Stephen Law - papers

Wright's Private Language Argument Refuted

2011-01-11T06:18:00.000-08:00

(currently unpublished) copyright to myself. Feel free to link but do not repost.

ABSTRACT: Wright’s Private Language Argument Refuted

Crispin Wright has developed a novel take on the private language argument presented by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations PI 258-60. Wright’s private language argument is ingenious and important, and it has not, to date, been refuted. In this paper I refute Wright’s argument, pointing out that it commits the fallacy of equivocation (it trades on an ambiguity in his use of the phrase “reason to believe”). While there may be a cogent private language argument presented in PI 258-60, Wright has failed to hit upon it.

Wright’s Private Language Argument Refuted

Introduction

Suppose our sensations are necessarily private and inaccessible to others. That would seem to introduce the possibility of a subject introducing a private sensation-language the meaning of which would necessarily be unknown to others. Suppose, for example, that I define “S” by reference to my private sensation. I focus my attention on the inner phenomenon, thereby impressing on myself the connection between sign and sensation. I might then use “S” to record facts about my private mental life. For example, I could use it to record in my diary those days on which I have that particular sensation. The meaning of “S” would necessarily be unknown, and necessarily unteachable, to others.

In Philosophical Investigations (PI) §§258-60, Wittgenstein appears to present an argument against the possibility of someone introducing such a “private language”. However, it remains controversial both what the private language argument is, and whether or not it is cogent.

In Does Philosophical Investigations §§258-60 Suggest A Cogent Argument Against Private Language? Crispin Wright presents an argument suggested to him by §§258-60, an argument that Wright believes is, in fact, cogent. That argument has not, as yet, been refuted. I aim to refute it here.

Wright’s private language argument

Wright begins by making a case for two key principles. The first principle lays down a condition on a sentence being apt for the expression of a fact. According to Wright,
sentences of a given family are apt for the expression of a fact only if:

(a) X believes what “P” expresses,

and

(b) What “P” expresses is true.

have an appropriately contrasting content where “P” is any of (appropriately many of) the sentences in question. (1986:228)

Wright’s second principle is that (a) and (b) will have appropriately contrasting content only if:

the information conveyed by (a) should differ from that conveyed by (b). And it is plausible that, for a large class of examples, two items of information differ just in case there can be such a thing as reasonably regarding oneself as possessing one and not the other. (1986:230)

These two principles have some prima facie plausibility, and I shall, for the sake of argument, concede both here. Wright then proceeds as follows. From the second of the above principles, Wright derives the interim conclusion that

we are entitled to regard (a) and (b) as conveying different items of information only if someone could have reason to believe one but not the other and could be aware of the fact. (1986:231)

The final step in of Wright’s argument is to show that, where “P” is a sentence of a putative private language (such as, “I am having S again”), it is not possible that someone could have reason to believe (a) but not (b), or vice verse. Wright continues:

The argument will be that when “P” is, putatively, a sentence of a language which no two people could reasonably believe they share, that is not a possibility.

It will suffice to consider four cases. Letting “A” range over believing subjects, we have

(i) A is aware of possessing both reason to believe (a) and reason to doubt (b);
(ii) A is aware of possessing both reason to doubt (a) and reason to believe (b);
(iii) A is aware of possessing both reason to believe (a) and no reason to believe (b)
(iv) A is aware of possessing no reason to believe (a) and reason to believe (b). (1986:231)

Wright believes that, whether A is X him- or herself or some third party Y, if “P” a sentence of a private language, none of the above four cases can obtain. It thus follows, according to Wright, that “P” cannot state fact. A language in which one might state facts concerning one’s own private sensations is impossible.
Wright deals with cases (i) to (iv) in turn, in each case providing one or more arguments for why, if “P” is a sentence of a private language, that case cannot obtain. I shall not run though all these arguments. It will be instructive, however, to run through Wright’s argument that, where “P” is a sentence of a private language, (iii) cannot obtain.

Let’s begin by supposing that A is not the putative private linguist but a third person Y. Wright’s argument that Y cannot be aware of possessing both reason to believe (a) and no reason to believe (b) is as follows.

True, Y does not know which aspect of X’s psychological state “P” concerns. However, Y does know that “P”, as used by X, concerns some aspect or other of X’s psychological state. And it is, generally, a feature of psychological states that the subject of such a state be some sort of authority about it. So if, for example, Y has reason to suppose X believes he is experiencing S again, then Y also possesses some reason to believe X is experiencing S again. As Wright puts it:

[I]f one may at least suppose that “P”, as used by X, concerns some aspect or other of X’s psychological state, then one is bound to take reason for (a) as supporting (b); and note that the point is not dependent on crediting X with Cartesian authority for his psychological states – it is enough that he be any sort of (fallible) authority about them, that his opinions about them count for something. (232)

Wright concludes that, where “P” is a sentence of X’s putative private language, Y cannot be in state (iii).

What if A is X – the putative private linguist him or herself? Can A then be in state (iii)? No, says Wright. X’s belief that “P” is true gives X grounds for believing “P” is true, for, again, “P” concerns X’s own psychological state, something about which X must surely be considered some sort of authority.

Refutation of Wright’s private language argument

Wright’s argument is not cogent. As indicated above, Wright begins by appealing to the principle that
two items of information differ just in case there can be such a thing as reasonably regarding oneself as possessing one and not the other. (1986:230)

But notice that this principle allows (a) and (b) to convey different pieces of information even if it is true that possessing reason to believe one immediately provides one with some reason to believe the other. For the situation may be that, while the existence of reason to believe (a) inevitably provides one with some reason to believe (b), the degree of support provided to each belief may differ, raising the possibility of it being reasonable to regard oneself as possessing one piece of information but not the other.

Here’s an analogous case. Consider the two pieces of information: Fred is a Christian, and: Fred is religious. Ceteris paribus, evidence supporting one of these beliefs inevitably provides at least some support the other. Yet it is entirely possible reasonably to regard oneself as possessing the latter piece of information but not the former.

To show that the information conveyed by (a) and (b) does not differ, Wright must show that it is impossible for one reasonably to regard oneself as possessing one piece of information but not the other. Wright fails to do this. He points out, no doubt correctly, that if, for example, A has reason to believe (a), then, because “P” concerns the putative private linguist’s own psychological state (something about which the private linguist must be considered some sort of authority), A will also have some reason to believe (b). But note that this fact is entirely consistent with it being reasonable for A to regard him or herself as possessing the information conveyed by (a) but not the information conveyed by (b). Thus it is also consistent with (a) and (b) conveying different pieces of information.

For example, suppose Y knows both that X defined “S” by reference to one of X’s psychological states and also that X has not given any thought to his definition until months later, when X is suddenly convinced he is experiencing S again. This delay may makes it rational for Y to entertain serious doubts about the reliability of X’s memory concerning how “S” is should be applied. In these circumstances, Y’s knowledge that X believes that he is experiencing S may give Y some reason to suppose that X is experiencing S again, as Wright maintains. But of course it may not be reason sufficient to make it reasonable for Y to regard him or herself as possessing the information that X is experiencing S again. Thus Y may reasonably regard him or herself as possessing the information that X believes he is experiencing S again, but not the information that X is experiencing S again. In which case, if sentence “P” is “I am experiencing S again” (as uttered by X), Wright has failed to give us any reason why the information conveyed by (a) and (b) cannot differ.

The fallacy of equivocation

Let me identify precisely where Wright’s private language argument goes wrong. It commits the fallacy of equivocation. Wright argues from the principle that

two items of information differ just in case there can be such a thing as reasonably regarding oneself as possessing one and not the other. (1986:230)

to the interim conclusion that

we are entitled to regard (a) and (b) as conveying different items of information only if someone could have reason to believe [my italics] one but not the other and could be aware of the fact (1986:231).

But what does “reason to believe” mean in the interim conclusion? The phrase “reason to believe” is ambiguous. It might mean, for example reason sufficient to make it reasonable to believe, or it might just mean some (possibly inadequate) reason to believe.

Now notice that Wright’s interim conclusion follows from his principle only if “reason to believe” means the former, not the latter. For we might still reasonably regard ourselves as possessing one item of information but not another despite that fact that possessing reason to believe one thing inevitably gives us some reason to believe the other.

Wright then claims that, where “P” is a sentence of a putative private language, the impossibility of cases (i) to (iv) suffices to show that (a) and (b) must convey the same information.

But notice that in cases (i) to (iv) “reason to believe” presumably means only some (possibly inadequate) reason to believe. Otherwise, for example, Wright’s case (iii):

A is aware of possessing both reason to believe (a) and no reason to believe (b)

comes out as the case in which A is aware of possessing both reason sufficient to make it reasonable for them to believe (a), but not reason sufficient to make it reasonable for them to believe (b) – a case which, as we have seen, is possible, i.e. because, while having reason to believe (a) immediately gives A some reason to believe (b), the reason A possesses for believing (a) may be much stronger than for believing (b), thereby making it reasonable for them to believe (a) but not (b).

In short, Wright’s private language argument trades on an ambiguity in the use of “reason to believe” - on an unwitting slide from one way of using that phrase to another. It commits the fallacy of equivocation.

There may be a cogent private language argument contained in PI 258-60. What is now clear. I believe, is that Wright has failed to hit upon it.

PLANTINGA'S BELIEF-CUM-DESIRE ARGUMENT REFUTED

2009-06-26T02:43:00.000-07:00

PLANTINGA’S BELIEF-CUM-DESIRE ARGUMENT REFUTED
Stephen Law

FORTHCOMING IN RELIGIOUS STUDIES. NOTE THAT CAMBRIDGE UNIV. PRESS NOW OWN COPYRIGHT.

Abstract

In Warrant and Proper Function, Plantinga develops an argument designed to show that naturalism is self-defeating. One component of this larger argument is what I call Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument, which is intended to establish something more specific: that if the content of our beliefs does causally effect behaviour (that is to say, semantic content is not epiphenomenal), and if naturalism and current evolutionary doctrine are correct, then the probability that we possess reliable cognitive mechanisms must be either inscrutable or low. This paper aims to refute Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument.

Introduction
In the final chapter of Warrant and Proper Function , Plantinga argues that, if both:

(N) naturalism – the view that there are no supernatural beings

(E) evolution - current evolutionary doctrine

are true, then the probability that:

(R) our cognitive faculties are reliable and produce mostly true beliefs

must be either low or inscrutable.
Plantinga argues, further, that this argument furnishes anyone who accepts N&E with a undefeatable defeater for any belief produced by those faculties, including N&E itself. Hence, N&E has been shown to be self-defeating.
One part of this larger argument is what I call Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument. The belief-cum-desire argument is designed to show something more specific - that if the content of our beliefs does causally affect behaviour, and N&E, then the probability of R cannot be high.
My objective here is to refute the belief-cum-desire argument.

Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument
Suppose some hypothetical rational creatures much like us evolve on a planet a lot like Earth - they ‘hold beliefs, change beliefs, make inferences, and so on’ . Suppose:

(C) causal efficacy – the content of beliefs causally affects behaviour

is true. What is the probability of R/N&E&C specified with respect to these creatures – what is the probability that their cognitive faculties are reliable?
The probability, says Plantinga, is not as high as you might initially be tempted to suppose. For it is not belief per se that is adaptive, but behaviour. And behaviour is caused by combinations of belief and desire. But then, claims Plantinga, for any given adaptive action (action that enhances the creatures ability to survive and reproduce),

there will be many belief-desire combinations that could produce that action; and very many of those belief-desire combinations will be such that the belief involved is false.

Plantinga illustrates like so:

So suppose Paul is a prehistoric hominid; a hungry tiger approaches. Fleeing is perhaps the most appropriate behavior: I pointed out that this behavior could be produced by a large number of different belief-desire pairs. To quote myself: ‘Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely that the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief. . . . . Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. . . . or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a regularly recurring illusion, and, hoping to keep his weight down, has formed the resolution to run a mile at top speed whenever presented with such an illusion; or perhaps he thinks he is about to take part in a 1600 meter race, wants to win, and believes the appearance of the tiger is the starting signal; or perhaps . . . . Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behavior.’

So adaptive behaviour can be produced by many belief-desire combinations and, ‘in many of these combinations, the beliefs are false’ . We cannot, concludes Plantinga, estimate the probability of R on N&E&C as high. And of course, if we cannot estimate that probability as high for these hypothetical creatures, then we cannot estimate it as high in our own case either.
The above argument that the probability of R given N&E&C cannot be high has some superficial plausibility. Plantinga is surely correct that:

(i) it is behaviour that evolution selects for rather than beliefs per se.

He is also correct that:

(ii) for any piece of adaptive behaviour, there are many belief-desire combinations that might produce it, on many of which the belief or beliefs in question are false.

However, I will show that, appearances to the contrary, it does not follow from (i) and (ii) that we cannot reasonably estimate the probability of R on N&E&C as being high. Indeed, I shall go further, and sketch out some reasons for supposing that the probability of R given N&E&C must, in fact, be fairly high.

Refutation of Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument
Consider two possible scenarios:

(a) we have evolved certain false beliefs and certain desires that, in combination, result in adaptive behaviour
(b) we evolved certain unreliable belief-producing mechanisms and certain desires that, in combination, result in adaptive behaviour.

Perhaps, on N&E&C, (a) is not so unlikely, for the reasons Plantinga cites. Suppose I have an innate belief that tigers are cuddly and that best way to pet a tiger is to run away from it. If I am also equipped with an innate desire to pet tigers, this results in adaptive behaviour.
But what about (b)? How likely is it on N&E&C that our belief-producing mechanisms are unreliable? Consider the question: what particular set of desires would a species need to evolve in order for the beliefs generated by such an unreliable mechanism to result in generally adaptive behaviour? Let’s look at some examples, beginning with the cognitive faculty of reason.

Example one: the FAC
Consider the fallacy of affirming the consequent (FAC). The FAC is an unreliable form of inference. It sometimes produces true conclusions, but often false.
Suppose evolution hard-wires a species of hominid H to be highly prone to the FAC. Suppose a member of this species, H1, concludes using the FAC that jumping out of planes is not safe. Another member, H2, concludes using the FAC that jumping off tall buildings is safe. They might reason like so:

H1’s inference:
If jumping out of planes is not safe, jumping out of balloons is not safe
Jumping out of balloons is not safe
Jumping out of planes is not safe

H2’s inference:
If jumping out of planes is safe, then jumping out of planes wearing a parachute is safe
Jumping out of planes wearing a parachute is safe
Jumping out of planes is safe

If evolution hard-wires a desire into species H to make H2’s resulting belief that jumping out of planes is safe adaptive – e.g. a powerful desire to commit suicide - that same hard-wired desire will result in the likely death of H1.
What set of desires must evolution instil in species H to render adaptive the potentially-mal-adaptive consequences of applying the FAC? There is no such set of desires!
The FAC sometimes produces false beliefs, but sometimes true. Is that the reason why evolution cannot render the FAC adaptive? Could a method of inference that consistently produced false conclusions from true premises be made adaptive by pairing it with an appropriate set of desires? No, as I explain below.

Example two: Counter-induction
Consider two hominids A and B. A reasons inductively and B counter-inductively, like so:

A observes that whenever other hominids eat, they usually continue to live, and when they stop eating, they die. He concludes that if he eats, he’ll probably continue to live, and if he stops eating, he’ll die.

B observes that whenever other hominids eat, they usually continue to live, and when they stop eating, they die. He concludes that if he eats, he’ll probably die, and if he stops eating, he’ll continue to live.

When A applies his form of reasoning to true premises, he is likely to end up with a true belief. B on the other hand, is likely to end up with a false belief. His method of inference consistently produces false beliefs.
However, if evolution equips A with a desire to live, and B with a desire to die, B’s false belief produces the same adaptive behaviour as A’s true belief. Counter-induction has delivered a false belief, but it has not produced behaviour that is mal-adaptive.
So far, it seems that Plantinga is correct: given evolution equips A and B with the right desires, the behaviour produced by their belief-forming mechanisms is equally adaptive.
But now suppose A and B engage in further reasoning, applying their respective methods of inference like so:

A observes that other hominids that forage and hunt get food to eat, and those who don’t get none. A concludes that if he hunts and gathers, he’ll get food to eat, and if he doesn’t he’ll get none.

B observes that other hominids that forage and hunt get food to eat, and those that don’t get none. B concludes that if he doesn’t hunts and gather, he’ll get food to eat, and if he does, he’ll get none.

Now, A’s reasoning helps him survive. Given his desire to live, these two inferences together will lead him to hunt and gather. That’s adaptive behaviour.
The problem is, given the desire required to get B’s first counter-inductive inference to produce adaptive behaviour, B’s second counter-inductive inference is now likely to produce mal-adaptive behaviour. Given B’s desire to die, plus his false belief that eating will kill him, his second counter-inductively generated conclusion will no doubt lead him not to go hunting and gathering. B will probably starve to death.

Plantinga is correct that for any piece of adaptive behaviour, there are many belief-desire combinations that might produce it, on many of which the belief or beliefs in question are false. But it does not follow that the probability of R given N&E&C cannot reasonably be estimated as high. The members of a species equipped with unreliable belief-forming mechanisms such as the FAC or counter-induction will end up with all sorts of combinations of false beliefs the potentially mal-adaptive consequences of which cannot be made adaptive by evolution hard-wiring that species with some particular set of desires.
In fact there are two difficulties here.
First, there is the problem of novel beliefs. An advantage of procedural reasoning is that it allows for creatures able to problem solve and adapt, within their own lifetimes, to a changing environment and novel situations. An adaptive inferential mechanism is likely to applied in new ways. But then evolution cannot then anticipate what desires will be required to render adaptive the innumerable potentially mal-adaptive conclusions likely to be drawn. If B draws the first counter-inductive conclusion, his desire to die renders his conclusion adaptive. But if B happens to go on and draw that second conclusion using the same unreliable form of inference, that same desire now renders the conclusion mal-adaptive.
The second problem is that not only can evolution not anticipate which desires creatures will need to render the conclusions of such unreliable inferences adaptive, when it comes to unreliable forms of inference, there just is no set of desires that will render the mechanism adaptive. A set of desires that renders one set of conclusions adaptive will render another set of conclusions generated by the same mechanism mal-adaptive.
On the other hand, evolution can make reliable forms of inference adaptive in a straightforward way, by equipping the species in question with desires for those things that enhance its ability to survive and reproduce. In which case, the probability that reliable forms of inference will evolve, as opposed to an unreliable forms of inference, looks to be high.

Other cognitive faculties
The considerations sketched out above suggest that N&E&C should lead us to estimate the probability that our cognitive faculty of procedural reasoning is reliable as fairly high. But of course, procedural reason alone furnishes us with little, if any, knowledge. Other cognitive faculties – mostly notable perception and memory – must also come into play.
How reasonable is it, given N&E&C, to suppose that these other faculties are reliable? If there is no good reason to suppose they are reliable, then there’s no good reason to suppose our various faculties working in conjunction constitute a reliable belief-forming system. My car may have a reliable carburettor, but if other parts are unreliable, the car as a whole remains unreliable.
So let’s now look at the cognitive faculties of memory and perception. Has Plantinga shown that, given N&E&C, the probability that these other faculties are reliable cannot be high?

Memory
Suppose hominid species H is equipped with an unreliable memory. Hominid H1 has at time t1 true beliefs B1 and B2. But, because H1’s memory is unreliable, she later believes the falsehoods not-B1 and not-B2. Is there a desire or set of desires with which evolution might also equip species H that will render adaptive the behaviour produced by these two resulting false beliefs? Very probably. If B1 is the belief that if you eat you will live and B2 the belief that if you don’t eat you will die, these beliefs will result in adaptive action if H1 desires to die. However, because H1 previously believed B1 and B2, she would previously have not eaten, which is mal-adaptive behaviour. There is no set of desires that will make both the input and output beliefs of this unreliable faculty result in adaptive behaviour. But then unguided evolution cannot equip species H with a set of desires that will make the input and output beliefs of this unreliable faculty generally adaptive. Evolution can, on the other hand, equip a species with a set of desires that will make the input and output beliefs of a reliable faculty generally adaptive. It appears, then, that N&E&C will therefore strongly favour a reliable memory faculty over an unreliable faculty.

Perception
How likely is it, on N&E&C, that evolution would produce a species with a reliable perceptual-mechanism-cum-desire combination, rather than an unreliable-perceptual-mechanism-cum-desire combination?
Fairly likely, I suspect. Here are two categories of unreliable perceptual mechanisms:

(1) Unreliable mechanisms producing mostly false beliefs.
(2) Unreliable mechanisms that produce significant proportion of, but not mostly, false beliefs

Let’s begin by considering perceptual or quasi-perceptual mechanisms of type (1). Such mechanisms fall, in turn, into two categories:

(1a) Unreliable mechanisms producing mostly false beliefs but in a systematic, predictable way.

and

(1b) Unreliable mechanisms producing mostly false beliefs in a random, unpredictable way

An example of (1a) would be a perceptual or quasi-perceptual mechanism that, whenever the subject is presented with a tiger, produces the belief there is a rabbit present. There is consistency to the error. An example of (1b) would be a perceptual or quasi-perceptual mechanism that, when the subject is presented with a tiger, may the first time produce the belief there is nothing present, the next time the belief a rabbit present, the next time the belief there is a chair present, and the time after that the belief there’s a side of beef present, etc., but rarely if ever the belief that there is a tiger present. While we can predict that the subject will make an error about there being a tiger in front of them, it is not possible, even given knowledge of the erroneous beliefs previously produced when a tiger was present, to predict what erroneous belief will now be produced on this occasion.
Can unguided evolution make an unreliable mechanism of type (1b) produce adaptive behaviour by combining it with an appropriate set of desires? It is hard to see how. If there is a tiger present and the mechanism makes me believe there is a rabbit present, my mistaken belief can still result in adaptive behaviour if evolution has given me a desire to run away from rabbits. But if the erroneous beliefs are being generated in a random way, there will be no particular desire or set of desires with which evolution might equip me that will make the random false beliefs generated by this mechanism adaptive.
What about a mechanism of type (1a)? Does the pattern to the errors produced by the mechanism mean that evolution can render the mechanism adaptive by combining it with an appropriate set of desires?
That suggestion might seem plausible when we consider a very simple example of adaptive behaviour, such as running away from tigers. If the mechanism systematically produces the belief that a rabbit is present whenever a tiger is present, all evolution need do is instil in these subjects a powerful desire to run away from rabbits.
But the suggestion becomes far less plausible when we consider more we consider sophisticated patterns of adaptive behaviour of the sort we actually exhibit.
Suppose, for example, that to reach food you need to survive, you need to engage in some team activity with other members of your species – e.g. negotiating some tricky terrain that includes a narrow ledge and a poisonous snake. Someone has to distract the snake while someone else crawls carefully along the edge and leaps over the snake at the exact moment it is distracted.
Now try to imagine a perceptual mechanism of type (1a) that produces mostly false beliefs about your surroundings, but beliefs that, when paired with certain desires with which evolution has pre-equipped your species, will result in the required adaptive behaviour from you and your team mates.
You must not believe there is a snake and a ledge and some food and some team mates with whom you must co-operate. And nor must your team-mates. You, and they, must have mostly false beliefs about your environment, but beliefs that, nevertheless, when paired with desires with which evolution has collectively furnished you, lead you to act in tandem with your other team members to retrieve and eat the food.
In fact, setting aside the challenge of imagining such a mechanism, it is a difficult enough challenge to construct just a set of mostly false beliefs and hard-wired desires that would result in the complex sequence of actions required. Perhaps it is not impossible. Perhaps your (1a) type mechanism causes you to believe that instead of food at the end of the ledge, there’s a little man who will give you a tickle stick if you walk carefully along a white line, jumping in the air after 15 seconds, and then reach down and take the stick. Perhaps you believe that eating the tickle stick is the best way to get tickled. If we pair this false belief with a desire to be tickled, your resulting sequence of actions might yet be adaptive. You might successfully negotiate the narrow ledge, leap over that snake (though who is going to distract it?) and then eat the food.
However, even if we can come up with a mostly-false-perceptual-belief-cum-desire combination that would, in this situation, result in adaptive action, it is still more difficult still to come up with a belief-forming mechanism of type (1a), which, when paired with an appropriate set of desires, will result in sophisticated patterns of adaptive behaviour generally of the sort of which we are capable. If the next time the food lies beyond a chasm that can only be negotiated if you and your team place a tree trunk across the gap, then the false belief ‘There’s a little man who will give you a tickle stick if you walk carefully forward along the white line, jumping in the air after 15 seconds…’ combined with that powerful desire to be tickled will send you and your team mates straight over the cliff. That is not adaptive behaviour.
It is not yet clear that there is any set of desires that, when combined with an unreliable perceptual mechanism of type (1a), will generally produce sophisticated patterns of adaptive behaviour of the kind we actually exhibit.

Let’s now turn to perceptual mechanisms of the second sort:

(2) Unreliable mechanisms that produce a significant proportion of, but not mostly, false beliefs

Such, as it were, hit and miss (as opposed to consistently miss) mechanisms may also be of two kinds: those producing false beliefs in a random way – there being no pattern to the errors, and those in which the errors are, in certain respects, systematic.
We have already seen in the case of mechanisms of type (1b) that a mechanism producing erroneous beliefs in a random way is not a mechanism that evolution might pair off with a particular set of desires such that adaptive behaviour will result.
But what of a hit and miss mechanism in which there is a pattern to the misses? An example would be a mechanism that was reliable with respect to the shape of objects but systematically unreliable with respect to position. Equipped with such a mechanism, a creature might believe, correctly, that there is a square object in its vicinity, but it will be mistaken about where that object is located.
Are there potentially many such perceptual or quasi-perceptual mechanisms that, while systematically producing many false beliefs, will still result in generally adaptive behaviour given evolution pairs the mechanism with an appropriate set of desires? And, if so, is there a significant probability, on N&E&C, that we have evolved such an unreliable mechanism, rather than a reliable mechanism?
Here is a sketch of two reasons why the answer to these questions is unlikely to be yes.
First, we have seen that it is difficult to envisage type (1a) mechanisms that, given N&E&C, will result in sophisticated sequences of team activity of the sort required to retrieve the food from that snake-inhabited narrow ledge. I cannot see that it is significantly easier to envisage a type (2) mechanisms of that sort. Try, for example, to imagine a type (2) mechanism producing mostly correct beliefs about the shape of objects but systematically incorrect beliefs about their location that will result in such successful sequences of team activity – I have tried, and failed. If someone claims there are many such potential mechanisms, the onus is on them to provide a series of examples to illustrate the point. I am unable.
Second, even if there are many such potential mechanisms, is there a significant probability, given N&E&C, that we have evolved such a mechanism rather than a reliable mechanism? Perhaps not. Consider, again, a mechanism that is reliable about the shape of objects but systematically unreliable about their position. The most obvious way such a mechanism might evolve is in two stages: first evolving a mechanism that is reliable about both the shape and the position of objects, and then engineering a mechanism that systematically reassigns positions to objects, but in such a way that, given the desires with which the species is also equipped, still results in adaptive behaviour. But why would that second level of engineering evolve given the reliable first level is already producing adaptive behaviour? What would be the pay off, for evolution, of now adding a sophisticated location-reassignment mechanism and changing the desires so that adaptive behaviour still results? If there is unlikely to be such a pay off, it is unlikely such a systematic-error-producing mechanism would evolve. Evolution will stick with the reliable mechanism.
In fact, even if N&E&C had equipped us with an unreliable perceptual faculty or faculties of type (2), it still would not follow that probably many of our beliefs are false. We have seen reasons to suppose that N&E&C will favour reliable as opposed to unreliable faculties of memory and procedural reasoning. If a species also possesses perceptual faculties that are partly reliable and partly, but systematically, unreliable, there arises the possibility – perhaps the probability – that the members of this species will be able to figure out that they are, to some extent, being systematically misled by those faculties. In which case, they may well adjust their beliefs accordingly. Their beliefs would now reliably reflect reality, despite the fact that they possessed unreliable perceptual faculties. If R is the reliability of their cognitive faculties acting in tandem, the probability of R might still be high, even if it was more probable than not that they possessed unreliable perceptual faculties of type (2).

