Ryle’s The Concept of Mind, Chapter 2 – Knowing How, Knowing That

In this chapter Ryle seeks to convince us that there is no Ghost in the Machine. The intuition that there is some mental ‘inner’ precursor to external actions is wrong. “…When we describe people as exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring to those overt acts and utterances themselves” (Ryle 2000, p26).

Ryle seeks to move us from thinking about an inner mental life, some of which leads to or initiates external behaviour. Instead, the view (as I understand it) that he wants us to develop is that our mental life is either expressed in a way observable to an external observer, or in a way that is not. When we talk we are vocalising our thoughts, and when we merely think (in words at any rate) we are doing the same activity a talking but not vocalising it. The introduction of the Category Mistake in the previous chapter was intended to prepare us for this move. Ryle gave an example of the visitor to Oxford University seeing the colleges and libraries, but wondering where the university is. Public thought (e.g. talking to someone) and private thought (e.g. talking to yourself without vocalising) are like the colleges and libraries, and the mind is the university.

Knowing How and Knowing That

Ryle draws a distinction between knowing how and knowing that. This distinction appears to map onto declarative and procedural knowledge.

Misunderstandings and Feints

“Misunderstanding is a by-product of knowing how. Only a person who is at least a partial master of the Russian tongue can make the wrong sense of a Russian expression” (Ryle 2000, p58). Feinting also requires knowing how. It is the “art of exploiting”, or provoking, your opponent’s premature conclusion of what course of action you are following (Ibid.).

Ryle's The Concept of Mind, Chapter 1 - Descartes' Myth

The Official Doctrine

In Chapter 1 Ryle outlines the ‘Official Doctrine’ of the Mind, that mind and body are distinct (substance dualism). Bodies are in space and time, and are ‘mechanical’ (roughly, they are causal systems). Bodies are public, in that their activities can be scrutinised by other parties. Minds on the other hand are in time, but belong in a kind of ‘mental space’ that is linked to the relevant body but isolated from other things in the physical universe. We are blind to the minds of others, and take it on a sort of faith that other people also have minds as we cannot observe them directly.

We have a privileged access to our own thoughts and feelings, and access that nobody else enjoys. This privileged access gives us a direct appreciation, we sort of watch and observe them. While we might be wrong or uncertain about things that occur in the external world, we cannot be mistaken about the happenings that we observe in our internal world.

Ryle calls this the Official Doctrine, as it was the dominant and explicitly/implicitly held belief about minds at the time the book was published in 1949. Ryle refers to the official doctrine “abusively” as the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.

Can you tell Ryle isn’t a fan of the Official Doctrine?

(Another wonderful turn of phrase about the Official Doctrine is Daniel Dennett’s ‘Cartesian Theatre’).

Category Mistakes

Ryle introduces the idea of a ‘category mistake’, whereby someone has incorrectly categorised an entity and then proceeded to treat it as though it belonged to that category. His famous example is of a visitor to Oxford or Cambridge university being shown various aspects of the university, e.g. various colleges and libraries, but then asking “But where is the university?”. The visitor has committed a category mistake, he has already seen the university (or at least parts of it) but is expecting something more because he considers universities to belong to the same category of things as colleges and libraries. Another example is the Home Office and the British Constitution both being ‘institutions’ but being radically different. Or expecting the ‘average family’ to be a similar sort of entity to an actual family (you can’t actually live next door to the average family).

The Problems of Conciousness, part 2

The Problem of Mechanism

This problem seems to be roughly "how do you go from neuron stuff to experience stuff". It is clear from various experiments and brain damage cases that we do move from neuron stuff to experience stuff, but how does it happen?

It will come as no surprise when I say that I don't know what the answer is. However our view is from the inside, from within the bubble of conciousness. We are blind to the workings of our brain, we only 'see' some of the results of its workings. Our experience is based on what makes it into conciousness, and no more. What does it make it is likely to to be processed, and to some degree incomplete. We should not expect the answer to the problem of mechanism to make intuitive sense. We might already have the answer, but not be willing to accept it.

What would the answer look like? What more are we looking for above and beyond the neurons and brain structures that when stimulated just so give us these experiences?

The Problem of Duplicates

Philosophical zombies are 100% identical physically and behaviourally to a concious human being, but lack concious experiences. You can talk to Zombie-Fred and be completely unable to determine whether he is a zombie or not. He'll talk to you about sports, tell you how much he likes a particular movie, and gaze with (seeming) admiration at scenes of natural beauty. Yet Fred has no concious experience. If you poke Zombie-Fred, various neurons and things will do the same as they would do in your body, but what goes on in Zombie-Fred's mental life is just some message that he got poked, with no actual concious feeling or sensation involved.

The argument that accompanies this is something like:

1. Zombies are identical to humans in every way, except they don't have concious experiences.
2. Physical activity in a human brain identically replicated in a zombie brain does not result in concious experiences.
3. Therefore, there needs to be something extra to create conciousness.

Counterargument: Zombies aren't real.

Is there much more to say? Perhaps I am being too quick at dismissing zombies, but zombies don't seem to be an explanation to fill a gap in our understanding, they seem to be something that is creating a gap that isn't there.

How can Zombie-Fred pass as a proper human without having a conciousness? Doesn't Zombie-Fred need something in its place? It would need some sort of rule or ability to talk about feelings of true love, or how excruciating a pain is, or how joyously vibrant a shade of green is. This would probably not be a difficult problem, and would be something well within Zombie-Fred's abilities, but Zombie-Fred would have something that humans don't have; some sort of "faking having a conciousness" module. However, wouldn't this in principle be an observable difference?

