’s biographer, Gail Presbey, was among those who took part in the expeditions.

Oruka was also one of the founding members of the International Development Ethics Association (IDEA). One of the earliest conferences of IDEA was held at Nairobi, alongside the World Conference that Oruka organised there in 1991.

Henry Odera Okura by Gail Campbell

Oruka had a talent for introducing philosophers to new fields, and to each other. Besides introducing me to environmental philosophy, Oruka encouraged Nigel Dower of Aberdeen (who later became IDEA’s second President) to contact the American philosopher David Crocker (who served as the first President of that Association), because he was aware of their similar scholarly interests. This led to a lifelong collaboration between the two.

Oruka also contributed to analytic philosophy, to applied philosophy in Africa, and to the international philosophical scene. His early work on punishment was strongly influenced by the views of his philosophical mentor Hedenius, and by the determinism to which Oruka adhered at that time. He argued that criminals are driven to infringe the law by their circumstances, and could not do otherwise. He concluded from this that punishment was an injustice and should be abolished. Initially these views were combined with his critique of the injustices of colonial rule, but he continued to hold them even during the early years of independence. By this stage, he had modified his views on punishment to advocate its use in defence of liberty against state terror – a terror which had already been exhibited by several independent African regimes, such as those of “three great sons of God, Francisco Macias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Idi Amin of Uganda and Jean Bokassa of the Central African Republic” (Punishment and Terrorism in Africa, 1985, pp.110-11). He also supported punishment of such rulers “commensurate with the crimes or [other] acts committed by the oppressors during their days in power”(The Life and Thought of H. Odera Oruka: Pursuing Justice in Africa, Gail Presbey, 2023, pp.70-71).

By the time of the 1995 conference on global futures, his deterministic view of human actions had given way to an open-futures view. This recognised a range of possible futures, in some of which poverty could be superseded. This belief is reflected in the title of the conference volume, Futures Beyond Poverty (Ogutu, Malaska, and Kojola, eds., 1997). Also, his posthumously published book, Practical Philosophy (1997), was dedicated “to the futures – to the future African philosophers and all future thinkers and workers for human justice and a better environment.” As he explains in the preliminaries of the book, “Future is not one given unalterable fate. There are always many possible futures. And depending on our actions today we can encourage the chances of some and diminish the chances of others.” He adds that insofar as future catastrophes can be predicted, humanity has the moral obligation to do everything it can to prevent them. He did not claim that the relevant catastrophes were unavoidable, but rather that even if they were likely, and thus foreseeable, human action could in at least some cases prevent them. Therefore people have obligations to strive, singly or concertedly, to bring about a different, less catastrophic, less unjust, future.

This conference also resolved to set up an ecophilosophy unit based in Nairobi, of which Oruka was to be the head. I once received a letter from Oruka on the fledgeling unit’s headed letter-paper. But the plans had to be abandoned at the outset as a result of Oruka’s sudden (and, on some interpretations, suspicious) death in a road accident on 9th December 1995.

As for Oruka’s own environmental philosophy, he advocated the stance of ‘Parental Earth Ethics’, in which the planet and its living constituents are understood as mutually related like a family. The family metaphor was not meant to evoke some form of spiritual or moralised view of ideal relations, but to express a scientific understanding of the interdependence of different components of the biosphere regardless of human-made categories and boundaries. Nevertheless, like many metaphors, it warrants further clarification.

Oruka’s stance becomes clearer in a later paper, ‘Eco-philosophy: Environmental Ethics’ (reprinted in Practical Philosophy), where he explicitly steers a middle course between anthropocentrism on the one hand and holistic eco-philosophy (of which Deep Ecology would be an example) on the other. He represents both anthropocentrism and Deep Ecology as extremes. By contrast, Oruka defends the stance of Frederick Ferré, who distinguished between moral agents (human beings only) and moral patients – beings entitled to our moral care, which include non-human entities. Both the extremes involve ethical problems, whereas Ferré’s position facilitates a unitary and universal ethic in which nonhuman nature is a focus of human concern alongside humanity. While Oruka’s stance on the range of moral agents admits of some qualification (is it true that only humans can act morally?), his understanding of the range of moral patients is receiving ever greater support.

Oruka also frequently put forward an argument explaining why rich nations have obligations to supply aid to developing countries. Both Gail Presbey and I commend this argument as a strong one. It has been summarised this way:

“If the world community agrees that humans have a right to life, then implicit in that right is the right to physical security, health and subsistence… A government’s right to sovereignty cannot override the individual’s right to life. Therefore, rich countries cannot argue that they have an option as to whether they aid starving persons. Foreign aid is ethically obligatory and not just international charity… since the aid is not a favour in the first place but rather a duty”

(Sagacious Reasoning: Henry Odera Oruka in Memoriam, Anke Graness and Kai Kresse (eds), 1997, pp.47-60)

Oruka was twice married. One of the children of his second marriage, Peter Oruka Odera, currently teaches International Relations at the University of Nairobi. Oruka’s legacy also includes the continued thriving of the Nairobi Philosophy Department (now combined again with that of Religious Studies), as well as ongoing discussions about African sage philosophy and about how best to build and entrench both international justice and justice in Africa. Several conferences have been held about his thought, including his reflections on the future of the world and of Africa in particular. Meanwhile the journal Thought and Practice that he and the African Philosophical Association founded in 1974 continues to flourish. His interest in environmental philosophy is articulated in the newer journal Utafiti, published from Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. His journalism and participation in public affairs are studied by other African philosophers and fellow intellectuals, and with it his advocacy of the cause of liberty. This is crucial to a continent all too prone to authoritarianism, and to the preventable poverty that authoritarianism often entrenches.

Readers interested in the latest round of debates about sage philosophy can pursue their interest by reading Rethinking Sage Philosophy (Kai Kresse and Oriare Nyarwath, eds, 2022). The subtitle of the book is, appropriately, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on and beyond H. Odera Oruka. Henry Odera Oruka stares out at us engagingly from the front cover.

© Prof Robin Attfield 2025

Robin Attfield is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Cardiff University.

Interviews

- The Post-Truth Kerfuffle

Interview

The Post-Truth Kerfuffle

Susan Haack, who is Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts & Sciences, Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law, at the University of Miami, talks with Angela Tan about how and when we know.

Professor Haack, you’ve argued that the proliferation of falsehoods and half-truths fosters a “deep-seated mistrust of everything others tell us.” How do you see this erosion of trust affecting how people engage with truth claims in everyday life? And in contexts where skepticism is both necessary and potentially corrosive, how can we encourage more careful discernment of truth without undermining meaningful communication?

I’m glad to see you understand that the ‘post-truth’ claim is both a claim about the proliferation of lies, half-truths, and so on, and a claim about the disillusionment with the concept of truth that this has engendered in some people. Sad to say, some in mainstream neo-analytic philosophy have used the post-truth idea as an excuse to argue and re-argue their old disputes about which kind of theory of truth is preferable, the minimalist or the substantialist. But this is not the key issue. There certainly are many, many outright lies, half-truths, evasions, etc, in the news media, in academia, and, indeed, everywhere these days. And, yes, it’s all too easy to just decide to believe nothing that you read or hear. But that would cut you off from the useful information that’s out there among the garbage. So what I think we have to do is to decide what topics or questions are most important for us or to us, and concentrate our attention on sifting the good stuff from the bad in communications on those topics.

It’s also wise to cultivate the habit of curiosity, when, for example, headlines strike you as puzzling. For instance, on the front page of a recent Wall Street Journal, I read two headlines: ‘Rate of Inflation Slows’, and, in the next column, ‘Hiring Slows’. This seemed to make no sense. After all, if inflation were going down, wouldn’t one expect that hiring would be looking up somewhat? It took me a while to figure out why these headlines seemed to be at odds. It was because the claim about inflation was that the rate at which inflation was increasing had slowed somewhat, not that inflation itself was falling. The claim about hiring, however, was that there was less hiring than there had been in the previous month. This provided a good lesson: that it’s very useful to have the habit of making sense of things contextually, and not just going with the headlines.

In other contexts, often the best thing to do is to maintain a position of agnosticism: to say “I just don’t know”, and mean it. There is no shame in having no opinion on a topic if you haven’t adequate evidence or haven’t had the time or the patience to sift through such evidence as is available. In fact, it’s much worse to claim to know when you’re not entitled to.

In an essay called ‘Post ‘Post-Truth’: Are We There Yet?’ (Theoria85, 2019), you argue that our concepts of lies and partial truths presuppose objective truth. How can we encourage people to reaffirm the value of truth when in today’s pervasively cynical discourse it is often seen as a tool for manipulation?

Certainly some people use affirmations of the objectivity of truth as a tool to advance some agenda of their own. This is unfortunate, but of course it doesn’t follow that there is no objective truth, only that insisting that there is objective truth is not sufficient in itself to show any particular claim to be objectively true.

You’ve criticized what you call the ‘monoculture of political correctness’, and you’ve emphasized the need for courage in challenging poorly founded claims. How do you balance intellectual courage with the humility to listen, especially when dissent can risk being dismissed as reactionary or contrarian?

One thing that I have found useful is to keep up a wide correspondence with people of very different cultures and very different views, and to listen to what they have to say with care. In many instances, it turns out that two people who seem to disagree radically in fact disagree less than it appears. For example, among my correspondents are a senior academic in Hungary and a younger professor in the US. I asked both of them a couple of years ago what they thought about the then recently-launched AI writing and editing tools, and about the transgender phenomenon we recently began to hear so much about. My Hungarian friend replied that he found the AI tools helpful and not very problematic, but, he continued, “This transgender business makes me sick.” The younger US professor explained at length the problems he was encountering with student work that was not really their own but AI-generated; but then added that he had had numerous transgender students, and that he found it completely unproblematic. I have considerable respect for both these people, and trying to think through what each of them might have had in mind has been helpful as a way of sorting out my own thoughts on the matter: for now, that the AI tools, though potentially useful, have to be handled with extreme care; and that the transgender phenomenon, while new to me, is something that requires respectful thought and acceptance, without risking encouraging someone to make irreversible decisions when they’re still young and may not be clear about the implications.

I’m now a little uncomfortable with my phrase ‘monoculture of political correctness’, which sounds a little prefabricated. I’m thinking of the brouhaha when Larry Summers, then-President of Harvard, was forced to resign after saying publicly that we didn’t yet know whether the relatively small number of senior women scientists was in part the result of women having less scientific ability than men. Of course, the real problem here is that the explanation of why there are relatively few senior women scientists is almost certainly multidimensional, yet Summers’ remark suggests, most unfortunately, that the only explanations are either lack of inherent ability, discrimination against women, or undervaluation of their work. How much better it would have been had he listed some of the many, many factors that would likely be involved, and acknowledged how little we knew about how they interact, or, indeed, what other factors there may be which we haven’t even thought of yet.

In your memoir article, ‘Not One of the Boys: Memoir of an Academic Misfit’ (Cosmos + Taxis8, 2020), you describe the costs of intellectual independence – isolation, alienation, and sometimes real resentment. How have you navigated the complex dynamics of academia while maintaining your commitment to rigorous inquiry? What advice would you offer to others who struggle with the loneliness of challenging intellectual tides?

I suspect that there are many people out there who would like to be as independent as I am, but find the social pressure against it just too much to cope with. It’s understandable if they resent the freedom I have worked so hard to find for myself, but that’s just another of the costs of independence for the independent thinker.

In the same article, you described feeling “hostility on the part of some who are unwilling, or not in a position, to pay the price such freedom requires.” How do you sustain your commitment to doing what you believe is right, even when it isolates you?

It’s not easy. My whole life, I’ve found myself swimming against the tide, so in a way I’m used to a kind of isolation. But I’m pleasantly surprised by how many people there are out there who understand what I’m trying to do, and why. So I communicate with them to keep myself more balanced emotionally.

Your work spans science, epistemology, and law, all of which center on the pursuit of truth. What unifying thread connects these diverse fields, and how has your interdisciplinary approach shaped your understanding of the challenges posed by the post-truth era?