Conclusion
Regarding his hypothetical creatures ‘ a lot like us’ evolving on another planet ‘a lot like Earth’, Plantinga claims that, for any given piece of adaptive behaviour they engage in,

there are many belief-desire combinations that will lead to the adaptive action; in many of these combinations, the beliefs are false. Without further knowledge of these creatures, therefore, we could hardly estimate the probability of R on N&E and this final possibility [C] as high.

The word ‘therefore’ is not justified by what precedes it. While it may be true that for any piece of adaptive behaviour there are many false-belief-cum-desire combinations that might produce it, it does not follow that we cannot reasonably estimate the probability, for either Plantinga’s hypothetical creatures or for ourselves, of R/N&E&C to be high. This is, not least, because, when we turn from beliefs to belief-producing cognitive mechanisms of the sort with which we are equipped (e.g. reason, perception, memory), it is no longer clear that there are many (indeed, any) unreliable versions of such mechanisms that, by virtue of unguided evolution pairing them with certain hard-wired desires, will nevertheless result in the sort of sophisticated patterns of adaptive behaviour we exhibit.
So Plantinga’s belief-cum-desire argument fails. Indeed, I have sketched out some reasons for thinking that the probability, on N&E&C, that our cognitive faculties, operating in tandem, are reliable, is actually pretty high (though I certainly do not claim to have established that here).
However, there remain two concessions to be made.
The first is: we should acknowledge that to refute the belief-cum-desire argument is not to refute Plantinga’s larger evolutionary argument against naturalism. The belief-cum-desire argument is intended to work in tandem with certain other estimates of probability to deliver the conclusion that the probability of R given N&E is either low or (given the questionability of these various estimations) inscrutable. The other key estimates are that, on N&E, the probability of C is low (because semantic epiphenomenalism is likely to be true), and (ii) that, on N&E and not-C, the probability of R is low. Now, as a matter of fact, given Plantinga’s estimates of these other probabilities, his conclusion that the probability of R given N&E must be low still follows (though the probability is now not as low as it would have been given the probability of R given N&E&C was high). So, we while we may have succeeded in refuting the belief-cum-desire argument, we cannot claim to have refuted Plantinga’s larger argument that the probability of R given N&E must be low or inscrutable. I make no such claim.
Secondly, Plantinga offers at least one other argument for the limited conclusion that we cannot reasonably estimate the probability of R/N&E&C to be high. Someone’s beliefs about the world might be largely false because they mistakenly think e.g. everything is conscious, and they refer to things in such a way as to attribute consciousness to them, so all their beliefs are of the form ‘that conscious so-and-so is such a such’. Despite being largely false, this individual’s beliefs could still be adaptive. Thus, even if N&E&C is true, this individual’s cognitive faculties could still be unreliable (in the Plantingian sense that they produce largely false beliefs). So, given N&E&C, we cannot be confident we have not evolved such unreliable mechanisms. This alternative argument is, again, not one I claim to have refuted here.
So the aims of this paper have been comparatively modest. Nevertheless, the belief-cum-desire argument, even if not indispensable to Plantinga’s larger project, nevertheless constitutes one of the most interesting and initially intuitively appealing parts of Plantinga’s larger case, and its loss is significant.
I note that in its most recent incarnation (in ‘Content and Natural Selection’ ), Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism no longer includes the belief-cum-desire argument – perhaps because Plantinga, too, has come to realize its failings.

THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE - forthcoming in Religious Studies

2009-06-05T05:43:00.000-07:00

POSTSCRIPT:

My Paper "The Evil God Challenge" is now available online at the CUP journals page http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A72V8TEm

This is the final, published version, appearing in Religious Studies shortly. PDF VERSION.

THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE

Stephen Law

NB Note COPYRIGHT RESTS WITH CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS. This is forthcoming in Religious Studies.

Abstract

This paper develops a challenge to theism. The challenge is to explain why the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-good god should be considered significantly more reasonable than the hypothesis that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and all-evil god. Theists typically dismiss the evil god hypothesis out of hand because of the problem of good – there is surely too much good in the world for it to be the creation of such a being. But then why doesn’t the problem of evil provide equally good grounds for dismissing belief in a good god? I develop this evil god challenge in detail, anticipate several replies, and correct errors made in earlier discussions of the problem of good.

I: THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE

Let’s call the central claim classical of monotheism – that there exists an omnipotent, omniscient and supremely benevolent creator – the good god hypothesis. Typically, those who believe this hypothesis, while perhaps insisting that it is a ‘faith position’, nevertheless consider it not unreasonable. Believing in the existence of God, they maintain, is not like believing in the existence of Santa or fairies. It is much more reasonable than that.
In response, critics often point out that, even if most of the popular arguments for the existence of God do provide grounds for supposing that there is some sort of supernatural intelligence behind the universe, they fail to provide much clue as to its moral character. Suppose, for example, that the universe shows clear evidence of having been designed. To conclude, solely on that basis, that the designer is supremely benevolent would be about as unjustified as it would be to conclude that it is, say, supremely malevolent, which clearly would not be justified at all.
Critics may add that there is, in addition, ample empirical evidence against the existence of such supremely benevolent being. In particular, they may invoke the evidential problem of evil.

The problems of evil

There are at least two problems of evil. The logical problem begins with the thought that the claim:

(1) There exists an omnipotent, omniscient and maximally good God

is logically inconsistent with the claim:

(2) Evil exists

Under ‘evil’ I mean to include both suffering and morally blameworthy actions. The argument then proceeds as follows. Clearly, (2) is true. Therefore, (1) is false.
Note that the amount of evil is irrelevant this version of the argument – all it requires is that there is some, no matter how little.
Perhaps the logical problem of evil does not pose such a great challenge to theism. To deal with it, it would suffice to show that an all-powerful, all-knowing and maximally good God might allow some evil for the sake of some greater good.
A second problem – the evidential problem – rests not on the thought that (2) is logically incompatible with that of (1), but on the thought that (2) provides us with good evidence against (1). The amount of evil does now become relevant. Even if we acknowledge God might have reason to allow some evil, surely there can be no good reason for quite so much? We can sharpen the problem by noting that God will presumably not allow any gratuitous suffering to exist. There must be a good reason for every last ounce of it.
Many argue that not only is there little reason to suppose that the God of classical monotheism exists, the sheer quantity of evil that exists provides us with overwhelming empirical evidence that he doesn’t. Those theists who maintain that belief in God, if not proved, is at least not unreasonable, are mistaken. Far from being a question reason cannot decide, the claim that the God of classical monotheism exists seems to be straightforwardly empirically falsified.

Theodicies

Faced with this objection, theists respond in various ways. They may suggest we possess good grounds for believing that, not only is there a creator, this being does indeed have the properties attributed to him by traditional monotheism. I will return to that suggestion later. They may also suggest that the problem of evil can, to a significant extent, be dealt with. Many theistic explanations of evil have been offered, including the following:

Simple free will solution. We are not blind automata, but free agents. As a consequence of God having given us free will, we sometimes choose to do wrong. Suffering results. However, free will allows for certain important goods, such as the possibility of morally virtuous action. God could have created a universe populated with puppet beings that always did as God wants. But the behaviour of such puppet beings lacks the dimension of moral responsibility that makes our actions morally virtuous. By cutting our strings and setting us free, God inevitably allowed some evil. But this evil is more than outweighed by the important goods that free will allows.

The ‘character-building’ solution. This is, to borrow John Hick’s phrase, a ‘vale of soul making’. We know that a bad experience can sometimes make us stronger. People who have suffered a terrible disease sometimes say they gained greatly from it. Similarly, by causing us pain and suffering, God allows us to grow and develop both morally and spiritually. It is only through our experiencing this suffering that we can become the noble souls God wants us to be.

Second order goods require first order evils. Theists may remind us that God had inevitably to include quite a bit of suffering in his creation in order that certain important goods could exist. Take, for example, charity. Charity is a great virtue. Yet we can only be charitable if there exist others who are needy. Charity is a so-called second order good that require first order evils like neediness and suffering (or at least their appearance) to exist. The second order good outweighs the first order evils, which is why God allows them.

When offered in response to the evidential problem of evil, such explanations are sometimes called theodicies. It is on the evidential problem of evil and on theodicies that I focus here.
Of course, as theodicies, these explanations have obvious limitations. For example, even if the simple free will solution succeeds in explaining the evil we bring about by our own free action, it fails to explain so-called natural evils – such as the suffering brought about by natural disasters. Arguably, all three theodicies fail to explain why there is quite so much suffering in the world.
True, other, sometimes more sophisticated, explanations have been also offered, as we shall see. Some believe these theodicies, if not individually, then at least collectively, largely take the sting out of the evidential problem of evil. The problem, they suppose, may not have been entirely solved, but it has at least been brought down to manageable proportions.
Still, there remains an acknowledgement by many serious-minded theists that it is certainly isn’t easy to explain quite why omnipotent, omniscient and supremely benevolent being, would unleash so much horror on the sentient inhabitants of this planet over hundreds of millions of years. This leads some to supplement these explanations with a further appeal – to mystery. God works in mysterious ways. Because God is infinitely intelligent and knowledgeable, his divine plan is likely to be mostly ‘beyond our ken’ . In which case, the fact that the reason for much of the evil that exists is beyond our understanding is not good evidence for his non-existence.
As I say, the three theodicies outlined above have been challenged. I too intend to challenge them, and also several others, but in an unusual way. I intend to take a step back and question the character and plausibility of such explanations collectively, by means of an analogy.

The evil god hypothesis

Consider a different hypothesis. Suppose the universe has a creator. Suppose also that this being is omnipotent and omniscient. But suppose he is not maximally good. Rather, imagine that he is maximally evil. His depravity is without limit. His cruelty knows no bounds. There is no other god or gods – just this supremely wicked being. Call this the evil god hypothesis.
How reasonable is the evil god hypothesis? I have already pointed out that, certainly in their simplest versions, most of the popular arguments for the existence of God fail to provide any clue as to our creator’s moral character. In which case, to the extent that they support the good god hypothesis (that’s to say, not very much, if at all), they also support the evil god hypothesis.

The problem of good

Still, isn’t there overwhelming evidence against the evil god hypothesis? I am referring, of course, to what might be called the evidential problem of good. The problem is that of explaining why an omnipotent, omniscient and supremely evil being would allow quite so much good into his creation. Why, for example, would an evil god:

• Give some of us immense health, wealth and happiness?
• Put natural beauty into the world, which gives us pleasure?
• Allow us to help each other, thereby reducing suffering and increasing the amount of things evil god despises, such as love?
• Give us children to love who love us unconditionally in return?
• Equip us with beautiful, healthy young bodies?

Surely, if a supremely evil being is going to introduce sentient beings into his creation, it will to torture them and have them do evil. Surely he won’t allow love, laughter and rainbows. Nor will he permit us to perform the kind of selfless and courageous acts that ennoble us and reduce the pain and suffering of others.
So, yes, the world contains much evil. But there is also a great deal of good - far too much good, in fact, for this plausibly to be the creation of such a limitlessly powerful and malignant being.
Notice how the evidential problem of evil mirrors the evidential problem of good. If you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and maximally good god, then you face the challenge of explaining why there is quite so much evil in the world. Similarly, if you believe in an omnipotent, omniscient and maximally evil god, then you face the challenge of explaining why the world contains quite so much good.

Some reverse theodicies

Of course, few, if any, of us believe the evil god hypothesis. Prima facie, not only is there little reason to suppose such a being exists, there also seems to be overwhelming evidence against his existence. When presented with the evil god hypothesis, most of us immediately dismiss it as absurd, typically because we consider the problem of good decisive.
But notice that, just as there are moves theists make to try deal to with the problem of evil, so there are similar moves we might make to try to deal with the problem of good. Here are some examples:

1. Simple free will solution. Evil god gave us free will. Having free will means we sometimes choose to do good, which evil god hates. However, it also introduces the possibility of evil acts for which agents can be held morally responsible. An evil god could have created a universe populated with puppet beings that he ensured always behaved unpleasantly. But the behaviour of such puppet beings lacks the dimension of moral responsibility that transforms such acts into actions of the most depraved and despicable kind. To maximize evil, an evil God will want us to perform cruel and selfish acts of our own volition.

In response to this first suggestion, some may object: ‘But why is a world such as this, in which we possess free will, worse than a world in which we possess no freedom and are simply compelled to cause endless misery to each other? Surely the latter would be far more evil. So why didn’t evil god create it?’
But this is to forget that a world in which we are compelled to maximize suffering is a world in which no morally evil actions are performed. And moral evil is a particularly profound and important form of evil (as even theists typically acknowledge). Just as, from the point of view of a good god, a world lacking morally good actions is gravely deficient, so similarly, from the point of view of an evil god, a world lacking morally evil actions is also gravely deficient.
In response, it may be said: ‘But still, a world in which there is a free will is far preferable to us than a world in which we are compelled to cause each other endless misery. The second hellish sort of existence would be far worse. And thus preferable from an evil god’s point of view. So why didn’t evil god create it?’
There is some plausibility to this response. Notice, however, that much the same kind of worry can be, and has been, raised about the standard free will theodicy. Dostoyevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, for example, asks whether our freedom isn’t bought at an unacceptably high price if it results in the torture of innocent children. Surely, Ivan and others suggest, given the choice between creating a heavenly world in which we are made noble and virtuous and enjoy a profoundly joyful existence, and a world in which, as a result of our having been given have free will, humanity, as a consequence, endures endless war, murder, rape, torture, the Holocaust, and so on, a good god would choose the former (certainly many of us would much prefer to occupy the former heavenly world; indeed, many theists hope and pray they will eventually do so).
So, while there may be a difficulty here for the free will solution to the problem of good, that does not reveal it to be any less plausible than the standard free will solution to the problem of evil, given this kind of worry is common to both.
Here are two more solutions:

2. The character-destroying solution. Hick was mistaken: this is a vale, not of soul making, but of soul-destruction. Evil god wants us to suffer, do evil and despair.
Why, then, does an evil god create natural beauty? To provide some contrast. To make what is ugly seem even more so. If everything were uniformly, maximally ugly, we wouldn’t be tormented by the ugliness half as much as if it was peppered with some beauty.
The need for contrast also explains why evil god bestows upon a few lavish lifestyles and success. Their happiness is designed to make the suffering of the rest of us even more acute. Who can rest content knowing that they have so much more, that they are undeserving, and that no matter how hard we might strive, we will never achieve what they have (and remember, too, that even those lucky few are not really happy).
Why does evil God allow us to have beautiful children to love and that love us unconditionally in return? Because we will worry endlessly about them. Only a parent knows the depths of anguish and suffering that having children brings.
Why does an evil god give us beautiful, healthy young bodies? Because we know that out health and vitality will be short-lived, that we will either die young or else slowly wither. By giving us something wonderful for a moment, and then gradually pulling it away, an evil god can make us suffer even more than if we had never had it in the first place.

3. First order goods allow second order evils. Some evils are second order evils requiring first order goods. Take jealousy. I cannot feel jealous unless I perceive others to have something worth being jealous of. Evil God had to allow a few of us to have goods (or perceived goods) so that jealousy might exist.

Let us call such attempts to explain the problem of good reverse theodicies. If these reverse theodicies leave you unconvinced, remember that, like a defender of the good god hypothesis, we can also play the ‘mystery’ card. Being infinitely intelligent and knowledgeable, evil god’s supremely ingenious and diabolical plan is likely to be largely beyond our ken. In which case, the fact that we can’t understand why there is so much good in the world if he exists is not good evidence of his non-existence.

The symmetry thesis

The three reverse theodices introduced above to deal with the evidential problem of good obviously mirror the three theodicies we looked at earlier. In fact, other theodices can be mirrored in this way too (see below). This suggests an interesting way to challenge theism.
How persuasive are our three reverse theodicies? Intuitively, not at all. Rather than being taken seriously, they usually provoke amusement among theists and non-theists alike. But this raises the question: if the reverse theodicies are feeble and ineffective, why should we consider the standard theodicies any more effective?
We may also raise a larger question. In terms of reasonableness, isn’t there a broad symmetry between the good god hypothesis and the evil god hypothesis? Take arguments supporting the two hypotheses. I pointed out earlier that many of the popular arguments in support of the good god hypothesis turn out to provide much the same sort of support (i.e. not very much) for the evil god hypothesis.
Moreover, when it comes to dealing with the evidence against the respective hypotheses provided by the enormous quantities of both good and evil that we find in the world, we can construct similar kinds of explanation. In particular, the three theodicies offered to deal with the evidential problem of god are mirrored by the reverse theodicies outlined above.
I shall call the suggestion that, in terms of reasonableness, there is indeed such a rough symmetry between the good god and evil god hypotheses, the symmetry thesis.

The scales analogy

Suppose the reasonableness of the good god and evil god hypotheses is in each case indicated by a pointer on a set of weighing scales. Depending on how each of our two scales is loaded – considerations adding to reasonableness being placed on the left of each scale; considerations subtracting from reasonableness being added to the right – the pointer on each scale moves from highly reasonable through a range of positions (fairly reasonable, not unreasonable. etc.) to highly unreasonable.
Certainly, we find that many of the popular arguments loaded by some theists onto the left side of the good god scale can just as effectively (or ineffectively) be loaded onto the left side of the evil god scale. We also find the weighty problem of evil on the right side of the good god scale is mirrored by the hefty problem of good on the right side of the evil god scale. And we find that three theodicies we have seen used by theists to try remove or lessen the weight of the problem of evil on the good god scale (perhaps we might think of them as large helium balloons that can be attached to the problem to lighten the load) are mirrored by reverse theodicies that might be used to reduce the weight of the problem of good.
The symmetry thesis says that, when we load the scales correctly with all the available evidence and other considerations pertinent to the reasonableness of a belief (incidentally, I make no commitment to evidentialism here ), the two scales settle in roughly similar positions.
Now most of us, theists included, consider the evil god hypothesis highly unreasonable. We suppose there is little of any substance to place on the left had side of the scale, and that, when the boulder that is the problem of good is added, the scale lurches violently to the right, not withstanding the effects of any reverse theodicy helium balloons we might then try to attach. Yet adherents of the good god hypothesis typically suppose the good god scale far more evenly balanced. To believe in a good god, they think, is not like believing in fairies, Santa or, indeed, an evil god. When this scale is properly loaded and the pointer observed, they say, we find it points to ‘not unreasonable’ or even ‘quite reasonable’.
In short, those who embrace the good god hypothesis typically reject the symmetry thesis. The challenge I am presenting to those who believe in the God of classical monotheism, then, is to explain why, if belief in an evil god is highly unreasonable, should we consider belief in a good god significantly more reasonable?
We might call this the evil god challenge.

The problem of good in the literature

I am not the first to note how the problem of good might be used to generate a problem for theists. The earliest discussion appears to be in the 1968 volume Evil and the Concept of God by Madden and Hare , in which the authors devote three pages to the problem of good. After briefly sketching some reverse theodicies, Madden and Hare conclude:

[t]he point should be clear by now that the problems of evil and good are completely isomorphic; what can be said about one can be said about the other in reverse. For any solution to one problem there is a parallel solution to the other, and for every counter-argument in the one there is a parallel counter argument in the other.

In his 1976 paper ‘Cacodaemony’ , Cahn (quite independently) draws the same conclusion, claiming that

…classic arguments in defence of the view that every evil in the world makes possible a world containing even greater goods can be exactly paralleled by arguments in defence of the view that every good in the world makes possible a world containing even greater evils.

In ‘God, the Demon, and the Status of Theologies’ , published in 1990, Stein concurs with Hare, Madden, and Cahn that

[a] demonist can constrict a demonology which is isomorphic for any theodicy.

New (also unaware of the earlier literature), in his 1993 paper ‘Antitheism’ , also develops some mirror arguments for, and reverse theodicies in defence of, belief in an evil god. Finally, ‘God, Demon, Good, Evil’ , published in 1997, Daniels attempts to deal with the arguments of Hare, Madden, Cahn and Daniels by suggesting that there is a crucial asymmetry between the good and evil god hypotheses – Daniels argues that an evil god is actually an impossibility. I respond to Daniels’ objection at the end of this paper.
There are a number of important differences between my evil god challenge and the earlier challenges raised by Madden and Hare, Cahn, Stein, and New.
First, as will become clear, I reject Hare, Madden, Cahn and Stein’s central claim: that the problems of good and evil and their respective solutions are ‘exactly parallel’(Madden and Hare). The solutions are not exactly parallel. I will indicate some asymmetries between the two problems and sets of theodicies (and also asymmetries in the arguments that might be mounted for these respective gods). However, I will explain why these local asymmetries need not, and probably do not, threaten the symmetry thesis.
Second, I find fault in New’s attempt to deal with certain seemingly non-reversible arguments for a good god, and provide a better response to those arguments.
Third, I intend my evil god hypothesis to provide a more nuanced and tougher challenge to theism than the challenges raised those raised by earlier contributors to this discussion, not just by acknowledging and responding to the problem of local asymmetries, but also by anticipating and dealing with a broader range of potential theistic responses.

II: RESPONSES TO THE EVIL GOD CHALLENGE

Some may think the evil god challenge easily met. For example, haven’t we omitted several important arguments for the existence of God which are arguments specifically for good god, and which are not mirrored by any corresponding arguments for an evil god? Don’t these arguments show that belief in a good god is, after all, rather more reasonable than belief in an evil god?

Miracles and religious experience

Take for example, the argument from miracles. Miracle cures and other supernatural phenomena are regularly observed. Some are officially investigated and confirmed by religious authorities such as The Catholic Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Don’t such events provide at least some evidence for the existence of, not just a god, but a good god prepared to perform great works of good in response to our prayers?
Or consider the argument from religious experience. Religious experiences are almost always judged to be experiences of something immensely positive. Again, don’t they provides us with at least some evidence that, not only is there some sort of intelligence behind the universe, this intelligence is a force for good, not evil?
Even if such arguments are far from conclusive when considered individually, we might suppose that they contribute towards making a cumulative case for the existence of, not just a god, but the supremely benevolent god of classical monotheism.
But if this is true, then the balance of the good god scale now shifts. We have something rather more weighty to place on the left side of the good god scale, something to which there corresponds nothing that might be placed on the left side of the evil god scale. Do we now have grounds for rejecting the symmetry thesis?

New on arguments from miracles and religious experience

In ‘Antitheism’ , New attempts to deal with this seeming asymmetry by constructing mirror arguments for an evil god. He asks us to imagine a world the inhabitants of which have experiences as of an evil god (New calls them ‘anti-religious experiences’) and who note harmful or evil events that cannot be explained scientifically (New calls them ‘anti-miracles’). We have now imagined evidence for an evil good that precisely mirrors the evidence for a good god.
The problem with New’s strategy, however, is that imaginary evidence isn’t really evidence. I can’t provide evidence against a scientific theory simply by imagining some. If evidence is to count, it must actually exist.
Many theists insist we have real evidence for a good god – the evidence provided by miracles and religious experience. The problem for the symmetry thesis, the theist may insist, is that there simply isn’t anything like this sort of evidence for anti-religious experiences and anti-miracles.
New’s attempt to mirror the arguments from miracles and religious experiences fails. However, as I now explain, there is a better way of responding to the arguments from miracles and religious experience.

A better response

Do the arguments from miracles and religious experience provide better evidence for a good god then they do an evil god?
Suppose the evil god hypothesis is true. This malignant being may not want us to know of his existence. In fact, it may help him maximize evil if he deceives us about his true character. An evil and omnipotent being will have no difficulty duping human beings into believing he is good. Taking on a ‘good’ guise, he might appear in one corner of the world, revealing himself in religious experiences and performing miracles in response to prayers, and perhaps also giving instructions regarding what his followers should believe. He might then do the same in another part of the globe, with the exception the instructions he leaves regarding what should be believed contradict what he has said elsewhere. Our evil being could then stand back and watch the inevitable conflict develop between communities to whom he has now misleadingly revealed himself, each utterly convinced by their own stock of miracles and religious experiences that the one true all-good god is on their side. Here we have a recipe for ceaseless conflict, violence and suffering.
When we observe how religious experiences and miracles are actually distributed, this is more or less the pattern we find. So, even if they are genuinely supernatural, do these miraculous phenomena provide better evidence for a good god than an evil god? While a good god might create miracles and religious experiences, it is difficult to see why he would produce them in this way, given the predictably horrific consequences. Perhaps miracles and religious experiences do indicate the activity of a supernatural agency, but it is arguable that their actual arrangement fits the evil god hypothesis rather better than it does the good god hypothesis. We should not, at this stage, rule out the possibility that, if there is an asymmetry between the two hypotheses, it is because the evil god hypothesis is actually rather more reasonable than the good god hypothesis.
In reply to the above defence of the evil god hypothesis, it may be asked: ‘But why would an evil god bother to deceive us about his true character, given that full knowledge of this merciless and all-powerful torturer would actually be far more terrible?’
The answer, of course, is that an evil god will want to allow for the performance of morally evil acts within his creation. As already noted, a world lacking moral agents able to perform actions of a profoundly wicked character is a world that is seriously deficient from his point of view. So not only does evil god create a world in which we are free moral agents, he also engineers the kind of circumstances in which we are, then, likely freely to choose to do evil. Religiously motivated conflicts clearly have been, and continue to be, a major source of moral evil in the world. By means of this deception, an evil god is able to create an environment within which moral evil is likely to flourish.
One may still raise this objection: ‘But surely nothing could be worse than hell as traditionally conceived? Why doesn’t an evil god just send us straight to hell?’
However, as already noted, a mirror puzzle faces those who believe in a good god. Given a heavenly environment would be profoundly more joyful than this, why doesn’t a good god send us straight to heaven? Why are so many of us allowed to go through such appalling suffering here?
Given both god hypotheses face this kind of objection, it constitutes, as it stands, no threat to the symmetry thesis.
Moreover, we can, in both cases, attempt to deal with the objection by appealing to an after-life. We are sent to this world first, where we have the opportunity to act in profoundly morally good and evil ways (this being important to both the good and evil gods). We then pass on to an after-life: an eternity in heaven or (on the evil god hypothesis) hell, where joy or (on the evil god hypothesis) pain and suffering are maximized [and any earlier evils or (on the evil god hypothesis) goods in the first stage of our existence are compensated]. I will look at examples of such after-life theodicies shortly.