China Brain

If our minds are just the results of neurons arranged in a big complicated machine, wouldn't it be possible to produce the same effect via some different arrangement? The China Brain thought experiment concerned getting billions of Chinese people to replicate the behaviour individual neurons, such that collectively they were simulating a brain. Why Chinese people? I have no idea.

The work that this thought experiment (or intuition pump) does is to show that the China Brain could  be "possible and it is functionally equivalent to a normal human being, it supposedly presents the illustration of the absent qualia hyopthesis. Block concludes that functional organisation is not what determines or fixes phenomenological conciousness" (Tye 2007). I think that is a well placed 'supposedly'. The intuition is to dismiss the China Brain. My response is to consider that the China Brain should, in some sense, have its own conciousness. It seems fantastical, and hard to countenance, but it seems where evidence and reason leads. I suppose this could make me a die-hard physicalist, unwilling to consider a non-physical account of conciousness no matter how absurd my position seems to be. But, the China Brain thought experiment doesn't give a reason to reject the possibility of conciousness, only an intuition not to. Intuitions can be useful, but they aren't answers. 

The Problems of Conciousness, part 1

Conciousness. Probably the most intimate and direct thing that we can know of, yet still somewhat strange and elusive.

I've started some background reading from the Blackwell Companion to Conciousness, and I'm having an interesting time reading Michael Tye's 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. I'm not quite getting some of the problems, and I'm not sure whether this is due to a failure to fully appreciate the problems or if I'm a hardline materialist/physicalist.

What follows will be a very brief synopsis of some of the problems, and my initial thoughts in response. The subject of this blog entry is:

Tye, M. (2007) 'Philosophical Problems of Conciousness'. In Velmans, M., and Schneider, S. (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Conciousness. Blackwell Publishing.

The Problem of Ownership

The problem of ownership is explaining how the mental objects of conciousness (feelings etc.) can be physical "given they are necessarily owned and necessarily private to their owners" (Tye 2007). The idea here seems to be that the mental objects and experiences are private in the sense that nobody else can have them, and nobody else can have access to them. I own my pen, and I can give it away to someone else so that they can own it.

I'm not sure the concept of ownership contained in this idea is correct. I own my pen, yes. I wouldn't own my child, nor would I own my favourite colour, or my boss. Do I own my arm? Yes. Not in the sense that I own my pen, but I still sorta own my arm. I could say my arm is part of me, but I think it would be more accurate to say it was part of my body.

Do I own my mental objects and experiences? I don't think it would be right for people to have unfettered access to these things without my consent. So perhaps I am asserting some sort of ownership over them. I can go further and say that I think that these mental objects are me. They might not be the whole of me, I have a store of memories for example, but they are a key component of me. Feelings and experiences as they occur are me being me. Without that I (as a mental entity) am not there. I don't own me, I am me. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" taken a step or two further.

Are my thoughts and feelings private? Well, yes. In one sense I don't think they necessarily are so. In the future could we rig up some sort of machine to record feelings and play them back in someone else's head? Maybe. This doesn't quite work because fully fledged persons may not have the exact same experience or thought even though they undergo the same 'Playback'. Thoughts and feelings surely don't exist in isolation, they will draw on past thoughts and emotions. That pang of loss will have shades of different sorrows for each of us. But, what are we saying here? If we ran a bit of software, or set of data, in a bunch of different computers we'd expect to get the same result. But only if we ran it in computers that were functionally the same, and shared the same relevant state. If we ran our data on multiple computers, which had other software running, or other data in memory accessible and relevant to our data, then we'd expect different outcomes or at least different machine states. Why expect something different from human brains?

I don't think we own our mental objects in the sense of owning property, and I'm not sure that they're private in the sense intended by Tye.

The Problem of Perspectival Subjectivity

This problem is that there is something that physicalism doesn't account for in conciousness. It is possible to understand something, but for that understanding to be incomplete until you have experienced it. "Phenomenally concious states are perspectival in that fully comprehending them requires adopting a certain experiential point of view. But physical states are not perspectival in this way" (Tye 2007).

Tye gives the following example:

"A man who is blind and deaf cannot experience lightning by sight or hearing at all, but he can understand fully just what it is, namely a certain sort of electrical discharge between clouds".

This man understands lightning, but cannot experience it. There is some sort of gap. I agree. I'm not sure quite what the problem for physicalism is though. (I should probably make a quick aside to say that I really do get that there seems to be some sort of fantastical jump that is hard to grasp or accept arises from the machinery of the brain...).

The brain process things. Our concious experience is the result of a number of sub-systems processing various inputs, such as sense data and memory retrieval. Imagine there is a little black box labelled 'Experience Machine' in our brains. Various inputs going into the black box, and out pops our concious experience. Understanding all that there is to know about lightning is not the same thing as experiencing it. In considering it, different inputs are going into the little black box. The inputs are thought objects about lightning. They are not going to be stored and represented in the brain the same as a direct past or current experience of being in the vicinity of lighting, and they will not be accompanied by visual and auditory sense data. What is going into the little black box when thinking about lightning is not the same as when experiencing it externally. So we should expect different things to arrive in our conciousness.

On this account, we would only expect a full understanding to be like actually experiencing it if we were able to simulate the little black box in our heads and were able to marshal appropriate inputs. If we could feed into the little black box all of the inputs that would go in when directly experiencing lightning, then we would expect to have the concious experience of it.

