Dancing Tiresias

I've been swing dancing for about a year now, and from time to time I'll take classes as a follow - partially to learn the other side of the dance, and partially because we've had too many leads and I don't like standing around (btw, if any women or gender-role-dashing men want to come out and learn an awesome social dance, let me know). Because I've been on both sides of the swing-out, I started to notice something: the dance by and large doesn't come from the dancers.

When you look and see a really cool turn, you might think that the dancers are doing most of the work. But really, a lot of what is going on in dance class is learning to stop doing certain things - stop moving so much in a Lindy circle, stop cranking the follow's arm around, and so on. When I lead and I want my follow to do a certain turn, I simply lift their hand in a certain way. I thought that the follow was still doing most of the work. But then I tried following, and it felt like the lead was doing most of the work - I just followed a relatively simple direction, turned when I had to because of momentum, and kept my arm bent properly so as to keep both of us from getting injured.

So who was doing the work? No one, really. The lead gives a couple signals, the follow interprets a couple signals, both add in a couple things to keep the dance floor safe, but they aren't aware of most of what is going on in the dance. It happens. They are blind to the specific spins and twirls turning around them. A hand goes up, a foot goes forward, and there was a turn. They circle around, the hand supporting the back is removed, and the two are at opposite ends of a rubber band.

Momentum and music and the real dancers.

When we try to see what is going on, we miss it. It's already happening - we just need to know a few key touches to enter into the action. When we dance blindly, we see.

Metaphors and Particulars

What are particulars? I was thinking that the notion of a metaphor shares some similarities. What makes a metaphor, a metaphor? It is a word being used in a non-literal sense: that is, there is (1) the literal sense (the general rules and semantics of the language), (2) the current situational context, and (3) the interaction between them. A metaphor, qua metaphor, is the interaction and is not either of the interactors.

Similarly, a particular thing seems to be something existing between two different levels. Take a fire burning in front of me. On the one hand, it is a bunch of universal physical laws - it is an instantiation of heat, motion, release of energy, and so on. (Of course, this is tendentious, but I think that there are good reasons for assuming the reality of at least linguistic rules.) On this level, though, where is the particular? Everything is universal. There is also the situation: the fire is part of a context, warming a room, boiling water for tea, and so on. Yet again, however, we don't have a particular, since it all gets subsumed under the situation. The particular is something liminal, something appearing only as the general laws (like the overall language and its typical meaning) interact with the completely concrete situation (like the current paragraph, piece, or poem). Like metaphors, particulars have meaning as a real interaction, but are not some object existing outside of that.

Maybe, in addition, the interaction itself is produced by us - we mix things together. We take sights, sounds, smells, and tastes with a touch of reason and spin them together. So the problem of particulars arises because we exist on different levels and navigate them simultaneously, so we need some way in which they hold together for pragmatics.

The Problem of Potentiality

How do we explain change? Maybe we remember our basic physics classes in high school: there is an object, held up in the air (by our hand or by part of some hacked-together Rube Goldberg device). It has potential energy. Then it gets dropped, at which point the potential energy is converted to kinetic energy.

This is more or less the Aristotelian notion of change (yes, I know there are problems, but it's an illustration - work with me here). We can apply this to other forms of change as well. For example, an acorn falls to the ground and resists being eaten by a squirrel. It is nourished in the soil and in time becomes a rabbit. Wait - that makes no sense. Acorns become oak trees, not rabbits. Why? We say that the acorn is potentially an oak tree and not potentially a rabbit. It is not the oak tree yet, but this is a different sort of not-being than the way in which it is not a rabbit. In time it will actually be the oak tree, given whatever there is that actualizes its potential (nutriments in the soil, water, etc.). So things potentially are certain other things (or potentially have certain other states) which can be actualized in the right circumstances.

The Aristotelian analysis requires these to be separate principles - actuality and potentiality, and we might also say the form of something (as it actually is) together with its matter (what makes it up). Matter is potential to receive a form. This makes some intuitive sense - when something changes, it both becomes different and stays the same. If I eradicated the acorn and then put an oak tree in its place, we would not say that the acorn changed into the tree. But at the same time, if nothing ever was different, there would be no change either. So the form must in some way become different (accidentally or essentially) while the matter stays the same in order for change to occur.