Historical evidence

Incidentally, the above response can be extended to deal with arguments for a good god based on historical evidence, such as the evidence provided by scripture (not all of which is rooted in religious experiences and miracles).
Some will suggest there is much textual and other historical evidence that might be marshalled to support belief in a good deity, but no corresponding evidence to support belief in an evil deity – and this constitutes a significant asymmetry between our two god hypotheses.
In response, we may again ask – does this historical evidence really fit the good god hypothesis better than the evil? Not if our evil god wishes to create the illusion that he is good, in order to foster the deception outlined above. It may well be in his interest to fabricate misleading evidence about his own character.
When we consider the spread of evidence supplied by the miracles, religious experiences, and also the historical evidence associated with the various different faiths, it is at least arguable that the pattern we find fits the evil god hypothesis better than the good. For, to repeat, why on earth would a good god produce these phenomena in such a way as to guarantee endless religious strife? Surely their actual, disastrous arrangement is rather more likely to be the handiwork of a malignant being?

A moral argument

Another strategy the theist might adopt, in order to establish a significant asymmetry between the good and evil god hypotheses, would be to maintain that there are moral arguments for the existence of a good god that cannot be mirrored by parallel arguments for an evil god. For example, they may argue that our moral sense could only have a supernatural origin, and that only a good god would have an interest in providing it. So the fact that we have a sense of right and wrong is powerful evidence favouring the good god hypothesis over the evil god hypothesis.
This particular argument fails, however. While it might be true that only a supernatural being is capable of furnish us with a moral sense, the fact is an evil god might well also have an interest in providing such a sense. For by providing us with both free will and knowledge of good and evil, an evil god can allow for the very great evil of our freely performing evil actions in the full knowledge that they are, indeed, evil.
Why, then, is the fact that we do possess knowledge of good and evil evidence favouring the good god hypothesis over the evil?

A second moral argument

A different kind of moral argument for the existence of a specifically good god focuses not on knowledge of objective moral value, but on its existence. Some will insist that moral facts are both non-natural and objective, and that a good god is therefore required to underpin them (or at least provides the best explanation of them).
It is at least contentious whether a cogent argument along these lines can be constructed. Notoriously, such arguments face the Euthyphro dilemma. Suppose we say that God, as divine law-maker, decrees that certain things, such as stealing and murder, are wrong. Does God decree this because he recognises that stealing and murder are, independently, wrong, or are they wrong only because he decrees them to be so? The first answer makes god redundant so far as setting up a standard of right and wrong is concerned – murder would have been wrong anyway, whether or not god exists, or, indeed, whether or not god himself happens to be good or evil. But then the objective, non-natural wrongness of murder would obtain anyway, even if there were an evil god. On the first answer, there can exist both a non-natural, objective standard of right and wrong, and an evil god. The second answer, notoriously, appears to make the moral wrongness of murder arbitrary and relative. Notice that this is a problem whichever of our two god hypotheses we favour. In short, on the first answer, there is no problem for the evil god hypothesis; on the second, there is, prima facie, equally a problem for both hypotheses. The Euthyphro dilemma thus constitutes a major obstacle to the construction of a moral argument for the existence of a specifically good, rather than evil, god.
Of course, it remains possible that cogent moral argument along the above lines might yet be constructed. I suspect that, for those who reject the symmetry thesis, this is the most promising line of attack. However, to date, it remains, even among theists, controversial whether any such argument exists.

More reverse theodicies

Let’s now return to standard theodicies and their mirror versions. Perhaps we have underestimated the range and efficacy of the standard theodicies on offer. Are there some that are not reversible?
Certainly there are many we have not yet discussed. However, in many, if not all, cases, reverse theodicies quickly suggest themselves. To illustrate, I will sketch out three more examples: (i) a reverse laws of nature theodicy, (ii) a reverse after-life theodicy, and (iii) a reverse semantic theodicy.

Laws of nature theodicy. Effective purposeful action requires the world behave in a regular way (for example, I am able deliberately to light this fire by striking my match only because there are laws that determine that under such circumstances, fire will result). That there be laws of nature is a prerequisite of our having the ability both to act on our natural environment and interact with each other within it. These abilities allows for great goods. They give us the opportunity to act in a morally virtuous way, for example. However, such a law-governed world inevitably produces some evils. For instance, the kind of laws and initial conditions that produce stable land masses on which we can survive and evolve also produce tectonic shifts that result in earthquakes and tidal waves. Still, the evil of earthquakes and tidal waves is more than outweighed by the goods those laws allow. We might think we can envisage possible worlds that, as a result of being governed by different laws and/or initial conditions, contain a far greater ratio of good to evil (that contain stable land masses but no earthquakes, for example), but, due to consequences we have failed to foresee (perhaps the absence of earthquakes is at the cost of some even worse kind of global catastrophe), such worlds will, in reality, always be worse than the actual world.

A reverse theodicy can be constructed like so:

Laws of nature reverse theodicy. Effective and purposeful action requires that the world behave in a regular way. That there be laws of nature is a prerequisite of our having the ability to both act on our natural environment and interact with each other within it. These abilities allows for great evils. For example, they give us the opportunity to act in morally depraved ways – by killing and torturing each other. By giving us these abilities, evil god also allows us to experience certain important psychological forms of suffering such as frustration – we cannot try, and become frustrated through repeated failure, unless we are first given the opportunity to act. True, such a law-governed world inevitably produces some goods. For example, by giving us the ability to act within a physical environment, evil god gave us the ability to avoid that which causes us pain and seek out that which gives us pleasure. Still, such goods are more than outweighed by the evils these laws allow. We might think we can envisage possible worlds that, as a result of being governed by different laws and/or initial conditions, contain a far greater ratio of evil to good (that contain far more physical pain and far less pleasure, for example), but, due to consequences we have failed to foresee (perhaps the greater suffering will result in us being far more charitable, sympathetic and generally good towards others), such worlds will, in reality, always be better than the actual world.

To this, some may object : ‘Very well, an evil god will produce laws of nature so we can possess the power to do evil – but surely he will also sometimes suspend those laws in order to cause us confusion and frustration and to produce evils to which the laws of nature would otherwise prove an obstacle.’
Notice, however, that both theodicies face this type of objection. A similar concern can be raised about the standard laws of nature theodicy. Yes, a good god will produce a regular universe so that are able to do good, but surely he would be prepared to suspend those laws and intervene in order, say, to thwart some particularly morally despicable act (e.g. stopping Hitler’s rise to power) or to prevent some particularly terrible natural disaster, or to help us achieve some very great good (perhaps arranging for a stroke of good fortune in a science lab that then leads to a cure for cancer). A good god would not just stand back and allow thousands of children to be buried alive in an earthquake, even if the earthquake does happen to be the result of natural laws that are otherwise largely beneficial.
After-life theodicies are also popular. Take the following version presented by Tim Mawson in his Belief in God :

Compensatory after-life theodicy. The pain and suffering we experience in this world is more than compensated for in the after-life – where we will experience limitless good. The explanation for why a good god would not simply send us straight to heaven is that it is only within a law-governed world within which we have free will (something which, according to some theists, such as Mawson , we lack in heaven) that we can enjoy important goods, including the very great good of doing good of our volition. As a consequence of inhabiting this world for a short while, we suffer, but this suffering is more than compensated for by an eternity of communion with God in heaven.

Mawson’s after-life theodicy can also be mirrored like so:

Reverse compensatory after-life theodicy. The joy and happiness we experience in this world is more than compensated for in the after-life – where we experience limitless evil. The explanation for why a good god would not simply send us straight to this endlessly cruel world is that it is only within a law-governed world within which we have free will that we can experience important evils, including the very great evil of doing evil of our volition. As a consequence of inhabiting this world for a short while, we experience some goods, but this is more than compensated for by what follows: an eternity of suffering in the company of a supremely malignant being.

It is also possible to reverse the standard semantic responses to the problem of evil. Consider this example:

Semantic theodicy. When we describe God as being ‘good’, the term means something different to what it means when applied to mere humans. This difference in meaning at least partly explains why a good god would do things that we would not call ‘good’ if done by us.

We can reverse this theodicy like so:

Reverse semantic theodicy. When we describe god as being ‘evil’, the term means something different to what it means when applied to mere humans. This difference in meaning at least partly explains why an evil god should do things that we would not call ‘evil’ if done by us.

With a little ingenuity, reverse theodicies can be constructed for many other standard theodicies too. However, as I now explain, we should probably concede that - contrary to the claims made by Madden, Hare, Cahn and Stein - in some cases, no ‘exactly parallel’ theodicy can be constructed.

Asymmetries

Take for example, theodicies founded in a particular Christian story about the Fall and redemption. When we examine Augustine’s explanation of natural and moral evils – that both are rooted in the original sin of Adam and Eve – no parallel narrative suggests itself. An attempt to construct a reverse story about a reverse Adam and Eve, who, through disobedience to their evil creator, bring about a reverse ‘Fall’ runs into insuperable obstacles. For example, while a good god might have some reason to allow the natural evils brought about by original sin to continue (for these evil consequences, being brought on ourselves, are deserved, and there remains, in addition, God’s offer of redemption) why would an evil god allow the continued existence of the natural goods brought about by the disobedience of a reverse Adam and Eve? It may be that, with some ingenuity, a rather different sort of narrative involving an evil god might be constructed to account for natural goods, but it is hard to see how it could mirror the Christian story of the Fall in sufficient detail to qualify as a reverse theodicy. Pace Madden, Hare, Cahn and Stein, it seems that not every theodicy even has a parallel, let alone an exact one.
Even where a parallel theodicy can be constructed, there may still be asymmetries. For example, if we suppose free will is itself an intrinsic good, then the reverse free will theodicy involves an evil god imbuing us with the good of free will. While an evil god may still be able to maximize evil by giving us free will, he will nevertheless have to pay a price (introducing that intrinsic good) – a price for which there is no parallel in the standard free will theodicy. Arguably, this makes the standard free will theodicy much more effective than the reverse version. The theist may insist that because free will is not just an intrinsic good, but a very great good, so very great additional quantities of evil are required to outweigh it – so great, in fact, as to render the reverse free will theodicy significantly less plausible than the standard theodicy.
So it appears that there are some asymmetries between the two sets of theodicies. However, the effect of these asymmetries appears to be comparatively minor, having little effect on the overall balance of reasonableness.
For example, given the mythic status of Adam, Eve, and the Fall, Augustine’s theodicy fails. But then the absence of a parallel theodicy does not affect the balance of reasonableness very much (and in any case, we might be able to construct a different sort of narrative to accompany the evil god hypothesis that accounts for natural goods in another way).
What of the asymmetry between the free will and reverse free will theodicies? Stein attempts to defend the thesis that for each theodicy there is an ‘exact parallel’ by arguing that free will is not, in fact, an intrinsic good.
However, suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that free will is an intrinsic good. That requires we abandon the Madden-Hare-Cahn-Stein thesis that for each theodicy there is a reverse theodicy that is its ‘exact parallel’. But does it require we abandon my symmetry thesis – the thesis that when we load the good god and evil god scales correctly with all the available evidence and other considerations pertinent to the reasonableness of a belief the two scales settle in roughly similar positions?
I don’t believe so, for at least three reasons:
First, this asymmetry between the two theodicies may very well neutralized by another. In order for us to have a full range of free choices between good and evil, god, whether good or evil, must introduce pain, suffering and death not just as possibilities but as realities. Not only must he make us vulnerable to pain, suffering and death (to give us the option of torturing or murdering others), he must actually inflict pain and death so that we have the free choice to help alleviate or prevent it. Now if it is prima facie plausible that free will is an intrinsic good, it is no less plausible that pain, suffering and death are intrinsic evils. In which case both free will theodicies requires the introduction of intrinsic goods and intrinsic evils. While the intrinsic goods give the evil god hypothesis some additional explaining to do, the intrinsic evils give the good god hypothesis some additional explaining to do. In which case, it appears the two asymmetries balance out.
Second, even if it were true that the free will theodicy is significantly more effective then the reverse theodicy, that might not greatly effect balance of reasonableness between the good and evil god hypotheses. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the standard free will theodicy is entirely effective in accounting for moral evils, and that the reverse theodicy wholly ineffective in accounting for moral goods (this being a far more dramatic asymmetry than even the one proposed). Thus we leave the full weight of moral good on the evil god scale, but entirely remove the weight of moral evil from the good God scale. Does this change in the balance of the two scales result in the two pointers indicating very different levels of reasonableness? Arguably not. For, ceteris paribus, there still remains an enormous amount of evil on the good god scale (such as the extraordinary quantities of suffering unleashed on sentient creatures over hundreds of millions of years before moral agents even made an appearance on the Earth). It may be argued (I think with some plausibility) that when those evils explained by the free will theodicy are removed, there remains more than enough weight of evil to keep the needle pointed firmly at ‘highly unreasonable’. The needle does not now point at ‘not unreasonable’ or ‘quite reasonable’ – it remains stuck down the ‘highly unreasonable’ end of the scale. The scale has shifted a little, perhaps, but not by very much. If that is so (and do I think it at least arguable), then the symmetry thesis remains true.
Third, let’s remember that even if the standard free will theodicy is rather more effective than the reverse theodicy, this asymmetry might in any case be counterbalanced or outweighed by other asymmetries favouring the evil god hypothesis over the good god hypothesis. In fact, we have already discovered one example: prima facie, the evidence concerning miracles and religious experience appears to support the evil god hypothesis rather more than it does the good god hypothesis.
To conclude, then, it seems that - pace Madden, Hare, Cahn and Stein - the two sets of theodicies do not precisely parallel each other. There are asymmetries. However, we have found little reason to suppose these asymmetries have much effect on the overall level of reasonableness of our respective god hypotheses. We have not yet found good reason to suppose that our two sets of scales do not, as the symmetry thesis states, settle in roughly similar positions.

Other moves

To finish, I now anticipate five responses the evil God challenge may provoke, and briefly sketch out some of the difficulties they face.

1. Significantly more good than evil
We might try to meet the challenge by showing that there is significantly more good than evil in the world. This will be hard to establish however, not least because good and evil are difficult to quantify and measure. Some theists consider it just obvious that the world contains more good than evil, but then many (including some theists) are struck by the exact opposite thought. Appeals to subjective estimations can carry little weight.

2. Ontological arguments
Might ontological arguments provide a priori grounds for supposing that not only is there a god, he is good? The most obvious difficulty here is that it is debatable, to say, the least, whether any cogent ontological argument can be constructed. The cogency of those arguments that have been offered remains unrecognized not just by non-theists, but also by many theists – perhaps the majority of philosopher-theists. They, certainly, will not be reaching for the ontological argument in order to demonstrate why the symmetry thesis fails.
New notes that some ontological arguments are, in any case, reversible. Take this example (my own – based on New and Anselm):

I can conceive of an evil god - a being whom no worse can be conceived.
But it is worse for such being to exist in reality than in the imagination. Therefore, the being of which I conceive must exist in reality.

3. Impossibility arguments
Could we meet the evil God challenge by showing that an evil God is actually an impossibility, for the very notion of an evil god contains a contradiction? Here are two examples of such an argument:

(i) Daniel’s platonic refutation’ of the evil God hypothesis
In ‘God, Demon, Good, Evil’ , Daniels suggests the resources to deal with the evil god challenge can be found in Plato’s Gorgias. Daniels believes Plato has shown that an evil god is an impossibility. His ‘platonic refutation’ of the evil god hypothesis is as follows.
First, Daniels claims we always do what we judge to be good. Even when I smoke, despite judging smoking to be bad, I do it because I judge that it would be good to smoke this cigarette here and now.
It follows, says Daniels, that no one does bad knowingly. But then it follows that if a being is omniscient, he will not do bad. There cannot exist an omniscient yet evil being. The notion of an omniscient yet evil being involves a contradiction.
I believe Daniels’ argument trades on an ambiguity in his use of the word ‘good’. True, whenever I do something deliberately, I judge, in a sense, that what I do is ‘good’. But ‘good’ here need mean no more than, ‘that which I aim to achieve’. We have not yet been given any reason to suppose I cannot judge to be ‘good’, in this sense, what I also deem to be evil, because I desire evil. Yes, an evil god will judge doing evil to be ‘good’, but only in the trivial sense that evil is what he desires. Pace Daniels, there is no contradiction involved in an omniscient being judging evil to be, in this sense, ‘good’.

(ii) The desire argument
A rather different argument would be: ‘But by bringing about evil, your evil god thereby aims to satisfy his own desire for evil; and the satisfaction of a desire is an intrinsic good. Thus the idea of a maximally evil god aiming to produce an intrinsic good involves a contradiction.’
This argument also fails. Even if we grant the dubious assumption that the satisfying of any desire – even an evil one – is an intrinsic good, the most we have revealed, here, is another local asymmetry – that, in aiming to maximize evil, evil god would have also to aim to achieve at least one intrinsic good (namely, the satisfaction of his desire to maximize evil). What we have established, perhaps, is that there are certain logical limits on God’s evilness (just as there are also logical limits on his power: he can’t make a stone so heavy it cannot be lifted). Evil god can still be maximally evil – as evil as it is logically possible to be. We have not yet established a contradiction in the notion of a maximally evil being.
There is, in any case, a more general point to be made about arguments attempting to show that an evil god is an impossibility and that the evil god challenge is thus met. The point is this: even supposing an evil god is, for some reason X, an impossibility, we can still ask the hypothetical question: setting aside the fact that so-and-so establishes that an evil god is an impossibility, how reasonable would it otherwise be to suppose such an evil being exists? If the answer is ‘highly unreasonable’, i.e. because of the problem of good, then the evil god challenge can still be run. We can still ask the theist to explain why, if they would otherwise reject the evil god hypothesis is highly unreasonable, do they not take the same view regarding the good god hypothesis?

4. Arguments from simplicity
What if the good god hypothesis is significantly simpler than the evil god hypothesis?
For example, we might suggest that a good god can be defined in a simple way, e.g. as possessing every positive attribute. As goodness is a positive attribute, it follows this god is good. The concept of an evil god, by contrast, is more complex, for he possesses both positive attributes (omniscience and omnipotence) and negative attributes (evil). Principles of parsimony require, then, that we favour the good god over the evil god hypothesis.
I acknowledge that there may indeed be asymmetries between the good and evil god hypotheses in terms of simplicity and economy. However, note that the fact that one theory is much more economical than another lends it little additional credibility if what evidence (and other considerations pertaining to reasonableness) there is overwhelming favours the view that both theories are false.
Take, for example, these two hypotheses: (i) Swindon is populated with one thousand elves, and (ii) Swindon is populated with one thousand elves, each of which has a fairy sitting on its head. The first hypothesis is more economical, as it posits half as many entities as the first. But is the first hypothesis significantly more reasonable than the second? No. For not only is there little reason to suppose either hypothesis is true, there is overwhelming evidence both are false.
Similarly, if the reasonableness of both the good and the evil god hypotheses is very low, pointing out that one hypothesis is rather more economical than the other does little to raise the probability of one hypothesis with respect to the other. The suggestion that the two hypotheses are more or less equally unreasonable remains unthreatened.

Conclusion

The focus of this paper has been on the evil god challenge: the challenge of explaining why the good god hypothesis should be considered significantly more reasonable than the evil god hypothesis. We have examined several of the most popular arguments for the existence of a good god and found they appear to provide little if any more support for the good god hypothesis than they do the evil god hypothesis. We have also seen that many of the theodicies offered by theists to deal with the problem of evil are mirrored by reverse theodicies that can then be applied to the problem of good. Prima facie, our two sets of scales seem to balance out in much the same way.
Now I do not claim that the symmetry thesis is true, and that the evil god challenge cannot be met. But it seems to me that it is a challenge that deserves to be taken seriously. The problem facing defenders of classical monotheism is this: until they can provide good grounds for supposing the symmetry thesis is false, they lack good grounds for supposing the evil god hypothesis is any more reasonable than the evil god hypothesis – the latter hypothesis being something that, surely, even they will admit is very unreasonable indeed.
While I acknowledge the possibility that the evil god challenge might yet be met, I cannot myself see how. Perhaps there are grounds for supposing the universe was created by an intelligent being. But, at this point in time, the suggestion that this being is omnipotent, omniscient and maximally good seems to me hardly more reasonable than the suggestion that he is omnipotent, omniscient and maximally evil.

EXTRACT: from chpt 3, The War For Children's Minds

2008-02-27T00:44:00.000-08:00

The positive side to Liberal education

Let’s now look in more detail at the Liberal alternative to Authority-based moral and religious education.

One way of being Liberal-with-a-capital-L would of course be to ignore morality altogether, to abandon each child to invent his or her own morality from scratch, within a moral vacuum. That’s not the method advocated here. This book recommends a much more specific sort of approach, an approach that involves a training in and the fostering of what might broadly be termed “thinking skills and virtues”. Children should be encouraged to scrutinize their own beliefs and explore other points of view. While not wanting to be overly prescriptive, I would suggest that skills to be cultivated should at least include the ability to:

• reveal and questioning underlying assumptions
• figure out the perhaps unforeseen consequences of a moral decision or point of view
• spot and diagnose faulty reasoning
• weigh up evidence fairly and impartially
• make a point clearly and concisely
• take turns in a debate, and listen attentively without interrupting
• argue without personalizing a dispute
• look at issues from the point of view of others
• question the appropriateness, or the appropriateness of acting on, ones own feelings

Acquiring these skills involves developing, not just a level of intellectual maturity, but a fair degree of emotional maturity too. For example, turn-taking requires patience and self-control. Judging impartially involves identifying and taking account of your own emotional biases. By thinking critically and carefully about your own beliefs and attitudes, you may develop insights into your own character. By stepping outside of your own viewpoint and looking at issues from the standpoint of another, you can develop a greater empathy with and understanding of others. So by engaging in this kind of philosophical, critical activity, you are likely to develop, not only the ability to reason cogently, but also what now tends to be called “emotional intelligence” (which is why the Director of Antidote – a British organization that works with schools to help develop emotional literacy –recently endorsed this kind of philosophical activity as an effective tool in aiding emotional development). Although I have emphasized the importance of reason, I don’t wish top downplay the importance of emotional development too. They are deeply intertwined.

Notice that many of these skills can only be developed, or at least are most effectively developed, by engaging in group activities, by getting children collectively to discuss and debate issues together. These are skills and virtues that are best taught and mastered, not in isolation, but through interaction within a “community of inquiry”. For that reason, many philosophy for children programmes are based around structured, open-ended group discussion. So the kind of Liberal approach recommended here certainly acknowledges the importance of a shared, social dimension to moral education. It’s not about severing all social ties and abandoning each individual child to “think up” their own morality within their own hermetically sealed-off universe. Quite the reverse. Exploring issues together may help foster interpersonal skills and a sense of community and belonging.

The approach described above might loosely be termed “philosophical”, though I should stress that doesn’t mean children should be given an academic course on the history of philosophy. What it means is that they should be trained and encouraged to approach questions in a particular kind of way. We should get them into the habit of thinking in an open, reflective, critical way, so that these intellectual, emotional and social skills and virtues are developed.
Clearly, the sort of philosophical approach to moral education recommended here is anti-Authoritarian. Those who favour Authority-based moral and religious education will reject it. Encouraging pupils to think for themselves, to debate freely and openly different moral and religious points of view, and so on, is precisely what those who think children should be taught to defer more or less uncritically to Authority on moral and religious matters are against.

Can children be philosophical?

Of course, all this presupposes that thinking philosophically is something children can do. But can they?

There’s good empirical evidence that they can. There have been a number of studies and programs involving philosophy with children in several countries. The results are impressive.
One notable example is the Buranda State School, a small Australian primary school near Brisbane, which in 1997 introduced into all its classes a philosophy program along much the lines outlined above. Children collectively engaged in structured debates addressing philosophical questions that they themselves had come up with, following a Philosophy in Schools programme using materials developed by the philosopher Philip Cam and others. The effects were dramatic. The school showed marked academic improvement across the curriculum. A report on the success of the program says,

[f]or the last four years, students at Buranda have achieved outstanding academic results. This had not been the case prior to the teaching of Philosophy. In the systemic Year 3/5/7 tests (previously Yr 6 Test), our students performed below the state mean in most areas in 1996. Following the introduction of Philosophy in 1997, the results of our students improved significantly and have been maintained or improved upon since that time.

There were substantial payoffs in terms of behaviour too. The report indicates “significantly improved outcomes” occurred in the social behaviour of the students:

The respect for others and the increase in individual self esteem generated in the community of inquiry have permeated all aspects of school life. We now have few behaviour problems at our school (and we do have some difficult students). Students are less impatient with each other, they are more willing to accept their own mistakes as a normal part of learning and they discuss problems as they occur. As one Yr 5 child said, ‘Philosophy is a good example of how you should behave in the playground with your friends’… Bullying behaviour is rare at Buranda, with there being no reported incidence of bullying this year to date. A visiting academic commented, ‘Your children don’t fight, they negotiate’… Visitors to the school are constantly making reference to the 'feel' or 'spirit' of the place. We believe it's the way our children treat each other. The respect for others generated in the community of inquiry has permeated all aspects of school life.