Let me start by talking about my work in law. One issue that has concerned me is that every legal system will have specific rules governing the preparation, presentation, and evaluation of evidence. As an epistemologist, and as someone who is a customer of the legal system (as in a certain sense we all are), I try to understand to what extent those legal rules help us to arrive at verdicts which are, as far as is possible, true. This, however, is extremely difficult, and made more so because, in an adversarial legal system – like the systems of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and so on – each party to a case has an obligation to present the evidence favoring their side as strongly as possible without contravening legal ethics. One result is that many people involved in the legal system have come to think that there are, as the saying goes, ‘two sides to every question’. But of course, sometimes there simply aren’t two sides of equal weight or probability.

In science, too, we need to watch out for the many, many complexities involved, including for the way issues could look different at different times. I’m thinking of that truly terrible paper by Andrew Wakefield – now retracted – claiming to have found a connection between the MMR vaccine and autism. To call the evidence on which this paper was based ‘flawed’ would be putting it mildly: the whole thing was a complete disgrace. However, many intelligent and thoughtful parents noticed that around the time when the MMR vaccine became compulsory the rate of diagnoses of autism went up significantly, and some of them thought this might be a good reason for not having their child vaccinated. They may not have been aware, however, that in the same period, the medical profession had changed its definition of ‘autism’, and had begun to speak of an ‘autism spectrum’, ranging from the extremely seriously incapacitated, through the moderate, to the high-functioning autistic person who might be extremely talented in various ways. This change in definition would itself naturally increase the rate of autism diagnosis. Nor, of course, did we know then – nor do we know now – everything about what bad side effects some vaccinations may have. We do know, however, that the outbreaks of measles which began to appear in the wake of the MMR-vaccine scare and subsequent lower take-up of the vaccination have had extremely serious consequences. Measles is not always a mild infection, but can have very bad effects. Incidentally, it was as a result of my contracting measles that I became extremely short-sighted and had to wear thick glasses or, later, contact lenses to correct my very poor vision.

Let me give you another example of a slightly different kind. There was a big scare about the possible terrible side effects of silicone breast implants. This scare was initiated in part by the fact that these implants had been approved for manufacture and sale before the scope of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was extended to cover medical devices as well as drugs. By the time the scope of the FDA was extended, the implant manufacturers had not yet supplied the evidence of safety that the FDA now required. At this point all we knew was that we didn’t know whether these implants had bad side effects. But matters got more complicated when a very young attorney in a firm for the implant manufacturers discovered a memo from one of the manufacturers to its salespeople explaining that they should go wash these implants and dry them off carefully before showing them to the doctors to whom they were recommending them. This disclosure encouraged a huge wave of litigation, and even the formation of something called the National Science Panel of scientists in the relevant fields appointed by federal judge Samuel Pointer, to whom thousands of these cases had been sent. After years of sifting through enormous boxes of documents, the panel concluded that there was no evidence of any damage caused by these implants. However, that there was no evidence of such damage is not the same as there being evidence that there was no such damage. Nor was the possibility ever seriously considered that leakage from these implants might prompt a serious reaction in some patients. Sadly, after years of litigation and millions of dollars spent on all this, we still really don’t know the truth.

The leading US case on the admissibility of expert testimony is Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993). It set the current standard by which US judges assess whether proffered expert testimony is good enough for a jury to hear. The drug at issue in this case was Bendectin, prescribed for morning sickness. The plaintiffs believed that this drug caused limb-reduction birth defects; the manufacturers denied this. Merrell had already withdrawn the drug from the US market in 1984 – not admitting that it was in any way damaging, but citing the costs of litigation as making it no longer worth selling in the US. Dr Done, expert witness for the plaintiffs, maintained that there was evidence that Bendectin caused birth defects. The manufacturers strenuously denied this, and stressed that they had no fewer than thirty studies published in peer-reviewed journals that showed no such link. The Supreme Court found that there wasn’t the evidence to show the plaintiffs’ case good enough for their expert to be heard by a jury. Moreover, they made ‘peer review and publication’ one indication that expert evidence is ‘scientific knowledge’, and therefore good enough to be admitted – a criterion still used.

Subsequent discussion raised questions about the independence of some of the ‘peer-reviewed publications’ cited in the case. In his final ruling in Daubert, Judge Kozinski argued that peer-reviewed publication is as good an indication of scientific reliability as we can hope for. However, I believe this underestimates the complexity of peer review in fields affected by litigation or commercial interests.

Dr Brent, expert witness for the manufacturers, insisted that if Bendectin were teratogenic (defect-forming), then after it was taken off the US market the rate of birth defects would have been higher in Canada, where it remained available, than in the US – and this wasn’t seen. However, obstetricians had long realized that you could mimic the effects of Bendectin by taking a vitamin B6 pill and half a Unisom tablet. If Bendectin was harmful, then this widely-used substitute which mimicked the drug’s effects could potentially have masked such a difference between the two countries, raising doubts about this line of reasoning.

To my surprise, in 2013 the drug returned to the US market, now made by a Canadian company under the name Diclegis. The FDA had never withdrawn its approval for Bendectin, so the company had only to prove that the drug was effective. I checked: how had they done this? They had studied the effects of the drug on a very small sample of around two hundred women, for whom it was being prescribed only for ‘mild to moderate morning sickness’. In my opinion it’s depressing to think that after all those years and all that litigation, expense, and distress, we still can’t be entirely sure that Bendectin is not harmful.

In 2014 there was another surprise. A European company claimed that by using what it called ‘deep computing’ it could distinguish tiny differences in the DNA of identical twins. When I say ‘tiny’, I mean of the order of differences in thirteen base pairs among billions of base pairs. This, they claimed, would enable investigators to distinguish DNA from one versus another of a pair of monozygotic twins. Some prosecutors in the US thought this might be a really useful tool when they knew that one of a pair of identical twins was the perpetrator of a crime but they had no fingerprints from the crime scene, and so there would be reasonable doubt with respect to which twin. Unfortunately, prosecutors soon learned that it would cost in the order of $60,000 to do such a test, so the idea of using it in criminal prosecutions was dropped. I, meanwhile, was wondering how likely it was that the differences the firm claimed to have found were real, or merely apparent, the result of a glitch in the computing process. My first thought was to read the article in question. It turned out, however, to be completely unintelligible to a layperson – not because of biological complications, but because it was written in computer jargon, almost all of it acronyms. I did try asking a former student, professionally a computer scientist, what he thought the likelihood was that this result was robust – to which he replied that it would take simply years of running the program against different samples to decide this.

In short, never forget there is no shame in saying, and meaning, “I really don’t know.” Indeed, there is no shame in saying, and meaning, “None of us really knows.”

• Angela Tan is a student at York House School, Canada.

• Some of Professor Susan Haack’s best-known books include: Evidence and Inquiry: Towards Reconstruction in Epistemology (1993); Defending Science – Within Reason: Between Scientism and Cynicism (2003) and Evidence Matters: Science, Proof and Truth in the Law (2014).

Letters

- Letters

Letters

Letters

Mindful Missives on Machines • A Bar For Truth • Let Fly At Fry • Explaining God • A Life of Liberation • Get Them While They’re Hot

Mindful Missives on Machines

Dear Editor: The article in Issue 168 where Vincent Carchidi discusses the limitations that currently prevent AI systems from reproducing human linguistic creativity has important implications for language learning. According to Noam Chomsky, learning your first language is the product of an inborn brain faculty, through which all infants, unless unusually deprived, will gradually but spontaneously develop mastery of the language of their environment. Other researchers, however, argue instead that this process is similar to the growth of other cognitive skills. Whichever of these theories is the more accurate, the fact remains, as Carchidi admits, that its most sophisticated outcome, appropriate language use, is obscure, and difficult to reproduce in a machine. This obscurity also characterizes how we learn a second language. It was traditionally believed that teaching the rules that seem to govern form and usage in comparison with the learner’s first language would provide the key. In the Sixties this approach was supplemented by the constant repetition of target sentences in order to instill familiarity. By the 1980s it had been recognized that neither of these methods resulted in more than rudimentary skills – on a par with the ability of Large Language Models to reproduce only what had previously been provided as input. There came to be adopted Communicative Methodology, which placed learners in different situations, with the expectation that this would stimulate creative but realistic responses rendered gradually more appropriate via feedback and further practice. It was found, though, that such creativity was severely limited by the lack of the sustained exposure typical of first-language acquisition. It seems, therefore, that we don’t really know how language is learned, either from birth or later in life, and therefore how best to teach it. This mirrors the difficulty inherent in enabling true linguistic creativity in AI systems.

Colin Sowden, Abergavenny

Dear Editor: Mahmoud Khatami’s article warning of the danger of allowing AI to become an ethical black box reminded me of the same warning issued some forty years ago by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Deep Thought, a vast supercomputer, is constructed to determine the ultimate answer to ‘Life, The Universe and Everything’. The program runs for millions of years, enabling whole tribes of philosophers to become wealthy debating the possible outcome on chat shows. When finally the program ends and states the Ultimate Answer it is… 42. No explanation – a pure black box result – and as a result, utterly meaningless.

Robin Peterson, Tunbridge Wells

Dear Editor: In his article in Issue 168, Amir Haj-Bolouri seems to take the attitude that we shouldn’t care about what’s real as long as we’re engaged with things that seem real enough to us to provide meaning. He uses Martin Heidegger’s ideas to describe our situation of being immersed in ‘worlds’ of things that matter. Then he goes on to discuss whether we can extend ‘Being-in-the-world’ to include ‘Being-in-the virtual-world’.

Unfortunately, neither virtual reality nor Heidegger’s philosophy seem to deal with what exists outside consciousness. Regarding virtual reality, that’s something that by definition doesn’t exist outside a consciousness. Regarding Heidegger, although he claimed to be talking about ‘being’, he actually appears to only be describing a subjective perspective. By contrast, I’m interested in what is actually real. I would also argue that we can make progress on the philosophical quest to understand what is genuinely real. In my view, the conclusions are quite radical, and show a reality that’s very different to the ‘ordinary world’. If, as Haj-Bolouri suggests, some people could come to regard VR as effectively real in the way the ordinary world is normally regarded, and given that VR has no reality outside its appearance, that should undermine our faith in the ‘ordinary world’, too.

Peter Spurrier, Halstead, Essex

Dear Editor: In Minds, Brains, and Programs (1984), John Searle asserts that, regardless of whether a system such as a robot displays intelligent behavior, it still lacks an inherent understanding of the meaning behind these actions, that is, consciousness. He argues that “the robot has no intentional states at all; it is simply moving about as a result of its electrical wiring and its program.” Searle is not convinced that the robot can think even if it is exposed to its surroundings and the real world. He further argues that despite extensive simulation of brain functions by a computer, it would merely mimic cognitive processes, lacking genuine consciousness. Regardless of the robot’s complexity, it cannot generate subjective experiences or true comprehension – elements he views as essential for consciousness. What comes closest to the human brain is that of an animal, not a machine: “We assume both that the animal must have mental states underlying its behavior, and that the mental states must be produced by mechanisms made out of the stuff that is like our [brain] stuff. We would certainly make similar assumptions about the robot unless we had some reason not to, but as soon as we knew that the behavior was the result of a formal program, and that the actual causal properties of the physical substance were irrelevant, we would abandon the assumption of intentionality.” I agree with Searle, and hope it will always be so. There is no profound purpose for an AI, only mechanical mimicry. Perhaps the human mind can never fully be replicated.

Megan Russo

A Bar For Truth

Dear Editor: Behind the bar in my local is a sign on the wall. It reads:

“Bar Rules:

1. The barman is always right.

2. If the barman is wrong, refer to Rule1.”

This amusing piece of nonsense reminds me of Epimenides’ Liar Paradox: a group of Greek sailors approach the island of Crete and are met by Epimenides, a Cretan man, who warns them that all Cretans are liars; but he’s a Cretan: so is his warning true or false? Slavoj Žižek (PN 168) raises the same paradox by saying ‘Everything I say is false’, which can be either true or false.