But here's the problem: we can never refer to matter itself. We also refer to some arrangement of that matter. We can talk about the way the acorn is currently structured to talk about how it will turn into a tree. In fact, it is difficult to see what we would need beyond its current form to explain its later form. Potentiality and matter are just roundabout ways of talking of current form and actuality with reference to latter form and actuality. It is as if we had two different coordinate systems looking at the same reality, but with the twist that actuality seems to be prior. All talk of potentiality is talk of actuality in disguise. Actuality carries monetary value, while potentiality consists of written slips of paper for a set number of greenbacks. So let's get parsimonious.

How do we explain change without potentiality then? The problem might be in thinking of "form" and "actuality" as something static. Things don't stand still, though. Everything is already caught up in some network of force. Even the earth which seems still is in tension with itself, as we discover when a tsunami hits. The actuality at any given instance is directional (or "telic", if you will) - it is what it is *doing* rather than what it statically *is*. When we talk of the potentiality of the acorn to become an oak tree, what we mean is that, given that dynamic nature of the acorn's present form, it would naturally become an oak if it follows that trajectory. But that oak tree is not now real - it is merely a way of describing what is actual through a hopeful prediction of the future. The oak tree is a hypothesis which is not now actual, and perhaps will never be, but which helps to organize our experience in the meantime. It doesn't need any separate principle beyond the fact that the acorn is currently in a state of growing, of responding to the soil around it, etc.

Potentiality has a merely pragmatic status, not a metaphysical one. The real principle, which is singular, is dynamic activity. This is resolvable into the current state and its direction of force (matter and energy?), but only as a conceptual distinction. How is this not just a return to the Aristotelian system, then? Because "actuality" is not the current state abstracted from its potential, but is the dynamic activity itself. Likewise, the direction of force is not the potential, but is just as much the actuality of the thing. In addition, these two moments are not metaphysical principles, but requirements of our minds for understanding the world. It seems perfectly possible that a perfect intellect would not need these crutches. We experience change because of who we are just as much because of how the world is.

What are the implications of this? We can still talk of potential, it serves a perfectly good pragmatic purpose, but it doesn't carry any metaphysical weight. Things don't change because some external actualizer acts on them, but have their own intrinsic power of self-actualizing (at least when I try to talk about it in Aristotelian terms, which are inaccurate; it's the best I have at the moment, though, so I have to ask readers to put aside surface incongruities and look at the meaning of what I say).

Further, it makes it easier to talk about all things as interconnected. When you have substances, they each have their own integrity, and you have to explain how they influence each other. But with an analysis of dynamic activity, everything already is by its very nature (speaking of its own "nature" in a pragmatic sense) affecting everything else. Aristotle's system is leaning in this direction with its analysis of act, but I'm going a step further - everything is completely constituted by how it fits into the overall network of forces. That is primary, and the substantial stability is an epiphenomenon - not vice versa. Substance is an abstraction from Reality (Indra's Web, suchness, shunyata, however you want to put it), not the basis. It is a perfectly good abstraction for getting around the world, which is all most people need, but common sense makes for poor metaphysics.

This also makes more sense of contemporary science in matters such as inertia (things naturally continue a line of force, whether fast, slow, in motion, or in rest, rather than going to some "natural place") and gravity (things naturally tend toward a place set by their environment, not by their own natures). Directionality, force, and environment determine the intrinsic nature of a thing; it is not always something accidental and violent.

What is Democracy?

The recent problems in Wisconsin are raising the question, What exactly is Democracy? Is it simply going with the majority? That can't be right - we say that slavery was wrong, even when the majority would have chosen it. But what is it, then? What do we do when budget cuts cost people not just luxuries, but their livelihoods? How many people must be crushed underfoot before a regime has become undemocratic, and how does their pain compare with the "majority" opinion of what is to be done? If most public school teachers make too little to be able to afford benefit cuts and still eat, is that too many people hurt? How about if a quarter of them? The handful beginning their careers in Milwaukee? Do they only have rights if the rest of the state is informed enough to vote in their favor, to realize that these people asked to "tighten their belts like the rest of us" already chose a stricter lot simply in taking up their career, their service to a community which more than ever proves the need of education? Do they only have their lives if their "representatives" in Madison pay attention to economic realities? But why stop at these budget cuts - what about those who have had these problems all along, but never had the solidarity, the security, or the space to say anything? How many have gone unheeded all along, whose lives have been so consistently hampered that they have not been able to point to a law which would change it for the worse?