Of course this is a single example – hardly conclusive evidence by itself. But it’s not the only example. In 2001-2, Professor Keith Topping, a senior psychologist, in conjunction with the University of Dundee studied the effects on introducing one hour per week of philosophy (using a Thinking Through Philosophy programme developed by Paul Cleghorn) at a number of upper primary schools in Clackmannanshire, including schools in deprived areas. Teachers were given two days of training. The study involved a whole range of tests, and also a control group of schools with no philosophy programme. The children involved were aged 11-12. This study found that after one year,

• The incidence of children supporting opinion with evidence doubled, but ‘control’ classes remained unchanged.
• There was evidence that children’s self-esteem and confidence rose markedly.
• The incidence of teachers asking open-ended questions (to better develop enquiry) doubled.
• There was evidence that class ethos and discipline improved noticeably.
• The ratio of teacher/pupil talk halved for teachers and doubled for pupils. Controls remained the same.
• All classes improved significantly (statistically) in verbal, non-verbal, and quantitative reasoning. No control class changed. This means children were more intelligent (av. 6.5 IQ points) after one year on the programme.

These benefits were retained. When the children were tested again at 14, after two years at secondary school without a philosophy programme, their CAT scores were exactly the same (that’s to say, the improvements that had previously been gained were retained), while the control group scores actually went down during those two years. Three secondary schools were involved and the results replicated themselves over each school. Again, this is only one study. No doubt such results should treated with caution. But, they do lend considerable weight to the claim that not only can children of this age think philosophically, it’s also highly beneficial. A recent study strongly supports the view that philosophy for children provides measurable educational benefits for children even in their first year of school.

To sum up: there’s good evidence that children, even fairly young children, can think philosophically. And, while more research needs to be done, there’s a growing body of evidence that it’s good for them academically, socially and emotionally. The kinds of skills such philosophy programmes foster are, surely, just the sort of skills we need new citizens to develop. Or so I’ll now argue.

From The War For Children's Minds, Routledge 2005.

Honderich and the Curse of Epiphenomenalism

2007-12-01T06:38:00.000-08:00

Honderich and the Curse of Epiphenomenalism

Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 13 numbers 7-8, 2006, pp61-77

Stephen Law

In Radical Externalism, Ted Honderich offers an ingenious and radical new solution to the problem of consciousness – a solution that promises, among other things, to do justice to two important features of consciousness – to both its subjectivity and its causal efficacy.

According to Honderich, the main alternatives to his own radical externalism are certain forms of dualism, or, as he puts it, “spiritualism”, and “devout physicalism”. Honderich’s central argument for radical externalism is that it succeeds in respecting those features of consciousness to which these two main alternatives fail to do justice. It is, therefore, the superior theory.

But is radical externalism superior? Does it have this advantage over its two main rivals?

I don’t believe it does. The central argument of this paper is that radical externalism falls foul of much the same kinds of problems concerning causal interaction that plague spiritualism. Indeed, ironically, it turns out that radical externalism is vulnerable to a similar objection to that which Honderich himself cleverly levelled again anomalous monism almost a quarter century ago.

But before we get to that objection, let’s begin by briefly outlining what Honderich takes to be the two main alternatives to his own theory – spiritualism and devout materialism – and examining their alleged failings.

Devout materialism and the problem of subjectivity

By devout materialism Honderich means

the belief or perhaps attitude that our consciousness is a fact, property or state of affairs that involves only physical properties […] and in particular properties […] existing and more or less anticipated [by] neuroscience.

The devout materialist either identifies mental properties with physical properties, or else eliminates them altogether (as in eliminative materialism).

So what’s wrong with devout physicalism? Honderich maintains it fails, among other things, to do justice to the subjectivity of consciousness. We’re all familiar with the kind of thought experiments involving black and white rooms, fool’s pain, homunculi-headed robots and so on to which Honderich is perhaps alluding when he says

[n]o doubt theories are sometimes destroyed by single counter-examples clearly seen, or by crucial experiments well-conducted. It is my inclination to think this of devout physicalism…

It’s certainly a perennial complaint that these various kinds of materialisms somehow fail properly to allow for the subjective quality of conscious experience.

Spiritualism and the problem of causal interaction

Which brings us to what Honderich considers to be the other main alternative to his own theory – spiritualism. What characterizes the dualist or spiritualist position, he says, is a commitment to the non-spatiality of consciousness. Spiritualism, according to Honderich, is

the theory, rightly associated with Descartes, that your consciousness is somehow non-spatial and hence not physical. It is in fact only misleadingly called dualism, mainly because its distinctive nature and its problems are not owed to its asserting that consciousness is other than physical but rather to its asserting that consciousness is out of space and in fact of a mysterious nature.

The problems that plague spiritualism, suggests Honderich, include the problem of causal interaction. Descartes famously attempts to place the locus of interaction between the mental and the physical realm in the pineal gland. But of course it remains blankly mysterious how this interaction might take place. How can something that is not anywhere causally impinge upon a spatio-temporally extended, physical object?

And so it seems that spiritualism also fails a key test of adequacy, in this case, the requirement that any adequate theory of consciousness

must not make impossible what is actual, which is causal interaction between consciousness and the physical.

So we appear to face an intractable dilemma so far as consciousness is concerned. We can either favour some form of devout physicalism, but then we fail to do justice to the subjectivity of consciousness. Or we can embrace some variety of spiritualism, in which case we run into the problem of causal interaction - indeed, we may find ourselves unable to prevent a slide into epiphenomenalism (or occasionalism or pre-established harmony theory, or whatever).

I’m sure many philosophers of mind would acknowledge that we do at least face something like the dilemma Honderich presents us with here. Indeed, finding a way out of this sort of dilemma has surely been one of the main preoccupations of philosophers of mind for the last couple of decades.

The question is: does Honderich’s new alternative – his third way, as it were – actually allow us to resolve the dilemma? Does it really let us do justice to both of these features of consciousness: to both its subjectivity and its causal efficacy?

While I suspect radical externalism probably does face problems with respect to subjectivity (see the end of this paper), it’s on problems with causal interaction that I’ll focus here. As Honderich’s case for radical externalism is that it avoids those problems that respectively plague spiritualism and devout materialism, establishing that radical externalism does indeed run straight into much the same old problems regarding causal interaction that afflict spiritualism would suffice seriously to undercut his case.

Radical externalism

Let me briefly sketch out both what I take radical externalism to be, and how I believe Honderich supposes it allows us to resolve the dilemma outlined above.

At the heart of radical externalism lies something Honderich calls worlds of perceptual consciousness. One important feature of a world of perceptual consciousness is that it is not located “in the head” (not at all, in fact, unless e.g. you happen to be looking at your own brain). It encompasses the same tracts of space that those objects of which you are perceptually aware occupy. Hence the “radical externalism”.

And yet, despite being spatially extended, a world of perceptual consciousness is also supposed to be subjective.

In what sense subjective? Well, a world of perceptual consciousness is something you have. Our worlds of perceptual consciousness are numerically distinct. You have yours. I have mine. When you and I simultaneously look at an orange placed on a table in front of us, our worlds of perceptual consciousness may spatially overlap. But still, while we may be conscious of the same orange, there are nevertheless two worlds of perceptual consciousness involved here, not one. Each subject has their own world of perceptual consciousness.

A corollary of this is that a world of perceptual consciousness is only immediately accessible to its owner. A world of perceptual consciousness is, in this sense, a private world. This kind of privacy is of course commonly supposed to be one of the hallmarks of the subjective (yet note that we are still dealing with a radical form of externalism here – we’re not talking about inner Cartesian theatres, or anything like that).

There’s at least one further way in which a world of perceptual consciousness would seem to qualify as subjective. A world of perceptual consciousness is subjective in that

[w]ith consciousness, what there seems to be is what there is. What there seems to be is all there is.

This, I take it, is the familiar claim that while I might be mistaken about there actually being an orange on the table in front of me, I can’t be mistaken about the fact that this is how things subjectively seem to me. Within a world of perceptual consciousness, appearance is king. You can’t, as it were, have fool’s x, where x is something that features within your world of perceptual consciousness.

Resolving the dilemma

How, then, does the introduction of worlds of perceptual consciousness allow us to resolve the dilemma sketched out earlier? How does it succeed in doing justice both to the subjectivity of consciousness and its causal efficacy?

Let’s start with subjectivity. That Honderich’s worlds of perceptual consciousness do at least do justice to the subjectivity of consciousness might seem obvious. They make perceptual consciousness something you have, and they also respect the fact that the illusion/reality distinction collapses when it comes to conscious experience. They are also private. So perhaps the subjectivity of consciousness is indeed taken care of.

But what of causal interaction between the mental and the physical? How do they allow for that? Well, remember that, according to Honderich, the problem spiritualism faces concerning causal interaction is simply this: how can something that is non-spatial causal impinge upon the physical? Honderich’s worlds of perceptual experience do indeed appear to sidestep this problem, for the simple reason that they are spatial.

So it might seem that Honderich’s radical externalism does indeed allow us to do justice to both the subjectivity of consciousness and its causal efficacy. A pretty neat trick, if successful.

Unfortunately, I don’t believe it is successful, as I’ll now try to explain. In particular, some very serious problems concerning causal interaction appear to remain.

Honderich outlines one problem confronting spiritualism regarding causal efficacy – the problem of how the non-spatial might causally impinge on the physical. And perhaps radical externalism does succeed in sidestepping that problem. The problem is that is not the only problem. In fact, spiritualism faces far more serious difficulties concerning causal interaction, including the kind of difficulty that Honderich earlier raised for anomalous monism.

The problem for Honderich, as I’ll try to show below, is that radical externalism confronts much the same kind of difficulty concerning causal interaction.

Honderich’s attack on anomalous monism

Let’s begin by briefly reminding ourselves of Honderich’s own earlier attack on Davidson’s anomalous monism. Anomolous monism itself arose in part out of a problem concerning the causal efficacy of the mental. According to Davidson, there can be a causal relationship between events only if they fall under some law. But there are no psychophysical laws. So how then can mental events cause physical events?

Davidson’s solution is to point out that laws relate events only under some description or other. A token mental event a can cause a physical event b if a is also a physical event. For then a and b can both fall under some physical description and so some physical law. But because there are no psycho-physical laws – no laws under which mental events described as mental cause physical events, so there can be no possibility of a type-identity between mental and physical events.

So Davidson’s anomalous monism claims that token mental events are token physical events. But it seems that these token events have two quite distinct sorts of property: mental properties and physical properties. The mental properties of an event are neither identical with nor reducible to its physical properties. So it appears that anomalous monism is still committed to a form of dualism – namely, a form of property dualism.

Which brings me to Honderich’s attack on anomalous monism. Back in 1982, Honderich cleverly pointed out that while Davidson does indeed allow mental events to have causal efficacy, it seems that epiphenomenalism still threatens. The problem is that while anomalous monism may allow mental events to have causal clout, it’s not in virtue of their mental properties that they have such clout. You could entirely strip away the mental properties of an event, and its physical efficacy would remain undiminished. But, as Honderich puts it, it’s surely mental events as mental that have causal efficacy. Honderich concludes that Davidson thus fails to do justice to one of our fundamental intuitions about the mental. Surely the mental properties of events are causally relevant. Anomolous monism makes them epiphenomenal. So anomalous monism won’t do.

Why the non-spatiality is not the only, or the most serious, problem concerning causal efficacy facing spiritualisms

Honderich’s argument against anomalous monism is neat and clear. But notice that it has nothing to do with the non-spatiality of the mental. (Indeed, notice that it’s not even clear that anomalous monism makes mental properties non-spatial. If physical events are spatially located, and physical events have mental properties, then why aren’t mental properties also spatially located?) Indeed, surely the Really Big Problem about the causal efficacy of the mental so far as dualism more generally is concerned is not that it makes the mental non-spatial (for, as I say, it’s not clear property dualism has to make the mental non-spatial, and in any case we might question whether the concept of cause requires both a cause and its effect to be spatially located ). What more often tends to force modern dualists in the direction of epiphenomenalism are not worries about the non-spatiality of the mental role so much as worries about the absence of psycho-physical laws and/or worries about the causal closure of the physical – in particular, the worry that if every physical event has a sufficient physical condition, then the mental ends up being causally locked out of the physical domain. As I say, this sort of worry about causal interaction is quite independent of any worries generated by the alleged non-spatiality of the mental.

But then a problem for radical externalism is this. Maybe it does sidestep one of the problems for spiritualism concerning causal interaction. By making worlds of perceptual consciousness spatial Honderich does perhaps avoid the problem of explaining how the non-spatial might impinge on the physical (though I have my doubts even about this: even if I acknowledge that a “phantom” pain produced by a severed limb is spatially located [in thin air], that, by itself, still leaves it blankly mysterious how this pain might have any causal impact on the physical). But that is not the only problem dualism faces so far as causal interaction is concerned. Indeed, it may yet turn out that radical externalism is vulnerable to some of the other classic problems.

In fact it seems to me that radical externalism is vulnerable. For much the same kind of argument that Honderich wields against anomalous monism can be used against his own radical externalism.

Let’s return to worlds of perceptual consciousness. They are supposed to solve the problem of causal efficacy by making consciousness spatial. Non-spatiality is supposedly what leads spiritualisms into trouble with causal efficacy. So that trouble is sidestepped.

Well, yes, that trouble is perhaps avoided, but the other problems remain. Worlds of perceptual consciousness may be spatially extended. But Honderich makes clear that they are nevertheless numerically distinct worlds. Nor are they identical with the physical world (or, I take it, any part of it). But then what difference can they make, causally speaking, so far as what goes on in the physical world is concerned?

After all, if we removed these worlds of perceptual consciousness, the physical world would remain, and everything, presumably, would continue on in it exactly as before. So why aren’t worlds of perceptual consciousness epiphenomenal?
In particular, if we can explain everything that happens physically entirely by reference to the physical, without our making any reference to worlds of perceptual consciousness or whatever goes on in them at all, then aren’t worlds of perceptual consciousness also epiphenomenal?

A reply

To this, the reply may be that, while a world of perceptual consciousness may not be identical with the physical world or any part of it, it can nevertheless include physical objects. I am currently conscious of this book. Therefore this very book constitutes a part of my world of perceptual consciousness. As the book is a physical object, it can have physical effects. But then, as my world of perceptual consciousness includes the book, so it too is able to have physical effects.

This surely won’t do. Suppose this book tips over and smashes a vase. The book tipping over causes the vase to smash. And the book tipping is part of my world of perceptual consciousness. So is this an example of my world of perceptual consciousness having a physical effect? That’s an odd-sounding conclusion to draw, to say the least. But even if it did follow, it remains true to say that featuring in my world of perceptual consciousness has nothing to do with the book’s causal efficacy. Had my world of perceptual consciousness been removed, the causal sequence that was played out in front of me – the book tipping resulting in the vase smashing – would still have been the same. We might put it like this. The event of the book’s tipping may have a certain mental property – the property of falling within my world of perceptual consciousness. But this mental property of the event is causally irrelevant to how things play out physically. The book would have done what it did anyway, whether or not it happened to feature within my world of perceptual consciousness.

Of course, Honderich rightly points out that a world of perceptual consciousness is causally dependent upon what’s going on physically. It exists in part as a result of what’s going on neurologically. But of course this doesn’t make worlds of perceptual consciousness any less epiphenomenal. Honderich allows the physical can have effects on consciousness. The difficulty is in explaining how consciousness is to have any physical effects. It does seem as if God could have made a physically identical world, but without including any worlds of perceptual consciousness at all. They add nothing so for as how things play out physically is concerned.

But if radical externalism falls foul of these same classic difficulties concerning the causal efficacy of the mental, then it seems it has no very substantial advantage over the various spiritualisms to which Honderich thinks it should be preferred.

Does Radical Externalism do justice to subjectivity?

I’ll finish by briefly turning to the other horn of the dilemma about consciousness – of how we are to do justice to the subjectivity of consciousness. This is something Honderich claims “devout physicalisms” fail to do. But does his own radical externalism fare any better?

Part of my difficulty here is in identifying precisely what worlds of perceptual consciousness are supposed to include. The suggestion seems to be that they can include real physical objects, as opposed to mere subjective surrogates for them. Suppose, for example, that you are conscious of this page. Honderich asks:

What did your consciousness seem to consist in? An answer can grow on you fast. It was for the page to be there. What your consciousness seemed to consist in was nothing other or more than that. In a better sense of the words than employed by some philosophers, that is what it was like for you to be conscious of the page and that is all that it was like.

The idea seems to be that your consciousness of the page is neither more nor less than for the page itself to exist. Well, actually, that’s obviously false, as the page can exist without you being conscious of it. It’s not entirely clear what Honderich is after, here. But it does at least seem that he wants to make the physical object itself feature in your consciousness. He wants to include it (and not just some mental surrogate for it) in your world of perceptual consciousness.

But earlier we noted that one of the criteria Honderich thinks any adequate theory of consciousness should meet is to do justice to the thought that when it comes to the realm of consciousness, the illusion/reality distinction collapses. You can be mistaken about what’s objectively there, but not about what’s subjectively there.

But then an obvious question arises – if real physical objects can crop up in all their objective glory within worlds of perceptual consciousness (as opposed to mere subjective surrogates – seemings, sense-data, ideas, or whatever) why doesn’t that make possible exactly the distinction between illusion and reality Honderich wants to avoid?

Perhaps it doesn’t, but I don’t yet see why it doesn’t. After all, it may seem to me like there’s a book in my world of perceptual consciousness, but as a matter of fact there isn’t. I’m hallucinating. So I’m mistaken about what there is in my world of perceptual consciousness.

In a nutshell, the problem is this, it seems Honderich wants to include physical objects within worlds of perceptual consciousness. But by including them, worlds of perceptual consciousness no longer appear to be the infallibly given worlds it seems he requires them to be if his theory is to satisfy his own criterion concerning illusion/reality.

Conclusion

In the preceding section a worry was raised about how radical externalism is supposed to explain what Honderich suggests any adequate theory of consciousness should explain: namely the absence of an illusion/reality distinction within the realm of consciousness. Perhaps radical externalism can explain this, though I don’t yet see how.

This is merely a worry, however. Perhaps my inability to see how radical externalism explains this is down to my not having fully understood it. It seems to me that the more substantial difficulty facing radical externalism concerns causal interaction. It may be that Honderich has solved one of the problems that plagued at least some spiritualisms concerning causal interaction. But in my view the most serious difficulties concerning causal interaction are just as much difficulties for radical externalism as they are for spiritualism. So, as it stands, radical externalism seems not to have any very substantial advantage over spiritualism.

Like Honderich, I’m not keen on either spiritualism or devout physicalism. I am persuaded that we probably should be looking for a much more radical solution. Radical externalism is bold, imaginative and very possibly a significant step in the right direction. But it’s not clear that, as it stands, radical externalism really does succeed in solving the causal interaction problem. Not as it stands.

Stephen Law
Heythrop College, University of London

Animation script

2007-11-09T05:26:00.001-08:00

INTRODUCTORY SEQUENCE

LIVE ACTION: CAMP THESPIAN SITTING IN VELVET ARMCHAIR IN LIBRARY, WITH HUGE LEATHER BOUND BOOK. ROARING FIRE AND SIDE-TABLE. SPOOKILY LIT AMID DARKNESS BY SPOTLIGHT. BIT LIKE OPENING OF ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

THE NARRATOR [WE SLOWLY ZOOM IN]: Ah, you’ve arrived. Welcome! Welcome to The Philosophy Files! – where we encounter some of the greatest mysteries of all!

FLUFFY WHITE CAT (ANIMATED?) APPEARS ON MANTELPIECE AND TEETERS ALONG IT.

But be warned. Thinking philosophically can be disturbing – frightening even. We’re going to be thinking without a safety net. [CAT SLIPS, SAVES ITSELF] Indeed, we will often be teetering on the very edge of sanity! [CAT FALLS OFF MANTELPIECE – CRASH!]

For we’re embarking upon a journey, a journey into the unknown – a journey to… the Outer Limits of thought. [SCREEN GOES TO INTERFERENCE] THAN SHRINKS TO POINT AND VANISHES LEAVING DARK SCREEN, LIKE IN OLD TWILIGHT ZONE SHOW [MAYBE PLAY TWILIGHT ZONE THEME?]

THE NARRATOR: Allow me to introduce…the philosopher!

GO TO ANIMATION: SPOTLIGHT CLUNKS ON REVEALING RODIN’S “THE THINKER”. PAUSE. OUT FROM BEHIND STEPS NERDY-LOOKING BLOKE. BRIAN BUNG: MALE UK ACCENT NICE BUT BIT NERDY AND NEUROTIC IN WOODY ALLEN MOLD.

BRIAN TRYING TO APPEAR LIKE COOL DETECTIVE: The name’s Bung. Brian Bung, PI.

NARRATOR: That’s right, Brian here is a PI – a Philosophical Investigator. Let’s scrutinize him more closely. [ZOOM IN ON BRUCE] There. No doubt you are admiring Brian’s highly-domed forehead [ZOOM IN ON FOREHEAD].

Perhaps you have surmised that beneath that shiny pate there growls a prowling tiger of an intellect. Bruce’s mind, you’ve guessed, must be veritably pulsing with giga-watts of cerebral energy!

WE ZOOM INSIDE BRIAN’S HEAD TO SEE SMALL ENGINE PUT-PUT-PUTTING.

Not a bit of it, I’m afraid. The truth, dear viewer, is that Brian is just an ordinary man. [BUNG SHOOTS A LOOK] Frankly, he’s the best we could afford on our limited budget.

[ZOOM IN ON BRIAN BUNG] But still, he is a philosopher! What marks Brian out as a philosopher? His curiosity of course. Brian is a man unafraid to ask questions. He questions what others take for granted. He thinks for himself – tries top figure things out. And he is faithfully served by his attractive assistant, Stella Wacker.

STELLA STEPS OUT FROM BEHIND THE STATUE. SHE IS ATTRACTIVE, SASSY, SERIOUS-MINDED US WOMAN DETECTIVE IN TRENCHCOAT. BIT LIKE SCULLY IN X FILES. SHE IS THE REAL BRAINS IN THIS OUTFIT.

STELLA [SOMEWHAT BORED/ALOOF]: Hi.

THE NARRATOR: Each week these two intrepid investigators grapple with one of the world’s greatest mysteries… [VOICE GAINING IN EXCITEMENT NOW…] for the year is 2250, this is Bruce Dern City, and these are The Philosophy Files!

PART ONE

[EXCITING “THE PHILOSOPHY FILES” TRAILER WITH THEME MUSIC: WE NOW SEE BRIAN AND STELLA ARE IN FILM-NOIR STYLE DETECTIVES OFFICE – ZOOM BACK TO SEE “BUNG AND WACKER – PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATORS – YOUR BIG QUESTIONS ANSWERED” STENCILLED ON THE DOOR. CLIPS OF: FUTURISTIC CITYSCAPE, B AND S RIDING AIR-SCOOTERS, GUNFIGHTING WITH LAZERS, PUNCH UPS WITH MARTIANS, EXPLODING BUILDINGS, OTHER ACTION CLICHES, ETC.]

NARRATOR [GRANDLY]: This week’s episode: The strange case of Muriel’s robot.

NOW WE’RE BACK IN THE FILM-NOIR STYLE OFFICE. STELLA IS READING. BRIAN STARING OUT THE WINDOW, BORED. THERE’S A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

SCENE ONE

STELLA: Enter.

A WOMAN, MURIEL, GLAMOROUS, ATTRACTIVE, DRESSED IN FIFTIES-STYLE SUIT AND HEELS, ENTERS, DISTRAUGHT. BRIAN IMMEDATELY GETS INTO “DRAGNET” MODE:

BRIAN [TRYING TO BE MACHO]: How can we be of service, Maam?
MURIEL: Thank goodness you’re here. I’m desperate!
BRIAN: Desperate?
MURIEL: It’s…it’s the guilt.
BRIAN: The guilt?
MURIEL: Yes. And yet I don’t know whether I should feel guilty. Maybe I did nothing wrong…I just don’t know. Can you help me…? I was told you’re best.
STELLA [CRISPLY]. We are the best, Maam. Now why don’t you sit down, take a deep breath and begin at the beginning.
MURIEL SITS AND BEGINS TO TELL THE STORY. Well, it was about six months ago…. [WE MELT TO THE SCENE: MURIEL ON CHAISE LONGUE HOLDING GLASS OF GIN AND READING THE PAPER]. I was taking my usual mid-morning pick-me-up and reading the newspaper when I saw an advertisement for one of those new robot helpers. You know the ones? Do the hovering and dusting and cook your dinner for you?
BRIAN: Yes maam. They’re highly advanced culinary and domestic appliances.
MURIEL: Well, it was a bargain. I had inherited a little bit of money, so I thought – why not? And the very next day there it was on my doorstep….

MURIEL OPENING DOOR TO DELIVERY MAN WITH LARGE BOX. MURIEL RIPPING OF PACKAGING TO REVEAL ROBOT PARTS, WHICH TUMBLE LOUDLY ONTO FLOOR.

FADE TO “LATER” MURIEL (KNEELING, WITH IKEA-LIKE INSTRUCTIONS, ASSEMBLING PARTS STREWN ACROSS FLOOR): Attach B to C and screw down firmly….No, wait, that’s part D. Or is it upside down?…. [FADE TO “MUCH LATER”] …and. finally, reach behind and flip switch to “on”…

ROBOT IN PINNY SPRINGS TO LIFE AND SITS UP: Hi! I am Emit – your new robot helper and friend!

BACK TO MURIEL IN OFFICE, RETELLING STORY:

MURIEL NARRATING (SADLY): It was right there my problems began. You see, I couldn’t accept that this piece of machinery wanted to be my friend. After all, it was just a pile of plastic and tin – just a machine - that I’d spent the last two hours assembling on my sitting room floor. How could a piece of machinery be my friend?