I have not given an account for the little black box labelled conciousness, but I think I have sketched out why we should expect a complete 'understanding' to be lacking the sense gained from having a concious experience of it.

Believing Bullshit, by Stephen Law

A couple of highlights from my read through of Stephen Law's Believing Bullshit.

"Any given set of observations can be explained by a number of theories. To use the jargon of the philosophy of science: theories are underdetermined by the evidence."

" as we'll see later in “But It Fits!” any theory, no matter how nuts, can be made to “fit”—be consistent with—the evidence, given sufficient ingenuity. It doesn't follow that all theories are equally reasonable, or that we can never fairly conclusively settle the question of which among competing theories are true on the basis of observational evidence."

"Many belief systems often start with a mystery—they offer to explain what might otherwise seem rather baffling."

"Putting these various points together, we can sum up by saying that, in order for a theory to be strongly confirmed, that theory has to stick its neck out with respect to the evidence. It has to be bold, to risk being proved wrong. If a theory either fails to make any predictions, or if it makes only vague and woolly predictions, or else if it predicts things that are not particularly unexpected anyway—if, in short, it takes no significant risks with the evidence—then not only is it not strongly confirmed, it can't be."

"amazing coincidences are inevitable. There are billions of people living on this planet, each experiencing thousands of events each day. Inevitably, some of them are going to experience some really remarkable coincidences." 

Believing Bullshit is all about the 'dirty tricks' people can play in presenting their theories and ideas to you, and how to spot these tricks and respond to them. If this sounds vaguely interesting it is well worth a read.

You may also be interested in Law's blog.

More Informed Choices Around Tax Avoidance

How about....

The tax authorities (i.e. HMRC) compiles and publishes data for every company which shows the revenue received by a company and the proportion of tax paid on that revenue. This could be supplemented by legislation whereby at every transaction point a company is required by law to show the published 'tax ratio'. This could even be presented as a handy infographic that shows a target point for what should be typical corporation tax. There could be a very limited number of additional information points, such as whether the company is a charity. The tax indicator on the infographic could potentially have top ups for things like charitable given.

It would also be handy if the infographic showed the ratio of salaries (well, total reward..) within the company (including holding/owning companies/all companies within a group) between the top earners versus the bottom earners.

Though perhaps overly heavy handed the infographic could display some helpful stats to help understand the implications of the numbers, e.g. what the impact is on school funding etc. Where applicable government procurement might stipulate a minimum percentage of taxation paid by a company. Individuals might choose to opt into a system whereby their payment cards will not accept an authorisation with a company that pays tax below a certain threshold.

This system would help everyone in society to make a more informed choice in how they direct their money. If people are content or supportive of a companies taxation level, or perhaps think that the product or service on offer is so superior that the lower rate of taxation paid is a worthwhile trade-off  Alternatively, people may choose to take their custom to another business on the basis that the transaction will be more supportive of public programmes such as infrastructure building, education, etc.

The market is often considered by many to be 'right', and should that it should be left unguided in order to produce better outcomes. Two problems with market forces however, and I don't mean to imply there are only two, is that an aggregate of individual choices does not represent the collective will, and that a lack of information distorts market activity. Providing consumers with greater information will allow them to make more informed choices with regards to how they wish to direct the flow of capital.

The Main Idea of the Theory of Justice

A summary of and some thoughts on my reading of John Rawl's A Theory of Justice (revised edition) (1999) section 3 "The Main Idea of a Theory of Justice":

Traditional social contract theories are a set of rules for those entering a given society, or under a given governance structure. John Rawls abstracts this idea and considers social contract theory from a pre-societal position, which he calls the Original Position. Starting the construction of our social contracts from the Original Position allows us to engineer a society that has justice built in to its structure, rather than trying to make the most of an existing structure which may have injustice and inequities built in to it. From the Original Position we are to develop principles that "...free and rational persons concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as defining the fundamental terms of their association".

Social contract theory is by its own terms social in nature. It relates to how we govern and interact as a society. The rights that we accord to each other relate to how we treat each other, both directly and in terms of access to and use of the technosocial system which we inhabit. Our interests are shaped by our psychology and our physiology; the architecture of our personhood and its embodiment. Rights relating to these are (relatively) fixed to that embodiment, but rights relating to the society that we inhabit are relative to what is available.

Rawls points out that the Original Position is not intended to be a historical state, it is a hypothetical state. By starting from the Original Position we consider how things should be. Rawl's hypothetical starting point includes a 'veil of ignorance'. In constructing a society and rights we should do unknowing of our particular circumstances and interests. In this way we can create for all, not just for ourselves or our own world view. A simple analogy is of cake cutting; if one cuts a cake into portions without knowing (or being able to influence) which portion they will receive, then they will be best served by cutting the cake into equal portions or at least with no portion smaller than the minimum acceptable size. In this way looking after your own interests also looks after the interests of others.

Although those born into a society have not explicitly agreed to the social contract, but in a justly organised society its citizens should be able to reflect and recognise that even if their personal circumstances are not to their liking that the societal structures are just and fair (assuming of course that they are!). Recognition from citizens of what makes for a just society, and assuming these are (largely) realised, and that it "...meets the principles which free and equal persons would assent to under circumstances that are fair" provides implicit consent.

Rawls argues that in the Original Position people are likely to adopt some mix of two strategies; the first is "equality in the assignment of basic rights and duties" and the second is the 'minmax' strategy which accepts inequalities providing they bring around "...benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged of society".