Democracy must be for the people. And when the people cannot give two seconds to think about their neighbor, when they cannot bring themselves to be informed, when they cannot turn and face the world in front of them beyond their fences, it must be against the majority.

Red

"First with regard to the knowledge of sense perception, whenever an object makes an impression on our normal sense organ by coming into contact with it, we may safely believe without any doubt that it is in reality as we perceived it, provided we are sufficiently expert not to be misled by illusions...." - Saadya Gaon

What does it mean to say that something is as we perceive it? This is a difficult issue, and I want to show just how difficult it is. Let's start off with the simplistic view: I am sitting in my chair and I see a red book in front of me. Therefore, barring hallucinations, colorblindness, and so on, the book is really red, in an objective sense.

However, it turns out that it is me who makes the book red. The different wavelengths in the world are analog and continuous - there is no nice division of colors "out there." Colors get divided up in our brains. The rods and cones in our eyes divvy things up according to, more or less, the three primary colors of light (red, green, and blue; some women have a fourth set as well). Another portion of the brain (the LGN) contrasts certain colors and is responsible for that after-image you get when you stare at something too long. This opposes blue and yellow, and red and green. Linguistic systems add colors in a specific order: languages with only two words for colors talk about white/light and black/dark, languages with three invariably add red as a third, and so on. Our brains make things the colors they are, so the book is subjectively red.

But even if our brains shape the world, there is still the world to be shaped. My seeing of the book as red is as dependent on my brain shaping the world as on the world shaping my brain. There are certain wavelengths which trigger certain neurons, and both wavelengths and neurons are necessary. So the book is red in this subject-object interaction.

Of course, things get even more complicated. On the one hand, I am as much a part of the physical world as the book. The book would probably appear as a different color under the light of a different sun; is it any less red for that? But I am as much a part of this physical environment as anything else. I am here seeing the book in this way because of specific pressures of natural selection, formed in relation to the world. So my own subjective view of the world is not so subjective - it formed because of the world, in tune with the world (or else the lineage leading up to me would not have survived). So maybe the book is objectively red after all, though in a less simplistic sense than we had first considered; perhaps it is better to say that it is "materially red", since there is no longer any separation between me the subject and the book as the object.

On the other hand, everything that I see in the world is a form of consciousness. Everything sensed, thought, inferred, is all a way in which I am conscious of it. The book's being red is a form of consciousness like anything else. Everything that I figure out about natural selection or the physical structure of the world is grounded first and foremost in consciousness, and makes no sense apart from it. However, it is not just me as the subject imposing a view on the world; the world as form of consciousness is just as important. When I see a tree, the tree is just as important to that event as me. In fact, it is after the fact that I separate out the aspect of consciousness which is "I" and which is the "tree", based on the fact that they move in different directions. So the book would be ideally red, or red as a structure of consciousness (just as "I" end up being merely a structure of consciousness), and not just subjectively red.

It would seem that we need at least one more level, however. We can start from the book and then bring ourselves in as an object of natural selection, or we can start from ourselves and bring in the book as a form of consciousness. Somehow, both of these work together. We need to talk about consciousness of the world in order to let science get off the ground in the first place, but science has something to say about our consciousness of the world. There is a circle here, and so the final ground I will talk about is the whatever-it-is that is the basis for this circle which allows it to take place. In order to figure out what this basis is, I give the simple homework assignment of reading Plotinus, Proclus, Nagarjuna, Vasubandhu, Dogen, Nishida, Shankara, Schelling, Hoelderlin, Hegel, and Heidegger, for a start.

At this point, since it all works together, subject and object, matter and consciousness, maybe it is best to simply say that the book is red.

Chomsky, Math, and Politics

I was recently reading through some of Noam Chomsky's writings on politics, and I came across a comparison he made between different disciplines. He pointed out that when he talked about mathematics, all that people cared about was the content of what he had to say. He is not a professional mathematician, but this does not matter as long as the math checks out. By contrast, when he talked about, say, the Vietnam war, everyone was concerned with his credentials rather than what he had to say, at least in the American media. His explanation was that those disciplines with more intellectual substance don't need credentials, whereas those needing credentials tend to be more concerned with preserving certain power structures in society. I think there is another explanation, however.