CUT TO MURIEL IN STORY, REPLYING TO EMIT:

MURIEL: You can’t be my friend. You’re just a machine. You don’t have a mind. You don’t have any feelings.
EMIT [LOOKING A LITTL HURT]: It’s true. I’m a machine. But of course I have a mind. I feel. I understand. Just like you.
MURIEL: That’s ridiculous. You mimic feeling and understanding very well, I grant you that. But you’re a sham. You only seem to have a mind. How can I be friends with a glorified household appliance? Now get on with the hoovering, please.
EMIT (LOOKS FORLORN - MAKES HOOVER NOISES AS HE SUCKS UP DUST WITH FOOT): A sham?
MURIEL (NARRATING): Things quickly went from bad to worse. Emit kept on trying to strike up conversations with me. Asked me about my day. That kind of thing. I just wanted him to do the ironing.
MURIEL (TO EMIT – SHE’S HOLDING UP A BLOUSE): A little more starch next time, please.
STELLA: Why did you find him so irritating?
MURIEL NARRATING: I… I’m not sure. It seemed creepy somehow. This… this thing wanted to have a relationship with me, for goodness sake. It was needy. Eventually, I told it to back off!
BRIAN: Back off?
MURIEL [NARRATING[: Yes. One morning, when Emit brought me a cup of tea in bed [EMIT SITS ON SIDE OF BED, SIGHS].
MURIEL [SNAPS]: I can’t stand this any longer! You’re acting like a moody teenager. Just stop it with the fake emotion, will you?
EMIT: Fake? My emotions aren’t fake, I assure you. I can’t help how I feel, can I? And…and…I…I…I feel rejected [SOBS INTO HANKY].
MURIEL: Oh please. You’re a machine. You simulate emotion. You simulate understanding.
EMIT: You think I don’t understand you?
MURIEL: Of course you don’t.
EMIT: But if I don’t understand, why do you bother speaking to me? Why do I follow your instructions if I don’t understand them?
MURIEL: That’s how you’re programmed. There’s a computer inside that tin head of yours – a computer that’s been cleverly programmed to mimic understanding, to make you act like you understand what I’m saying.
EMIT: But I really do understand you!
MURIEL: No you don’t.
EMIT: Yes I do. And I really do feel!
MURIEL [IRRITATED]: You only say that because you’re programmed to fake feeling.
EMIT: I’m not faking it for goodness sake! What can I do to prove to you that I really do have a mind?
MURIEL: There’s nothing you can do. You’re a machine. Machines don’t have minds.

MURIEL, NARRATING AGAIN: After that, Emit became increasingly listless. EMIT STOOPED, DOING WASHING UP. PAN CLUNKS TO FLOOR. NO REACTION.

He would stare out of the window for hours, mumbling to himself.

[EMIT HEAD IN HANDS MUMBLING “Do I have a mind? Maybe I just think I do?]

MURIEL [NARRATING]: Eventually, he disappeared altogether.
STELLA, RAISING EYEBROW: Where to?
MURIEL HANDS STELLA NEWSPAPER HEADLINE. “ROBOT FOUND SMASHED AT BOTTOM OF DEADMAN’S LEAP”
BRIAN [LOOKING OVER STELLA’S SHOULDER: Emit killed himself?
MURIEL: That’s right. And now….now….
BRIAN [PUTTING HAND ON MURIEL’S SHOULDER]: And now, Maam, you’re wondering if you didn’t make a mistake?
MURIEL: That’s right. [BLOWS NOSE INTO HANKIE] It’s…it’s… the uncertainty I can’t stand. Did I mentally torture that poor sap into committing suicide? Did he really suffer those awful angst-ridden moments alone, staring out over the city lights, his soul churning in torment, before throwing himself into the abyss? [CUT TO EMIT STARING OUT FORLORNLY OVER CITY LIGHTS, HE CHUCKS HIMSELF OFF EDGE AND COMICALLY BOUNCES DOWN CLIFF FACE, “OUCH”, “OW” ETC. TILL SMASHED TO PICES AT BOTTOM AND THE LIGHTS IN HIS EYES FADE TO BLACK] Or was he [UPSET, GRASPING AT LAMP], in truth, no more than a piece of metal and plastic, no more capable of experiencing real thoughts and feelings than this table lamp [LIFTS LAMP, LOOKS LIKE SHE MAY SMASH IT].
BRIAN [TAKING LAMP FROM HER]: Careful Maam. That was a graduation gift.
STELLA (TO MURIEL): I see. It’s the classic conundrum. Can a machine think and feel? You were convinced it couldn’t. Now you’re not so sure.
MURIEL: That’s it exactly. Can you reassure me?
ZOOM ON STELLA’s FACE: It’s a tough one, Maam. But you’ve come to the right place. We’re professionals. Our first call – Deadman’s Leap.

STELLA AND BRIAN GRAB TRENCHCOATS AND LEAVE.

SCENE TWO

WE SEE STELLA AND BRIAN FLYING ACROSS CITY PAST LEAFY SUBURBS AND ARRIVING AT BOTTOM OF CLIFF PAST ‘DEADMAN’S LEAP’ SIGN.
STELLA [RUMMAGING THROUGH BUSHES]: He’s got to be round here somewhere. What you doing?
BRIAN [CLEARLY PEEING IN BUSHES]: Er nothing. [BRIAN TURNS SLIGHTLY AS HE REPLIES, SOUND OF PEEING CHANGES TO PEEING ON METAL. BRIAN LOOKS DOWN.]
BRIAN: Hey, I’ve found him!
STELLA AND BRIAN LOOKING DOWN AT SMASHED ROBOT [HEAD AND LIMBS TORN OFF].
BRIAN: Gee, he really made a mess of himself.
STELLA: Let’s get to work, shall we? [PICKS UP EMIT’S HEAD.] You know, there’s something not right here. The head’s empty. [SHAKES HEAD. SOUND OF BOLT RATTLING ROUND INSIDE]
BRIAN: Empty? Who would have taken the computer out?
STELLA: Good question. [ZOOM IN ON PLATE SCREWED TO BACK OF HEAD WITH SERIAL NUMBER ETC. IT READS: MANUFACTURED BY SEARLE-TRONIC CORPS. BRUCE DERN CITY. Let’s pay a little visit to the director of … Searle-tronics.

SCENE THREE

STELLA AND BRIAN PARK THEIR AIR SCOOTERS AND STAND BEFORE THE HUGE SEARLE-TRONICS BUILDING [PAN UPWARDS] ⎯WITH HUGE “SEARLE-TRONICS” SIGN ON TOP ‘SEARLE-TRONICS ⎯ YOU’RE DREAMS ARE OUR REALITY”. THEY ENTER LOBBY THROUGH REVOLVING DOOR. INSIDE LOBBY IS A HUGE STATUTE OFA WHITE UNICORN [BLADERUNNER QUOTE]

BRIAN TO RECEPTIONIST: We’re here to see Mr Searle.
RECEPTIONIST, TERSELY: Professor Searle. He sees no one without an appointment.
STELLA: He might want to see us. Tell him we’re investigating an incident at Deadman’s Leap.

RECEPTIONIST PICKS UP PHONE AND WHISPERS INTO IT. BRIAN LOOKS THROUGH GLASS AT TRAMP OUTSIDE, WHO IS CLUTCHING BOTTLE AND STAGGERING. A ROBOT LIKE EMIT [ONLY MORE SINISTER] COMES UP, GRABS TRAMP BY SCRUFF OF NECK AND DRAGS HIM AWAY.

BRIAN: Tight ship you run here.
RECEPTIONIST [PUTTING DOWN PHONE]: Professor Searle will see you now.

BRIAN AND STELLA TURN AND ARE SURPRISED BY ANOTHER LARGE, SLIGHTLY SINISTER ROBOT LOOMING OVER THEM.

ROBOT: Would you follow me, please.

THEY WALK TOWARDS AND ENTER GLASS LIFT AND ARE ZOOMED UP. THEY WATCH THE CITYSCAPE THROUGH LIFT’S GLASS WALLS [LOOKS BIT LIKE BLADE RUNNER]

LIFT DOORS HISS OPEN AT TOP FLOOR AND THEY WALK INTO HUGE GLASS-WALLED OFFICE. BEHIND DESK IS SEARLE, PLAYING WITH EXECUTIVE TOY. HE LOSES TEMPER AND SMASHES IT WITH FIST, THEN NOTICES HIS GUESTS. THERE’S AN OWL ON A STAND BEHIND HIM [BLADE RUNNER QUOTE].

SEARLE: Oh. Ah. Welcome. Welcome. I understand you’re investigating that nasty incident at Deadman’s Leap. One of our robots, I believe?
STELLA: That’s right, Professor Searle. We’ve been employed by the robot’s owner to look into the case.
BRIAN: Do many of your machines end up committing suicide?
SEARLE: Machine self-destructs are a very rare occurrence. This is the first machine of its generation ever to breakdown in this way. It’s bad publicity, obviously. Er, your client is not planning to make a fuss, is she? Do tell her that we plan to reimburse her fully or provide her with a new machine - whichever she prefers.
BRIAN: We went to examine the remains. The robot’s computer had been removed. Anything to do with you?
SEARLE [FOLDS ARMS BEHIND BACK, STARES OUT ACROSS CITY]: Computer taken you say? Probably just vandals looking for spare parts. Certainly nothing to do with Searle-tronics.
STELLA: Professor Searle, do you know why this machine malfunctioned?
SEARLE: I’ve no idea. As I say, it’s never happened before.
BRIAN: But Mr S…
STELLA (INTERRUPTING): Well, thank you for your time, Professor Searle.
SEARLE: Not at all. Let me know if I can be of any further help.
BRIAN AND STELLA WALK TOWARDS LIFT:
SEARLE: Button “G” will get you back down to the ground floor.
BRIAN: Goodbye. STELLA PUSHES BUTTON MARKED “LAB”. Er… DOORS SHUT.
BRIAN [ANXIOUSLY WHISPERING]: What are you doing?
STELLA: We’re paying a visit to the lab.
BRIAN: The lab?
DOORS HISS OPEN AND THEY STEP INTO WHITE CORRIDOR.
CUT TO SEARLE’S OFFICE: HE IS WATCHING INDICATOR LIGHTS SHOWING THEY GOT OUT AT “LAB”. HE TURNS ON AND LOOKS AT TV MONITOR SHOWING THEM WALKING DOWN CORRIDOR.

SEARLE: Naughty. Very naughty.

SCENE FOUR

CUT TO BRIAN AND STELLA IN CORRIDOR, WALKING FAST.

BRIAN: The lab? Why we going there?
STELLA: Something Searle said didn’t ring true. I think these new robots aren’t all they appear to be…[ARRIVE AT DOOR MARKED ‘LAB”]. This is it.

THEY SNEAK INSIDE. WE HEAR REPEATED “HISS TICK KERPLOK, HISS TICK KERPLOK” RHYTHM.

STELLA: This is where the latest generation of robots like Emit are made. I want to take a closer look….

THEY CREEP AROUND SOME PACKING CASES. BRIAN SPOTS A LINE OF MENACING-LOOKING ROBOTS MARCHING PAST.

BRIAN [PANICKED WHISPER]: Look out!
STELLA: It’s okay. Those are just shells. ZOOM OUT TO REVEAL THE ROBOTS ARE MOUNTED ON PRODUCTION LINE. WE NOW SEE THEIR FLIP TOP HEADS ARE OPEN AND EMPTY. The computers are fitted in the room next door. Let’s take a peek. BRIAN AND STELLA SNEAK UP TO DOOR. STELLA LOOKS THROUGH ITS PORTHOLE WINDOW INTO NEXT ROOM, FROM WHICH WE HEAR PRODUCTION-LINE SOUNDS.

STELLA: It’s just as I thought…
BRIAN (ALSO TAKES A PEEK: SHOCKED EXPRESSION): Oh my goodness! Are they what I think they are?

SUDDENLY THE MAIN DOOR THROUGH WHICH THEY ENTERED IS KICKED OPEN AND IN RUSH THREE BIG SCARY ROBOTS. ROBOT ONE CARRIES A LAZER GUN.

ROBOT ONE: Get them!
STELLA: Quick, this way!

BRIAN AND STELLA DUCK BEHIND SOME PACKING CASES JUST AS LAZER GUN BLASTS WALL BEHIND THEM. THEY CRAWL THROUGH MORE CASES AND EMERGE NEXT TO WINDOW. STELLA TRIES HANDLE. WINDOW OPENS.

STELLA: This way! It’s our only hope.

STELLA STEPS OUT ONTO LEDGE AND NERVOUS BRIAN TEETERS AFTER HER. WE VIEW THEM FROM ABOVE SPREAD UP AGAINST THE WALL WITH HUGE DROP ONTO STREET FAR BELOW. GUSTS OF WIND BUFFET THEM.

BRIAN: Er, now what?
STELLLA: And now, we jump.
BRIAN: Are you crazy? We’ll die!

ROBOT WITH LAZER SMASHES HEAD AND ARM THROUGH WALL AND AIMS LAZER TOWARDS THEM. STELLA GRABS BRIAN BY HAND AND JUMPS, TAKING HIM WITH HER. THEY ARE PLUNGING TO THEIR DEATHS!

BRIAN: AAAAAARGH!

INTERMISSION

SUDDENLY SCREEN FREEZES AND WE HEAR NARRATOR ASKING THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS:

NARRATOR: Are Brian and Stella doomed? Will they be splattered like so much Strawberry mousse across the busy streets below? Find out in the next exciting episode, right after this intermission.

“INTERMISSION” CAPTION. WE CUT TO LIVE ACTION: NARRATOR IN HIS VELVET CHAIR WITH ROARING FIRE AND SIDETABLE. HE IS NOW STROKING A FLUFFY WHITE CAT, A LA JAMES BOND’S BLOWFELD.

NARRATOR: That’s correct, dear viewer. It’s the intermission. A time to reflect. To take stock. In each episode of The Philosophy Files we help ourselves to a little “time out” to examine a salient philosophical idea or clue in more detail.

[SOUND OF FILM PROJECTOR STARTING UP. WE SEE PROJECTOR FILM COUNT DOWN 5 + 4 +…ETC.]

So let us look at the facts so far. First, we know, do we not, that the glamorous Muriel [FILM PROJECTED ONTO SCREEN NEXT TO NARRATOR, WHO HAS PICKED UP A POINTER STICK – ON SCREEN WE SEE FLASHBACK TO HER TALKING IN M AND S’S OFFICE – NARRATOR POINTS] is anguished - tortured by the thought that Emit, her faithful robot servant, was so wracked by feelings of rejection that he ended up ending it all. [ON SCREEN, WE SEE EMIT BOUNCING DOWN THE CLIFF. THEN CUT BACK TO NARRATOR] Or was he nothing more than faulty electrical goods – no more to be mourned than a broken electric toaster?

That’s what Brian and Stella have been charged with finding out.

We know, too, that Professor Searle acted suspiciously, [ON SCREEN WE SEE FLASHBACK TO SEARLE’S OFFICE AND THEN THE ROBOTS CHASING M AND S] and that his robo-henchmen tried to kill Brian and Stella when they went to investigate the lab.

What was it that Brian and Stella spied through that doorway? [FLASHBACK TO M AND S PEERING THROUGH DOORWAY] What is ghastly the secret of the Searle-tronics lab? You’ll soon find out. [CUT BACK TO NARRATOR, HOLDING POINTER] But first let’s take a closer look at the philosophy behind this week’s episode.

Philosophers have grappled for a long time with the suggestion that machines might one day think and feel. True this simple electric toaster [NARRATOR HOLDS UP TOASTER PASSED TO HIM FROM OFF-CAMERA BY BUTLER] cannot think. And this cooker [WE PULL BACK AND NARRATOR POINTS TO DARK CORNER OF ROOM SUDDENLY SPOTLIT TO REVEAL COOKER, WITH BUTLER POSING NEXT TO IT LIKE IN A GAMESHOW] cannot feel. But what of more complex machines? What of super-advanced machines of the future? Machines like Emit? Might they think and feel?

Not according to the 17th Century French philosopher Rene Descartes.

WE AGAIN PULL BACK TO REVEAL, TO ONE SIDE OF NARRATOR, SPOTLIT DESCARTES IN PERIOD DRESS, SITTING AT DESK. IT’S ACTUALLY ERIC CANTONA (CAN WE GET HIM?) IN WIG AND GOATEE BEARD. [MAYBE SUBTLY PLACE SOME CLUES: A FOOTBALL AND TROPHY OR MAN U SHIRT IN THE BACKGROUND]. HE IS WRITING AT HIS DESK.

NARRATOR: Descartes thought that to truly think, you need a mind. And your mind is something non-physical!

DESCARTES, TO NARRATOR: Zat is right, my friend. Your mind – that which thinks - is a something immaterial – a soul! A soul that can even float off and exist on its own. That, of course, is exactly what happens when we die! CUT TO ANIMATION: SOMEONE ON DEATH BED. THEY DIE. Our souls float up to heaven! LITTLE WINGED CLOUD FLOATS UP FROM CORPSE. If they’ve been good, that is! Otherwise they go to the place with the red devils! [CLOUD STOPS, PLUMMETS LIKE A STONE DOWN INTO HELL POPULATED BY LITTLE RED DEVILS WHO PROD IT].

[CUT TO LIVE ACTION: CLOSE UP OF DESCARTES] We human beings have minds. But animals and machines do not, no matter how mechanically sophisticated they might happen to be. Zey are mere automata. Mere physical objects. As such, [SLIGHTLY MANIACALLY] they are utterly devoid of thought and feeling!

[CUT TO NARRATOR] NARRATOR: Thank you, Rene. So if Descartes is right, Muriel certainly doesn’t need to feel guilty about her robot’s violent end. She can relax, secure in the knowledge that Emit was no more able to think and feel then is this toaster [TOASTER FALLS OF HIS LAP AND STARTLES CAT]. Sorry Mr Whiskers. [STROKES CAT WHICH GOES BACK TO SLEEP]. Sure, Emit might outwardly seem like one of us. But if Descartes is right, Emit lacks a soul.

But other thinkers aren’t so sure.

PICKS UP POINTER. SLIDE PROJECTOR COMES ON.

Slide please.

NEXT TO ANIMATOR APPEARS A SCREEN: SHOWS AN ANIMATED IMAGE OF WINGED CLOUD [WITH FACE] FLOATING OVER A BRAIN. LABELLED “MIND” AND “BRAIN”.

Some believe that the mind is the body, or at least a part of it. NARRATOR POINTS TO IMAGE. The brain! You are your brain!

SLIDE CHANGES: IMAGE OF BRAIN NOW HAS ARROWS AND LABELS “MIND”, “BRAIN”.

Certainly we know that the mind and the brain are connected, don’t we? They interact. Damage someone’s brain and you can damage their mind as well.

Take Fred here. [ANIMATION: SPOTLIT NERVOUS-LOOKING GUY DRESSED LIKE MENTAL HOSPITAL INMATE. HE IS STRAPPED IN WHEELCHAIR THAT IS WHEELED ONTO SIDE OF STAGE BY TWO SINISTER-LOOKING DOCTORS ON EITHER SIDE OF HIM. WHEELCHAIR SQUEEKS AS IT’S WHEELED ON] Suppose Fred was accidentally to bump his head, thereby rattling his brain.

ONE DOCTOR SUDDENLY PULLS OUT MALLET AND WACKS FRED OVER HEAD. FRED PASSES OUT.

That might cause his mind to lose consciousness.

FRED COMES TO.

Or suppose we were to pump drugs into Fred’s brain.

DOCTOR INJECTS FRED – HIS EYES DO THAT DRUGGY SPIRAL THING. WE HEAR THE DOORS PLAYING….

That might cause his mind to have very different experiences.

CUT TO LIVE ACTION, NARRATOR: So the mind and the brain interact. But are they actually the same thing? In order to have a mind, do you need a flesh and blood brain?

NARRATOR LEANS OVER AND RINGS LITTLE BELL ON TABLE BESIDE HIM

If you do, then again, because Muriel’s robot didn’t have a brain, he didn’t have a mind.

Emit merely simulated thinking and feeling.

Muriel was quite right to insist that Emit was just a machine. She doesn’t have to feel guilty.

BUTLER APPEARS IN NARRATORS SPOTLIGHT.

Ah, Jenkins. Some tea and biscuits, please. [BUTLER WALKS OFF].

But do you need a brain to have a mind? Some computer scientists believe you don’t. Having a brain, they say, is one way to have a mind. But it’s not the only way. What if we were to fit someone with a sophisticated computer instead?

How would the computer work?

Well, it would do the same job the brain does. Let’s take a closer look at Fred’s brain.

CUT TO ANIMATION OF FRED WITH THE SCIENTISTS AGAIN. THEY HAVE A BIG COMPUTER WITH TAPES AND WIRES. FRED IS STRUGGLING A LITTLE. ONE DOCTOR IS TESTING FRED’S REFLEXES. ONE OF THE SCIENTISTS PULLS X-RAY SCREEN IN FRONT OF FRED FROM OFFSCREEN. NOW WE CAN SEE INSIDE FRED. ZOOM IN ON HIS BRAIN.

The brain is really a sort of central control room. It receives lots of electrical signals – patterns of electrical stimulation – from the nerves running into it from the eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin [WE SEE LOTS OF TINY BLUE ARROWS FLOWING UP NERVES IN FRED’S BODY INTO FRED’S BRAIN]. That’s how you get to see the world around you. It’s also how you get to hear it, smell it, taste it and feel it.

Your brain also sends out patterns of electrical stimulation to control your muscles and other organs [WE SEE TINY RED ARROWS FLOWING OUT OF BRAIN DOWN NERVES TO FRED’S ARMS AND LEGS]. That’s how you are able to walk, talk and generally move your body about. It’s your brain that makes these things happen by sending out the right patterns of electrical stimulation.

Let’s see Fred’s brain in action. WE SEE FRED IN X-RAY MODE. HIS ARMS ARE NOW RELEASED BY THE DOCTORS. WE CAN ALSO SEE A TABLE WITH BOWL OF ICECREAM NEXT TO HIM] He can now see a bowl of ice-cream.

FRED – IN X-RAY MODE [HOMER-SIMPSON-LIKE]: Mmmmm. Ice cream.

NARRATOR: What goes on inside Fred when he sees the ice cream? [THE FOLLOWING IS ALL ANIMATED] Light bounces off the ice cream and enters Fred’s eyes. [ZOOM IN ON EYE] A lens focuses the light to produce an upside down image at the back of the eye [ANIMATE THIS]. This image falling onto the back of the eye fires millions of nerves. These produce patterns of electrical stimulation that then pass down Fred’s optic nerves into his brain [FINALLY ANIMATE ALL THIS WITH LITTLE BLUE ARROWS RUNNING FROM EYE INTO BRAIN].

It looks as if Fred’s going to eat a mouthful of that ice cream. What’s happening now? [AGAIN THIS IS ALL ANIMATED WITH ZOOM INS, CUTAWAY DIAGRAMS AND LABELLING]. Patterns of electrical stimulation are coming out of Fred’s brain and running down the nerves in his arm that control his muscles [FINALLY, ANIMATE ALL THIS WITH LITTLE RED ARROWS RUNNING OUT OF BRAIN DOWN ARMS. FRED GRABS SPOONFUL OF ICE-CREAM]. That’s making Fred’s arm reach out and grab the spoon.

CUT BACK TO LIVE ACTION NARRATOR.

So Fred’s brain receives patterns of electrical stimulation through some nerves. And it sends out patterns of electrical stimulation through other nerves. It really is a sort of central control room.

[DIAGRAM – CUTAWAY OF HEAD – ILLUSTRATING THE IN AND OUT SYSTEMS OF NERVES – RED AND BLUE ARROWS – WITH BRAIN LABELLED ‘CENTRAL CONTROL ROOM”]

But why does it have to be a flesh and blood brain that acts as the central control room? Why couldn’t a sophisticated computer be programmed to do the job instead?

Fred’s brain, after all, is just a piece of physical machinery [ZOOM IN ON BRAIN TO REVEAL NETWORK OF NEURONS] – biological machinery.

CUT TO NARRATOR. BUTLER APPEARS WITH TRAY OF TEA AND BISCUITS AND OFFERS SOMETHING TO NARRATOR.

Ah. Cheesy nibbles. My favourite. Thank you. [HELPS HIMSELF TO BISCUIT AND TAKES A BITE. BUTLER PUTS TRAY ON SIDE TABLE AND LEAVES].

Where was I? Ah yes. But why do the electrical signals have to go in and out of a flesh and blood brain?

NARRATOR [WITH MOUTHFUL OF BISCUIT] What if we constructed a fantastically [SPRAYS CRUMBS SAYING LAST WORD] advanced computer that responded to patterns of electrical stimulation in just the same way that Fred’s brain does? [CAT SHAKES OFF CRUMBS] Of course, the computer would have to be very sophisticated. But there seems no reason in principle why we couldn’t build one to do the same job.

CUT BACK TO FRED STRAPPED IN CHAIR [X-RAY SCREEN REMOVED]

So let’s take Fred’s brain out and replace it with just such an advanced computer…

FRED LOOKS AT US SHOCKED:

FRED: “What?!!”

SEVERAL MORE WHITE COATED SCIENTISTS LEAP AT FRED FROM OFF-SCREEN AND PIN FRED DOWN INTO CHAIR. THERE’S STRUGGLING. FRED’S LEGS ARE KICKING.

NARRATOR: …a computer designed to do just the job that Fred’s brain does…

FRED’S LEGS GO FLOPPY AND HIS BRAIN IS THROWN OUT OF SCRUM. WE SEE COMPUTER BEING PASSED IN. SOME FIDDLING AS THE BRAIN IS FITTED. WHITE COATS STAND BACK AND FRED SITS UP STRAIGHT, STUNNED.

NARRATOR: There. It’s installed. But does Fred still have a mind? Does he still have thoughts and feelings? Does he still understand? Let’s find out. How do you feel Fred?

FRED [HIS ARMS ARE FREE]: Er…okay I guess. BANGS SIDE OF HEAD WITH HAND. SLIGHT RATTLE.
NARRATOR: Everything still working okay? Can you still see that ice cream?
FRED: Yes. It looks just the same. [TAKES A MOUTHFUL]. Hmm. Tastes the same too.

[CUT TO NARRATOR] NARRATOR: So you see? Because the computer in Fred’s head does exactly the same job that his brain used to, Fred seems outwardly exactly the same as he did before. [TAKES ANOTHER BISCUIT FROM TRAY]

But does Fred have a mind?

[CUT TO FRED] FRED: Of course I have a mind!

[CUT TO NARRATOR] NARRATOR, POINTING AT FRED: True, Fred says he has a mind. But maybe he only says that because the simulation is so good!

If Fred does have a mind, then you don’t need a brain to have a mind. A computer could do the job just as well.

It doesn’t matter what kind of stuff the machine inside your head is made out of. Just so long as it does the right job.

NARRATOR REACHES OVER TO TEA POT AND POURS HIMSELF A CUP OF TEA WHILE CONTINUING TO SPEAK…

So there’s our conundrum! Now we’ve replaced Fred’s brain with a computer, does he still have thoughts and feelings? Or is he now just a machine – a machine cleverly designed to simulate thought and feeling?

The time has come to return to the action. [PICKS UP CUP OF TEA]
Let’s say goodbye to Fred…

[CUT TO FRED] FRED [BEING WHEELED OFF INTO DARKNESS BY THE DOCTORS: WHEELCHAIR HAS SQUEEKY WHEEL]: Er…goodye…

NARRATOR: [CUT TO FREEZE FRAME OF THE FALLING BRIAN AND STELLA] …and immerse ourselves back in the story. Our intrepid heroes appear to be doomed! Are they about to splattered across the sidewalk? Let’s find out!