Arguing for and against the status quo

Here is a useful test to help reason about an issue. It comes from Nick Bostrom and Toby Ord's The Reversal Test: Eliminating Status Quo Bias in Applied Ethics, published in Etthics 116 (2006). It comes to me via Nicholas Agar's Humanity's End: Why We Should Reject Radical Enhancement.

Reversal Test: When a proposal to change a certain parameter is thought to have bad overall consequences, consider a change to the same parameter in the opposite direction. If this is also thought to have bad overall consequences then the onus is on those who reach these conclusions to explain why our position cannot be improved through changes to this parameter. If they are unable to do so, then we have reason to suspect that they suffer from status quo bias.

This is a useful way to approach status quo conservatism or bias. If a group are resistant to a certain change, e.g. human intelligence enhancement, then the parameter should be flipped. Is the group resistant to change in the opposite direction, e.g. human intelligence degradation? This teases out if the opposition to the proposal are against the direction of change, or change itself. If they appear to be against any sort of change, then they need to be able to advance a case as to why the current value of the parameter is considered to be good/ideal and should not be changed.

I think it can also be used as a useful defence against charges that a group is being resistant to change. In these instances the parameter should be flipped. Is movement in the opposite direction desirable? If so, then the group aren't resistant to change, they're resistant to a specific (perceived) undesirable change that degrades the situation.

We Are Not Human Beings

What follows is a brief discussion about Parfit's We Are Not Human Beings, and my thinking on the topic. As per other such discussions on this blog, it isn't necessarily intended to be a robust interpretation or set of arguments, rather a handy overview and part set of handy notes primarily for my benefit, but also hopefully for the benefit of others.

Partfit, D. (2012). We Are Not Human Beings. Philosophy, the Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, volume 87, number 339, January 2012.

Parfit discusses personal identity; what it is that is us, how it can be distinguished from things that are not us, and how we should think about ourselves. There are numerically identical things; my keyboard has been the same keyboard for several years. Here by same I mean it is the same object, and a spatial-temporal path could be traced for it, and we could be confident that when viewed in the past it is identical in the sense that it is the same object. Things can also be considered qualitatively identical. My preferred design of trackball sadly only lasts a few years before wearing out, so over the years I have had several objects that share a whole host of properties (they are the same model, colour, etc.) but are different objects. The trackball that I have now is the same sort of trackball that I had ten years ago, and aside from the serial number it is indistinguishable to me, but it isn't the same object. The numerical identity of my trackball is of no concern of me, I only care if I have a qualitatively identical trackball.

People are different. We are concerned with numerical identity as well as qualitative identity. Substituting my beloved with her twin simply wouldn't do.

Or would it?

What we are interested in with regards to personal identity is the thinking bit of a person. If we swapped two people's brains over we would consider it a body transplant rather than a brain transplant. We would follow the brain if we were concerned with things like responsibilities, promises, guilt, and friendship.

Parfit covers three concepts of personal identity; the soul view (which he promptly sets aside), the Animalist View, and the Lockean View. The Animalist View is rooted in our identity as animals, it is biological continuity that is of interest to us. This certainly seems to be the face value working rule that we use; we identify persons based on their bodies. The Lockean View is focused on psychological continuity, and Parfit gives us his definition:

The Narrow, Brain-Based Criterion:  If some future person would be uniquely psychologically continuous with me as I am now, and this continuity would have its normal cause, enough of the same brain, this person would be me. If some future person would neither be uniquely psychologically continuous with me as I am now, nor have enough of the same brain, this person would not be me. In all other cases, there would be no answer to the question whether some future person would be me. But there would be nothing that we did not know.

Parfit presents a continuum of thought experiments to draw out the distinction between the Animalist and Lockean views, moving along the scale; Transplanted Head, Surviving Head, Surviving Cerebellum.

Parfit refers to McMahan's Embodied Part View. Under this view we are the thinking part of the Human Animal.  Parfit extends this view with the Embodied Person View; human animals think by having a concious thinking part which is a person in a Lockean sense.

Parfit covers a number of potential and actual objections, but ends with the conclusion that we can be best described as Embodied Persons; "Since the animal thinks only by having a part that thinks, there are not too many thinkers here [the Too Many Thinkers objection]. And since the animal is a person only in the derivative sense of having a Lockean person as a part, there are not too many persons here [the Too Many Persons objection]".

It would seem to me that there is another distinction here. The thinking parts in our brains is the embodied part of us, the apparatus and substrate of thinking, of our identity. Our identity however is the brain-state. Admittedly our identity, our thinking, is tightly coupled with the physical mechanisms of the thinking which are in turn tightly coupled with wider aspects of our bodies. If my brain was reset to a blank state, then there would be a break in the psychologically continuity. It may be that the brain state left is the closest to generating my identity of any brain in existence, but if we were to say it is still me we would merely be making the best of a bad situation.

1. If my brain state was destroyed/reset, would we still claim identity? Possibly, but only in so far as we conflate personal identity with our physical shells.
2. If 100 people had their brain state reset, and their physical appearance altered so that they all appeared the same... would we consider there to be anything of personal identity left to trace? No.
3. If my brain state was destructively copied (i.e. moved) into a replicant of me, we would consider my identity to be in the replicant.
4. If my brain state was destructively copied into a computer that functionally simulated my brain for me, and then moved back into my original body we consider the human-body-brain-state-copy to be me.

Our personal identity is the thinking itself, the representation stored and manipulated in the brain. The apparatus for personal identity that we have available to us is the parts of the brain that do the thinking, which are embodied in the human animal. In computer terms we aren't even the software, we're the current state of the software at a moment in time.

