Philosophy Discussions on the Way to NYC Shopping

From 2002 until the pandemic, several of my kids and I would go to New York the day after Christmas to shop along Broadway. Usually we drove to either Trenton or Secaucus from Lancaster, parked the car, and took New Jersey Transit trains to NYC.  

We would talk about almost anything on the drives up and back. On one of the drives when my younger daughter Lisa was in grad school, so 2013 or after, it was just Nigel, Lisa and I in the car. Nigel fell asleep in the back seat. 

Lisa and I started what became a two-hour plus discussion of free will--does it it exist? 

At the time, Lisa had come to believe in Determinism. That school of thought says free will is an illusion. We act as nature and nurture has programmed us. The appearance of free will can always be explained by brain activity and environment.  

I believe that all people have free will, but most people choose to use it rarely or never. Many wish they did not have free will and want someone else to make the tough decisions in their lives.  

Last week, I was in the English section of a Swiss bookstore and saw Sam Harris' book "Free Will." I meant to read this after Lisa and I discussed Determinism. (Was the decade delay a free will choice on my part, or because I had a job and kids living at home at the time, simply something I forgot--determined by my environment?)

Even though it is a decade later and Lisa has a different view of free will now, I  decided to buy the book and read it on the flight from Geneva to Riga, Latvia.   The book is well written and I am unconvinced. Another book titled "Free Will" takes the position that we have free will but use it rarely. That is my position. I wrote about that book here. It's very good on parsing Fate, Chance, Free Will and Determinism. 

I may choose to re-read Mark Balguer's book "Free Will" later this year. I recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.  As for Sam Harris' book on the same topic, I will leave it in an airport or train station for someone else. It is very well written. And that makes me reject the premise all the more. 

Every sentence I write involves choosing the right words in the right order. Sometimes I surprise myself with a choice of words that seems perfect for expressing and idea. Sometimes I re-read something I wrote and think I should never attempt to write again. Most of writing is determined by decades of experience and training and intuition. But once in a while I have to choose among very different possibilities and in that moment, I have Free Will.

Understanding Beliefs: Book 10 of 2022

 

The thesis statement of Understanding Beliefs is in the middle of page three in the first chapter: 

One of the most important things to say about beliefs is that they are (or at least should be) tentative and changeable.

From this statement, many believers and all fundamentalist believers, would disagree with Nils J. Nilsson, Kumagai Professor of Engineering (emeritus) at Stanford University.  He was a pioneer in computer science and robotics and wrote many books including The Quest for Artificial Intelligence: A History of Ideas and Achievements. Nilsson died in 2019 at the age of 86. 

Nilsson first divides beliefs into "procedural" and "declarative."  Procedural beliefs are what we know and believe by doing--riding a bicycle for example. Declarative beliefs are those we state in sentences--religious creeds, political views, etc. He then discusses whether declarative beliefs constitute knowledge. Some who do research in the field of knowledge say that beliefs are different, Nilsson says in the introduction that beliefs cannot be separated from knowledge. Then he begins the first chapter:

Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. For example, I believe I exist on a planet that we call Earth and I share it with billions of other people.

He goes on to enumerate his beliefs in things such as computers and airplanes, beliefs about our culture such as democracy and the rule of law, and beliefs about the members of his family.  He describes procedural and declarative belief in more detail and explains scientific theories.  The Nilsson says,

Before we trust a belief sufficiently to act on it, we can analyze it and perhaps modify it--taking into account our own experiences, reasoning, and the opinions and criticisms of others.

Which had me smiling and thinking of religious believers, myself included, who are more likely to believe and then analyze later.  He ends the chapter saying we are like pilots flying through clouds trusting our instruments--our beliefs guide our lives when we cannot see our path.

The second chapter asks the question "What do beliefs do for us?"  The answer:

Our beliefs serve us in several ways. Some help us make predictions and select actions, some help us understand a subject in more detail, some inspire creativity, some generate emotional responses, some can even be self-fulfilling.