PART TWO

SCENE ONE

FREEZE FRAME ROLLS AND WE SEE BRAIN AND STELLA FALLING.

STELLA: Hang on tight!
BRIAN: What?!

STELLA WHIPS OUT A CABLE FROM HER BELT THAT HAS A HOOK ON IT. SHE CLIPS IT TO BRIANS TROUSER BELT AND PRESSES A BUTTON ON HER BELT. SUDDENLY A HUGE PARACHUTE BILLOWS OUT BEHIND HER AND THEY FLOAT DOWN TO STREET. BOLTS OF LAZER GUN POUND THE PAVEMENT AROUND THEM. LOOK UP TO SEE ROBOT FIRING AT THEM. SUDDENLY HUNDREDS OF SINISTER ROBOTS ARE POURING OUT OF BUILDING AFTER THEM.

STELLA: Let’s move!

SHE DRAGS BRIAN OVER TO AN AIRSCOOTER PARKED ON PAVEMENT AND THEY ZOOM AWAY.

BRIAN: How’d we survive that fall?
STELLA [FLASHING WHAT’S UNDER HER JACKET]: Para-bra. Latest gizmo from Girl-Detective Co.
BRIAN [DREAMILY]: Nice.
STELLA: Let’s get moving - we’ve got business to attend to.
BRIAN: Where?
STELLA: Police Headquarters, where else?

SCOOTER PULLS UP OUTSIDE POLICE HQ. STARSKY AND HUTCH’S CAR IS PARKED OUTSIDE. BRIAN AND STELLA ENTER AND WALK UP TO DESK.

BRIAN: We wanna’ see the chief.
COP: He’s busy.
STELLA: Tell him we know who’s behind that robo-suicide. And why the robot’s computer was stolen.

CUT FORWARD TO CHIEF’S OFFICE.

CHIEF [WHO IS BLACK]: So what’s going on? – and be quick – I’ve got a pile of paperwork the size of the Himalaya on my desk.
STELLA: We’ve just been to Searle-tronics. And Searle tried to have us killed.
CHIEF [INDIGNANT]: What? Now steady on. Searle’s an important man. Why would he do such a thing?
BRIAN: We discovered his secret.
CHIEF: Secret?
STELLA: After we paid him a visit, we decided to take a peek at the robot production line.
BRIAN: Not a pretty sight.
STELLA: As you know chief, Searle-tronics produces some of the most advanced robots around. [WE SEE SEARLE-TRONICS LAB AGAIN, WITH TECHNICIANS WORKING ON ROBOTS] But they ran into trouble with their latest model. The robots’ computers constantly crashed [THE ROBOTS ARE FALLING OVER, TALKING GIBBERISH, ETC. PANICKED TECHNICIANS TRYING TO FIX THEM]. Searle-tronics were going to lose millions.
BRIAN: So they did the dirty.
CHIEF: The dirty?
STELLA [LOOKING PEEVISHLY AT BRIAN]: What Brian means, sir, is that we discovered that Searle-tronics started to use real human brains in their robots.
CHIEF: What?! Real human brains! But that’s Illegal!
STELLA: Highly illegal. The use of cloned human tissue for commercial gain is absolutely prohibited here in Bruce Dern City. But Searle was desperate. The latest Searle-tronic computers just wouldn’t work properly. His new robots were going belly-up. So Searle did the only thing he could to save his company - he started cloning specially compliant human brains and fitted them inside the robots instead.
CHIEF: That explains why that suicidal robot’s head was empty. Searle didn’t want the truth to come out.
BRIAN: Exactly, sir. Searle arranged for the brain to be stolen before anyone else got a chance to examine it. [FLASHBACK: WE SEE THE BRAIN BEING REMOVED BY TECHNICIANS WITH A SEARLE-TRONICS VAN]
CHIEF [FLIPPING SWITCH ON INTERCOM]: This is the chief. I want a SWAT team assembled right now! We’re going to shut down Searle-tronics and arrest Professor Searle! You two coming?
STELLA: GRABBING COAT]: Yes sir!

ZOOM OUT OF WINDOW WHERE A SPY DEVICE IS HOVERING, IT’S CAMERA TRAINED ON THE CHIEF, BRIAN AND STELLA. CUT TO SEARLE BACK AT SEARLE-TRONICS: HE IS WATCHING THEM ON TV MONITOR.

SEARLE: Darn it. I’ve got to get out of here. [PRESSES INTERCOM]. Daisy. Bring the car round front will you?

SCENE TWO

CUT BACK TO ROOF OF POLICE BUILDING. WE SEE BRIAN STELLA AND CHIEF BOARDING BIG CHOPPER. A BLACK-LEATHER-CLAD SWAT TEAM IS BOARDING TOO. CHOPPER TAKES OFF. BRIAN SAT NEXT TO ATTRACTIVE FEMALE LEATHER-CLAD SWAT TEAM-MEMBER. HE GAZES AT HER HANDCUFFS.

BRIAN: Nice cuffs.
SWAT-GIRL: Thanks.
STELLA [LOOKING OUT WINDOW]: There’s Searle-tronics now!

CUT TO ROOF OF SEARLE-TRONICS. THERE ARE ROBOTS ON ROOF. THEY FIRE AT THE CHOPPER.

CHIEF: I think we’re expected!
BRIAN [POINTING DOWN]: Er, what’s going on down there?

CUT TO VIEW OF HUGE CROWD OF PEOPLE OUTSIDE FRONT OF SEARLE-TRONICS BUILDING.

BRIAN: Oh-oh. Looks like a demonstration.
CHIEF [ANGRY]: Dammit. Why wasn’t I warned about this?
STELLA [LOOKING DOWN AT THE CROWD]: I think it’s a demonstration against stuffism.

CUT DOWN TO DEMONSTRATORS OUTSIDE FRONT OF SEARLE-TRONICS BULDING: PEOPLE WITH PLACKARDS THAT READ “NO TO STUFFISM” “STUFFISM IS A CRIME”. CUT BACK TO HELICOPTER.

BRIAN: Stuffism?
STELLA [ANNOYED]: Don’t you read the papers? The anti-stuffists are the biggest protest movement around!
BRIAN: Er…right. What’re they protesting against?
STELLA: Discrimination. Discrimination against those made out of different stuff.
BRIAN: Stuff?
STELLA: Yeah, stuff. They say it doesn’t matter what kind of stuff someone’s made out of – flesh and blood – tin and plastic – it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether they’ve got a mind!

CUT BACK TO DEMONSTRATION: DEMONSTRATOR THROWS TOMATO AT BUILDING AND SHOUTS “FREE THE MACHINES!” ANOTHER SAYS “THEY HAVE FEELINGS TOO”. CUT BACK TO HELICOPTER.

BRIAN: Ah, I see. They think tin and plastic machines have minds?
STELLA: Exactly. They say there’s no justification for us flesh-and-blood machines to discriminate against these tin-and-plastic machines. It’s wrong for us to make them our slaves.
BRIAN: Ah – I see. They think stuffism is like sexism or racism.
STELLA: That’s right. It’s unfair discrimination against those that are different. We all know racism and sexism are wrong. We know it’s wrong to discriminate on the basis of someone’s skin colour or sex.
BRIAN: Guess so.
STELLA: Well these demonstrators think it’s just as wrong to discriminate on the basis of the kind of stuff you happen to be made out of. Didn’t you hear about that anti-stuffism benefit concert last week? Rock against stuffism?

CUT TO CONCERT, BIG BANNER OVER STAGE READS “LET’S STUFF STUFFISM”. STEVIE WONDER LOOKALIKE AND A ROBOT ARE ON STAGE SINGING: “FLE-E-SHY AND TI-I-NNY, LIVE TOGETHER IN PERFECT HARMONY…” TO TUNE A BIT LIKE “EBONY AND IVORY”. CROWD SWAYING WITH LIGHTERS HELD ALOFT. CUT BACK TO INSIDE CHOPPER.

CHIEF: Pah, these anti-stuffism demonstrators make me sick. Who’s going to do the work if the robots don’t do it? The economy will go down the pan!
STELLA: Er, isn’t that what they said about abolishing slavery?
CHIEF [ABSENTLY]: Is it? Anyway, the point is this demonstration is giving Searle the chance to escape! [LOOKS DOWN AND POINTS] He’s getting away in the confusion! There he goes now!

CUT TO DOWNWARDS VIEW OF SEARLE GETTING INTO WAITING CAR OUTSIDE SEARLTRONICS BUILDING. CUT TO SEARLE’S BODYGUARDS CLEARING PATH THROUGH CROWD TO CAR. SEARLE FOLLOWING.

SEARLE: Out of the way you imbeciles! You’ll be wanting to give toasters the vote next!

TOASTER LOBBBED FROM CROWD BOUNCES OFF SEALRE’S HEAD.

SEARLE: Bah!

SEARLE GETS INTO CAR AND DRIFTS AWAY THROUGH THE CROWDS HOLDING BANNERS SAYING “JUST SAY NO TO STUFFISM” “TINNY’S FEEL TOO!” ETC. ETC.

CUT BACK TO CHOPPER

CHIEF: Okay, the Swat team will shut down the Searle-tronics building. We’ll go after Searle.

THE SWAT TEAM ABSEIL FROM CHOPPER ONTO ROOF OF SEARLE-TRONICS AND BLAST THE ROBOTS. THE CHOPPER SHOOTS OFF AFTER SEARLE. CUT TO COCKPIT, WHERE STELLA, BRIAN AND CHIEF ARE NOW STANDING BEHIND THE PILOT.

STELLA [POINTING DOWN]: There he is!

CUT TO VIEW DOWN ON SEARLE’S CAR CAREERING THROUGH CROWDED STREETS. WE ZOOM IN ON BACK WINDOW AND SEE SEARLE MANIACALLY STARING BACK AT THEM.

CHIEF: We can’t blast him. There are two many by-standers.
STELLA: I’ve got an idea. Can you take out that the legs on that hoarding up ahead? [SHE POINTS FORWARD]
PILOT: Yes maam.

CHOPPER FIRES AT ADVERTIZING HOARDING IN SHAPE OF A HUGE ROBOT WITH MOVING MOUTH. ITS SPEECH BUBBLE IS SAYING “SEARLE-TRONICS: YOUR DREAMS ARE OUR REALITY”. THE LEGS OF ROBOT ARE SHOT OUT AND IT CRASHES SIDEWAYS. IT’S HEAD BLOCKS THE ROAD. SEARLE’S CAR CRASHES STRAIGHT INTO ITS MOUTH. MOUTH CHOMPS UP AND DOWN ON IT. CHOPPER LANDS BY THE CAR. STELLA, BRIAN, PILOT AND CHIEF RUN UP TO CAR. SEARLE TUMBLES OUT OF BACK SEAT, CURSING.

SEARLE: Darn you…you…you meddling fools.

BRIAN OPENS BOOT. IT’S FULL OF HUMAN BRAINS.

BRIAN: And here’s the proof sir. HOLDS UP A BRAIN.

CHIEF GAZES AT THE BRAINS.

SEARLE: They’re just brains, for goodness sake. Just lumps of meat. Flesh and blood – metal and plastic – [POINTING WILDLY UP AT THE HUGE ROBOT HEAD THAT’S STILL SLOWLY CHOMPING ON SEARLE’S CAR] what difference does it make what I build my machines out of?
CHIEF (POMPOUSLY, TO PILOT): All the difference in the world, Searle. All the difference in the world. Arrest him.

PILOT CUFFS SEARLE.

BRIAN (RATHER FULL OF HIMSELF): Looks like it’s mission accomplished, sir.
STELLA (THOUGHTFUL): We’d better be going, chief – we’ve still got to break the news to that suicidal robot’s owner…

SCENE THREE

BACK AT BRIAN AND STELLA’S OFFICE, THEY’RE LOUNGING IN THE SWIVEL CHAIRS. MURIEL’S SILHOUETTE APPEARS THROUGH THE FROSTED GLASS IN THE DOOR [NB.“BUNG AND WACKER – PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATORS – YOUR BIG QUESTIONS ANSWERED” STENCILLED ON THE DOOR]. THERE’S A KNOCK.

BRIAN: Come in.

MURIEL ENTERS.

MURIEL: I hear you’ve made a breakthrough.
BRIAN: Yes maam. We have news.
STELLA: Sit down, Mrs Jones. I guess you’ve heard that Searle-tronics, the manufacturer of Emit, has been fitting its latest generation robots with real human brains.
MURIEL: Yes, it was on the news. Oh my goodness! I guess this means that…that these robots can…can really think and feel?
STELLA: If a real brain is what you need to think and feel, then yes, it seems Searle’s latest robots really can think and feel.
MURIEL: But… but then Emit didn’t just mimic feelings. He really did suffer. And I was so cruel to him! [STARTS CRYING].

[BRIAN PUTS HIS HAND ON MURIEL’S SHOULDER]

BRIAN: Just a minute Maam. You’re jumping to conclusions. There’s one last detail you need to know.
MURIEL: What detail?
STELLA: You see, we discovered something else too. Searle had guessed that Emit was one of the new robots with a brain inside. That’s why his robo-henchmen stole the contents of Emit’s head. CUT TO FLASHBACK OF ROBO-HENCHMEN ARRIVING NEXT TO EMIT’S MANGLED BODY.] Searle didn’t want the truth to come out. But when we cross-examined Searle, he revealed that Emit turned out to be one of the old-style robots. [ROBO-HENCHMAN UNSCREW EMITS HEAD AND PULLS OUT A COMPUTER] The ones without a human brain. [ROBO-HENCHMAN KICKS COMPUTER INTO THE BUSHES].

[CUT TO BACK TO OFFICE].

BRIAN: That’s right maam. Emit didn’t have a head full of meat. Just a head full of circuitry.
MURIEL: Oh good grief, what a relief! So Emit was just a machine after all!

WE PULL BACK AND CUT TO NARRATOR TAKES UP THE STORY.

LIVE ACTION: WE CLOSE IN SLOWLY ON NARRATOR [IN ‘CONCERNED’ VOICE: HE’S STILL STROKING THAT WHITE CAT]: Muriel was hugely relieved to hear that Emit’s head had contained only a computer after all. [WE SEE MURIEL RECEIVING NEWS: STARTS SOBBING INTO HANKY]. But should she have felt quite so relieved? Stella, for one, was not so sure.

CUT TO STELLA IN TRENCHCOAT. LOCKING OFFICE DOOR (WE SEE STENCILLED “BRIAN BUNG – PHILOSOPHIOC AL INVESTIGATOR” ON THE DOOR) AND WALKING HOME ON HER OWN DOWN DARK FILM-NOIRE STREET. SHE’S DEEP IN THOUGHT.

As she walked home that evening, Stella wondered. Did Emit really only simulate thought and feeling? What difference does it make what we’re made of on the inside? Isn’t it what we do that counts?

STELLA PAUSES TO LOOK UP AT ANOTHER HUGE ROBOT-SHAPED SEARLE-TRONICS HOARDING AT END OF STREET, WITH ROBOT’S MOUTH MOVING. ADVERT READS: “SEARLE-TRONICS: YOUR DREAMS ARE OUR REALITY”.

To really think and feel, do you really need a brain? Won’t a computer do?

STELLA ARRIVES AT O’GRADY’S BAR. WALKS IN.

What do you think?

CUT TO NARRATOR: SUDDENLY MUCH BRASHER AND BRIGHTER: In next week’s exciting episode of The Philosophy Files, we’ll grapple with another mind-boggling philosophical mystery.

Until then, may reason be your guide! [ALL THE SHOWS WILL FINISH WITH THIS SAME CATCHPHRASE.]

CAT BITES HIS HAND.

NARRATOR: Ouch! Careful Mr Whiskers.

Five Private Language Arguments (International Journal of Philosophical Studies 12, no. 2 (2004))

2007-09-12T06:13:00.000-07:00

Abstract

This paper distinguishes five key interpretations of the argument presented by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations I, §258. I also argue that on none of these five interpretations is the argument cogent. The paper is primarily concerned with the most popular interpretation of the argument: that which that makes it rest upon the principle that one can be said to follow a rule only if there exists a “useable criterion of successful performance” (Pears) or “operational standard of correctness” (Glock) for its correct application. This principle, I suggest, is untrue. The private language argument upon which it rests therefore fails.

FIVE PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENTS

Section §258 of Part I of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (henceforth PI §258) is one of the best-known and most controversial passages of that book. Many philosophers - including Malcolm Budd, John Canfeild, Hans-Johann Glock, P.M.S. Hacker, Paul Johnston, Anthony Kenny, Norman Malcolm, Marie McGinn and David Pears - claim to discern within PI §258 and the surrounding text a powerful argument against the possibility of a necessarily private language. Others dismiss the argument, typically on the grounds that it is verificationist.

My aim in this paper is twofold. The first aim is clarity. The dispute over whether the private language argument of PI §258 is cogent has been confused by the fact there are now five main interpretations of PI §258 currently on offer, each interpretation presenting a fundamentally different argument. I will set out and distinguish clearly all five private language arguments. My second aim is to explain why none of these arguments is, as it stands, cogent.

I begin by setting out what all the commentators discussed in this paper believe to be the target of PI §258: the suggestion that one might possess a necessarily private language.

Inner Space

On Wittgenstein’s view, the origin of the idea that one might start a private language lies in a highly seductive picture of the mind, a picture Wittgenstein rejects as essentially confused. The picture represents the mind as being akin to the inside of a room, an inner space within which one’s sensations, ideas and other mental phenomena are located. Of course, were I to lock myself away inside a physical room it would still be possible in principle for others to find out what’s going on inside by, say, peaking through a window, breaking down a door or demolishing a wall. Not so with my inner space. It seems that, while others may experience sensations that are qualitatively just like mine, this - the token pain I have right now - remains essentially inaccessible to others.

The picture sketched out above does seem to make fairly straightforward the idea that one might start a necessarily private language. If sensations are phenomena experienced within a necessarily private inner domain, then the introduction of a necessarily private language would appear to be fairly straightforward matter. Suppose a man is imprisoned in a room within which certain objects – rats, let’s suppose –¬ appear and disappear. This prisoner might secretly record those days on which he sees one or more rats by entering a mark in the top right hand corner of the relevant page of his diary – an exclamation mark, let us say. Now there seems, on the face of it, no reason why I should not, in like fashion, record in my diary those days on which a particular sensation makes an appearance within my inner space. Suppose I use “S” in this way, for example. Both codes are “private” in the sense that no one else actually knows them. However, while the former could be taught to someone else, the embroyonic language I use to record my sensations, where sensations are construed as phenomena located within a necessarily private inner space, is necessarily private. Because it is in principle impossible for others to gain entry to my inner domain and establish what I use “S” to record, so it is in principle impossible for others to establish what I mean by “S”.

The Importance of the Private Language Argument

The argument of PI §258 is aimed, not at the suggestion that I might develop a code for the purpose of recording my sensations, a code I just happen to keep private (why should I not develop such a code?) , but rather at the suggestion that the meaning of such a code would be necessarily private, as it would be on the inner space model.
Why is the Private Language Argument important? We find the inner space model of the mind reflected in the work of many philosophers. On Wittgenstein’s view, we tend to become fixated on this picture as soon as we start to think philosophically about mind and meaning. Wittgenstein wants to help us free ourselves from its grip on our thinking.

In fact, many philosophers appear to commit themselves, often unwittingly, to the view that each of us already speaks a private language. Locke, for example, argues that the meaning of a word is an “Idea” in the mind of the speaker.

Words in their primary or immediate Signification, stand for nothing, but the Idea in the Mind of him that uses them…

Locke also holds that these Ideas are “hidden from others, nor of themselves can be made to appear” . Consequently, Locke appears to commit himself to the view that each of us speaks a private language: no one else can establish what Ideas I use my words to signify.

Even if we do not suppose, as does Locke, that the function of every word is to stand for some mental item located within one’s inner space, it certainly can seem natural to suppose that at least some words - sensation terms like “pain”, for example - function in this way. If so, then at least the meaning of one’s sensation vocabulary will be necessarily private. Wittgenstein, of course, rejects this account of how our sensation vocabulary functions. On Wittgenstein’s view, the suggestion that “pain” is, or indeed any expression might function as, the name of something necessarily private is deeply confused. The aim of the private language argument of PI §258 is to help alleviate this confusion.

So what is the argument?

PI §258

Here is PI §258 in full.

Let us imagine the following case. I want to keep a diary about the recurrence of a certain sensation. To this end I associate it with the sign “S” and write this sign in a calendar for every day on which I have the sensation. – I will remark first of all that a definition of the sign cannot be formulated. – But still I can give myself a kind of ostensive definition.- How? Can I point to the sensation? Not in the ordinary sense. But I speak, or write the sign down, and at the same time I concentrate my attention on the sensation – and so, as it were, point to it inwardly.- But what is this ceremony for? For that is all it seems to be! A definition surely serves to establish the meaning of a sign. – Well, that is done precisely by the concentration of my attention; for in this way I impress on myself the connexion between the sign and the sensation. – But “I impress it on myself” can only mean: this process brings it about that I remember the connexion right in future. But in the present case I have no criterion of correctness. One would like to say: whatever is going to seem right to me is right. And that only means that here we can’t talk about “rightness”.

Precisely what argument is intended here is contentious. I shall refer to the five main interpretations on offer as The Strongly Verificationist No-Independent-Check Argument, The Weakly Verificationist No-Independent-Check Argument, The Circularity Argument, The Stage-Setting Argument and Kenny’s Private Language Argument. On some of these interpretations the private language argument is verificationist; on others it is not. I do not intend to argue for or against any of these interpretations as interpretations. My focus is solely on the supposed cogency of the arguments they attribute to Wittgenstein.

The No-Independent-Check (NIC) Argument

By far the most popular interpretation of PI §258 construes the text as presenting a version of what I call the No-Independent-Check Argument (henceforth the NIC Argument), which runs, in outline, as follows.

If I introduce “S” as the name of my private sensation and then later want to know whether what I am having is “S” again, I must remember what I previously labelled “S”. But how can I check whether or not I have remembered correctly? I cannot check the accuracy of my memory other than by reference to other memories; but, as Wittgenstein argues at PI §265, that would be no check at all: it would be akin to buying additional copies of the same edition of a newspaper in order to check the accuracy of what is reported.

The situation is very different when a term is defined by reference to a public sample. If, for example, I define “S” by reference to the colour of a piece of cloth, I can physically tape the sign “S” to my cloth sample and place it in a drawer for future reference. There now exists something independent to which I can appeal, something against which my memory of what “S” means may be checked. But in the case of the necessarily private sample no such independent check is possible.

So, as Wittgenstein puts it, when it comes to my application of “S”, “I have no criterion of correctness”: there is nothing independent to which I (or indeed any one else) might appeal to verify that I am applying “S” correctly.

But why should we conclude, as Wittgenstein does, that therefore “whatever is going to seem right is right” and so “we can’t talk about rightness”? So what if I cannot verify whether or not I have remembered correctly? Perhaps I have remembered correctly all the same. There appears to be a lacuna in the argument at this point.

The Strongly Verificationist NIC Argument
Perhaps the most obvious way of closing this gap in the NIC Argument is to import into it some sort of verification principle. If, for example, we adopt the principle that a statement is meaningful only if it is verifiable, that will allow us to make the move from: that I apply “S” correctly is unverifiable, to: it is meaningless to talk about my having applied “S” correctly. I shall call such versions of the NIC argument Strongly Verificationist.

If the NIC Argument requires that we help ourselves to the Logical Positivists’s principle, or something similar, then it is obviously seriously flawed. Verificationism is notoriously counter-intuitive. So the NIC Argument would depend upon a counter-intuitive and as-yet-unargued-for premise. The NIC Argument could be salvaged if adoption of the verification principle could be independently justified. But it is, to say the least, contentious whether any such justification can be provided.

In any case, the claim that I cannot verify that I apply “S” correctly is itself dubious. That I apply “S” correctly can perhaps be indirectly verified. For can’t I check that my memory is generally reliable? I might test the general reliability of my memory by, say, attempting to memorise a sequence of letter/colour pairings printed on a card, writing down what I believe those pairings to be, and then checking whether I have remembered correctly by checking what I have written with what is printed on the card. If I verify that I have remembered correctly in this case, then surely I possess some justification for supposing that I have remembered correctly in the private case too.

Given the very obvious problems with the suggestion that the Private Language Argument relies on a general verificationist premise, most commentators persuaded by the argument have sought to show that no such principle is required. Let us now turn to some of these other interpretations of PI §258.

The Weakly Verificationist NIC Argument

Many commentators, while supposing the NIC Argument is what Wittgenstein intends, nevertheless insist that no general verification principle is required. Rather, they suggest that to bridge the gap in the NIC Argument we require only the more modest premise that someone can be said to follow a rule only if there exists “a process of independent verification” , “useable criterion of successful performance” or “operational standard of correctness” by which the putative rule-follower’s application of the rule can be checked. In short, someone can be said to follow a rule only if it is possible (for the rule-follower, or at least for someone) to verify that he or she does so. I call such versions of the NIC Argument weakly verificationist. This weaker principle also suffices to allow Wittgenstein to make the move from “I have no criterion of correctness” (i.e. there is nothing independent to which I, or indeed anyone else, might appeal in order to verify that I am applying “S” correctly) to “we can’t talk about rightness”.

Colin McGinn , Johnston , Glock, Canfeild and Pears all interpret PI §258 as offering a weakly verificationist version of the NIC Argument. Johnston, Glock, Canfeild and Pears find the argument compelling (McGinn does not commit himself either way). But should we allow the proponent of the NIC Argument even the weaker principle? I shall argue that we should not. I will examine two versions of the weakly verificationist NIC argument - Glock’s and Pears’– and reveal that they both share the same fundamental flaw.

Glock’s Version of the Weakly Verificationist NIC Argument

Let’s begin by asking how the weaker principle might be justified. I begin with Glock, who offers the following.

[R]ules are standards of correctness … [T]here is no such thing as a non-operational standard of correctness, one which cannot even in principle be used to distinguish between correct and incorrect applications.

Glock’s thought seems to be this. In order to constitute a genuine standard of correctness a rule must be, as Glock puts it “operational”, i.e. it must be something one can actually consult, something independent against which one’s memory of what is correct can be checked. If no such standard of correctness exists, if, in short, it cannot be verified that one applies the rule correctly, then there is no rule.
But this is unpersuasive. It just isn’t true that there only exists a rule where there exists an operational standard of correctness. True, we do often set up such objective standards. One way in which we do this is by creating an enduring and independent record of what our rule is. A decorator’s colour chart provides an example of such standard, for example. One can check one’s memory of how “puce” should be applied by looking it up on the chart.