Numerical identity isn't important. Qualitative identity is what matters; we're interested in the properties of a thinking animal/other. In a not quite fleshed out analogy, in the arrangement of physical things so that the rainbow twinkles just so, we are the rainbow.

The Cogito—I think, therefore I am—becomes:

Thinking occurs, I am the thinking.

Epistemic and Pragmatic Actions

A handy terminological distinction...


Epistemic Actions alter the world so as to aid and augment cognitive processes such as recognition and search. Examples include leaving things by your door that you want to remember to take with you, entering information into a calendar, and tagging blog posts.


Pragmatic Actions are those actions that alter the world because some physical change is desirable for its own sake. Examples include turning the heating on because it is cold, and shutting the door to enclose a space.


This came to me via Clark and Chalmers (1998) The Extended Mind. They got it via Kirsh and Maglio (1994) On Distinguishing Epistemic from Pragmatic Action (which I've not yet read).

Book recommendations from 2011

Last year's highlights in books:

• On the Philosophy front is Brian Barry's Culture and Equality. Well written, clear, and compelling.
• On the Human-Computer Interaction front is Universal Principles for Design by Lidwell, Holden, and Butler. I've not managed to give this book the attention it deserves yet as it is sitting on my desk at work, and I've been working elsewhere for a couple of months. Good examples, a clear layout, and overall good design principles for interaction design.
• On the Fiction front my highlight was the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which starts with Gardens of the Moon and culminates in The Crippled God. Sitting on my desk screaming out to be read is Orb Sceptre Throne by Esslemont, who is writing within the Malazan setting.
• Honourable mention must be given to Christopher Hitchen's final work Arguably.

On equal respect to cultures and ways of life

On liberals (allegedly) having to give equal respect to cultures because liberals are committed to equal respect for persons:

"The obvious problem with this argument is that illiberal cultures typically—I am tempted to say necessarily—are committed to violating the cannons of equal respect. Equal respect for people cannot therefore entail respect for their cultures when these cultures systematically give priority to, say, the interests of men over the interests of women."

- Brian Barry (2001). Culture & Equality. Polity Press. p127 

August's Reading

Fiction
I've recently finished Dance with Dragons, the latest instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin. Quick summary: great book, long time coming.

Fantasy Flight Games' Deathwatch role playing book.

HCI
A bit lacklustre here, I am currently re-reading Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for mobile devices.

Philosophy
I've just started on David McFarland's Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien Minds. I'm also part way through Brian Barry's Equality and Culture, which is a great book and essential reading for anyone interested in multiculturalism. Barry is an entertaining read, with compelling arguments, clarity of writing, and less restraint than most to sticking in the intellectual boot when he disagrees with someone.

Goal attaining systems

I came across an interesting categorisation of goal attaining systems today:

• Goal-achieving; a system that recognises when a goal state has been reached. This can be implicit. Examples include a doorbell buzzer, or flowers opening up in the sun.
• Goal-seeking; a system that is such that it will move towards a goal state without any recognition that the goal is being worked towards. Examples include a marble spinning in a bowl, which will ultimately come to rest in the middle.
• Goal-directed; a system that has a representation of the goal state and it's behaviour is intended to bring about. This is a system with feedback control. Examples include a thermostat, and human planning.

This is a useful set of categories that can be utilised in thinking of philosophical entities and systems, and for the design of software agents, applications, and robots. It came to me via David McFarland's Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien Minds.

Eberle and Pubic Justification

Eberle, C.J. Religion and Liberal Democracy in Simon's The Blackwell Guide to Social and Political Philosophy (2002).

Eberle discusses the role that religious beliefs should play in a liberal democracy, and whether the theist based solely on religious reasons is justified in supporting a law that coerces others. The introductory example that Eberle uses is one relating to laws that discriminate against homosexuals. Some portion of Christians (and it should be noted not exclusively Christians or even exclusively religious folk) are, broadly speaking, against homosexuality and a reason/justification for this is based on passages in the bible, e.g. Leviticus 18:22 "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." Eberle argues that theist citizens should attempt to put forward a public justification for laws (and such) that other citizens can accept, but if this fails they are fully justified in supporting laws that coerce others (e.g. to discriminate against homosexuals) if they hold this to be a moral course of action.

I disagree with the arguments presented in Religion and Liberal Democracy, and don't find the case made for justification for citizens to coerce others based on a position that has failed the test of public reason to be compelling. I shall attempt to argue for my position.

A possible mistake that Eberle makes is to identify religious belief as a special case. If one takes it as a specific instance of a more general case of citizens' strongly held beliefs and world views, then his arguments are weakened. There is no clear reason why a religious belief as a motivation for moral views and endorsing of laws should be considered separately from idealogical beliefs and the like (e.g. strong belief in the efficacy of certain alternative medicines, or adherents in conspiracy theories that lack any credibility).

The general argument from Eberle appears to be:

1. A religious person has personal moral beliefs that influence support for coercive laws (our problematic set of cases)
2. A subset of these are wholly based on their religious views, and therefore cannot be given as a publicly acceptable justification
3. Coercive laws can only be supported if a citizen can give publicly acceptable justification
4. Therefore, in cases where a religious person cannot provide public justification for a law, by requiring that they abstain from supporting that law we are making them act against their morals, which is wrong

The first response to this argument is to generalise it and consider all persons in the polity collectively; to apply the principle of equality to their beliefs and motivations. This gives us the general principle for which Eberle is making a case for a religious exemption: Laws that coerce others which cannot be given publicly acceptable justification should not be supported. This allows us to rule out support based on bigotry, delusions, fundamentalism, and the like. If we did not have this principle there would be no basis for dismissing unjustified laws, which would be extremely undesirable. Eberle argues that in the case of the theist this principle asks them to go against their morals. Even if true, Eberle doesn't make a case for why religious views deserve an exemption over and above, for example, idealogical views.