Perhaps evolution prefers ‘pay-off’ strategies to ‘truth’ strategies, so don’t worry about the Bar Rules if you want the barman to give you a beer – the pay-off. We decided the whole thing was enjoyable nonsense, and the barman was still pulling beers, so we laughed and ordered another round. The barman obliged because the barman is always right.

David Berger Lawson, NSW

Let Fly At Fry

Dear Editor: This is in response to the interview with Stephen Fry in Issue 168. Fry’s assertion that ‘a violinist has their violin, it isn’t them’ is not entirely accurate. I am a professional screenwriter, director, costumer, and actor. When I write a script, the script is in essence what I am. There was a PN article last year that argued that significance was not defined by size or breadth [‘Significance’, Issue 162]. I’d argue further that although Musk’s space empire might conquer the solar system, ideas can conquer entire universes, and in fact, create entire universes! Ideas are therefore the most precious resource. So to me, intellectual property is more important than gemstones.

I’m not surprised that Fry has an affinity for the intellectual. He was the voice of the Guide in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie, and ought to know the value of the meaning of life! Jokes aside, my view is that the meaning of life is to seek beauty. This might sound fluffy, but it has a logic. For example, a Wall Street executive who has no interest in art might say that his purpose is to increase his salary, yet his upscale Manhattan apartment would probably have nice decor and a good view of the skyline. This decor and skyline constitute beauty – therefore demonstrating that all humans seek beauty.

If there’s another interview with Fry, I’d like you to ask – does he know where his towel is? Because I lost mine.

Larry Chan, New York City

Dear Editor: Stephen Fry’s general knowledgeability evidently does not extend to the history of cinema. The viewers of the earliest films did not see ‘grainy jerky cinema footage’ as he asserts in his interview in PN 168. These films only look that way today if watched on poorly preserved copies screened at the wrong speed (silent films were shot at a slower speed). However, anyone who has seen prints of these films taken directly from the original negatives will testify to the astonishing sharpness and clarity of the images. The Lumière brothers, who made the very first films, were already distinguished still photographers, and brought all their skills to bear on the new medium.

The first audiences also did not scream with terror when they saw a train apparently approaching them. This is a myth. The earliest versions of this tall tale date from decades after the event, and none of the many reports at the time mention any such thing happening. The first audiences were sophisticated Parisians who were familiar with magic lantern shows. They were highly impressed by the moving images, but not at all frightened by them. Continuing to spread discredited myths should be discouraged, even if by a Knight of the Realm.

Peter Benson, London

Explaining God

Dear Editor: Concerning Raymond Tallis’s article ‘Excusing God’, Philosophy Now 168, it is a truism that nature is chaotic and knows no good or evil. However, on the basis of the hypothetical existence of God, Tallis argues against the ‘terrible’, ‘dreadful’, ‘appalling’ suffering that such a God would permit in this world. Take away the God argument, and we’re left with a man who is very upset about the way the world is. Yet as a self-professed ‘infidel’, what comfort does he have? Worse, what comfort could he bring to others? On the other hand, if God is omnipotent, would not his omnipotence include the ability to guarantee some kind of good for each of us? This is precisely what Tallis rejects.

Rev. Thomas O. Scarborough

Dear Editor: In Issue 168 Raymond Tallis took up the hoary problem of evil in a Godly world, although the problem itself undermines the existence of an intentional deity who cares deeply about the affairs of our cancerous species. The deity’s popularity is due in large measure to his supposed promise of eternal life to the chosen. However, while losing life on this rather lovely little planet is sad, it’s also clear that few people contemplate the horror of unending existence. What does one do after, say, the first thousand years? Practice the harp?

Let me by define ‘evil’ as intentional cruelty – taking pleasure in inflicting pain. Predation in nature isn’t about causing pain, but getting food. That may not explain why the cat plays with a mouse; but maybe they’ve acquired their owner’s sensibility. Otherwise, we’re the only creatures who hurt other creatures for the pleasure of it. Of course, much evil is hurting others out of greed, indifferent to their pain. We’ve made defeating others our economic system and the purpose of most sports. And many peoples alive today basically stole their country from its original inhabitants (as Moses’ people did in the promised land). So is the collective more evil than the individual?

Walter L Mosley, Wilmette, IL

Dear Editor: Like Professor Tallis, I too struggle with the evils in the world. Mostly I struggle with man’s inhumanity to man. I studied Theology in college, but theology is no longer the Queen of the Sciences it was in the Middle Ages: it’s become more of a pesky stepchild. Philosophy and Theology are related, but the line between the two is fuzzy, and both schools of study seem to go in circles a lot. That’s OK. They far outstrip not thinking at all (and there’s plenty of that going around). But when it comes to understanding things like good and evil, or an infinite God… ultimately, we’re going into things we will never completely understand. However, if I have learned anything, it is that God is limitless in all his attributes. So although we might get a peek into the wisdom of God, as for the really big picture, we have to trust that God knows what he’s doing. To a moderate evangelical like me this is called ‘faith’. But I also believe that the conversation should not end.

Wade Rustin

Dear Editor: In Issue 168, Tallis questions whether a benevolent God powerful enough to create a universe would be unwilling to prevent natural disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes, on out particular planet. Neither does God punish the wicked for deliberately causing distress to the innocent. We do not know why the wicked prosper and the righteous are afflicted, but one reason why it happens is that the wicked look after themselves and the good look after others. But if there’s no God to reward or punish us, why should we suffer to relieve the distress of others? One possibility is that knowledge of suffering causes some of us greater distress than the effort of relieving or preventing the distress does. It is in the nature of some people to feel the suffering of others a little like it was their own, and so they too feel benefit when the suffering is relieved. Such feelings might be natural, or instilled during childhood. Some care for others because their religion tells them to do so. Unfortunately the religions tell us to care for different others, such that followers of one religion may be cruel to followers of a different one.

If we believe we should care for others our world will be a happier place. That probably has to be sufficient for us, as when we cannot rely on ourselves we can only turn to each other.

Allen Shaw, Leeds

Dear Editor: In reference to a child suffering in Gaza (Issue 168), Raymond Tallis’s comment “the evil that caused this hideous suffering” tells me something about Tallis himself. Firstly, he must have some concept of evil to make that association. Secondly, it demonstrates compassion for the suffering of another human being. The question remains, wherein is the source, or justification, of his compassion, and what was the origin of the evil he mentioned? Tallis concedes he has a gap in his understanding, which is “not shaped to accommodate a god.” This is where his logic breaks down. Would he say he has a gap in not understanding science, medicine, or even philosophy, and therefore claim non-existence for their truths?

Most theists, like me, concede that the problem of pain is difficult to comprehend. Perhaps this is because we continually try to fit God into our model of reality: to say, “If God (by my definition), were omnipotent (by my definition of what that should mean), he/she should (fill in the blank)”. The stumbling block seems to be our free will, which abused, results in cruelty and suffering. But as C.S. Lewis said, God cannot give us free will and at the same time withhold it. Nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.

Finally, it is tempting to believe that the supposed ‘allowance of suffering’ of that girl in Gaza is meaningless. I disagree. I know it affected Prof Nick Maynard, who reported it, Raymond Tallis, who was so moved as to refer to it, and myself, who woke in the early hours of the morning after reading him, pondering how to respond. Could it be that awareness of her suffering and death has moved at least three human beings to a greater compassion, and so a little closer to the One who understands?

Michael Hanley, Melbourne

A Life of Liberation

Dear Editor: I found the article on Paulo Freire in PN 167 most interesting, so I bought a copy of his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. It is not an easy read, with a heavy Marxist slant – not surprising as its genesis was amongst the poor in Brazil. But Freire’s emphasis on communication through dialogue is vital, and is now an accepted part of education.

Freire’s crucial message was to awaken awareness in the masses about their situation and what might be done about it – a continuing push for greater fairness in their share in the wealth of society. Freire coined the Portuguese word conscientizacao (‘conscientisation’) for the essential process of awakening awareness to mutual causes. Generally, the ongoing struggle described in Pedagogy aims to reverse processes that dehumanise people. In the modern world, where much in our lives is decided at a global level, most of us endure a ‘master and servant’ relationship, where those at the top enjoy vastly greater rewards than those whose labours generate the wealth. In the afterword by Ira Shor, Freire’s ambitions are summarised by the questions, “What kind of world do we live in? Why is it like that? What kind of world do we want? How do we get there from here?”

Those thoughts about the dehumanisation of people echo those of Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism. In another of her books, The Life of the Mind, she emphasises the importance of teaching people to think clearly and broadly from an early age. Humans are gifted with the power of language, and we should use it constructively at all times, to ensure all opinions are heard. That route leads to social harmony and progress; stifling opinion and dehumanisation of people leads to conflict. The ability to think seriously, and the encouragement of dialogue and involvement at all levels, would make for a happier, healthier society, and the realisation of Freire’s ideas.

David Morris, Oxford

Get Them While They’re Hot

Dear Editor: I’ve imagined philosophers with food or drink or flower carts. Each cart would have a sign near the top with wares that rhyme with his name. Below that is a slogan pertaining to his philosophy. I present them for your amusement:

Plato’s Potatoes: Ideal spuds fresh from the Form.

Spinoza’s Roses: Divine fragrance from nature’s garden.

Russell’s Truffles: ‘Nobody knows the truffles I’ve seen.’

Hegel’s Bagels: Baked in the oven of Reason; glazed with pedantry.

Nietzsche’s Peaches: Uber sweet; willfully powerful.

Socrates’s Cheeses: Toasted cheddar with hemlock. Yum!

Aristotle’s Bottles: Fruit and vegetable juices, logically squeezed.

Locke’s Lox: empirically smoked by seasoned experience.

Descartes’ Tarts: Great taste, clear and distinct.

Carnap’s Snaps: Introduced gingerly in London by A.J. Ayer.

Camus’ Booze: Aged with absurdity.

Bacon’s Bacon: Fried crisply by Scientific Method.

Quine’s Wines: ‘There’s many a slip twixt objective cup and subjective lip.’

Voltaire’s Pears: ‘The best of all possible pears’ – Leibniz.

Schopenhauer’s Flowers: Brought to bloom by a blind, unconscious Will.

Lenin’s Lemons: Eternally preserved.

Parmenides’ Teas: Steeped in the dream of a goddess.

Whitehead’s Breads: Baked in the oven of mathematical logic.

Occam’s Raisins: Eat no more than necessary.

You may now call the boys in white coats. I will not resist.

Chris Christensen, Portland, OR

Columns

- Pharmaco-Metaphysics?

- Susan Stebbing (1885-1943)

- Philosophers on Newspapers

- Nine Spiritual Exercises

Tallis in Wonderland

Pharmaco-Metaphysics?

Raymond Tallis argues against acidic assertions, and doubts DMT discoveries.

I ought to begin with a confession. I have had no first-hand – or first-head – experience of psychedelic drugs. Admittedly, I occasionally (actually, frequently) ‘do’ a bit of (actually, quite a lot of) my favourite white wine. Courtesy of Pinot Grigio, I am sometimes translated to a parallel universe in which my jokes are funny and the laughter they trigger is directed at the tale rather than the teller. But this is hardly comparable to the experiences of ‘psychonauts’ who take hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin in pursuit of revelations about the true nature of the world, of our place in it, and of our eventual destination.

In The Doors of Perception (1954), Aldous Huxley reported on his experiences with the psychedelic drug mescaline. They ranged from the enchantment of an unpeeled awareness of the beauty of flowers, to a sense of a Divine Presence. The title of the book echoed William Blake’s claim in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790) that “If the doors of perception were cleansed, then everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

The philosopher and psychologist William James (1842-1910) was ahead of Huxley. His experiences with nitrous oxide (laughing gas) had an enduring influence on his thought and, in particular, on his attitude towards religion. Reflecting on his experiences, he felt that all religions “converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance.” James was haunted by the suspicion that his everyday awareness was flanked by utterly different modes of consciousness, and separated from them by ‘the flimsiest of screens’.