Even if no record of a rule is kept, it seems that an operational standard of correctness of sorts might still be provided by a wider community of rule-followers. I can check whether I apply “puce” correctly by asking others. Like the colour chart, they may also provide me with something independent against which my memory of what “puce” means may be checked.

However, while rule followers usually do possess an operational standard of correctness, either in the form of an enduring record of what their rule is or in the form of a wider community of rule-followers to whom they might appeal, Glock is surely wrong to suppose that such a standard must be possessed if their activity is properly to qualify as rule-following. Intuitively, it seems clear that a rule can exist even if no operational standard of correctness does.

The Prisoner Case

To illustrate, let’s return to the case of the prisoner introduced towards the beginning of this paper. The prisoner secretly records those days on which he sees one or more rats in his cell by placing an exclamation mark in the top right-hand corner of the relevant page of his diary. Suppose that after a year roughly half the pages in the prisoner’s diary have been marked in this way. Intuitively, this prisoner has engaged in a rule-governed practice. Were he now to place an exclamation mark on a page on a day when no rats were seen, he would make a mistake. Yet if, on any particular day, a doubt were to enter into the prisoner’s mind - were he to wonder: “Have I been using an exclamation mark to record those days when I have seen a rat or on those days when haven’t?” – note that there need not exist anything independent to which he, or indeed anyone else, might appeal in order to check that his memory is correct. Given that the prisoner did not, for example, write in the front of his diary “! = day on which rat is seen” or explain his rule to his jailers, etc., it may be quite impossible for the prisoner or anyone else to verify that his application of “!” is in accordance with either his earlier previous applications or his original intention. Just as in the case of the private linguist, the prisoner’s memory of what is correct may now be the only available indicator of correct application. But surely, whether or not the prisoner possesses an “operational” standard of correctness, he may still follow a rule. Glock’s principle would disqualify this prisoner as a rule-follower. It must, therefore, be incorrect.
What the prisoner case elicits is the very strong intuition that the possibility of verifying that one follows a rule correctly is not a necessary condition of rule-following. It is upon this intuition that all existing versions of the weakly verificationist NIC argument ultimately founder. Unless this weaker verification principle can be independently supported, the weakly verificationist NIC argument fails through reliance on a principle that is both counterintuitive and inadequately justified.

Dealing with a reply

In reply, it might be suggested that the weakly verificationist version of the NIC argument can easily be reformulated to avoid my objection. A defender of the argument may concede that in order to be a rule-follower one need not actually possess a on operational standard of correctness. Glock’s weak verification principle is indeed too strong. However, a still weaker version is viable. What is necessary, to qualify as a rule follower, is that such an operational standard might have existed, i.e. whether or not it actually exists. Notice that this move would allow our prisoner to be a rule-follower after all, while still ruling out the possibility of a necessarily private language. For the prisoner might have written down in the front of his diary “! = day on which a rat is seen”, thereby providing himself with something independent against which his memory of how “!” should be applied might be checked, even though he did not actually do so. Or it might have been the case that our prisoner explained his rule to his jailers to whom he might then have appealed had the prisoner wanted to check how “!” is applied. Either way, he would have possessed an operational standard of correctness. The key difference between the prisoner and the putative private linguist is that while it is not now possible for either of them to check against something independent their memory of what their respective signs mean, the prisoner might have possessed such an independent check. That is why the prisoner follows a rule but the putative private linguist does not.

The problem with the above reply is that, once it is conceded that there need not actually exist any independent means of verifying the correctness of a rule-follower’s memory of how their rule is to be applied, it is gerrymandering of the proponent of the NIC argument nevertheless to insist - just because it allows them to rule out the possibility of a private language - that it must at least be that the case such a check might have existed. In order for such a move to be legitimate the proponent of the NIC argument would need to provide some independent reason to adopt this even weaker principle. However, it is unclear what this independent reason might be. Indeed, those who seek to justify this still weaker principle face an uphill battle, for it too is counter-intuitive. For what the prisoner case elicits is the very strong intuition that to be a rule follower all the prisoner need possess is a certain skill or ability: that of applying “!” in accordance with his original intention (something about which I will have more to say shortly). But then why should a private linguist not possess the same sort of ability? That the possibility of verifying that he or she possesses this ability not only does not exist - as in the prisoner case - but could not have existed seems, on the face of it, equally irrelevant.

Pears’ Version of the Weakly Verificationist NIC Argument

Like Glock, Pears also adheres to the principle that one can be said to follow a rule only if it can be verified that one does so – i.e. only if ones applications can be checked against something independent. However, Pears offers a slightly different justification of the principle.

Imagine for example trying to become a good marksman on a rifle-range where you were the only person that ever saw you target and even then you only ever glimpsed it down the sight of you rifle before you fired and never again. In such circumstances there would be no point in pulling the trigger […] In general someone who can never know what he is in fact doing will not be able to maintain any proficiency at doing it, and will have never been in a position to learn to do it, or even try to do it. An acquired skill, like speaking a language, is not like an automatic performance. Blinking in a bright light is something that you might never know you did, because, not being an intentional action, it stands in no need of a test of success. You might even be born with the capacity to do it and [sic] be given it by neural surgery, but the “gift of tongues”, without any test of success available to the speaker, would not count as the gift of language. The point is not that you could not acquire or maintain the skill because it would be too difficult to acquire or maintain in such circumstances, but that whatever you did in such circumstances could not count as the exercise of a skill.

Pears concludes that “[l]earning is only possible if there is a standard of success which the pupil can apply to what he does to improve his performance” ; “we cannot even try to acquire a skill without a useable criterion of successful performance” . As the putative private linguist possesses no useable criterion of success, nothing he or she does can count as the exercise of a skill.

Is Pears’ justification of the weaker principle adequate? Pears claims that one cannot be said to acquire or maintain a skill unless one does so through a process akin to target practice, i.e. through the repeated application of a useable criterion of success. But, again, this is untrue. Let’s return once more to the example of the prisoner who decides to record those days on which he sees a rat by writing “!” in the corner of the relevant page of his diary. It seems clear that he immediately comes to possess a skill – that of applying “!” correctly – without his ever bothering to check that he applies “!” correctly. He does not bother introducing a “useable criterion of success” – as he might by, say, writing “! = day on which rat is seen” in the front of his diary – for the obvious reason that he knows he does not require such a criterion. He knows his memory is generally reliable. The prisoner acquires his skill, as it were, just like that, without any of the target practice Pears thinks necessary. Nor is it required that he engage in such practice in order to qualify as having maintained this skill.

To this Pears may reply that in the prisoner example I help myself to the prisoner’s existing linguistic skills. The only reason the prisoner can immediately introduce a new sign into his vocabulary and then go on immediately and unerringly to apply it just like that is because the prisoner has already learnt the general skill of introducing and using signs in this way. Pears may insist that at least such a general skill must be acquired and maintained through a process akin to target practice, where a standard of success is applied over and over again in order to improve or maintain performance. And it is certainly true that this is a process of the sort the putative private linguist cannot engage in.

The above reply is inadequate, however. Even if we grant Pears that ones general linguistic abilities must at least be acquired and maintained via a process akin to target practice, all that follows is that one cannot start a private language if one does not already possess a public language. But this is not to show that private language is impossible. It is to show, at most, only that one’s first language cannot be a private one. Once one has a public language, what is to stop the private linguist introducing “S” in much the same way as the prisoner introduced “!”, i.e. without any useable criterion of success? As the aim of the private language argument is to show that private languages are impossible, period, Pears version of it therefore fails.

The Fundamental Problem with the Weakly Verificationist NIC Argument

To take a step back: it is clear that what lies behind Glock’s and Pears’ adherence to the weak verificationist principle is the thought that in order to qualify as a genuine rule-follower, as opposed to one whose actions happen merely to coincide with some rule, one must know that one follows that rule. This is plausible. As John Canfeild points out, it seems that more is required for rule following than mere extensional success - “I don’t want just to guess that it is the same; and I don’t want just to be lucky. I want to know it is the same.”

But their requirement that in order to know the rule there must exist something independent against which one can check one’s application is clearly too strong. Why do we want to say that our prisoner qualifies as a rule-follower – why, indeed, do we want to say about him that he knows what his rule is – despite his not being in possession of any “way of telling” that he applies it correctly? Intuitively, because he possesses an ability: roughly speaking, the ability to apply the sign “!” appropriately in accordance with his original decision. He does not guess blindly how “!” should be applied, and then happen to get lucky. It is because the rule is that “!” should be entered in his diary on just those days on which he sees a rat that he so enters it.

Obviously, there is a distinction to be made between knowing that P and merely truly believing that P. Clearly, there is also a distinction to be made between having an ability and merely guessing correctly how to carry on. In neither case is it enough that one just get lucky. But Glock and Pears claim, in effect, that in order to know that P (at least where P is some claim to the effect the claim that the rule for so-and-so is such-and-such) one must, in addition, possess some method of verifying that P. That’s what distinguishes someone who knows the rule from someone who merely repeatedly guesses correctly.

But, as I say, this condition is surely too strong: it entails that our prisoner does not know the rule governing “!” when clearly he does. Indeed, the Glock/Pears suggestion as to how to draw the distinction between knowing and merely truly believing (at least when it comes to knowing a rule) prejudges what is highly controversial: that no externalist theory of knowledge, e.g. of the reliabilist or “truth-tracking” variety, can be correct. In fact, pace Glock and Pears, my intuitions support the view that if the diarist’s beliefs about how he should apply “S” are reliable, if they do track the truth, then surely the diarist does knows the rule governing “S”.

Granted, much more needs to be said about what does distinguish the rule follower from the lucky guesser (and, indeed, from someone who is merely caused to act in accordance with the rule). What is clear is that the Glock and Pears suggestion as to how we should draw this distinction is unlikely to be correct. As their version of the private language argument rests on acceptance of this suggestion, it too is unlikely to be cogent.

To conclude: it seems that whether or not the diarist can verify how “S” is applied is beside the point. Intuitively, when it comes to rule-following, what is important is that one possesses an ability; it matters not whether one (or indeed anyone else) can verify that one possesses it. While many are convinced by the weakly verificationist NIC Argument, it rests on a highly dubious and inadequately justified principle the counter-intuitive character of which is clearly evinced by the prisoner case. So let us now leave the NIC Argument and look at some other interpretations of PI §258.

Hacker’s Circularity Argument

Wittgenstein elsewhere attacks a certain account of how it is that we are able to apply words correctly. The account involves a sort of internal “looking up” process. Suppose for example, that I am asked to pick a red flower. How am I to know which flower to pick? A natural suggestion is: on hearing the word “red” I conjure up from my memory a mental image or sample. I then compare different flowers with this mental sample until I find a flower that matches. I then pick that flower. Wittgenstein points out that this account is viciously circular. For how did I know which mental image to conjure up? The ability to pick out the red mental sample presupposes precisely the very ability that this inner “looking up” process is supposed to explain – namely, the ability to pick out red things. So the proposed “explanation” of how I am able to pick out red things is really a pseudo-explanation. No real explanatory work has actually been done.

When one is dealing with an objective sample, on the other hand, the situation is quite different. If I want to know which of a number of bathroom tiles is properly described as “puce”, I may pull out my decorator’s chart, look up “puce”, scan across to the adjacent colour sample and then compare the different tiles with it until I find the right one. My ability to apply “puce” correctly in these circumstances might be properly explained by appealing to a “looking up” process. But when it comes to so-called mental samples the situation is quite different. For of course mental samples are not objectively correlated with the corresponding words. One simply has to remember which sample goes with the word “red”. And this requires that one already possess the ability to apply “red” correctly.

P.M.S. Hacker interprets PI §258 as offering a similar argument aimed against the possibility of starting a private language by correlating a word with a mental sample. According to Wittgenstein’s interlocutor, I can correlate “S” with an inner, necessarily private sensation. This sensation then functions as my mental sample of “S”. I can then go on to apply “S” correctly because, when I want to know whether some new sensation is “S” again, I need only conjure up a memory of my original mental sample in order to compare it with what I have now. But here is the problem: how do I know which mental sample to conjure up? The proposed explanation of my supposed ability to recognise whether something is “S” actually presupposes that I possess that ability at this point. I need to know what “S” means before I am in a position to conjure up the right sample, for how else am I to know which sample is a sample of “S”? As Hacker puts it,

[d]eliberately calling up the memory sample of S rather than some other sensation requires that one knows what “S” means; yet calling up this sample was meant to be what knowing the meaning of “S” consists in, not to presuppose it.

The interlocutor’s account of how I am able to apply “S” correctly is therefore circular: it presupposes what it is supposed to explain. It seems, then, that the ability to apply “S” correctly is something I cannot have.

Hacker’s interpretation is certainly consistent with the text of PI §258. The interlocutor’s explanation of how I come by a “criterion of correctness” fails through being viciously circular.

Refutation of The Circularity Argument

Hacker’s argument is crisply self-contained. It also dispenses with the need to invoke any sort of verificationist premise. The argument does, however, suffer from a serious flaw. Clearly, I can apply the word “red” correctly. Indeed, it seems I can apply it correctly without my having to conjure up any sort of memory sample. But then why can’t I similarly apply “S” correctly without my having to conjure up a mental sample? The Circularity Argument presupposes that it is a necessary condition of my possessing the ability to apply “S” correctly that I engage in some sort of mental looking-up process: in order to know whether this - what I am having now - is S, I must retrieve a memory sample of S in order that I might compare what I have now with it. Certainly, the proposed account of how I am able to apply “S” correctly is circular. But why suppose that I must engage in such a looking up process? Of course Wittgenstein correctly denies that engaging in such a process is a necessary condition of ones possessing the ability to apply “red” correctly. But then why insist that it is a necessary condition of my possessing the ability to apply “S” correctly? However it is that I can apply “red” correctly, why can’t I apply “S” correctly in the same way? No reason has been given. So the Circularity Argument, as it stands, also fails.

The Stage-Setting Argument

Marie McGinn offers an interpretation of PI §258 that also avoids the need to import a verificationist premise into the argument. According to McGinn, PI §258 is best read as a comment on PI §257, where Wittgenstein points out that
…a great deal of stage-setting in the language is presupposed if the mere act of naming is to make sense.

The point about stage-setting is a familiar one. Wittgenstein famously argues that merely to point to or concentrate ones attention upon an object and say a word does not suffice to lay down a rule for the correct application of that term. If, for example, I point to my red pencil and say “tove”, it is unclear whether my definition is intended to introduce a proper name (eg. of that particular pencil), a common noun or some other sort of expression. Even if we know that “tove” is a common noun, does tove mean red pencil, or pencil, or artifact, or wooden object, or object weighing less than five tons or object currently located in the northern hemisphere of the Earth? Even if we know that “tove” refers to a colour, does it mean scarlet, or red, or red-and-reddy-orange, etc? How much of the colour spectrum is “tove” intended to pick out? Introducing an expression by means of an ostensive definition can only work when the grammatical place that that the word is to occupy has already been set out. Such a definition requires, as Wittgenstein puts it, “stage-setting in the language” – the kind of linguistic stage-setting necessary to determine what it is that has been named. We need to be clear that “tove” is intended to name a primary colour, for example. And this in turn requires that we have already mastered the grammar of a colour vocabulary. In the absence of such stage-setting, no rule for the correct application of “tove” is set up.

On McGinn’s reading, the main thrust of PI §258 is that this kind of stage-setting is absent in the private linguist’s case.

The problem here is not that “S” refers to something that is (can be) introspected, but that the private linguist tries to determine what “S” refers to by a bare act of introspection […], directing attention inwards and saying “S” is not a way of giving a definition.

Hence the definition of “S” in PI §258 is an idle ceremony. No rule for the correct application of “S” is set up. Malcolm Budd similarly argues about the private linguist’s definition that

his act of private ostensive definition does not give any content to the idea that it would be correct for him to write “S” down on certain subsequence occasions and incorrect for him to write “S” down on certain other occasions. For the combination of an act of attention to a sensation and the utterance of “This is called “S”” does not determine the meaning of “S”: any ostensive definition can be variously understood. It is the way in which a sign is used, or is intended to be used, that determines its meaning, and the concentration of a person’s attention upon a sensation as he speaks or writes down the sign implies nothing about how the sign is to be used.

Call this the Stage-Setting Argument.

Refutation of The Stage-Setting Argument
That the Stage-Setting Argument, at least as set out above, fails the test of cogency may be demonstrated by noting that the same line of reasoning would also rule out the possibility of our starting a public language. For how did public language get started? If the only candidate is by means of an ostensive definition, then, by the same argument, it should be impossible to start a public language. For the linguistic stage-setting required for the very first ostensive definition to succeed would also be absent in the public domain. As we clearly did manage to start a public language, the Stage-Setting Argument cannot be cogent.

The conclusion we ought to draw, of course, is that there must be some other way to start a language. Public language did not start with an ostensive definition. The question then arises: given that public language started not with an ostensive definition, but in some other (presumably less cerebral, more spontaneous and organic) way, why couldn’t a private language also get started in this other way? If we conceive of the mind as an inner space, a space within which various introspected “somethings” appear and disappear, why should the subject not gradually evolve a practice of using signs to record the occurrence of these “somethings”?
In reply it might be claimed that the resources required for this “other way” of starting a language, whatever it is, to succeed are necessarily unavailable within inner space. This claim may even be true. The difficulty, of course, lies in justifying it.

Kenny’s Private Language Argument

Anthony Kenny also offers a non-verificationist interpretation of PI §258. Here is the crux of Kenny’s version of the private language argument.\

Suppose next that the private-language speaker says “By “S” I mean the sensation I named “S” in the past.” Since he no longer has the past sensation he must rely on memory: he must call up a memory-sample of S and compare it with his current sensation to see if the two are alike. But of course he must call up the right memory. Now is it possible that the wrong memory might come at this call? If not then “S” means whatever memory occurs to him in connection with “S”, and again whatever seems right is right. If so, then he does not really know what “S” means. It is no use his saying “Well, at least I believe that this is sensation S again”, for he cannot even believe that without knowing what “S” means.

Note that a key assumption made here is that if it is possible that the speaker might call up the wrong memory-sample of S, then “he does not really know what “S” means”. But this assumption is surely false. Again, compare the case of the prisoner. Is it possible that he might misremember what “!” means? Of course. Does that entail that he does not really know what “!” means? Of course not. For it is unlikely that he will misremember: his memory is fairly reliable. As a reliable, though of course not infallible, user of “!” the prisoner surely can be said to know what “S” means. But then why shouldn’t the private linguist also be a reliable user of “S”? No reason is has been given.

Bizarrely, Kenny’s argument seems to require that any rule-follower be infallible about how his or her rule should be applied: if it is even possible that one might misremember how a sign should be applied, then one does not know what it means. This is clearly too strong a requirement. So perhaps I have misunderstood. Perhaps by “possible” Kenny means something weaker. For example, perhaps he just means not unlikely. Then Kenny’s argument would no longer require rule followers be infallible. But on this interpretation Kenny’s argument still fails. For then his argument would rest upon the principle that if it is not unlikely (or whatever) that the wrong memory sample may be called up, then whatever seems right is right. This principle is patently false.

Conclusion

The first and most obvious conclusion I wish to draw is that, far from presenting an unambiguous argument, PI §258 is highly cryptic. There are five very different interpretations of the argument on offer. Whatever the virtues of PI §258, clarity is not among them. Second, on none of these five interpretations is the argument, as it stands, cogent.

But what if, rather than offering a single argument, PI §258 and the surrounding text is actually intended to offer a raft of arguments? What if, in reply, it’s suggested that there is no “private language argument” as such but rather a series of interlocking arguments and observations which taken together suffice to show that the suggestion that one might start a necessarily private language is nonsensical. The piecemeal approach I have taken to refuting the arguments is therefore unfair. The arguments and considerations discussed here should be approached en masse. What might seem to be a series of flawed arguments may then reveal themselves to interlock in a mutually supportive way. Together they form a watertight whole.

The problem with this suggestion is that it simply isn’t true. Taken together, the five arguments discussed here resemble not a watertight container but a leaky sieve. They do not remedy each other’s faults.

Because each of the five arguments fails for a different reason, the temptation for a defender of “the private language argument” presented with a refutation of one version may be to slide over to another, perhaps without acknowledging or even realising that any such slide has taken place. Those unpersuaded by “the private language argument” may thus discover that when they start to pursue their doubts the Wittgensteinian leads them into a labyrinth of arguments within which the pursuer quickly becomes lost, thereby allowing their prey an easy escape. This may be one of the reasons why defenders of “the private language argument” can be such elusive quarry, and why disputes over the cogency of the “private language argument” typically end in stalemate with neither side admitting defeat. My aim in this paper has, in effect, been to provide a map or overview of this Wittgensteinian labyrinth. Most importantly, I have also shown that, as it stands, none of the labyrinth’s corridors leads us to the conclusion Wittgenstein wishes to reach.

Systems of Measurement (Ratio, Vol. 18, pp. 145-164, June 2005 )

2007-09-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

Systems of Measurement

Wittgenstein and Kripke disagree about the status of the proposition: the Standard Metre is one metre long. Wittgenstein believes it is necessary. Kripke argues that it is contingent. Kripke’s argument depends crucially on a certain sort of thought-experiment with which we are invited to test our intuitions about what is and isn’t necessary. In this paper I argue that, while Kripke’s conclusion is strictly correct, nevertheless similar Kripke-style thought experiments indicate that the metric system of measurement is after all relative in something like the way Wittgenstein seems to think. Central to this paper is a thought-experiment I call The Smedlium Case.

The Standard Metre
In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein makes the following intriguing remark.

There is one thing of which one can say neither that it is a metre long, nor that it is not one metre long, and that is the Standard Metre in Paris. – But this is, of course, not to ascribe any extraordinary property to it, but only to mark its peculiar role in the language-game of measuring with a metre rule.

In Naming and Necessity, Kripke takes issue with Wittgenstein. Using ‘S’ to refer to ‘a certain stick or bar in Paris’, Kripke objects as follows.

This seems a very ‘extraordinary property’, actually, for any stick to have. I think [Wittgenstein] must be wrong... Part of the problem which is bothering Wittgenstein is, of course, that this stick serves as a standard of length and so we can't attribute length to it. Be this as it may (well, it may not be), is the statement ‘stick S is one meter long’, a necessary truth? Of course its length might vary in time. We could make the definition more precise by stipulating that one meter is to be the length of S at time t0. Is it then a necessary truth that stick S is one meter long at time t0? Someone who thinks that everything one knows a priori is necessary might think: ‘This is the definition of a meter. By definition, stick S is one meter long at t0. That's a necessary truth.’ But there seems to me no reason so to conclude, even for a man who uses the stated definition of ‘one meter’. For he's using this definition not to give the meaning of what he called the ‘meter’, but to fix the reference. . .There is a certain length which he wants to mark out. He marks it out by an accidental property, namely that there is a stick of that length. Someone else might mark out the same reference by another accidental property. But in any case, even though he uses this to fix the reference of his standard of length, a meter, he can still say, if heat had been applied to this stick S at t0, then at t0 stick S would not have been one meter long.

Kripke raises three separate questions in this paragraph. First, does ‘one metre’ have the same meaning as a definite description, eg. the description ‘the length of the Standard Metre’? Second, is it a priori that the Standard Metre is one metre long? Third, is it necessary that the Standard Metre is one metre long? Kripke accepts that it is a priori that the Standard Metre is one metre long (at time t0). However, Kripke denies that it is necessary. He also denies that ‘one metre’ is synonymous with ‘the length of stick S (at time t0)’.
To which of the three questions does Kripke suppose Wittgenstein would answer ‘yes’? he suggestion seems to be: to all three.

The necessity claim
I am going to focus here on the dispute over whether it is necessary that the Standard Metre is one metre long. I shall assume in this paper that Wittgenstein believes it is necessary.
Why might Wittgenstein believe this? Kripke’s suggestion appears to be: because the expression ‘one metre’ is defined by reference to the length of the Standard Metre. Therefore what is expressed by the sentence:

(T) ‘The length of the Standard Metre is one metre’

is true by definition and so necessary.
As Kripke points out, the reasoning here is flawed. In fact, even if we accept that ‘one metre’ is defined by reference to the length of the Standard Metre, there are (at least) two ways in which such a definition might be understood. One might understand ‘one metre’ to be defined either in such a way that the following holds:

an object o at any time t and possible world w is one metre long at t at w if and only if o is the same length at t at w as is the Standard Metre at t at w,

or alternatively in such a way that this holds:

an object o at any time t and possible world w is one metre long at t at w if and only if o is the same length at t at w as the Standard Metre is at t0 at @ (where t0 is a particular time and @ is this, the actual world).

Of course, if ‘one metre’ were defined in the former manner, then it would be necessary that the Standard metre is ‘one metre’ long.
However, if Kripke is correct, the expression ‘one metre’ is not so defined. According to Kripke, ‘one metre’ designates with respect to any arbitrary time and world, not the length of the Standard Metre whatever it might happen to be at that time and world, but rather that length which the Standard Metre happens to possess at a particular time at this, the actual world. Hence it is contingent that the Standard Metre is one metre long: it might not have been the length it actually is.
Kripke expresses this point by saying that ‘one metre’ is a rigid designator. It designates the same length – i.e. that length actually, currently possessed by the Standard Metre – with respect to every possible world. If ‘one metre’ were defined in the former manner, however, then it would not rigidly designate that length.
Why favour Kripke’s view of how ‘one metre’ functions over Wittgenstein’s? What settles the matter, it seems, is a certain thought experiment. We are invited to test our modal intuitions on an imaginary case, the case in which the Standard Metre (Kripke’s ‘stick S’) is heated just prior to t0, thus making it a little longer. Under these circumstances, is the Standard Metre one metre long at t0 ? My intuitions say no. The Standard Metre would be more than one metre long at t0. But then it is not a necessary truth that S is one metre long at t0.
My aim in this paper is threefold. First, I explain why the reasoning Kripke thinks leads Wittgenstein to suppose that the Standard Metre is necessarily one metre long is unlikely to be Wittgenstein’s. Second, I provide a more plausible account of why Wittgenstein might suppose that the Standard Metre is necessarily one metre long. Third, and most importantly, I explain why I believe there is after all something to Wittgenstein’s view – the metric system is relative in something like the way Wittgenstein seems to think; only it is not relative to the Standard Metre or any of our metric measures, but to what I call a broader frame of reference.
I begin by distinguishing two different ways in which objects are used as samples.