I don't wish to discount Chomsky's worries about how the intelligentsia does misuse its position to create facades of expertise, negatively impacting critical discussion of issues. But I equally want to recognize that there is a reason why we expect credentials of people in some fields and not others. When I look at a mathematical proof, all I need to examine is there. I may need to bring in my own knowledge to understand the proof in the first place, but if I can understand it, I can assess it. Other mathematical facts are irrelevant in deciding whether the theorem checks out, so understanding of the steps in this specific proof is all that is required.

When it comes to history or politics, by contrast, there can be many views with their own inner logic, which people take to be determinative of their truth (for example, conspiracy theories, religious apologetics, and the political views of your least favorite party). Looking at whether the argument itself checks out is no longer enough, since external facts can change that picture (technical tangent: David Lewis' book on Counterfactuals comes to mind - could this difference between fields be expressed in terms of modal logic?). Is the history being taught now the same history you learned as a child, for example? And I guarantee that if you have not studied the history of Galileo's contribution to the history of science, you will find it to be much less straightforward than it is made out to be - a couple extra facts about the time make the difference between "Galileo, the destroyer of dark age dogma" and "Galileo, the guy with the interesting idea which nevertheless poorly explained various aspects of the world until Newton posited that mystical, occult force known as gravity."

No matter how certain these sorts of arguments seem on their own, they could be false. Therefore, to know that someone has something worthwhile to say, we need to know more than that their speech makes sense. We need to know that they are the sort of person to know a lot of potentially relevant background information and so able to catch external facts pertinent to the topic. If someone talks about the wars in the Middle East, they need to know something about the history of the area, the differences between the regions and peoples, the root causes for the radical movements, and so on. Otherwise, we get such nonsense as "Saddam Hussein is aiding Osama bin Laden".

Of course, two other things seem to be necessary which complicate the picture. In addition to actually having the information, one needs to have an open mind so that one can readily assess new data and change ones position if necessary - again, the already present internal logic of an historical, religious, political, etc. argument is no sign of its ultimate validity. Also, there needs to be sources for the new information, which is where Chomsky's own point seems to have its place. We need people around who can perturb the system, push back against the recognized system of credentials. No system of credentials could be perfect since the object of study can never be closed off - we never will have knowledge of the specific going-ons in society in the way that we have knowledge of mathematical theorems.

Zen and Grammar

I was walking to get coffee one day (in the not-so-merry month of December), and I realized that there is a similarity between Zen and the relation between prescriptive and descriptive grammar. (Yes, I know, everyone's thinking it these days – I'm a little slow on trends.) So, descriptive grammar would say that whatever people say is what is grammatical. After all, what is understood is what is understood, and language is what actually communicates and not merely what the grammar books say ought to communicate. “They” is a single, gender-neutral pronoun in additional to a plural one, and the phrase “I could care less” is meaningfully its opposites.

On the other hand, prescriptive grammar would hold that there are correct ways of speaking. How prescriptive one wants to get may differ, but there at least are some norms of speaking which are correct and deviances from this norm which are incorrect.

I don't wish to get into debates over which is correct (especially because the answer is obviously descriptive grammar), but I wish to point out that there is a tension between the two. In my daily speaking, I resist the use of the word “irregardless”. It is meaningful, because it means something. Even people who detest the word know what was intended by its use. However, I do not use it, preferring the more aesthetically pleasing “regardless”, and this alone already influences the linguistic world around me. I will also mark it on students' rough drafts, perhaps point it out to other people when I feel snobbish, and so on.

In any case, I can't help but talk in one way rather than another, and this influences the speech patterns of other people. So even while everything that communicates, communicates (and so absolutely everything that is not babbling, and perhaps even that on occasion, is grammatical in a sense), I naturally choose some ways of communication over others (and so make a prescriptive choice).

Similarly, in Zen, everything is already as it is. It is ultimately Parmenidean – what is not, is not in any way, so why talk about it? If everything truly is one, there is nothing to talk about or reject concerning this ultimate truth. However, we still act in some ways instead of others. We have natural dispositions and practical situations,. Until we are dead and so no longer agents we will choose some ways of acting over others, even if this is the decision to not act.