You might see where this is leading. If you’re serious about philosophy, and in particular, if you want to explore what Peter Strawson called ‘revisionary’ rather than a merely ‘descriptive’ metaphysics – that is, if you are hopeful of waking out of normal wakefulness – then brain-blitzing psychotropic drugs may seem to have more to offer than arguments and counterarguments barnacled with footnotes. A train of propositions leading up to a conclusion seems unlikely to deliver a vision of ‘real reality’. Accepting the outcome of a syllogism seems to fall far short of embracing, or being embraced by, a world-picture transformed by experience. As Søren Kierkegaard said, “to stand on one leg and prove God’s existence is a very different thing from going on one’s knees and thanking him” (Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1841). In short, conventional philosophical discourse seems a relatively feeble method of transforming one’s world-picture compared with mind-altering drugs. So why, in my nearly sixty years of puzzling over philosophical problems, have I never seriously considered using psychedelic drugs to assist my inquiries?

It’s not a matter of moral disapproval. As already admitted, I ‘do’ quite a bit of Pinot Grigio – at least in part in pursuit of its effects on my mind. In general, I have a liberal attitude to drugs, so long as taking them does not interfere with delivering on your responsibilities, to yourself and to others. Indeed, I believe that in many cases, the criminalisation of drugs has caused more harm than the drugs themselves. At the very least, decriminalisation would enable quality control, reduce the risk of potentially fatal overdoses, and destroy the business model of the murderous gangs who get rich through drug trafficking. No, my resistance to drug-assisted philosophising is rooted in my doubts about how seriously we should take what one might learn, or seem to learn, during a trip.

One big reason for my scepticism is that the lessons of the trip seem to overlook how drug-induced experiences are made possible by the world of untransformed daily life. Except in the case of those whose life has become devoted to taking, experiencing, and recovering from trips, turning on and tuning in usually takes place by appointment. For example, Aldous Huxley’s mescaline adventures were carefully planned well in advance. The first one began on time at 11 a.m. 3rd May 1953, during which he was looked after by his wife Maria and the psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond. In short, it was situated in the everyday world to which we all belong. Had it been a bad trip, he would have relied on being rescued by inhabitants of a realm to which he, too, belonged, when he was not caught up in his drug-induced solitude.

The contradictoriness of psychonauts who would have us believe that their drug of choice has enabled them to see what reality really is, and that it is entirely unlike what passes for reality in their daily life, is worth a bit more attention. The trip takes place in an unchanged reality. Moreover, the drug has been synthesised, tested, quality-controlled, packaged, and transported in that world, and the facts about its properties have been discovered and broadcast by individuals in the grip of everyday life. It is ordinary people usually in ordinary states of mind in the ordinary world who experiment with the psychedelics that target 5HT2A receptors.

As for the trip itself, we can imagine someone who, having taken a large dose of psilocybin, say, feels the bounds of his ego falling away as he dissolves into The One. Thus liberated, he trips over the cat, falls down the stairs, and breaks his leg. Suddenly he’s in desperate need of the hitherto normal everyday world surrounding him, populated by bounded egos whose uncleansed doors of perception enable them to exercise their defined roles and rush to his aid. This is a reminder that, even if nothing as dramatic as that happens, a chemical vacation in a ‘different reality’ is just that: a vacation. And, of course, the judgement as to whether the experiences were a revelation of truth or (just) hallucinations will be tested against a shared knowledge base outside of the event.

It does not seem justified, therefore, to blithely regard mind-altering drugs as opening metaphysical peepholes on to fundamental reality; as heuristic devices enabling us to discover the true nature of the world, ourselves, or our place in the world; or to dismiss the world of childcare and work, of appointments and duties, as an ‘illusion’.

Contemporary philosopher Thomas Metzinger sees psychotropic drugs as tools for furthering our understanding of brain mechanisms, and thus (so he believes) contributing to a neurobiologically-informed philosophy of mind. He also argues that personal familiarity with altered states “would thoroughly shatter [consciousness researchers’] folk-phenomenological intuitions and endow them with completely new theoretical intuitions” (quoted by Nicolas Langlitz in Common Knowledge, 2016, p.377). Metzinger, however, dismisses the more dramatic conclusions extracted from psychedelic experience as ‘epistemologically vacuous’ (Being No-One, 2003, p.249): chemically-induced hallucination is not proof-by-revelation of the illusory nature of everyday reality. After all, certain molecules alighting on receptor sites in one’s brain does not on the face of things seem like an appropriate axiomatic starting point for metaphysical inquiry; nor does the subsequent spread of ‘enhanced’ neural activity seem to have the authority of a sound argument leading to a robust conclusion; nor does it create space for the to-and-fro of Socratic dialogue.

Hallucinations © Ungeorgiy 2023 Public Domain

Everyday Transcendent Metaphysics

So much for pharmaco-metaphysics. But what are we to make of radically revisionary metaphysical views arrived at by the well-worn path of argument illuminated by the guttering rush-light of sudden insights, side-lit by the views of other philosophers, and propelled by what Ludwig Wittgenstein characterised in Philosophical Investigations (1953) as the “assembling of reminders for a purpose”? Are these views not subject to the same challenges that seem to invalidate psychedelic metaphysics? Think for instance of those who, holding a seemingly solid copy of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), accept George Berkeley’s claim in it that entities exist only insofar as they perceive or are perceived. They nevertheless expect the book to still be there when they enter a room where it is stored. (Berkeley, who was a bishop, argues that that’s because God continually perceives physical objects). Or consider academics who, persuaded of Immanuel Kant’s view that ‘material objects’ located in space and time in the way we perceive them to be, are in fact constructs of the mind - then travel by train to give a lecture on this topic at an agreed place and time. Or yet others who (to take a well-worn example) deny the reality of time, but are still confident that they had their breakfast before their lunch. What is most striking is that those who have these views live with, cooperate with, share projects and ideas with, those who do not. (I have often thought about the children, partners, and colleagues of philosophers who earn their living questioning the reality of the external world.)

Readers may suspect that the existential sincerity – or insincerity – of radically revisionary philosophical views has been a preoccupation of mine. Indeed, it has surfaced from time to time in this column – as in ‘Zhuangzi and that Bloody Butterfly’ (Issue 76, 2009) and ‘Arguing with a Solipsist’ (Issue 141, 2020). If a philosophical argument could demonstrate an entirely different picture of the world, could you really inhabit that brave new world? More importantly could you co-habit in that transformed reality with those to whom you are closest – those you accept without question as central to your everyday life, and who return the compliment of taking you for granted? World pictures radically at odds with daily experience can be genuinely shared – and lived out – only when they have a collective origin rather than being arrived at in solitude, irrespective of whether the method of transport is a drug or logical argument. Indeed, collective affirmation gives religious metaphysical views – such as that everything is enclosed in the being of an omniscient, omnipotent God, an advantage over individually-derived revisionary metaphysics. Radically revisionary views, if they are to be embraced sincerely, have to be shared with others in something that goes deeper than a report from (someone else’s) experience or a philosophical text. If we are to believe them and live them out ourselves, we need a community.

And so, for the present, I will be faithful to Pinot Grigio. Admittedly, there may be timidity behind my rejection of psychonautical adventures – a fear of losing control over my mind for an indefinite period of helplessness; and the prospect, when I return, of sharing with puzzled, even amused, friends and family, the incomprehensible tidings that (for example) “I am one with ultimate reality.”

As for philosophising, I will stick to pen and keyboard, paper and screen, and, of course, conversation. My focus will be on describing what seems to be the case, in the widest sense – thereby undermining the insufficiently-grounded views of materialists, idealists, and others who seem fundamentally to misunderstand the nature of the (extraordinary) ordinary world in which we live. Thus do I endeavour to open a space for celebrating the many-layered sense, rejected by some psychonauts, of the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays of everydayness – allowing myself to be intermittently italicised courtesy of a glass or two of P.G.

© Prof. Raymond Tallis 2025

Raymond Tallis’s Prague 22: A Philosopher Takes a Tram Through a City is out now in conjunction with Philosophy Now.

Philosophical Haiku

Susan Stebbing (1885-1943)

by Terence Green

Perverse unreason:

W(h)ither our democracy

When our minds do sleep?

Susan Stebbing

Susan Stebbing was one of those rare philosophers who believe that philosophy should actually make a practical difference to people’s lives. She was also rare by virtue of being a female philosopher at a time when the rigours of rational thought were generally deemed by men too much for the fairer sex. Born in London in 1885, Stebbing came of age just as analytic philosophy was first tightening its logical grip on Britain’s thinkers. In 1920, she began lecturing at London’s women-only Bedford College. In 1930 she published A Modern Introduction to Logic, considered the first textbook of analytic philosophy (it remained in print until the early 1960s). And in 1933, she became the first woman to be appointed to a full professorship of philosophy. During this period, she came to be a leading light of the Cambridge School of Analysis, and helped found the journal Analysis, which continues today. Concerned with ordinary, everyday language, and how we use and misuse it, she was integral to the introduction to Britain of logical positivism with its emphasis on science and logic, although she rejected its rejection of metaphysics, along with some of its fundamental propositions concerning language and thinking.

Stebbing summed up her beliefs regarding the purpose of philosophy with admirable clarity. It is, she said, the “task of philosophy to render our thoughts clear,” for without clear thinking, we become mired in confusion and muddle, or worse, lies and propaganda. With this in mind, and as the world descended into chaos, in 1939 she published Thinking to Some Purpose, a book intended to alert ordinary folk to the threat unreason posed to democracy. “I am,” she wrote, “convinced of the urgent need for a democratic people to think clearly without the distortions due to unconscious bias and unrecognized ignorance.” In case readers were a little slow to catch her meaning, Stebbing hammered the point home: a free press and democratic institutions are insufficient to maintain a democracy, she warned, when confronted by “our stupidity and by those who take advantage of that stupidity.” During WWII she aided those in flight from Nazi Germany, including scholars and orphaned children, giving both her time and her money – she was the very essence of a practical philosopher. She died in 1943, at the age of just 57, little realising the plague unreason would become for future generations.

© Terence Green 2025

Terence Green is a writer, historian, and lecturer who lives in Eastbourne, New Zealand.

Philosophy Shorts

Philosophers on Newspapers

by Matt Qvortrup

‘More songs about Buildings and Food’ was the title of a 1978 album by the rock band Talking Heads. It was about all the things rock stars normally don’t sing about. Pop songs are usually about variations on the theme of love; tracks like Rose Royce’s 1976 hit ‘Car Wash’ are the exception.

Philosophers, likewise, tend to have a narrow focus on epistemology, metaphysics and trifles like the meaning of life. But occasionally great minds stray from their turf and write about other matters, for example buildings (Martin Heidegger), food (Hobbes), tomato juice (Robert Nozick), and the weather (Lucretius and Aristotle). This series of Shorts is about these unfamiliar themes; about the things philosophers also write about.

Someone once said that Europe is characterized by the newspaper. It stands to reason then that this outlet of daily news was often mentioned by philosophers. Just so, “The newspaper reading of the early morning is a kind of realistic morning prayer” confided Hegel (1770-1831) to one of his notebooks (Miscellaneous Writings of G.W.F. Hegel, p.247). That famously abstract thinker knew what was he was talking about: rarely for a philosopher, he was briefly the editor of a newspaper himself – in his case, the Bamberger Zeitung. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) never held such a position, but even for him, it was as if all education pointed towards this newspaper reading ritual: “A person… has learned to read his native language. Later he reads… newspapers” Then he analyses in minute detail how this works. (Philosophical Investigations, para. 156).

All this seems to assume that the reader would be enlightened by what he or she reads. But Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) took a different view. Ever the cynic, he saw the daily papers as mouthpieces of the Prussian regime, “so with malice in their eyes and an accompanying grimace… newspaper critics too now involuntarily speak… in the language of [nationalist] superiority” (Human, All Too Human, p.368).