The rest of the chapter explains more about what beliefs do for us.  In the third chapter we get to the more murky subject, "Where do beliefs come from?" Part of Nilsson's answer: 

All of our beliefs are mental constructions. Some are consequences of other beliefs, and some are explanations built to explain existing beliefs and experiences. (Italics Nilsson's.). ... We do know that explanations can only be constructed from the materials at hand--that is, from whatever beliefs and concepts happen to be around.

Chapter four "Evaluating beliefs" looks at how we handle doubt in our beliefs and the strength of our beliefs.  His example throughout the chapter is belief in global warming or climate change.  How those who believe come to that belief and how to evaluate that belief given the new evidence every year.  He worries about those who will not evaluate their beliefs:  

On many things, our minds are made up. But they can only be made up if we never challenge them with new experiences, new information, and discussions with knowledgeable people who might hold opposite beliefs. ... Changing our minds is difficult, but it is necessary if we want to have ever-more-useful descriptions of reality.

Chapter five "In all probability" explains how we show confidence in our beliefs, or not. Most of our beliefs, fall between the extremes of "definitely true" and definitely false" and this chapter explains how to determine our confidence in a particular belief.  

Chapter six "Reality and truth" explains the boundary between reality--things that exist, and truth--statements about what actually exists.  That boundary, like an open border, gets crossed a lot. Nilsson says, In the time of Galileo "even some theologians agreed that there was a difference between reality itself and descriptions of reality." 

Nilsson uses coal as an example. Is coal black? Is the color of coal characteristic or part of the reality of coal? Which led me to think of titanium dioxide. In nature it is black sand covering beaches in around the world: in Brazil, in South Africa, and in Western Australia among others.  Titanium dioxide is black when it forms in nature. Almost a century ago, someone figured out a process for oxidizing titanium under controlled conditions that results in a molecule 2,500 Angstroms in length--half the wavelength of white light.  The result is the whitest possible white pigment.  

Chemically, black sand and white pigment are identical. But when the molecule is 2,500 Angstroms in length, our eyes see white, vivid white.  When the molecule is much bigger, it appears to be black.  Is the same substance both white and black? In this case appearance is physics not chemistry. Is the reality the chemical compound or the color? Are white and black appearance only, or reality?

Chapters seven and eight describe "The Scientific Method" and "Robot Beliefs." They are fun but for those committed to the scientific method, that chapter is a review summed up when Nilsson says, "People have a lot of beliefs that are not falsifiable, and therefore such beliefs are not scientific."  Nilsson explains the current state and limits of artificial intelligence and robot beliefs. He ends the chapter saying, "Robots do not have any "magical," nonphysical methods for obtaining information. I don't believe humans do either."

The final chapter is "Belief Traps"--getting trapped in beliefs that wouldn't survive critical evaluation. Nilsson begins the chapter:

I have stressed throughout this book that our beliefs should be subject to change. Scientists are used to having their theories replaced by better ones. Why shouldn't we regard our everyday beliefs as tentative also?

 In the next paragraph, it is clear he knows why.  He says, "Let's looks first at obstacles to belief change caused by one's lifestyle and attitudes." He then cites the isolation of technology as a cause of falling into belief traps. He then quotes a psychologist who says "People are credulous creatures who find it very easy to believe and very difficult to doubt." He ends the chapter and the book quoting John Stuart Mill: 

[the person who] has sought for objections and difficulties instead of avoiding them, has shut out no light which can be thrown upon the subject from any quarter...has a right to think his judgment better than that of any person, or any multitude, who have not gone through a similar process.

QED or Amen, as you prefer. 

Understanding Beliefs is part of The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, dozens of books on topics from Free Will to Nuclear Weapons and many more. I have read four and plan to read three this year.  

First nine books of 2022:

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Book 8 of 2022: The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

The Life of the Mind is the last of more than a dozen books written by Hannah Arendt in her life.  This book consists of two book published in a single volume, the first part on Thinking, the second on Willing.  She finished Willing on a Sunday and died the following Thursday.  In her typewriter was the first page of the third volume which would have been titled: Judging.