The case being made is that if something cannot be reasonably be justified, then it can still be supported even when it coerces other people if strong beliefs are held. I believe the correct response in such a situation is that if something cannot be reasonably publicly justified then the person in question should correct their views, or maintain them but accept that others have a different world view and should not be coerced.

Eberle provides the following example (p295) in support of his argument:

"...we may assume that, given the evidence available in his epistemic environment, Socrates rationally believed that the sun revolves around the earth; that, given the evidence available in our epistemic environment, we moderns rationally deny the sun revolves around the earth; and that, given the relevant differences between our respective epistemic environments, Socrates would have been unable to articulate a rational for his geocentric convictions that we moderns regard as even remotely convincing. In that hypothetical case, Socrates would enjoy a rational, but not a public, justification for his geocentric convictions. [The upshot being that we cannot expect Socrates to withdraw his support for his geocentric convictions]."

There are a number of problems with this. Firstly, Socrates is wrong. Secondly, we can understand Socrates position and his reasoning, and we can appreciate that Socrates is attempting to provide public justification, and given his current epistemic environment he may (perhaps should) succeed. That his view is wrong and will lose out does not diminish the key point that Socrates is successfully engaged in public reasoning. He is currently not adequately informed in comparison to moderns. Thirdly, we can engage with Socrates in public deliberation, we can attempt to convince him of our position based on our more expansive epistemic foundation, and we can reasonably expect Socrates to weigh the evidence and arguments and side with the heliocentric model due to its more compelling account of the solar system. Socrates is wrong. He should either change his views to heliocentrism because it is a superior view, or he should accept that his geocentric view is no longer sufficient as a public reason and he should not use it as a basis to coerce others.

A difference between the case that Eberle is making for a religious exemption and his example of Socrates is that Socrates is engaged in public reason, whilst the solely-religious justification is not. Eberle, in presenting the position of justificatory liberals put forwards the following conception:

"(5) rationale R counts as a public justification for coercive law L only if each cognitively adept, reasonable and adequately informed citizens affected by L can accept R as a sufficient basis for L."

I don't follow why only citizens affected by a coercive law can reject it, but leaving that aside this is an interesting case. Eberle's response to this is religious people consider their sacred texts to be relevant source of information for their reasons, and if non-believers do not accept these reasons then that is because they are not adequately informed about the sacred texts, that the religious could claim "...that non-believers think otherwise because they are inadequately informed: to be unaware of an omniscient being's express judgements is to be desperately ignorant." This argument fails because the non-believer is, or can be, informed as to the content of the sacred texts (indeed a Pew survey in 2010 found that generally atheists knew more about religion than believers), they simply do not accept the content as valid. This is an inevitable situation in a pluralistic world. Religions present absolutist world views that are incompatible with each other as well as with atheists, with no fair and just way to arbitrate between them (as they are absolute). If we cannot deliberate reasonably in a democracy then we give way to mob rule. Hence why we have secularism; religion A cannot be reconciled with religion B,  therefore they cannot be used to justify state coercion (e.g. establishing primacy of one religion over the other). The secular response is to protect people's freedom to choose and follow their religion, as part of a broader move to protect the liberty of all.

Reasonable public justification needs to be just that. Where such justification is lacking coercion cannot be supported. Solely religious motivations inherently cannot provide reasonable public justification in a pluralistic world. But religion is a subset of a broader case, not a specific case. What cannot be justified should not be supported. This does not remove religion from the public sphere, nor should it. What it does is remove it as a deliberative basis, but it can still be a motivational force and a subject of debate. Deeply held beliefs can be supported even if a reasonable public justification cannot be made, providing there is not an undue impact on others, out of prudence, generosity, or respect.

Deliberative Democracy

Today's Political Philosophy paper is James S. Fishkin's Deliberative Democracy (1991).

Fishkin discusses the tension between three aspects of democracy; Deliberation, Political Equality, and Non-Tyranny. Deliberation is the process of public reason to reach decisions, it is the "Filter" of society's values and preferences. Political Equality as well as being a value is a "Mirror" of the will of the people, and a leveller acting against entrenched interests and elites. Non-Tyranny is the goal to prevent, amongst other dangers, "Mob Rule".

There is at present no ideal location in the conceptual space of democracy. As such we must seek to optimise our political systems to create a balance between these competing concerns. We may not wish to have a 'dead centre' position, but certainly a position around the middle balancing the competing aspects. Of course just where we currently are and where we wish to be in the conceptual space is a matter for debate, and a process that is also subject to these competing aspects.

Fishkin's concern is that we are moving too much towards Political Equality, to the determent of Deliberation. This concern isn't against political equality in the sense of 'who gets the vote', but in a broader sense in how institutions are run. Who gets to decide, who gets elected and why, how is deliberation carried out, who is a member of the Senate, etc. This is a concern about the equality of the process of democracy, not the equality of the subjects of democracy within the state though that is a concern if the situation moves towards mob rule.