Everything therefore is perfect in being “imperfect”. When I am hungry, I do not exist less; however, my state of being hungry is not something to be held on to, either. It is self-obliterating. When I am hungry, I go and get myself some pizza and so cease to be hungry. So everything is lacking and incomplete, because of the fact that it is what it is. Hunger is not hunger, because it essentially drives us to become full, and therefore it is hunger. So this lack, this drive to eat which makes itself cease, is its own perfection: I am perfectly hungry in ceasing to be hungry.

So too in language. My grammar is perfectly descriptive in being prescriptive. My use of words is not a static dictionary of meanings, but is what it is in influence, change, and force. My prescriptive changing of linguistic norms is the descriptive state of things, despite the fact that there is no single prescriptive reality. No matter what "grammar" actually is on a descriptive level, we are still caught up in the midst of things and working things out in our own conversations.

Similarly, a fire is not a fire, therefore it is a fire. It is entirely outward-focused: it is fire not because of anything in itself, but because of how energy is given off to everything around it. It is what it is only because of how it affects the world around it; that is, insofar as it makes what it is not what they are. The eye does not see itself, therefore it is an eye; it is how the eye responds to what it is not that makes it what it is.

So too is language descriptive in not being descriptive. Precisely because it is the ebb and flow of meanings can we have descriptive grammar. If we tried to be grammatical according to a descriptive grammar, it would become prescriptive. After all, grammar books start off talking about how language is actually spoken; it is after that they become bulwarks against the change of words. Grammar is descriptive because it is prescriptive. But it is also prescriptive because it is descriptive: we have the power to change language, and so prescribe something within our own conversations, precisely because there is a way of speaking which is beyond any of these norms we are trying to enforce. The norms we enforce aren't bootstrapping themselves, but rather rely on the changeable nature of language to change from something to something else.

The Fact of Fiction

The following can be traced back to a conversation between Nate and myself. I thought that it should be written down at some point, some point being now. I can't remember whose part was whose, and furthermore I don't think it matters in matters of philosophy – chalk it up to the speech of Aletheia, if you must have a source. The question is, what is it that distinguishes fictional entities from real things?

The first answer might be to say, real things exist. But what does it mean to say that things exist? That I can touch and feel them? This might be true for physical things, but it at least makes logical sense to say that non-physical entities exist (does the number 2 exist? How about consciousness?). How about that there is something true about them? But it is true that Santa Claus rides his sleigh around the world, in a fashion of speaking. Social constructions such as Santa Claus have their own specific sort of existence in our shared stories, though I am not saying that I could wake up in the middle of the night and discover him on my roof after the rising of such a clatter. Maybe you don't want to call this “existence”, but then we need to see what existence is, as well as how “non-existent” things can have anything at all true about them.

We proposed the following: real entities are complete and consistent, while fictional entities are not. By complete I mean this: ask whatsoever question you will that is applicable, and there shall be an answer. If I ask about the mating habits of the rarest species of beetle, there is some truth to the matter. If I ask about the mating habits of dragons, however, I may very well be at a permanent loss. We encounter this phenomenon all the time when reading stories – we speculate about what happens, where the characters are coming from, what happens in the middle of plot holes, and we get frustrated when no answer in forthcoming. Think of a murder mystery that never reveals the killer. We feel that there must be an answer, but it may simply be unanswerable – there is a killer, this is true, but there is no truth to the matter about who the killer is.

Consistency may be a bit more tendentious, but I shall proffer it anyhow. I may read one story, and vampires melt when exposed to sunlight. In another story, which I shall now invent and which I have certainly never encountered through any medium, they glitter. Do vampires then melt or glitter in the sunlight? Both, it seems. Now, it might be argued that vampires melt in the first story and glitter in the second, and so there is no contradiction. But that would be saying that there are two sorts of vampires. The oddness of the second story comes about not because we are encountering a second sort of vampire, but because there is one sort of vampire, and they melt. And yet they glitter, too. There would be no possibility of cognitive dissonance without there being one entity between the different stories which has both the essential property of melting and the essential property of glittering without melting. Fictions can therefore be contradictory in a way that real things cannot.