Nietzsche was not the first to complain that the papers were being used for propaganda. Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish-born British Whig politician, philosopher, and critic, feared that the French spirit of revolution is “sown almost everywhere, chiefly by newspaper circulations, infinitely more efficacious and extensive than ever they were” (Thoughts On French Affairs, p.91). And not only revolutionary ideas and the guillotine, no – even “the importation of French finery, never fails of furnishing a very popular column in a newspaper” (ibid). No wonder that he complained that views were often “bawled in newspapers” (Speech on American Taxation, p.386).

In the Twentieth Century, newspapers slightly changed their business model. Now, in order to survive, they needed advertisements. This prompted the ever-philosophical mind of Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), who worked as a reporter for the New Yorker, to reflect ruefully “that the advertising columns of every newspaper show … ‘scientificality’, by which a manufacturer proves with facts and figures and the help of a ‘research’ department that his is the ‘best soap in the world’.” (The Origins of Totalitarianism, p.245).

Arendt did not say what she thought of journalists. Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), by contrast, did. According to him, the newspapers were written by “bowlegged- and crooked, club- and flat-footed, blob-fingered, half-feathered, but pig-politically rejected subjects, under the name of journalists” (Diaries, 1847, p.134).

© Prof. Matt Qvortrup 2025

Matt Qvortrup’s book Great Minds on Small Things is published by Duckworth.

The Art of Living

Nine Spiritual Exercises

Massimo Pigliucci explains how to get Philo-Sophical.

On 20th May, 1521, Spanish troops fought against a Navarrese contingent supported by the French at the fortress of Pamplona. The Spanish lost the battle, but a little more than a month later, on June 30th, they decisively defeated the combined Navarrese and French forces at the Battle of Noáin, thus ending the Navarrese rebellion. One of the Spanish soldiers wounded at Pamplona was the Basque captain Íñigo López de Loyola, who was injured in both legs. While convalescing at the Benedictine abbey of Montserrat in Catalonia, Íñigo, who later took the name of Ignatius and founded the religious order known as the Society of Jesus, started working on a book of spiritual exercises. These practices were organized in four thematic weeks, meant to help Christians recommit to their faith. Yet as famous as Ignatius’s exercises became, he was not the originator of the idea of spiritual exercises. Several ancient Greco-Roman schools, including the Epicureans and the Stoics, had long before discovered that certain practices could be invaluable in living a good life.

The most comprehensive discussion of the history of philosophical exercises, including a comparison between the Hellenistic and Christian approaches, can be found in a classic book by French scholar Pierre Hadot, aptly entitled Philosophy as a Way of Life (1995). Hadot tells us that a list of such exercises was written down in two books by the Jewish Middle Platonist philosopher Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE-40 CE), Who is the Heir of Divine Things?, and Allegorical Interpretations, although similar exercises are scattered throughout the works of Seneca, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, and other classical thinkers.

Let’s take a closer look at Philo’s approach, which some modern practitioners (including yours truly) find particularly useful. Philo recognized three major classes of exercises, having to do with reflection, action, and learning. Broadly speaking, the goals of the three classes are, respectively: to meditate on our life and on what is or is not important; to help us act appropriately, in accordance with our meditations; and to gain insights into what other people think so that our actions are most efficacious.

Beginning with reflection, there are three fundamental exercises that Philo advises us to do on a regular basis (daily, if possible, but at least weekly):

(i) Pay attention: that is, train ourselves to live and act in the moment, and not be distracted by other things, including regrets about the past or worries about the future;

(ii) Take the time to write down our thoughts about salient events of the day and how we reacted to them, in order to learn how to do better the next time;

(iii) Express gratitude by singling out things and especially people we’re thankful to have in our lives.

In terms of action, again he suggests three spiritual practices:

(iv) Engage in what has been called ‘therapy of the passions’ – being attentive to unhealthy emotions such as anger, learning to recognize them at their onset, and working on developing better reactions to whatever triggers them;

(v) Self-mastery: attempt to improve our temperance and self-control, for instance by engaging in occasional fasting, or abstaining from alcohol or drugs; and

(vi) Performance of duties, especially social ones, like writing to our friends, checking in with people we know who may be in need, and so forth.

Lastly, there are three exercises concerning learning:

(vii) Engage as much as possible in Socratic dialogue (ie philosophical discussion) with others;

(viii) Read philosophy, especially original texts; and

(ix) Inquire, that is, engage in research or scholarship, if one can. Or at the least, read other people’s writings concerning how the world works – what we would now call ‘science’, broadly construed.

The general idea is to improve our knowledge of the world (learning), regularly meditate on our experiences (reflection), and use these two tools for the crucial aspect: acting in life according to our chosen philosophical principles.

It helps to keep a diary of your practices, or a spreadsheet in which you write down when and how you have performed each exercise. Mine now goes back over a decade, and has gradually become a precious source of information about the evolution of my self. Since my records are electronic, I can search by keywords (something Philo certainly couldn’t do) and see when, or how frequently, certain issues come up. How often has anger been a problem? For what or whom have I been grateful? How good have I been at performing my duties toward others, or at engaging in self-control? The point is neither to chide ourselves for our failures, nor to ‘gamify’ our philosophical progress. Rather, such exercises are tools first used over two millennia ago to help us become better human beings, which is the goal of a philosophical just as much as of a religious life.

© Prof. Massimo Pigliucci 2025

Massimo Pigliucci is the K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. His books include How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life (Basic Books) and Beyond Stoicism: A Guide to the Good Life with Stoics, Skeptics, Epicureans and Other Ancient Philosophers (with Greg Lopez and Meredith Kunz, The Experiment). More by him at massimopigliucci.org.

Reviews

- Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray

- 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

- The Republic by Plato

- The Beatles: Nothing is Real

Books

Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray

We follow mammal’s search for meaning, as Mark Vorobej savages John Gray’s book of impractical cat philosophy.

What can we learn from cats about how we should live our lives? Quite a lot, apparently, if we follow the inspiring lead of John Gray in his highly original study, Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life (2020).

Humans, according to Gray, are inherently anxious and miserable creatures who are often driven mad by nearly constant despair and an unconquerable fear of death (pp.93-95). As reflexively self-conscious and therefore conflicted and ‘self-divided’ souls (p.35), unhappiness is our natural state and, to quote Blaise Pascal, ultimately “nothing can console us.” Because we see the world as ‘a threatening and strange place’, we analyze, interpret, and worry about absolutely everything around us. Rational reflection only makes matters worse. Cats, on the other hand, are alien life forms who are profoundly “other than us in the deepest levels of their being” (p.26). They are naturally happy and content. Possessing “an innate understanding of how to live” (p.7), they simply do what comes naturally, and want for nothing beyond the unexamined and largely instinctive life that nature has bestowed on them. Oblivious to the passage of time, they are free of inner anguish. For example, they do not agonize over decisions, either past, present or future, since they do not miss the lives they have not led. Accordingly, the joyful and tranquil feline mind is ‘one and undivided’ (p.6), and is not in any danger of being wracked by feelings of guilt, regret, doubt, despair, or dissatisfaction. Most significantly, “cats are not ruled by [the fear of] death” (p.104). In a phrase, cats have “no need of philosophy” (p.3). They flourish perfectly well without it.

Cats’n’Rats’n’Bats

It’s hard to quarrel with Gray’s characterization of what it’s like to be a cat. But we can extend his findings in an interesting way by noticing that every one of these claims about cats is true of, say, rats, as well; not to mention bats, donkeys, goats, hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, horses, guinea pigs, weasels, otters, reindeer, moose, mice, grizzly bears, giraffes, rhinos, salmon, humming birds, chipmunks, chickens, chickadees, sparrows, cobras, parrots, llamas, ground hogs, and quite possibly dolphins… As far as we know, none of these creatures engage in philosophical reflection. None question the meaning of life. Not being ‘ruled by words’, each simply does what comes naturally. And so none are plagued by angst, or act so perversely as to kill or die in the hope of achieving immortality. Most of these creatures spend much of their life in instinctive behaviour. And for the most part, each thinks of death only when it is immediately upon them (p.99).

Cats are therefore in fact quite tangential to Gray’s entire project in this book. Since cats are not different in kind from countless other alien life-forms with whom we share this planet in any respect that’s crucial to Gray’s analysis, cats themselves apparently have little distinctive to teach us, if anything. The good news for Gray is that there are therefore countless further volumes waiting to be written that can further corroborate his striking conclusions (Murine Philosophy: Rats and the Meaning of Life, anyone?).

So a lot of what Gray observes in cats can readily be found elsewhere. For example, cat lovers are endlessly intrigued by why humans find cats so adorable, and why we’re willing to make great sacrifices for creatures that, in many ways, give us back so little in return (as compared with dogs, for example.) For this Gray argues that we love being with cats because humans have a deep and basic need to connect with something other than the human world (pp.18, 26). But by this reasoning, we should also love spending time with all other creatures, such as rats or maybe cockroaches. The fact that we don’t cries out for an explanation that is not given here. Similarly, Gray’s account as to why people have worshipped cats throughout history as gods (or demons), is that they live according to their own nature (p.99-100). But this again begs the question as to why rats and all the rest are not worshipped in a similar way.

Ferocious predator preparing to attack

Kitten Ksphotofive 2021 Public Domain

Gray further argues that humans have traditionally filled their lives by seeking diversions that shield us from awareness of our own mortality and the fundamental meaninglessness of existence (pp.37, 93-95). Distractions of this sort – including the practice of philosophy – may provide some temporary relief, but ultimately they backfire and succeed only in multiplying our sorrows (p.35). Gray insists that cats themselves, however, are not just another distraction. Rather, they possess the power to heal us by offering not only a “respite from thought” (p.43) – the kind of thought associated with the type of self-consciousness that’s the source of human wretchedness – but also, and more strikingly, a release of sorts from the very state of ‘being human’ (p.43). Again, though: why, then, don’t rats possess this remarkable power too? Why don’t rats offer another redemptive path towards self-transcendence? One shouldn’t for example simply claim that rats are easily dismissed as filthy flea-infested rodents, since, just like cats, rats can be cleaned up and domesticated. Besides, Gray shows virtually no interest in the bodies of cats; either in what they look like, or in what it feels like to snuggle up close to one. So if we can be healed by connecting with alien organisms, maybe the lesson here is that we should overcome our superficial prejudices and learn to love hanging out with rats, and integrate them into our lives. For another instance, Gray claims that cats provide us with “a glimpse of life before the [Edenic] Fall” (p.42) – a portal, if you will, into a world beyond suffering. Rats inhabit a somewhat different garden, but aren’t the inhabitants of that garden also innocent? And so doesn’t the world of rats beckon us with its own unique array of tantalizing temptations and otherworldly delights? As the Good Book says, “In my Father’s house there are many rooms.”

These sort of questions are not discussed by Gray in any fashion whatever, so there’s a truly prodigious research program waiting to be undertaken by subsequent generations working in Gray’s zoological shadow.

Thinking About Not Thinking

Gray’s spiritual challenge to humanity runs deeper yet. It’s not enough, according to him, that we should gaze lovingly at the world of cats from afar. We gain life not only by liking cats; we must also strive, as best we can, to ‘become cat-like’ (p.69). Living well, for humans, means ‘living like a cat’ (p.111). So despite our endemic misery, the good life can still be achieved if only we quash our humanity and learn to live as cats do. Gray writes, “The good life is not the life you want but one in which you are fulfilled” (p.107) – and you can fulfill yourself only by losing yourself in some kind of imperfect communion with a being who is profoundly unlike you. To find life, or salvation, you first must die.

This sounds like mysticism to me. But like any brand of mysticism, this stance is rife with mystery, and, like many mysteries, is fuelled by a variety of paradoxes (others might less charitably speak here of flat-out contradictions). The following two paradoxes promise to provide especially fertile ground for future research into something that, like cats themselves, appears to lie beyond the realm of ordinary human understanding.