Two uses of samples
Consider the following two ways of using an object as a sample:

The use of an object as a definitional sample. What I shall mean by a definitional sample is a sample used for the purposes of defining the meaning of a linguistic expression. The use of stick S to define ‘one metre’ in the manner Kripke describes would be one example. Similarly, one might define the word ‘pencil’ by means of a pencil, or the word ‘red’ using a swatch of material.

The use of an object as a standard sample. Suppose that, while doing some home repairs, I discover that I have lost my tape measure. So I improvise a rule out of a piece of wood dowel. I lay the stick alongside various objects, noting how many multiples of its length or fractions thereof are the lengths of those other objects. I call this using an object as a standard sample. Other examples include: using a tuning fork to bring musical instruments into tune with each other; using a colour chart to match tins of coloured paint in a store to the paint on one’s walls at home.

Notice that an object functioning as a standard sample needn’t function as a definitional sample. I might measure using a piece of wood dowel without ever introducing a name for its length. Conversely, an object used to define needn’t function as a standard. In fact, you might define ‘red’ using as your sample something it would be impossible to use as a standard, e.g. an object that undergoes constant, unpredictable colour changes. You might still point to it at the appropriate moment and say ‘That’s red’.
The Standard Metre is of course used in both these ways.
Now the line of reasoning Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein is as follows. The Standard Metre is used to define ‘one metre’. So it is true by definition and thus necessary that the Standard Metre is one metre long. Yet it is with the ‘peculiar role’ of the Standard Metre in ‘the language-game of measuring with a metre rule’ that Wittgenstein is most concerned at Philosophical Investigations §50. Kripke presents Wittgenstein as focusing on the use of the Standard Metre as a definitional sample, whereas Wittgenstein is actually most concerned with its use as standard sample, as a measure. It seems unlikely, then, that the reasoning Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein is Wittgenstein’s.

The W-system of measurement
So how might the Standard Metre’s use as measure be relevant to the claim that the Standard Metre is necessarily one metre long? I think the most plausible answer to this question is that Wittgenstein is operating with a particular conception of what it is for an object to function as a measure.
Consider the following definition. Let the reference of ‘one W’ with respect to any arbitrary time t and possible world w be the length that stick W has at t at w (and be empty otherwise). Thus stick W can never be and could never have been anything other than one W long. It is a necessary truth that, if it exists, W is one W long.
Having thus defined ‘one W’, we can now set about expressing the length of a given object as a multiple/fraction of one W. Let’s say that an object at a given possible world w and time t is 0.5 W long if and only if it is exactly half the length of W at w at t, that it is 2 W long if and only if it is twice as long as W at w at t, and so on.
Notice that in this system of measurement stick W’s length in Ws at any arbitrary time and/or world is stipulatively held constant. Stick W is necessarily one W long. Shrink or stretch it: stick W remains one W long. Indeed, by shortening stick W one alters the W dimensions of other objects.
I shall call this the W system of measurement. As we saw above, it’s the ‘peculiar role’ of the Standard Metre as a measure that leads Wittgenstein to suppose that the Standard Metre is necessarily one metre long. It seems plausible, then, that on Wittgenstein’s view the ‘peculiar role’ assigned to the Standard Metre in the metric system is precisely that which is assigned to stick W in the W system. That would neatly explain the necessity claim.

Many measures
There is, however, an obvious difference between the metric system and the W-system: in the metric system more than one measure is used. We all have our own metric measures.
But the metric system could still be relative in something like the way the W system is relative. The metric system might be what one might call a majoritarian system. Consider a practice in which many different sticks are used to measure the length one M. It’s stipulated that to be one M long is to be the same length as the majority of these sticks. More precisely: for an object o to be one M long at any world w and time t is just for o to possess whatever length is possessed by the majority of the relevant sticks at w at t. Hence if one stick had its length reduced by ten percent but the rest remain unchanged, then that particular stick would now be only 0.9 M long. So it’s contingent that any particular stick is one M long. Call this the M-system of measurement.
The M-system is obviously similar to the W system. Something is assigned a role analogous to that assigned to stick W in the W system. The difference is that in the M-system it is not one particular measure but the majority of measures that is assigned that role. I shall call all systems of measurement involving one or more measures where what is assigned the role of stick W is either a single measure or else a subset or percentage of those measures W-type systems of measurement.
Is the metric system like the M-system? Obviously, that cannot be Wittgenstein’s view. If to be one metre long is to be the same length as the majority of our metre rules, then, pace Wittgenstein, it would be a contingent fact that the Standard Metre is one metre long. Wittgenstein, I suggest, believes both that all systems of measurement are essentially W-type, and also that in the metric system it’s the Standard Metre alone that plays the role of stick W. That’s its ‘peculiar role’.
However, our modal intuitions suggest that the metric system is not any sort of W-type system – not even a majoritarian system. If the metric system were a W-type system, then it should be impossible for all our metric measures simultaneously to have their metric dimensions reduced by 10%. But, intuitively, this could happen. If, for example, there was a complex plot by Martians to shave down all our metre rules during the night, then all our metre rules might end up 0.9 metres long.

The K-system of measurement
How, then does the metric system function? In fact it seems to be what I call a K-type system of measurement. Suppose we introduce the expression ‘one K’ to refer to that length which stick K happens actually to possess at t0. We might then go on to measure length in Ks using stick K, and do so quite accurately, just so long as stick K remains the same length. But then, even though the length of K is used to measure length in Ks – indeed, even though it be the only thing we use to measure length in Ks — it is nevertheless contingent that stick K is one K long. For stick K might not have been the length it actually is. Let’s call any system of measurement in which all measures are used in this way K-type.
An implication of Kripke's views about how the expression ‘one metre’ functions is that the Standard Metre has the same sort of role in the metric system in the same sort of way as stick K has in the K system. On Kripke's view, ‘one metre’ names a certain length: that length which the Standard Metre happens currently to possess. Thus the Standard Metre is only correctly used to measure length in metres on the condition that it remains that same length. Intuitively, it seems Kripke is right about this.
In fact, it seems that, while we certainly might introduce a W-type system of measurement, all our actual systems of measurement are K-type and not W-type. For example, consider a situation in which all our kilogram weights have their weight reduced by 10% overnight, everything else remaining the same. When I test my modal intuitions with the question, “What would be the weight in kilograms of those kilogram weights?” they say they would weigh only 0.9 kilograms. It would surely be wrong to describe the weight in kilograms of everything else as having increased. So the metric system of measuring weight would also appear to be a K-type system.

The background to K-type systems of measurement
Wittgenstein apparently believes that all systems of measurement are W-type. But our modal intuitions suggest our actual systems are K-type.
But perhaps Wittgenstein is not wholly wrong. As I will argue shortly, it does seem that something functions in the metric system in a manner analogous to the way stick W functions in the W system, even if it isn’t any of our measures.
Let’s now turn to The Smedlium Case.

The Smedlium Case
Imagine a world quite similar to our own that contains large quantities of a metal-like material – let's call it smedlium – which gradually and unpredictably alters in size. All smedlium objects expand and contract in unison. At one o'clock on one particular day all the smedlium objects are 5% larger than they were at mid-day; at two o'clock they are all 10% smaller, and so on. Despite this peculiarity, smedlium remains a useful material. In fact, it is the strongest and most durable material available. One of the inhabitants of this world builds machinery made wholly out of smedlium. The machines are used in situations where their size relative to non-smedlium objects doesn't matter. The smedlium engineer constructs and calibrates a measuring rule made out of smedlium to use when manufacturing such machines. She measures dimensions in ‘S’s, one S being measured against the length of her smedlium measure. Of course, so far as manufacturing smedlium machines is concerned, a smedlium measure is far more useful than is a rule made out of some more stable material, for it allows the smedlium engineer to ignore the changes in size of the object upon which she is working. For example, she knows that, say, if the hole for the grunge lever measured 0.5 S in diameter at one o'clock, then a grunge lever which measures 0.5 S in diameter at two o'clock will just fit into that hole, despite the fact that the hole is now noticeably smaller than it was at one o'clock.
Now one might think that here at least is one case in which a measuring rod functions as does stick W in the W system, not as does stick K in the K system. Surely, one might argue, what ‘one S’ designates with respect to any arbitrary time and world is the length of the smedlium engineer’s measuring rod whatever it might be at that time and world, not the length that it actually possesses at some particular moment in time. The smedlium system must be a W-type system.
And yet, oddly enough, we have the same modal intuitions about the smedlium system as we do about the metric system. It seems that the smedlium measuring rod might cease to possess the measurement one S. It might actually come to possess e.g. the measurement 0.9 S.
Suppose, for example, that mid-way through a month when the smedlium engineer is working on a particularly important project, a saboteur breaks into the smedlium engineer's workshop and indulges in some industrial espionage. The saboteur shaves 10% off the end off the smedlium measuring rod knowing this will cause the smedlium engineer all sorts of problems. Isn't it the case that the smedlium measuring rod no longer possess the measurement one S? To me, this certainly seems the right way to describe the situation. Indeed, it seems right to say that the smedlium measuring rod now has the measurement 0.9 S, given that it is now 10% shorter than it would otherwise have been.
It also seems right to say that the smedlium measure might never have had the measurement one S: it might always have been only 0.9 S long (one might tell a story on which the mould in which stick S was originally cast leaks at one end, producing a sightly shorter stick). So, intuitively, it is contingent that the smedlium measuring rod possesses the measurement one S.

A puzzle for Kripke
So we have the same sort of modal intuitions about the smedlium system as we do about the metric system. However, while it appears to be contingent that the smedlium measuring rod possesses the measurement one S, note that there is prima facie, a problem in applying the Kripkean explanation of the contingency. We saw that the Kripkean explanation of why it is contingent that the Standard Metre possesses the dimension one metre is that ‘one metre’ is a rigid designator: it rigidly designates a certain length – a length the Standard Metre happens only contingently to possess. But note that this explanation is unavailable when it comes to explaining why it is contingent that the smedlium measuring rod possesses the dimension one S. Clearly, “one S” doesn’t rigidly designate a length. An object can retain the dimension one S even while altering in length.
This raises a difficulty for Kripke: it seems that, in the smedlium case, the intuition of contingency is going to have to be accounted for in some other way. But if in the smedlium case the contingency is to be explained other than by supposing that ‘one S’ is a rigid designator (of a certain length), then presumably that same alternative explanation might be provided in the metric case too.
In fact, one might begin to wonder whether the metric and smedlium systems aren’t both W-type systems after all. Just how reliable are these Kripkean intuitions of contingency upon which so much importance has been placed? Kripke’s argument against the metric system being a W-type system no longer looks quite so decisive.

Relativizing to a frame of reference
What, then, does explain the intuition of contingency concerning the S measurements of the smedlium measuring rod? What does ‘one S’ name, if not a length? Why, if all previous changes in S’s length didn't affect its S measurements, does the change in its length affected by the saboteur affect its S measurements?
In fact the Kripkean explanation can still be applied here if we are prepared to introduce a relativized notion of ‘length’. As I explain below, one might suggest that ‘one S’ does rigidly designate a ‘length’ of sorts, it’s just that it designates a length relative to a frame of reference other than one with which we are ordinarily familiar.
Arguably, at least some of our judgements concerning sameness of length are made relative to the frame of reference constituted by the medium sized dry goods (trees, hills, houses, rocks and pebbles, etc.) with which are ordinarily surrounded. They constitute the frame of reference relative to which one might correctly describe one’s trousers as having shrunk or one’s geraniums as having grown taller. Whether or not we already possess such a relativized notion of length, let’s now introduce one. Let’s say that, on this relativized notion of ‘length’, two objects at different times and/or worlds differ in ‘length’ just to the extent that their dimensions expressed as a fraction of the mean of all the dimensions of those medium-sized dry goods at those times and worlds differ. Thus, on this relativized notion of ‘length’, if, in some actual or counterfactual situation, not only my trousers shrink but so too do all the relevant medium-sized dry goods by the exact same amount, then my trousers continue to remain the same ‘length’.
Clearly, ‘one S’ doesn’t name a ‘length’ relative to this frame of reference. However, it may yet name a ‘length’ relative to some other frame of reference. Suppose, for example, that the frame of reference to which the ‘length’ in question is relative is constituted by the mean of the dimensions of all the other smedlium objects, including those upon which the smedlium engineer has been working. We might then explain why the change in the length of the smedlium measuring rod affected by the saboteur is a change which, unlike all previous changes in its length, results in it ceasing to possess the measurement one S. It’s a change which alters its length not just relative to our familiar frame of reference, but also relative to this alternative frame of reference.

A Kripkean resolution of the Smedlium Case
Let’s introduce the expressions ‘lengthS’ and ‘lengthM’ to indicate when we are using the two relativized notions of length outlined above. Differences in lengthM are relative to the frame of reference constituted by the sort of medium-sized dry goods actually found in our local environment; differences in lengthS are relative to the frame of reference constituted by the smedlium objects.
Having allowed talk about ‘length’ to be relativized to different frames of reference, we can now provide a Kripkean explanation of the contingency of the smedlium measuring rod being one S long can now be applied. ‘One S’ is indeed a rigid designator. It rigidly designates a certain lengthS. This lengthS is only contingently possessed by stick S. Stick S ceases to possess the lengthS one S when the saboteur shaves down one end.
But notice that we can only apply the Kripkean explanation if we are prepared to allow for such relativized notions of ‘length’. So, unless Kripke is prepared to allow for such relativized notions of ‘length’, the smedlium case remains a problem for him.

A parallel between the smedlium and W-systems
Notice that in the smedlium engineer’s system of measurement the designation of ‘one S’ with respect to any arbitrary time t and world w is tied to the dimensions of the relevant smedlium objects at t at w. So, although the smedlium engineer’s system of measurement is a K-type system, nevertheless something functions in her system in a manner akin to the way stick W functions in the W system. Just as, in the W system, the W dimensions of stick W are held constant for all times and worlds, so (we’re supposing) in the S system the mean of the dimensions of the relevant smedlium objects (or something similar ) is held constant for all times and worlds.

Is the metric system like the smedlium engineer’s system?
We are now in a position to appreciate that while the intuitions to which Kripke appeals – namely that ‘one metre’ is a rigid designator and that the Standard Metre is only contingently one metre long – may indeed indicate that the metric system is a K-type system, not a W-type system, nevertheless these intuitions do not indicate that the metric system isn’t relative in the same sort of way as the smedlium engineer’s system. For we have analogous intuitions when it comes to the smedlium engineer’s system of measurement.
Indeed, notice that our intuitions about the metric case do not indicate that Wittgenstein isn’t right to suppose that something functions in the metric system as does stick W in the W system, though of course they do indicate that Wittgenstein is wrong to suppose that what plays that role is the Standard Metre. That is, it may yet turn out that something plays a role in the metric system analogous to that played by the smedlium objects in the smedlium system.
I will shortly turn to the question of whether the metric system actually is relative in this way. But before I do so, let’s briefly consider some other similarly relativistic systems of measurement and then contrast them with what I call absolute systems of measurement.

Other frames of reference
Notice that, when introducing a system of measurement by defining ‘one K’ by reference to a bar known to be made out of some more familiar and stable material, there are still many different background frames of reference we might adopt. To illustrate, consider the following scenario.
Suppose that a community of astrophysicists (who work only at night) decide to adopt a certain stick ¬— stick K — as a measure. They carefully store stick K in a large box from which they occasionally remove it to check and calibrate their instruments. Coincidentally, the morning after the astrophysicists adopt stick K as their measure the park keepers enter the laboratory looking for something to mark out the grounds surrounding the laboratory. They chance upon the stick K lying in its box and decide to use it as a rule to measure out and keep a record of the dimensions of the layout of their grounds. Each evening they carefully return stick K to its box. And so two practices of using the length of stick K as a measure happen to develop quite independently of each other.
Let’s also suppose that, again coincidentally, both the astrophysicists and the park keepers use the expression ‘one K’ to name that unit of measurement of which they use K as their only measure. Indeed, let’s suppose that both communities introduce the expression ‘one K’ to function as a rigid designator of, as they put it, a certain “length”: the “length” of stick K at time t0.
Now suppose that, for some strange reason, the planet on which the astrophysicists and park keepers live and everything on it gradually shrinks over a period of one month. Suppose that, relative to a much larger frame of reference, the dimensions of stick K at time t1 are exactly 10% less than they were at time t0.
Consider the question: does stick K retain the measurement one K at t1? The answer to this question depends at least in part upon on what, if anything, constitutes the relevant background frame of reference in each system of measurement. It seems to me that, given the interests and concerns of the park keepers, their system of measurement is likely to be relative to some comparatively local frame of reference. Let’s say that the frame of reference in question is constituted by the immediate countryside. In which case the park keepers may truly declare that K still retains the dimension ‘one K’ at t1. If informed about the shrinkage of their planet, the park keepers will dismiss it as an irrelevance: they will insist the K-measurements of both stick K and their flowerbeds remain unaffected. Given the astrophysicists' interests and concerns, on the other hand (i.e. given that they use their system to frame scientific hypotheses about how the universe as a whole behaves), they may relativize their system of measurement to some much larger frame of reference. Let’s suppose that this is the case. Then the astrophysicists may truly declare that stick K is only ‘0.9 K’ long at t1.
In short, while both communities define the expression ‘one K’ in such a way that it functions as a rigid designator of that unit of measurement of which they use stick K as their sole sample, if their respective systems of measurement are relative to different frames of reference, then they nevertheless use ‘one K’ to refer to different units of measurement. The astrophysicists introduce ‘one K’ as a rigid designator of a lengthA; the park keepers introduce ‘one K’ as a rigid designator of a lengthP.

Absolute Length
We have looked at a number of different K-type systems of measurement of length. Each is relativized to a different frame of reference. But must all K-type systems of measurement similarly be relativized?
Maybe not. Perhaps we can correctly describe objects at different times and/or worlds as being absolutely the same length – as I shall put it, the same Length (with a capital ‘L’) – as opposed to merely being the same lengthS, the same lengthM, the same lengthP, the same lengthA, etc. While an attribution of lengthS, lengthM, lengthP or lengthA etc. to an object in some actual or counterfactual circumstance is always made relative to a frame of reference, an attribution of Length is made independently of any frame of reference.

Krelative and Kabsolute systems of measurement
We are now in a position to distinguish two varieties of K-type system: those that are relativized to some frame of reference or other and those that are not. Let’s distinguish them by calling the former Krelative systems and the latter Kabsolute systems.
Krelative and W-type systems of measurement are similar in that both involve something being assigned a role analogous to that assigned to stick W in the W system. Krelative systems differ from W-type systems in that, although something is assigned a role analogous to that assigned to stick W, it isn’t what we use to do our measuring. Rather, it is what I have been calling the background frame of reference that is assigned that role.
Clearly, the smedlium engineer’s system is not a Kabsolute system. It is a Krelative system. I have suggested that in the smedlium system it is the various other smedlium objects that constitute the relevant background frame of reference.

Central conclusion
My primary concern in this paper has been to develop a clearer picture of how the metric system of measurement, and indeed all our systems of measurement, may operate. I have, in effect, provided two very different accounts. The metric system may be a Kabsolute system. Or it may be a Krelative system.
Intuitively, Kripke is right: the metric dimensions of the Standard Metre, and indeed the rest of our metric measures, might all have been, say, ten percent less than they actually are. Our intuitions support the contention that the metric system is a K-type system, not a W-type system. My central conclusion is that this intuition is equally consistent with both the hypothesis that the metric system is a Kabsolute system and the hypothesis that the metric system is, like the smedlium engineer’s system, a Krelative system.
Krelative systems are certainly a possibility, as the smedlium case illustrates. Indeed, as I have explained, we need to acknowledge their possibility in order to apply the Kripkean explanation to our intuitions concerning the smedlium case.
If the metric system is indeed a Krelative system, then Wittgenstein is partially vindicated. Something functions in the metric system as stick W functions in the W system. It’s just that what has this function isn’t the Standard Metre, or indeed any of our metric measures.

Final question: Is the metric system a K-relative system?
This brings us to our final question. Granted that the modal intuitions to which Kripke appeals are neutral between the metric system being a Krelative system and a Kabsolute system, which is it?
I believe the metric system is a Krelative system. I shall not attempt to make a knock-down case for the conclusion here. But I shall indicate why that seems to me to be the more likely alternative.
Let’s begin by anticipating some objections to the suggestion that the metric system is a Krelative system.
You might argue that the metric system must be a Kabsolute system for the following reason. A definition of the expression ‘one metre’ by reference to the length of the Standard Metre will typically take place in the absence of any deliberation concerning what, if anything, is to constitute the relevant frame of reference. Indeed, don’t we thereby succeed in ‘fixing the reference’ of ‘one metre’ with respect to any arbitrary time and world without our having to adopt any frame of reference at all? If so, then ‘one metre’, thus defined, must designate an absolute Length rather than a length relativized to some frame of reference or other. But then the metric system must be a Kabsolute system, not a Krelative system.
This objection is easily dealt with. Compare the smedlium engineer’s system of measurement. She introduces ‘one S’ to name that unit of measurement of which she uses stick S as her only measure. Now her definition of ‘one S’ is certainly also unlikely to involve any explicit appeal to a frame of reference. Indeed, that her system of measurement is relativized to frame of reference, let alone that it is relativized to a frame of reference constituted by the other smedlium objects, may well be a fact of which she is not fully cognizant. Yet it is clear that her system of measurement nevertheless is relative to a frame of reference. Obviously, ‘one S’ does not name a Length. It names a lengthS (or something similar). So the engineer’s ‘reference-fixing’ definition of ‘one S’ by reference to stick S must involve at least an implicit appeal to some frame of reference or other. Presumably, what functions as the relevant frame of reference in the smedlium case is determined, not by any conscious decision on her part, but by (broadly speaking) the use to which she puts her system of measurement.
But then the fact that we may similarly define ‘one metre’ without giving any thought to what, if anything, is to constitute the relevant frame of reference is similarly consistent with the metric system also being a Krelative system.
I acknowledge that a difficult question remains, however: if our talk about ‘length’ is relative, then to what is it relative? – I touch on this question below.
Clearly the suggestion that the metric system – and, indeed, our talk about ‘length’ generally – is relative to say, the frame of reference constituted by planet Earth is undermined by the intuition the metric dimensions of the Earth might not have been what they actually are, e.g. they might have been ten percent less. Similar intuitions appear to undermine most of the other more obvious suggestions that might be made concerning what constitutes the relevant frame of reference.
Consider, for example, the suggestion that the frame of reference relative to which our talk of length is relative is constituted by all physical dimensions — those of everything in the entire universe. Even this suggestion would appear to be undermined by yet another Kripkean modal intuition: might not all these dimensions have been a little less, or become a little less, than they actually, currently are? It seems they might. Indeed, that such a shrinkage had taken place might even be verifiable. If the laws of nature remain unaltered, all sorts of differences will manifest themselves: many processes will take less time to occur; our bodies will suddenly seem stronger, and so on. It may well be that the smoothest and most plausible way to account for all these changes might indeed just be to suppose that everything has shrunk a bit. But if it makes sense to suppose that everything might shrink a bit, does that not entail that by ‘length’ we must mean Length?
Again, not necessarily. The frame of reference need not – or need not just – include the physical dimensions of things (by which I mean, roughly, the dimensions of physical objects and the distances between them). It may incorporate, at least indirectly, the laws of nature themselves (for example, if the frame of reference to which a K-relative system of measurement is relative is, say, the distance traveled by light in a fixed period of time, then a change in the laws governing light’s speed will affect that frame of reference, and thus also the K-measurements of things.) So perhaps the frame of reference is constituted by the universe as a whole, including its laws. And in fact it is not so clear that we can make sense of the possibility of a universe just like this one except that, while all physical dimensions are reduced slightly, there is also, nevertheless, a corresponding adjustment to the laws of nature effectively cancelling out any possible manifestation of that reduction. Yet if by ‘length’ we mean Length, we should be able to make sense of that possibility. So our modal intuitions seem finally to favour the view that the metric system is a Krelative system.
There is a further reason why our difficulty in specifying precisely to what the metric system is relative should not be considered decisive against the suggestion that the metric system is Krelative. For note that we run into similar difficulties when it comes to specifying what constitutes the relevant frame of reference in the smedlium case, a case in which we clearly aren’t dealing with a Kabsolute system.
Consider, for example, my tentative suggestion that the smedlium system is relative to the mean of the dimensions of the relevant smedlium objects. On closer inspection, this suggestion seems not to be quite right. For can’t not envisage counterfactual circumstances in which the mean of the dimensions of the relevant smedlium objects, expressed as a fraction/multiple of one S, is other than what it actually is? Suppose, for example, that our smedlium engineer invents a machine that shrinks objects (be they made out of smedlium or some other material). Place an object or number of objects (made out of some ordinary material – not smedlium) inside the machine and press the start button and the dimensions of those objects are reduced by 10%. Now suppose that a very large version of this machine is built and all the smedlium objects that exist are placed inside and the button pressed. What are the S dimensions of all those smedlium objects now? My intuitions favour the suggestion that the S dimensions of all those objects have just been reduced by 10%. But then my original suggestion concerning what constitutes the relevant frame of reference in the smedlium case cannot be exactly right. It seems that, though the smedlium system is a Krelative system, not a Kabsolute system, we run into exactly the same sort of difficulties in specifying to what the system is relative as we do in the metric case. But then the latter difficulties do not count heavily against the suggestion that the metric system is itself a Krelative system.
There’s a another reason for favouring the view that the metric system is Krelative. Even if we allow that there are such things as absolute Lengths (and perhaps we should not), surely any absolute Length would be too disengaged from actual our practice of measuring, recording, talking about, etc. metric dimensions for it plausibly to be considered a candidate for the reference of ‘one metre’.

Final conclusion
It seems to me that the metric system is much more likely to be a Krelative system than a Kabsolute system. In order to apply the Kripkean explanation of why it is contingent that the smedlium engineer’s measuring rod is one S long we need to introduce relativized notions of length. ‘One S’, it seems, is a rigid designator: it rigidly designates a lengthS. This raises the possibility that what ‘one metre’ rigidly designates is also a length relative to some background frame of reference or other. We have yet to see a cogent objection to the view that the metric system isn’t relative in this way.
Indeed, it seems probable that the metric system is a Krelative system. In which case Wittgenstein is partially vindicated: the metric system is relative in something like the way Wittgenstein suggests. Only it is not relative to the Standard Metre, or indeed to any of our metric measures. Rather, it is relative to what I call a background frame of reference.

Stephen Law
Heythrop College, University of London