But fictions are beings that are not, beings that are false. The opposite seems to hold as well: all of our falsities and delusions are fictions of a fashion. What is “being” then, by contrast? It is uncreated and imperishable, not one of our unstable fictions; whole and of a single kind and unshaken and perfect. It never was nor will be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous (Parmenides, Fragment 8, KRS). If it is complete, it is whole and does not exist as something that was and now is not (since answers to our questions about the past are currently answerable – history is a viable study), nor similarly is it something that will be yet now is not (the very power of prediction proves the possibility of encountering the future now). If it is consistent, it is all together, one, and continuous, since nothing contradicts anything else.

If this is correct, then the status of fictional entities is more than a study of books and legends. Fiction is the way we live life when it does not align with the above picture, whereas reality by contrast is something unitary and whole and the fertile ground out of which all of our fictions spring – since they too are part of reality in their own way.

What is "Non-conceptual"?

In my posts on religious experience, I had been focusing on how there might be dialogue about non-conceptual experiences specifically. As was pointed out to me, however, it is far from clear what "non-conceptual" might be. On the one extreme, it could refer to any experience. I cannot tell anyone what "red" is - they must see it for themselves. So if "conceptual" implies "communicable by means of speech/concepts alone", then most things (or perhaps all) would be non-conceptual.

That doesn't seem to help us too much, though, since there appears to be some content to "non-conceptuality". What about the nature of (fill in goal of particular religion here)? That is something neither experienced in this life, nor is it something we could put together from anything in this life presumably (heaven would always exceed our expectations, for example). Or how about "go to church/synagogue/mosque/temple/etc. and your life will make sense"? This one is more difficult. Presumably we will eventually be able to form concepts of an afterlife, and so it is only accidentally non-conceptual. The directive to do something for life to make sense is, by contrast, a command cloaked in the language of a statement. There might be a concept associated with it, but there is also a dissociation between the concept and the experience which one has by following the directive. This is actually a quite interesting topic, especially since it relates to much more than a rather specific form of experience such as I am discussing here. But it is not yet the type of non-conceptuality I am interested in.

I was talking with someone yesterday about math, and I think that there is something there which can come closer to what I am talking about (for a more detailed discussion, see here and perhaps here). We talk about infinite numbers in mathematics, but there is a sense in which all that they show is that we never really talk about the infinite. There is always a larger "infinite" numeral, in fact an "infinite" number of them (whatever that might mean). Any attempt to capture the infinite fails to truly capture it, but must always delimit it in some fashion. Our actual references to the infinite does not refer to the infinite in itself, but rather to the way in which we find that everything that we encounter in insufficient. We are always referring to finite things in describing the "infinite" (and even to talk about describing it is to allow an infelicity of speech).

In this sense, we never have a concept of the "infinite" in itself. Similarly, Heidegger's discussion of the "nothing" is not of an object (since it makes no sense to make "nothing" an object since it is not a thing), but rather of the "nihilation" of beings - that is, we are talking about a particular manner of what is, of how meanings slip away and things recede from us, and only in talking about beings can we in circumlocutions talk of "nothing". There is no way of having a referential concept of the "nothing" or of the "infinite".

So what would a "non-conceptual experience" look like? Not being a practicing mystic myself, I cannot quite say (although they say that they can't say either). Maybe we could think of it like this: even though we never truly find the mathematical infinite, we have some intuitive grasp of the paucity of concepts - not just of the concepts we do have, but of any possible concept we could have. There is a part of us that jumps out of the particular way of thinking about things and takes hold of the whole, even if only to immediately lose it. Any attempt to describe this whole then fails, and we can only think about it by looking at the parts, in their difference, their strife, and their lack. Even in having the experience, then, one does not have something they can conceptualize and refer to. Two mystics can refer to "the mystical experience", but any conceptual content even for them will still be of what happens to beings, to the finite, etc., and not of the ultimate and infinite. So perhaps "non-conceptual" would mean that, even if there might be a concept of it in a sense, such a concept has for content something other than its purported "referent"?

Cultural Values

The other day, I was talking with some people about foreign education. In particular, do we as Americans step in and give them our own educational system when we see fit? Or do we let them develop their own culture? I tended toward the latter option, and although it would need numerous caveats in a concrete situation (for example, would it be all right to give funding for them to develop their systems, and other issues), it made me think of broader cultural concerns.