Simply put the problems here are a) modern democracies are too large for everyone to participate in the formal public deliberation, and b) most of the public will be in state of 'rational ignorance' whereby they are are not informed, and further they may be uninterested and unequipped to partake in the deliberation. Many of the issues here are of group dynamics and relate to humans interact generally. Two people can have a conversation. A handful of people can have a debate. Increase numbers further and there needs to be structures and processes in place, e.g. agenda setting, turn taking, etc. Standard effects that inhibit group discussion occur, e.g. production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and social loafing (also known as 'Why the traditional conception of brainstorming is actually counterproductive').

Fishkin's proposal is to borrow from the Athenian model had have small groups selected as a microcosm of the people, set aside time, resources, information, and provide structured support so that they can engage in deliberative debate. The output from this can either inform policy directly, or be as a pubic statement of the will of the people. We already do this with our citizen juries, another legacy we owe the Athenians.

Deliberative democracy is seen as a good thing for the standard reasons, that it will be manifestly fair, bring about better policies, engage the citizenry and so forth. Interestingly Fishkin quotes Maddison as saying that deliberative institutions are important to capture the "cool and deliberate sense of the community", as opposed to the uncool and undeliberate people as a whole. This has echoes of the philosophical debate [this is code for I can't find the reference but it might be Frankfurt] on Free Will and how we treat one and another normally. We have a sense of people being in their right mind, or out of it. That some decisions are made in the heat of the moment, or when under some form of psychological or physiological stress and that we discount these or at least moderate our judgements because of them. There is a sense that the 'real' you is the cooler and deliberative you that reflects your long term goals and interests. Again, another thing to thank the Ancient Greeks for; the rise of reason and the move to abstract, concept based, universal thinking.

Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy

Joshua Cohen gives an account for an ideal deliberative procedure in Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy (from The Good Polity (1989)). This overview is another quick summary of paragraphs and sections.

1. "A deliberative democracy is.. an association whose affairs are governed by the public deliberation of its members"
2. "Democratic politics involves public deliberation focused on the common good, requires some form of manifest equality among citizens, and shapes the identity and interests of citizens in ways that contribute to formation of a public conception of the good"
3. Cohen doesn't think that these three features (2) are 'natural sequences' of the ideal of fairness
4. These features are arrived at by trying to instantiate an ideal of fairness whilst taking into account psychological and sociological assumptions (e.g. self-interest over collective interest, entrenched privilege, etc)
5. Cohen doesn't think this (4) is good enough, as it is too indirect and instrumental a reason. Rather we arrive at (2) based on building an ideal of public deliberation
6. Ideal deliberation:
1. Is free. Free to deliberate (freed of prior norms), and free to implement the outcome and that the fact of an outcome is sufficient to comply with it
2. Deliberation is reasoned (deliberation occurs). Here we can refer to Rawls' burdens of reason. 
3. Parties are equal formally (as per rule and convention) and substantially (actually free without constraints, e.g. vested interests and the like)
4. It aims to reach a consensus
7. Public deliberation focuses the debate on the common good. "While I may take my preferences as a sufficient reason for advancing a proposal, deliberation under conditions of pluralism requires that I find reasons that make the proposal acceptable to others who cannot be expected to regard my preferences as sufficient reason for agreeing."

One of the possible objections that Cohen tackles is of injustice. His defence is roughly to analogous to the robust defence of liberal constraints that "liberal constraints are there to maximise liberty for all". Cohen's defence appears to be (obviously given here in rough form) that democracy is served by liberal values, e.g. free expression allows for the maximisation of deliberation, and therefore it is wrong (invalid?) for democratic decision making to reduce these liberal values. This argument takes liberal values to be instrumental in realising deliberative democracy.

Elster - The Market and the Forum

Democracy is "the worse form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from to time" - Churchill

Democracy has some problems in idealised forms. A democracy needs some form of decision making procedure for those instances where the people don't unanimously back a course of action, and this is usually done by majority voting. This can be a problem because you can have a 'tyranny of the majority' where minority interests are either neglected, or oppressed. Secondly, everyone has an equal vote (which can also be argued as a plus point). Thus the uninterested, the uneducated, the bigoted, the malicious, the bribed, etc all have an equal vote to the careful and considerate voter.

Elster's paper tackles different approaches to democracy. He defines three views of politics, and divides these between Market based and Forum based views. The first is Social Choice Theory (SCT), which is the Market based view. SCT is considered to be an instrumental good (it brings about good ends but isn't good in itself), and is private. SCT is about preference ordering. There are problems with this, as a Market based view it is self centred and an aggregation of individual ego-centric votes will bring about a resolution that is a) for the general good, or even b) good at all. There are a number of other issues as well, such as strategic voting where citizens vote for the most likely least-worst outcome rather than the desired outcome. An ideal SCT based voting system should have "... anonymity (that all individuals should equally), non-dictatorship (a foritori no single individual should dictate the social choice), liberalism (all individuals should have some private domains within which their preferences are decisive), and strategy-proofness (it should not pay to express false preferences).

The second view of politics denies its privateness, and the third also denies that it is an instrumental good (and affirms that it is a good in itself). They are views of politics as the Forum where the citizenship engage and debate with each other.

When politics is public the political process can shape public opinion. Sharing ideas can broaden horizons and provide different views, which aids in bringing about a better state of affairs. Elster has seven objections to this: (1) if citizens are 'encouraged' to participate this is overly paternalistic; (2) unanimous and rationale agreement may not follow (see Rawls' public reason, see also various news articles and blogs...) and there may be no way of resolving competing conceptions of the good; (3) there may not be enough time to satisfactorily discuss an issues; (4) public discussion may not be positive and may not bring around a positive end; (5) the people as a whole are not necessarily equipped to reach a better outcome than a subset of people (witness the rise of homeopathy)(6) unanimity might be brought about by conformity rather than rational agreement, and; (7) it does not follow that public debate will purge selfish desires.