First: since it’s obvious to most people that ‘humans cannot become cats’ (p.2), Gray at times counsels us merely to become just ‘a little more like a cat’ (p.110). So incremental change of this sort is deemed to be acceptable. But presumably we still have to make hard choices about how best to achieve even this more modest goal. This in turn means that we must contemplate alternative courses of action, and make judgments about the probable consequences of the various choices. But as Gray has already told us, cats do not engage in this sort of reasoning. So Gray seems to be saying, use your human skills to figure out how to undermine your humanity and become more like a cat. He is in effect telling us to employ reflexive consciousness as a means of renouncing reflexive consciousness! One can be forgiven for thinking that this strategy sounds a little self-defeating. It resembles what utilitarians refer to as ‘the Paradox of Hedonism’: Strategic reasoning informs us that the best way to achieve happiness is to stop reasoning strategically about how best to achieve happiness. Here Gray rightly appeals to Pascal’s sensible discussion about the pivotal role that ritual plays in acquiring faith (p.36): If you want to become a believer, or a cat, start by acting like one.

But a second, more worrisome apparent inconsistency arises out of this first paradox.

Rat pressing a lever to take a selfie

Rat selfie by Augustin Lignier 2021 Public Domain

As we’ve seen, Gray apparently arbitrarily privileges cats over other species that are not relevantly different in kind. So if we have reason to become more cat-like, we have just as compelling a reason to become more like a rat. There are countless other species in the running as well: donkeys, goats, hamsters, chipmunks, rabbits, and so on. With which of these many creatures, then, should we best seek a more fulsome communion? This choice is hardly inconsequential, as each species is unique, and so each choice will carry a distinctive set of costs and benefits. It’s hard to believe that we could sensibly resolve this issue without closely monitoring and evaluating what tends to happen to people when they try to live more like a cat, or a rat, or a grizzly bear. Yet because they don’t do philosophy, cats themselves have no interest in the question ‘Should I strive to be more like a cat than a rat?’, and so becoming more like a cat will not help you in deciding how best to deliberate about the best way to rein in human deliberation. We simply can’t seriously engage with this question without imagining what it would be like to become more like a cat, or a rat, or a grizzly bear.

Gray explicitly acknowledges this. Cats do not tell themselves stories, because they cannot. Humans, on the other hand, “cannot help making their lives into a story” (p.38). These ‘inventions’ invariably ‘take over’ and yield miserable and delusional lives that no longer ‘belong’ to us (p.105). Accordingly, “whereas cats live by following their nature, humans live by suppressing theirs” (p.22). “The human animal never ceases striving to be something that it is not” (p.2). And stories are the ineffectual means by which we “try to be happy by escaping [our]selves” (p.25). Therefore, as a human, you can try to live as, say, a cat – you can try to escape from yourself – only by telling yourself a delusional story about who you are and what it would be like to live as a cat. Paradoxically, then, it’s in your nature to tell yourself a story about yourself that denies your true nature. And paradoxically, then, that same inescapable activity of self-reflection that most fundamentally causes suffering also miraculously offers a release from suffering! In effect, Gray imagines that he can tell a coherent story about living well that does involves not telling a story.

This may be both mysterious and insightful. Or the truth may be far more straightforward. Perhaps trying to conform to a story about what it would be like to become more like a cat doesn’t actually make us any less human, or any more like a cat. Maybe any story about cats is only just another very human distraction that can only compound our inevitable misery. And maybe a bewildered and beleaguered human trying to become more like a cat can never be anything other than a bewildered and beleaguered human trying to become more like a cat.

© Mark Vorobej 2025

Mark Vorobej is a retired Canadian philosophy professor who can be reached at vorobej@mcmaster.ca.

• Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life, John Gray, Penguin, 2020, £9.99 pb, 128 pages

Books

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

B.V.E. Hyde ponders the point of Jordan Peterson.

For the majority of his career, Jordan Peterson was, like most academics, a relatively minor public personality. He started to appear sporadically on local television about twenty years ago, and his first book, Maps of Meaning (1999), barely sold a hundred copies. His rise to fame came in 2016 when he began to publicly criticize the Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code (Bill C-16), passed by the Parliament of Canada to introduce ‘gender identity and expression’ as prohibited grounds for discrimination. Peterson argued that it constituted compelled speech (though some legal scholars denied this interpretation). Compelled speech, Peterson was convinced, was a step too far towards totalitarianism. As Neil McLaughlin argues in Society (vol. 58, 2021), what caused his fame to last were the six different roles he came to play in the public eye: political provocateur, academic researcher, media entrepreneur, therapist, father figure, and spiritual leader. Peterson’s two recent books, presenting in total twenty-four ‘rules for life’, are only incidentally related to his rise to prominence. It was his fame that made the books, not the other way around. This is not to say that the books are no good, only that the world of publishing is complicated. However, each of the rules might be traced to one of his six personas, and his lasting popularity has more to do with his books than with his initial rise to fame.

Both books are something like self-help books, but in this regard they are most unusual, for they are too philosophical to fit comfortably in that genre. The first book is subtitled An Antidote to Chaos (2018), the second is titled, Beyond Order (2021), and these show the major respect in which they differ. The former focusses on the dangers one faces from too much chaos (which is feminine), and the latter on the malign effects of excessive order (which is masculine). For Peterson, who is at heart a Jungian psychologist, both order and chaos are fundamental elements of human experience, and an individual’s psychology is determined by the balance between them. Pathologies result from their imbalance. The overall problem Dr Peterson tackles in his work is that of existential nihilism and its psychological effects, such as angst, dread, and most importantly, depression. Suffering is, he thinks, an unavoidable part of the human condition: “Suffering is built into the structure of being”, he says (in this respect he is quite Buddhist). He also thinks that “we all have a palpable sense of the chaos lurking under everything familiar” and that, if it goes unchecked, “the forces of tyranny expand inexorably.”

Too much focus on the problems he tackles will inevitably result in a pessimistic view of Peterson. That is possibly why in the Los Angeles Review of Books (8 March 2018), Houman Barekat describes Peterson’s work as “an ugly, mean-spirited treatise against human kindness.” Indeed, what is positive about his work is not his picture of the human condition – it is what we are capable of achieving despite it.

In fact, Peterson’s general concern is the same as the French-Algerian philosopher and novelist Albert Camus, who opened his book The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) with the assertion that “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” When faced with the meaninglessness of the world, Camus said we have three choices. First, we could succumb to the absurdity of it all and kill ourselves. However, this, he thought, was contradictory, for it is to admit that life is too much, and so affirm the very absurdity you’re trying to escape from. Instead, we might take a Kierkegaardian ‘leap of faith’, and believe in spite of it all that life is meaningful. But this, according to Camus, is ‘philosophical suicide’. Finally – and this is the route endorsed by Camus – we can revolt against the absurdity by affirming life. Revolting is ‘the contrary of renunciation’, and it is through this that Camus says that we can ‘give life value’.

Peterson says the same thing. In his opinion, it is a “suicidal gesture” to shrink away from the absurdity of life; moreover, we are in dire need of “the meaning inherent in a profound system of value, or the horror of existence rapidly becomes paramount” (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos). So it is existential meaning, that is, a profound system of value, which prevents us from falling into hopeless despair. Our only choice, then, is to revolt against the absurdity of existence. To continue to live in the face of the meaninglessness of life is what it means to be a tragic hero. And our everyday heroism in the face of suffering makes us “low-resolution versions of God” (ibid).

A vital connexion between personal responsibility and existential meaning is drawn by Peterson in one of his rules: to “stand up straight with your shoulders back” is to “accept the terrible responsibility of life”. So once again like Camus, Peterson finds meaning in our choice-making, asserting that “free choice matters” in our striving towards meaning. “Everyone falls short of the glory of God”, he further says: nevertheless, “you have some vital role to play in the unfolding destiny of the world” (ibid). That role is to “help direct the world… a bit more toward Heaven” – which is achieved by balancing order and chaos, predictability and unpredictability. Then you may find “Meaning, with a capital M”, which will “well up from the most profound depths of your Being” and you can once again “walk with God in the Garden”, for it is by living well that we can “atone for our sinful nature” (ibid).

Peterson is clear that meaning comes from striving, not obtaining, and says that “to have meaning in your life is better than to have what you want”. But by meaning he does not mean happiness. “Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable. It’s not something to aim at – because it’s not an aim. And if happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure” (ibid). If a person is to achieve happiness at all, they must first pursue meaning, for which they must “conduct his or her life in a manner that requires the rejection of immediate gratification, of natural and perverse desires alike” (ibid).

Peterson maintains that these facts of life can be observed in chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis, “a narrative sequence almost unbearable in its profundity.” Peterson, views the Garden of Eden as representing order, and the Serpent as chaos. That there was evil even in the Garden shows that “nothing can be completely walled off,” for “we have seen the enemy, after all, and he is us… No walls, however tall, will keep that out” (ibid). Nevertheless, the prelapsarian world was too orderly, in that man was not yet conscious of himself. Ignorance is the price of such order. To be human is to be conscious: in the Fall man became fully human. It catapulted us “out of infancy, out of the unconscious animal world, into the horrors of history itself.” For Peterson the Fall was not wholly bad, for a world without evil, without strife, represents “permanent human infantilism and absolute uselessness.”

Eden by Jan Breugel and Peter Rubens 1615

Peterson does not write in philosophic proofs or mathematical formulae, but in metaphors and analogies. His books stand out as being genuinely interesting to read, rather than merely having interesting ideas. The ideas that he does advance in them are, ultimately, optimistic. He has been misrepresented as pessimistic and political but when he is political, he is sensible. He’s not the ‘far right favourite’ Cynthia Miller-Idriss makes him out to be in Hate in the Homeland: The New Global Far Right (2020). But that his self-help advice is almost commonsensical is really what accounts for the appeal of his books. He writes forcefully for self-development propositions which are largely unremarkable, and, at bottom, totally agreeable. That is not to detract from the excellence of his work; on the contrary, it is his realism about the human condition, his optimism about how to transcend it, and the simplicity of his injunctions that provide a route to a psychologically healthier place, at a time when the world itself seems to have gone mad in its complexity. This makes Jordan B. Peterson a significant contemporary intellectual.

© B.V.E. Hyde 2025

B.V.E. Hyde is a researcher in philosophy at the University of Bristol and Bangor University. A prolific reviewer of books, he has written more than sixty for academic journals and magazines.

• 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan B. Peterson, Allen Lane, 2018, 448 pp., £25.00 hb

• Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life, Jordan B. Peterson, Allen Lane, 2021; 432 pp., £25.00 hb

Classics

The Republic by Plato

In Classics, Hilarius Bogbinder reviews Plato’s Republic.

You may never have heard of Aristocles (428-347 BCE). Well, not under that name, anyway. But if you were reading the sports pages in the (non-existent) Greek newspapers of around 420 BCE, you would know as an eminent wrestler. Indeed, he won the Isthemian Games in this sport, and also had strong feelings about this particular martial art. Like many a purist (then as well as now), he was none too pleased with wrestling when it was all a show; he was also pretty old-school, and praised “the legitimate manoeuvres of regular wrestling – extricating the neck and hands and sides from entanglement” (Laws, 281). He returned to his sport later in life, once he had become an established writer, and he wasn’t a fan of the new, showier type of this most ancient of martial arts: introducing ‘boxing devices’ was ‘absolutely useless’; and such antics, the former champion fighter declared, “don’t merit the honour of being described” (Ibid).

The wrestler who wrote these comments was known for being exceptionally broad shouldered. The Greek word for ‘broad’ is platys – so, his contemporaries called him ‘Plato’, and that’s how we know him today.

Plato was many other things besides being sporty. Born into an aristocratic family, he harboured ambitions of becoming an author of the tragic plays of which the Greeks were so fond. Yet once he became as one of the most gifted writers of the philosophical canon, Plato did not have much time for comedians –perhaps because some of the comic playwrights of his time had mocked his beloved mentor Socrates. That great man was portrayed as a farting buffoon in Aristophanes’ The Clouds. Perhaps then it was the mocking portrayal in plays that led Plato to denounce poets and playwrights in his magnum opus The Republic (c.375 BCE), and to suggest, rather illiberally, that “the only forms of poetry we are to allow to our [ideal] state are hymns to the gods” (Republic 607a). Plato was at least consistent in his intolerance: a biographical sketch of him reads that he ‘consigned his poems to the fire’ (Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laertius, Book III, 281).