Basically, the position I want to put forward is this: every culture has its own genuine vantage point on reality, and we need to work with that (if anyone is interested in listening to theoretical justifications for this, it is based on Parmenides and Neoplatonism – but that is a different post). When Americans champion values of freedom and independence, there is an actual good in that. We have seen something real about the world. There would be no way of subjectively and relativistically realizing anything unless reality allowed it – freedom could not be seen as a good, even "subjectively" - unless it actually does something for human, social reality. But at the same time (as I have been forced to acknowledge against my American intuitions), other societies that champion communal values and concrete regulations for guiding action have their own insights into reality which we often lack and which generally conflict with ours.

So there is room to say that American education should grow American values – there is something there worthwhile – but at the same time there should be, say, Islamic education growing Islamic values. There's good stuff within their own framework, and Muslims should be looking to their own roots (sometimes in recovering what has been left behind, such as struggling/ijtihad over legal canons, but still in a way genuinely Islamic).

Part one of the thesis, then, is that every culture has its own truth, or perhaps its own finite witness to truth if that is better - a truth neither fully absolute nor merely conventional, but real nonetheless. Part two is that it is better to work within a tradition than to syncretically combine them. Different traditions and cultures have spent hundreds and thousands of years melding material together. Sometimes this is done more effectively than others, but there is still more of an organic unity between elements of an established culture than one put together from whatever novelties excite people. Now, cultures are living and growing, and can incorporate new elements. But this still isn't done randomly. New elements must be grafted in to the old tree, worked in so that they work with the whole. Throwing American models of government into the Middle East causes problems, whether or not they are better models of government – they have consonances in the Euro-American system (including thought about the nature of the person, responsibility, role of government, states of nature, dissemination of knowledge, economics, etc.) which are completely lacking in other areas of the world. It is similarly difficult applying insights learned from other cultures to a contemporary American environment (for example, how hard is it to convince people of the benefits of available health care and public transportation?).

Part three is that, since cultures have their own witness to truth by their relation to reality (and so to Being), cultures that negatively define themselves lack a witness insofar as they negatively define themselves. Terrorist groups have relatively little cohesion outside of fighting against some common enemy. There might be some such cohesion, and to this extent they get something about the world, but a negative and merely relative identity keeps them from having anything to develop. Taking ones own race as the master race in opposition to all others is, again, merely a relation against others.

Sentient Cuttlefish: The Novel?

I've mentioned on this blog thoughts on intelligent cephalopods a few times. The concept fascinates me: here is a group of animals at a completely different spot in the evolutionary chain from ourselves, lacking our mammalian social instincts, but yet with a high degree of intelligence. What if they were to cross some threshold and become self-aware? What would this look like? I've played with the idea of sentient dolphins also, but that seems more boring: they'd look like cavemen of the sea at first, and then build up something like an underwater, mammalian society, not too different from what humans would do. It would be a good test case in how a different environment can shape intelligence, but cephalopods are cooler. So, I want to start writing about them. Maybe a short story, maybe a novel, maybe an epic poem, but I want to make this happen, and I'm looking for input.

I'm still working on the setting. These beings lack social instincts, and this will change them at their very core. What does reason look like for them? Language? They don't use language primarily to communicate, so where does it come from? I'm thinking that it will arise from evolutionarily beneficial mnemonic systems, with perhaps some adaptation to rudimentary communication (such as "stay off my territory"). This entails that writing comes before speech for them.

They would also be solipsistic in a sense since they would have no innate feeling for others. But they wouldn't even have a well-defined sense of themselves, since there would be no other over which they could define themselves as separate individuals. Ethically, they would appear amoral, not having basic social feelings, but it's not as though they would actively try to be bad, either - they just wouldn't recognize each other. They would in some ways be more like those with extreme autism than, say, psychopaths, except that their entire evolution would have been guided by this.

Could these beings ever have anything remotely resembling a society? It would still be beneficial to them, but then how would they maintain it? Would they end up like Vulcans of a sort? What would happen if they encountered human beings (or sentient dolphins)? Just some of the ideas with which I am playing.

On Human Nature

I have been grading many essay questions on the topic of whether human nature is good or bad according to Chinese philosophy, and I thought that I would weigh in on the question since I've been forced to think through it fifty times.