We finished a months-long discussion of the book with a review session. I have been part of the Virtual Reading Group of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College since 2018 when I attended a conference on anti-Semitism.  The group meets weekly on Zoom with upwards of one hundred participants each week.  

In Thinking Arendt describes the activity of thinking as an inner dialogue. When thinking we withdraw from the world. She opens the book talking about how in our ordinary lives we are in the world of appearances.  We present ourselves to others in what we say, what we wear and what we do. These appearances, to the extent they are within our control, are the way we present ourselves to the world. These appearances may or may not represent reality, either what we believe to be our true selves or what we others believe. 

Arendt talks about how the age of scientific discovery ended the Common Sense people had. In the 16th and 17th Centuries, an avalanche of scientific discoveries overthrew previous understandings of the world.  I read a book last year titled Being Wrong  that has a lovely description of how we can't trust how the world appears.  And the rest of Being Wrong is about how hard we will fight to be right.

Thinking allows us to withdraw from the unreliable world of appearances into a place where we can consider possibilities.  Thinking always involves language, even when we consider images: thinking beings have an urge to speak, speaking beings have an urge to think.

She contrasts thinking with action: persuading through speech. When we speak, when our goal is clear, there is no inner dialogue. We say the words that will express our thoughts.  

In Willing Arendt shows acts of will to be the opposite of thinking. When we think, we deal with what has happened, with the past. In willing, we decide to project ourselves into the future.  There is an inner dialogue of urging, especially when there is hesitation, but the dialogue is toward an action in the future.  

Arendt shows the development of the concept of will in western thought using those she considers the philosophers of the will.  In her view, the Ancient Greeks never developed a concept of the will.  She credits the Apostle Paul with making clear the function of the will in the life of the mind.  She moves from Paul to Epictetus to Augustine to Aquinas, then has a chapter on Duns Scotus.  A contemporary of Aquinas, Arendt describes the philosophy of Scotus as the "primacy of the will." She credits him as being the most clear philosopher of the will among all those she introduces. I have read nothing of Duns Scotus and found this chapter fascinating.

The best philosophy brings clarity to life. I know so much more about thinking and willing than I did before reading and discussing this book. If you are interested in the Virtual Reading Group, contact the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. 

First seven books of 2022:

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

First Book of 2022: Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

My first book of 2022 was in the category graphic novel. But the book in question is not a novel. It is a philosophy book that is written with words and drawings.  

But graphic novel is the category according to Wikipedia, so I will go with it:

A graphic novel is a book made up of comics content. Although the word "novel" normally refers to long fictional works, the term "graphic novel" is applied broadly and includes fiction, non-fiction, and anthologized work. It is, at least in the United States, typically distinct from the term "comic book", which is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks.

Before I read Unflattening, I heard Nick Sousanis talk about how his book came to be and what he was trying to do with his use of graphics.  I loved hearing him talk about how our eyes follow images and graphical cues and how he used that knowledge to create the book.

I liked this review by comicsgrid.com

Over eight chapters, Unflattening follows an anonymous, sleepwalking figure as they step out of a regimented life and take flight to explore new worlds. Sousanis draws the imagery of these worlds from TV, movies, the classical canon of art, and scientific diagrams. Unflattening embraces visual references from Paleolithic cave prints to James Bond films, and verbal ones from Bruno Latour to Wallace Stevens. The protagonist bears at one time Hermes’ sandals and at others wings of its own; it is incarnated as a Pinocchio-like puppet confounded by a centipede’s existential challenge, ‘Who are you?’, before finally being reborn as a child reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The comic’s final image is of that newborn’s eye opening to see the world as if for the first time.