The Greek title of The Republic is Politeia, which is more accurately, but less eloquently, translated as ‘The Conditions and Rights of Citizens’, or what the Romans would call civitas. But thanks to Cicero (106-43 BC), who idolised Plato, it has become known as The Republic. The English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) famously wrote that “the safest characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists in a series of footnotes to Plato” (Process and Reality, p.39, 1929). But he might have specified it even further, and said that Western philosophy is a series of responses to The Republic. Written in Plato’s so-called ‘middle-period’, after he had set up his famous Academy, the book covers ethics (‘How should one live?’), metaphysics (‘What is the world?’), and epistemology (‘How do we know?’) – in short, all the major fields of philosophy. Yet, as the title implies, the book, at least superficially, concerns the art of government. However, the ideal state, the kallipolis (kallos means ‘beautiful’ in Greek) the book depicts, only comes up as an illustration by Socrates within a longer discussion with Glaucon and Adeimantus (who in real life were Plato’s older brothers). And as much as subsequent writers have denounced Plato for being a totalitarian proto-fascist in The Republic – above all Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945) – Socrates is vague as to whether he believed it actually feasible to implement his ideal, of a government of those who ‘love to observe the truth’ (Republic 475e).

Aristocles or ‘Plato’, by Ron Schepper

In The Republic, the model state is, so to say, the soul writ large. For Socrates, “everything to which a function is assigned has an excellence” (Republic 353b). This means that if each of the three parts of its soul (or mind) perform their function then the soul has aretê (excellence or virtue). To do this, the rational part of the mind – the logistikon – must steer the spirited part (thymoeides) and the desiring part (epithymetikon). Plato had originally developed this metaphor in his shorter dialogue Phaidros, where the soul was compared to a ‘winged charioteer’ (Phaidros 246b) which steered a pair of horses – one ‘of noble stock and the other the opposite in every way’ (246b). But in Politeia Plato elaborates, and suggests that these three parts are also found at the larger level in the ideal state. Thus, the logistikon is equivalent to its ‘philosopher kings’, and the spirited part synonymous with the guardians – the protectors of the state – who keep the lustful (‘desiring’) mob in place.

Controversially, Plato suggests that the mob must be kept ignorant, and that “our government will have to use frequent doses of lies and deception for the benefit of their subjects” (459d). (Plato uses the word pharmakon to imply that these lies are a necessary medicine) So far, so reactionary. Yet, progressively, the rulers who administer this golden lie ‘drug’ should be of both sexes: “There is no job among those who serve the state which is given to a woman because she is a woman, nor any to a man because he is a man; the natural aptitudes are distributed similarly between the two sexes.” (455d)

Some commentators believe that Plato’s journey to Syracuse to advise Dion, the brother-in-law of that city-state’s ruler, was an attempt to turn The Republic’s polity into reality. Certainly, as he wrote in the Seventh Letter, his pupil was “a more enthusiastic convert to my views than any young man I have ever met.” Yet the advice he gave Dion was rather different from that outlined in Politeia, and closer to that of Plato’s Statesman – namely, that “statesmanship is… management by consent” (Statesman, 276e). In any case, Plato was a failure as a political consultant. Briefly enslaved, he only regained his freedom when a fellow philosopher paid 30 Minas – the equivalent of half a million pounds in today’s money – for his liberty. Plato then returned to Athens and established his Academy.

In Politeia, Socrates openly stresses “the state we have been founding exists in words only”, and goes on, “I don’t think it exists anywhere on earth” (592b). However, he also stresses, “there is a model up in heaven for anyone willing to look” (592b). This is crucial for understanding Plato’s philosophy. For the truth is something of a higher order. This ultimate reality is encapsulated in Plato’s famous Theory of Forms. The forms are the ideals (the Greek is eidos) to which we subconsciously compare the things in the visible world, of which the things we see are only ever imperfect imitations. For instance, we compare a chair to some higher ideal of this item of furniture, namely its form or ideal. It follows from this that those who paint a picture of a chair (Plato’s own example) are creating something which is even further removed from the ‘real’ reality, the ideal of the chair. This, as it happens, is the cause of Plato’s dislike of artists who imitate the world.

The relationship between ultimate reality and mundane appearance is explained in The Republic’s famous Allegory of the Cave. Here, prisoners chained up in a cave mistake shadows cast on the wall opposite them for real people, and only occasionally see the proverbial light (515a, ff). Or in another image, which his interlocutor describes as one he ‘understands but not fully’ (511d), Socrates asks us to “Imagine a line cut in two [and then] to take [the] two segments and cut each one in the same ratio, one for the invisible class, the other for the intelligible. Now take these four functions, understanding [of the Forms] at the highest, [normal] thought at the second, belief at the third, and [artificial] images at the bottom” (511e). All this is rather abstract, as even Plato admits. Yet none other than the Uncertainty Principle’s Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) declared himself a Platonist: “I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favour of Plato,” he wrote – and went on to say that the “smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense, they are forms” (Natural Law and the Structure of Matter, p.34, 1967).

Plato’s overall aim for The Republic is to define justice. For Plato, to act justly is to identify the form or ideal nature of Justice, and act accordingly. Yet, Socrates, and perhaps Plato, is not consistent about justice: at the beginning of The Republic to be just is valued ‘for its own sake’ (358a); but fast forward to the last of its ten books, and those who act justly are rewarded in the afterlife.

As with any great work of literature, Politeia contains perceptive asides and acute observations – such as, ‘no study pursued under compulsion remains rooted’ (536e). It even has its fair share of humour, like ‘idleness… make people full of wind like emissions from the swamp’ (405d). Possibly the greatest mind of all times was happy to tell a fart joke perhaps because “jokes which you would yourself be ashamed to make… [are ones] which you will be very pleased to hear” (405d).

However, it’s the political observations which are the most insightful. Certainly, Plato was no lover of democracy. In fact, he maintained that a benign aristocracy was better than a democracy – but that democracy was preferable to tyranny. A sociologist as well as a philosopher, Plato’s description of the decay of democracy and the birth of tyranny is a perceptive as it is accurate, and still relevant 2450 years after it was penned. At a time when law courts are used as political battlegrounds, we might well be wary when Plato describes the prelude to the final days of democracy as when “arise impeachments, prosecutions, and trials directed by each party at each other” (565d).

Plato posited that democracies turn into dictatorships because citizens crave recognition. More specifically, when citizens feel that the politicians or elites ‘had been unjust to them’, their ‘spirit’ would start ‘boiling’, and they would “select a special champion for their cause, whom they maintain and exalt to greatness” (565b). This individual, the demagogue, “will promise largely in public… [but] in private… make grants of land … to his own” (565e). Soon the people will realise that their chosen leader is a tyrant who will “find an excuse to get rid of… the free thinking individuals” (567). Then “The government will henceforth be an open and avowed tyranny; and according to the proverb, the commons, flying from the frying-pan of the service of free men, will have fallen into the fire of a despotism exercised by slaves. In other words, they will have exchanged that vast and unseasonable liberty for the new dress of the harshest and bitterest of all slaveries” (569a). Maybe it’s reassuring then that a survey showed that The Republic is the most studied book in the top universities in the US (‘The most popular required reading at America’s top 10 colleges’, Abby Jackson, Business Insider, 5 Feb, 2016).

© Hilarius Bogbinder 2025

Hilarius Bogbinder is a Danish-born writer and translator. He studied politics and theology at Oxford University and lives in London.

Music

The Beatles: Nothing is Real

Clinton Van Inman gets back to the psychedelic Sixties.

“It was more than sixty years ago today when Sgt Pepper taught the band to play.” Well, that’s not quite right. Sgt Pepper wasn’t the band’s first album, and it even came a few years after the Beatles’ breakthrough U.S. appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Still, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Band marked a turn for John Lennon and Paul McCartney towards a more philosophical style of songwriting. The world has never been the same since. Their songs still reverberate throughout the ages like no others, with lyrics laced with profound thoughts on themes of peace, freedom, authenticity, alienation, protest, and love. Most people have never read or even heard of Kant or Hegel, but most know some Beatles slogans, like ‘Let it Be’ or ‘All you need is Love’. Though not deemed philosophers in the traditional sense, their ideas contribute much to popular thought especially popular existentialism. Their songs are an attempt to crawl out of our modern dead end of absurdity, meaningless, and doubt, to perhaps find something more than ‘misunderstanding all you see’ (Strawberry Fields Forever).

Almost every Beatles song can be interpreted philosophically, but my favourite album (along with millions of other fans) has always been Magical Mystery Tour (1967). This album has been banned, criticized, ridiculed, and censored so much it’s amazing that it has survived.

Paul McCartney by Clint Van Inman

Like its name, it remains a most baffling album. It’s about a tour bus travelling about England, and it provides a delightful odyssey – but not like Homer, more like Monty Python! Deep down it is a search for meaning – but nothing really happens except the hope of finding a new place. The journey has no end, no purpose, only the hope of finding something magical. And we are all on a tour in a similar sense: a journey to we know not where. We are not sure where the bus is going or when it will stop. I can imagine someone sitting in the back of the bus saying “Just sit back and enjoy the ride!” The best we can hope for is that we can find love on the way.

The movie of the same name was a disaster, but the album has perhaps the best songs of the Beatles. John Lennon said that Strawberry Fields Forever was the finest song he ever wrote. In particular, the lyrics, “Let me take you down, cause I’m going through Strawberry Fields, Nothing is real, and nothing to be hung about” have puzzled fans for generations.

Interpreted philosophically, I think they offer insights into reality. Philosophers since Thales (sixth century BCE) have been on a quest to find the underlying nature of reality, or to put it another way, what the world is made of. Thales himself thought that the ultimate nature of the physical world was water; Anaximander then said it was air. Democritus deemed reality to be made of atoms; Parmenides meanwhile said it was Being itself. Plato believed the really real to be his Forms or Ideas. Much later, Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) said the world was made of monads – individual entities that mirror the rest of the world; then Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) said that ultimate reality was Will. Now everything is believed to ultimately be forces, fields, and energy. The quest continues… until one realizes that ‘nothing is real’ – the physical world is all a big construct. No use knocking your head against a wall ‘misunderstanding all that you see’, as there is ‘nothing to get hung about’. From the dreamlike perspective of Strawberry Fields Forever there are no absolute truths, only possibilities – where anything is possible.

John Lennon by Clint Van Inman

Pop Goes Philosophy

John Lennon was no egghead, only ‘the eggman’ (I Am The Walrus). But it still amazes me how the Beatles could turn complex philosophical ideas into simple, enchanting lyrics. In this way, the Beatles helped create a new venue for thought. Coupled with their dreamlike music, the Beatles have expanded the philosophical audience into popular culture. But for them philosophy was not reserved for the classroom and the chalkboard, but was rooted in experience: ‘Life is not a puzzle to be solved, but a life to be lived,’ I think is the fundamental message. Not words to support some theory, but words of wisdom to live by. Indeed, the Beatles offered words of hope and joy to live by.

With the Beatles, popular philosophy evolved to new heights. In the previous generation, the existentialists Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus had changed the philosophical landscape by writing novels. But now the Beatles, along with the likes of Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and many others, turned rock’n’roll into a philosophical adventure – some of which is even taught now in Philosophy 101. ‘Nothing you can think cannot be thunk’.

The final track on the Magical Mystery Tour album is a song that epitomizes the Beatles’ philosophy: ‘All You Need is Love’. This is a simple song with a simple message, but it’s the hardest of words to live by. But even if “it’s been a hard day’s night, and you’ve been working like a dog”, still, “We can work it out”!

At the end of ‘All You Need is Love’ we hear the optimistic words, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done. All you need is love, love, love is all you need…” The song then fades away, into a dreamlike state. John said that, “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality. And finally ‘in the end the love you take is equal to the love we make’.” (The End, from Abbey Road, 1969).

© Clinton Van Inman 2025

Clinton Van Inman was born in England, raised in North Carolina, graduated SDSU with a degree in philosophy, and is now retired and living in Florida with his wife Elba.