On the side of Mengzi (Mencius): there are roots in human nature which give us the capacity of being good. Further, when left to themselves, they make us actually good. For example, according to Mengzi, if we see a child stuck in a well, we will save the child. This is the case even if the child is not ours and we expect no reward from saving the child.

Roots like this sense of compassion are how we could ever get any virtuous qualities. Because we naturally feel compassion,* we can actually be benevolent. The alternative would be that we would have a set of rules instructing us to act in a benevolent way, but without anything being internalized beyond these rules.**

We cease being good by failing to reflect on these roots in our nature. We naturally feel compassion for those close to us. As we reflect and nourish the feeling, it grows outward, encompassing more and more people. External forces can push us away, however. For an illustration, a starving person will eat whatever is offered to her, though her nature distinguishes between tasty and disgusting food when left to itself. Similarly, conditions such as oppression and poverty can distort our natural judgments.

For Xunzi, on the other hand, human nature is bad. We are born and our nature is only concerned with ourselves. A baby feels its own hunger, not that of another. Each of us starts by seeking our own immediate advantage and this alone. We need to be shown a way out. This requires a virtuous role model (the sage) with her standards and practices for reaching the good life.

This good life is peace and harmony in society for Chinese thought. As long as we seek our own immediate benefit, we cause disorder and disharmony. This is why human nature is bad, not because of some arbitrary command from on high decreeing it to be such. We can recognize the need to be better, since such a disharmonious society is bad for everyone involved at some level, but without the external force of the sage we cannot escape. The Achaeans in the Iliad honoured warriors and those who could accumulate wealth, even while realizing that a life of war is horrible for human beings. We need (a) a model to see to give us possibilities, (b) a set of practices to follow to discipline us against seeking our immediate benefit, and (c) our own deliberate effort to become good.

The problem is, who is right? Contemporary science backs Mengzi to an extent (see http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/ for a quick view of some of the issues). If there were a race of sentient cuttlefish, they would have an entirely different nature and set of ethics.*** However, human beings are mammals and so have social natures. Living together is something hard-wired into the vast majority of us. We naturally feel empathy, fairness, altruism, etc., and not just our own immediate, purely self-focused benefit.

Still, this only helps part of Mengzi's argument. We do not seem to naturally keep extending these roots out further and further, since whatever is according to nature (or the way of heaven, or however one wishes to put it) happens always or for the most part. We stop at a given point where we feel comfortable, with whatever tribe is relevant in our context. Genocides and general dickishness seem to be a natural trait of human beings as much as anything else. Is there some other basic component of human nature we need in order to account for this?**** Are there always external forces resisting our natural impulses, always shortages of resources that cause societies to go wrong at some point? Does our intrinsically social nature work against us as much as for us, depending on the society into which we are born?

Addendum: perhaps the entire problem is that we are starting off with the evaluative terms "good" and "bad". If we were to stick with simple descriptions, some of the problems disappear. Human nature is intrinsically social, and geared toward benefiting those around us. This is simultaneously good and bad, depending on what we are looking at any given time. Starting with the issue of good/bad is therefore trying to cut against the joints of reality, which of course will lead to contradictory conclusions.

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* Note that "feeling" is not opposed to "thinking" in Chinese thought. There is simply the xin, the heart/mind/all inner states together, and feeling correctly is an important part of thinking correctly.

** Which rules out a divine command ethic. Even if God commands it, this does not mean that it is anything that would be good according to our natures.

*** Which is why I find the concept of cephalopod intelligence so fascinating. They are already intelligent creatures, but from an entirely different region of the evolutionary chain and without our social instincts. I really want to write something about a cephalopod (anti-?)civilization at some point.

**** Of course, someone is responding at this point with the theological answer of "sin." But it seems that this is a cheap answer, when there are genuinely explanatory and natural accounts available. Evolutionarily speaking, communities which preserve each other against competitors survive. Aggression helps creatures survive. Even atrocious acts such as rape are found within the natural order (go research ducks - nasty things), and there seems to be no reason to explain them as a result of some fall rather than a brutal way for nature to accomplish its purposes of perpetuation. "Sin" only makes sense if you expect that everything should be perfect in the first place and then find that it isn't. But I have yet to see one iota of evidence for such an expectation unless one has already assumed a set of theological claims, or is expecting a different sort of perfection than one which would mean anything for the daily lives of human beings.