In the course of this journey, Sousanis dethrones the primacy of the word in a kind of Copernican revolution. He argues that image is not mere illustration, subordinate to words, but an equal partner and component in thinking. He explores stereoscopic vision and the principles of astronomical observation as metaphors in order to define ‘unflattening’ as ‘a simultaneous engagement of multiple vantage points from which to engender new ways of seeing.’ (Sousanis 2015: 32).

An extended sequence takes us through the world of Edwin Abbott’s Flatland, in which two-dimensional ‘A. Square’ encounters a three-dimensional sphere who exposes him to previously unimagined perspectives. We need each other’s points of view, Sousanis tells us, to avoid become constrained in set modes of thinking and blinkered perspectives, just as A. Square must be enlightened by his encounter with the sphere. Words and images together free us from the limitations presented by either the purely visual or purely verbal. 

And here are a few pages.  

I hesitated to read the book for a long time, but now I am reading two other graphic novels (both biographies of scientists).  Unflattening will take your mind places it has never been before.

Enjoy!

My books of 2021:

Fiction

Non fiction 

Favorite

Books of 2022

The Philosopher of War and Terror and Politics: Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt 1906-1975

Today a friend asked and I were talking about politics and how refugee problems have led to wars in the past. Then we talked about how much current trouble stems from the way countries handle refugees at their borders. 

Which led me to recommend the books of Hannah Arendt. I am an obsessive reader. Arendt is one of about a dozen authors of whom I read most or all of their work.  So I thought I would make an annotated list of Arendt’s works. 

Hannah Arendt is a philosopher. She studied under Martin Heidegger, completing a PhD in 1928 at age 22 at the University of Heidelberg.  She escaped Germany in 1933 moving to France then to America where she became a citizen and is identified as an American Philosopher. 

I comment briefly on the books I have read. I also include at the end the books I have not yet read.

Eichmann in Jerusalem: Arendt’s most well-known book and most controversial is not philosophy, but reporting for the New Yorker magazine about the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1961.  In this book Arendt uses the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe Eichmann. Because Eichmann was responsible for deporting three million Jews to Death Camps, many wanted to see him as evil incarnate. But he was a failed salesman with a talent for logistics, a failure twisted into evil, not an evil mastermind.

Origins of Totalitarianism is a long and brilliant work on how modernity and the crisis of refugees and stateless people led to both world wars and to the creation of totalitarian states in Russia, Germany and later in China.  The book also clearly defines totalitarianism as a new form of government based on isolation and terror that did not exist before the 20^th Century.

The Human Condition: This brilliant book is not about Human Nature, but the circumstances of our collective life.  The book begins with the launching of Sputnik and the effect that event has had on all of humanity. 

On Revolution: The book I am reading now about the relatively modern phenomenon of revolution. She describes how the American Revolution succeeded and why nearly every other revolution has failed. 

Love and Saint Augustine: This book was her PhD thesis. I have never read anyone who better understands Christianity and what happened to the faith when it went from the margins to the center of political power.

Between Past and Future is a book of essays. All the essays are good, but the essays on education and tradition are stunning in their insight and how much they speak to problems right now.

The Promise of Politics follows up on the Origins of Totalitarianism with more analysis of Marxism and how the world of Ancient Greece, particularly Athens, still sets our expectations in the world of politics.

I have not read her collection Jewish Writings or Men in Dark Times because they essays are about the lives of people who I am unfamiliar with and Arendt takes for granted that the reader will know the work and significance of the subjects. I also have not read The Life of the Mind nor have I read On Violence. That will be next. If Democracy fails in America as it has in every other nation on earth. I want to have Arendt’s advice on violence fresh in my mind. 

If I could only read one book by Arendt, it would be The Human Condition. I wrote something on EVERY page of my copy. Next would be the Origins of Totalitarianism. Then Love and Saint Augustine.

I started reading Hannah Arendt shortly after I returned from Iraq.  I did not know it at the time, but in November 2016 I would become a political activist. Hannah Arendt describes clearly the best of politics and the worst. Because of Arendt, I am keenly aware of what political activism really means.  

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