Fiction

- The Epistemology Professor Losing it in Cincinnati

- Me, me, me?

Poetry

The Epistemology Professor Losing it in Cincinnati

by Paul Dickey

About the third time, Dad told Mom,

who was driving the car:

“Exit at Highway 27, coming up

in a half mile.” She said, “I know.”

“I know that you know; I am saying it over

and over because I cannot know that you know.”

Once again, Dad didn’t know what

he was saying. He should know better.

He had a degree in the field. He was

always telling me when I came home

after curfew that a proposition cannot

meaningfully state its negative.

One cannot, he would explain, propose

in meaningful discourse, the statement

‘This proposition is false’ – for if it

were false, it would then be true,

or if true, it would be false.

I told him that I hadn’t meant to lie,

but it never mattered.

I knew I was grounded.

In the night, he could see the road map

only when lights flashed randomly

through the side windows.

Later, when we got to the hotel,

he would explain what he meant:

the duplicity of meaning over the term

know, and the failure of the constructs

of propositional logic to express the human.

He will write a paper for The Philosophical Review.

To me, it was only my lost father,

still in the dark, his raised voice sounding

like screaming, speaking his no.

© Paul Dickey 2025

Paul Dickey’s book of poetry, Anti-Realism in Shadows and Suppertime, was released in September 2022. In the past year he has also released a volume of flash fiction, What My Characters Should Have Said, and a poetry chapbook A Reading of Dali (Likely Misunderstood) Which in Twenty Meters Becomes This Poet’s Self-Portrait.

Fiction

Me, me, me?

Benjamin George Coles finds himself.

So I saw a guy on the bus who looked uncannily like me. Really exactly like me, in fact. I was kind of freaked out. What do you do in that situation? I think if I’d been in a better place mentally, or even just a bit more in the habit of talking to people, I would have approached the guy, remarked on the bizarre extent of our resemblance, maybe asked a few friendly questions. But I happened to be sitting at the back of the bus, and he was near the middle and hadn’t noticed me, and it was easier to just stay put, keep my head down, and stare at him as he got off by the town hall.

Then I saw a few more of them about – guys who looked exactly like me. One passed me in the street. I noticed him first because of his extraordinarily flamboyant clothing: purple bell bottoms and a tight, yellow V-neck, plus an orange, tie-dyed headband and a large dandelion behind one ear. He was on the phone and seemed irritated. Another doppelganger I found in the supermarket, looking through the ready meals section, this time dressed (mercifully) in a fairly standard suit. Then there were the two in the bar, deep in conversation over beers… I didn’t even notice what they were wearing, I just quietly left.

I did some research, and found there’s a company in South Korea that’s mass-producing me now. I won’t deny I was a bit perturbed upon making this discovery; but, well, I’m a fairly chill guy, and I didn’t have much get-up-and-go back then; and anyway, what can you do?

Of course I felt differently after my on-again-off-again girlfriend started dating one of them – although, in her defence, we were very definitely off again at that point. And then my acquiescence was tested yet further when I was sacked from my soul-destroying IT job and I found out a few weeks later that they’d employed one in my place! Then, not long after that, my parents arranged to go on holiday with one of them! Well, that really was the last straw.

I wrote a furious email to that company in South Korea. I didn’t get a reply. To be honest, I was rather rude. I wouldn’t have replied to such an email either.

For a while I had forlorn fantasies of leading the many mes on a great trip to Seoul to protest outside the company’s HQ, MLK-style. It was never gonna happen. How we would raise the money to get us all out there was one question; but also, the others didn’t show signs of being particularly discontented in their lives… So instead I just sort of moped about.

I was moping down by the quay on one occasion, and one of them jogged past me. He was kitted out in all the proper jogging gear, and he looked in great shape. I suppose I got a bit of a buzz from that – seeing myself looking so trim. So I called after him. Turned out he was serious about football – serious in a way I’d never been, despite my love of the game. I mean, he was a pro, had made it as far as the third division, and was playing centre mid for a club that was pushing for promotion. I’d always played centre mid too. Out of interest, I went along to one of his games. He absolutely bossed it, man. I went along to another, then another. Soon I was in with the ultras, happily screaming abuse at opposition players.

It was around then that I started receiving government benefits on mental health grounds, which meant I didn’t have the worry of finding work. So yeah, a space sort of opened up in my life, and I filled it with… well, with me, I guess. Ha ha. I mean I got interested in what all these other mes were up to. I started talking to them whenever I saw them. There was a me – one of the first ones I approached – who was doing a PhD in entomology. I didn’t even know what entomology was: the study of insects, apparently. This guy could talk for hours about how much we have to learn from termites. There was a paramedic me! Who, as he liked to emphasise and repeat a little more than was perhaps strictly necessary, saved lives day-in-day-out. Though I have to say he had an alarming habit of getting drunk whenever off duty – which I think explained, in part, that rather boastful streak.

I tracked down that flamboyantly dressed me. Wasn’t too difficult. He was running a struggling Sixties-themed café called Across the Universe. Part of the deal there was you were only allowed in if you were wearing flowers in your hair. I admired how he stuck with that policy, even though it cost him much-needed business. Then there was an accountant me, who, in his free time, worked with this group disrupting illegal fox hunts at country estates. You should have seen him, charging down gun-toting horse-riding plutocrats armed with nothing but a camera phone! When I asked him why he was an accountant, of all things, he said, “What can I say, I love numbers, it’s like doing sudoku puzzles for a living.” That made a lot of sense to me. Who doesn’t love a good sudoku? Oh, and there was an Uber driver me who also did early morning shifts at a bakery. He was a single father, struggling to provide for his three kids, who were simply the sweetest bunch you ever met. All doing so well at school and so supportive of their dad! Sometimes the oldest one would go and do the early bakery shift in his place – and she was only fifteen. Looked a lot like me, too.

And there was a tour guide me! And he was rubbish! Absolute rubbish! I kid you not. I went on one of his tours of the town centre: he had half his facts wrong, and hardly told any of the great stories about the plague years and the civil war and all that. He wouldn’t have got away with it if the other members of the tour group weren’t all clueless foreigners. I approached him about it afterwards, and he was initially quite angry and defensive, but then he changed tone, almost broke down, in fact, and said it wasn’t his bag at all, local history – he just couldn’t get any other job. I felt for the guy. I took him to the pub and started telling him some of the ghost stories about the old hospital building that’s now an upmarket apartment complex. We’ve kind of made a regular thing of it since then. We’ll meet up once or twice a week, and I’ll try to convey some bits of local folklore or trivia to him. He thinks I have it all in my head, but truth be told, I often do a bit of research in advance. And you know, I’ve always been an early riser, so I’ve also taken to sometimes helping out with the bakery shift for Uber driver me; or sometimes even, now that I’ve got the hang of it, just doing it myself – I mean, when it’s the daughter who turns up, I of course tell her to go home, get a bit more shut-eye before school. And from the bakery it seems natural enough to go on to Across the Universe with a batch of fresh rolls and pastries – which have, I think, started drawing a few more brunch customers, who thankfully seem more up for the flowers-in-your-hair thing than the after-work crowd. I’ve been introduced to so much great hippy music through that place. If you don’t know Tim Buckley’s second album Goodbye and Hello already, do yourself a favour, give it a listen! I tell you, they knew how to make music in those days.

I’m also trying to help the paramedic me get off the bottle. Feels like that should be a priority. I’ve tried various things – took him to a bunch of football games, an entomology conference, and on a couple of outings with the hunt-disrupting group. That’s the biggest winner so far. It appeals to the hero in him, I suppose. And he and accountant me have hit it off pretty well. In fact, paramedic me is also into his sudoku, and, in the back of the minibus on the way back from a disruption last weekend I had the two of them race to see who could finish five of the things first. I swear accountant me had it by only a matter of seconds in the end.

I recently bumped into my old girlfriend and the me she effectively left me for. We ended up having dinner together, the three of us, and by the end of it, I’d realised he’s probably a better fit for her. Certainly he’s a decent enough chap. At times, it was quite touching, seeing the way they were together. There was a lightness between them that maybe my poor mental health had made impossible with me.

Perhaps seeking some comfort, I went to visit my parents the next day. They were really sweet, and I think a bit less clingy and passive aggressive than they’ve been at times in the past. It appears that, serendipitously, the shamefully small amount of time I give them, and the small amounts of time various other mes give them, add up to about the level of contact with their son that they want. They asked about my search for a new job. I laughed. Told them I’m fucking crazy, thank God: no work for me. And anyway my benefits are supplemented by occasional tips I’m getting as business picks up at Across the Universe. Yeah, Mum didn’t appreciate the curse word or the criminally undeclared income for that matter, but what can you do?

I found myself writing another email to South Korea the other day, this time essentially expressing my gratitude. It’s amazing how transformative their work has been in my life. I’m meeting new mes all the time – getting to know them, lending a hand where I can. I find I enjoy that, and it almost invariably leads to a hand being lent in return sooner or later. And now, occasionally, I’m even helping out non-mes.

Didn’t get a response to that email either. But writing it felt like an important milestone for me. I’m a lot happier than I was before.

© Benjamin George Coles 2025

Benjamin George Coles’ essays have appeared in The Philosopher, Film International and Bright Lights Film Journal, while his short stories have appeared in The London Magazine, Hobart, Erotic Review and Every Day Fiction, as well as in Italian translation in Turchese. He won the 2022 Crème Fraîche screenwriting competition at the Luxembourg City Film Festival, and his winning entry was turned into the 2023 short film A Place to Be.

Cartoons

- Harley Schwadron’s Cartoon

- Don’t Mill On It

- Phil Witte’s Cartoon

- Steve Delmonte’s Cartoon

- Simon & Finn

- Plato’s Noble Lie

Cartoon

Harley Schwadron’s Cartoon

by Harley Schwadron

© Harley Schwadron 2025

To see more, please visit schwadroncartoons.com.

Cartoon

Don’t Mill On It

by Juno Browning

© Juno Browning 2025

Cartoon

Phil Witte’s Cartoon

by Phil Witte

© Phil Witte 2025

Cartoon

Steve Delmonte’s Cartoon

by Steve Delmonte

© Steve Delmonte 2025

Please visit www.directoryofillustration.com/SteveDelmonte.

Cartoon

Simon & Finn

by Melissa Felder

© Melissa Felder 2025

Please visit simonandfinn.com.

Cartoon

Plato’s Noble Lie

A strip by Corey Mohler about Plato’s Noble Lie.

Plato in his Republic said that you basically had to come up with national myths and a ‘noble lie’ that would placate the uneducated population and make them do their duty to the city without really understanding why. Separately, one consequence of Plato’s theory of forms is that abstract concepts, such as numbers, ‘really’ exist in some sense. So “the concept of the number seven” exists independently of us, in the realm of forms.

© Corey Mohler 2025

Each week, Corey Mohler draws a new Existential Comics strip and posts it at existentialcomics.com.

Table of Contents

Philosophy Now: Aug/Sep 2025

Editorial

How Do You Know?

News

News: August/September 2025

Sources Of Knowledge

Xuanzang & the Gettier Problem

The Philosophical Method of Exception

Popper, Science & Democracy

Challenging the Objectivity of Science

Gödel, Wittgenstein, & the Limits of Knowledge

Articles

The Centennial of the Scopes ‘Monkey’ Trial

A Crisis of Attention

Weltschmerz and the World

The Meaning of a Good Life

What Makes A Work Of Art Great?

Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995)

Interviews

The Post-Truth Kerfuffle

Letters

Letters

Columns

Pharmaco-Metaphysics?

Susan Stebbing (1885-1943)

Philosophers on Newspapers

Nine Spiritual Exercises

Reviews

Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life by John Gray

12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos and Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson

The Republic by Plato

The Beatles: Nothing is Real

Fiction

The Epistemology Professor Losing it in Cincinnati

Me, me, me?

Cartoons

Harley Schwadron’s Cartoon

Don’t Mill On It

Phil Witte’s Cartoon

Steve Delmonte’s Cartoon

Simon & Finn

Plato’s Noble Lie