In the third view the political process is a good in itself. It causes people to engage reasonably and rationally with others, and the idea is that this becomes a 'habit'. People will have to frame their views in terms of public reason which others can engage with. This works as an end for society as a whole, but ultimately individuals would rarely be engaging in politics in order to become more reasonable and tolerant, they would merely be by products.

Multiculturalism failure in Lancashire

I've used the following as a quote a few times in essays and discussion, so I thought it useful to repost it here. It comes from an article on the Lancashire Telegraph website about introducing humanism and atheism as part of the RE curriculum, and is a quote from one Salim Mulla the chair of the Lancashire Council of Mosques.

Broadly speaking a multicultural society is one that supports a plurality of world views and 'cultures' within a polity. To be successful, these world views need to get along with each other even when they are not in harmony. In short, for it to be a multicultural society and not a fragmented one, the people need to at least tolerate, and respect that others hold different views. In practice to allow citizens the freedom to pursue these diverse ends the polity needs to be liberal; one that allows people the liberty to pursue their ends. A liberal society needs to equip it's citizens with the ability, potential, and freedom to choose their way of life, otherwise those citizens don't have liberty. As part of this citizens need to be aware that they have other choices, that other world views exist.

In the UK this is one of the reasons we have RE lessons. RE teaches about different world views to broaden horizons, and help people to understand that others may have fundamentally different world views and that's okay. RE is about religious understanding. This should probably be subsumed into a broader citizenship and ethics class, but that's a whole different story. Religious instruction is left to parents and whatever temple is attended. (Important exception here: the varyingly applied rule for collective worship in schools).

So.. we want our children to know about other religions as part of their education. It allows them to choose. It broadens their horizons and exposes them to novel ways of thinking. It helps them to understand The Other, and in a school where children have a wide range of faiths and world views it helps them to understand that people who believe radically different things to them are still people just like you. Because, you know, apartheid is bad.

Anyway, without further ado, here is the quote from Lancashire Telegraph and the chair of the local muslim council of mosques on the subject of letting children know that not everyone believes in God:

“We believe it is important to have faith values whether that is Christian, Islamic or any other religion.

"The values are very, very important. I don’t think the non-God aspect should be introduced into the curriculum.

“I don’t think it is right. People are born into faiths and are brought up in that faith and that’s how it should stay.

“The non-faith beliefs send a wrong message to the children and confuse them.”

Interesting stuff. I think this underestimates children, and suggests that people shouldn't be free to choose their beliefs. Mr Mulla is of course entitled to his belief that those without faith are wrong, that's what being in a liberal society is all about, but I believe that saying "this world view on the matter of the existence of God, which is held by 30-60% of the nation [depending on the polls and phrasing of the question], shouldn't be mentioned in a class that is supposed to teach children about other world views and should in effect be censored" seems ... well... a little insular.

Rawls - The Status of Majority Rule

Next up on the reading list is section 54 of Rawls' A Theory of Justice: The Status of Majority Rule.

I have difficulty reading Rawls. I largely agree with him and think he has sound arguments, but I tend to get a little lost in his exposition. So, this attempt at a summary will be a cheeky walkthrough to produce only a sentence from each paragraph.

1. Majority rule (e.g. democracy) is, hopefully, an instrumental good in that it brings about a legislative state of affairs grounded on the principles of justice (loosely liberty and equality).
2. It does not follow that what the majority wills is right, which is why we need constitutional limitations, though (interesting multiculturalism angle) we should be wary that entrenched minorities may use these limitations to preserve their illicit advantages.
3. A just constitution is "...defined as a constitution that would be agreed upon by rational delegates in a constitutional convention who are guided by the two principles of justice" and the Viel of Ignorance (VI) and Original Position (OP) come into play here as part of a conceptual ideal procedure.
4. A law or policy is just if it could be arrived at via the ideal procedure (VI and OP).
5. A problem with majority decision as an instrument of reaching a correct decision is that people influence each other (lots of human interaction stuff here: group think, evaluation apprehension, social loafing, etc... hmm... perhaps law making needs a fresh looking using the group decision making and creativity literature)
6. There are some benefits from having lots of people involved in decision making though, the exchange of opinion "...checks our partiality and widens our perspective"
7. So we want an ideal procedure.. but don't have it at the moment
8. An ideal political process is different to an ideal market process, because you won't get an efficient outcome if everyone only considers their own interest
9. We can't really bring about an ideal procedure (where people make the laws), we must rely on a certain extent on the people being just, but we should still aim to move towards it
10. Because of the equality principle, in the ideal procedure everyone's vote has equal weighting; one *cough* man one vote, which is a bit different to the ideal market, though I don't know why we should be caring about the ideal market at this stage
11. For any given legislative choice there may be a range of possible outcomes in the 'outcome landscape' that could be considered to be just
12. The role of majority decision making is to choose policies that lie on the 'justice peaks' in the 'outcome landscape', which will make the decision authoritative though not definitive.


Interesting aside: (some) theists claim that only God can provide objective morality. Setting aside the truth value of that, the subjectivity of interpreting that morality, and the Euthyphro dilemma... can the Original Position be considered a basis for objective morality? It appears to be in all but name in A Theory of Justice. Well, to be fair I've not read the whole thing so it could be in name as well.