If Aristotle Visited Us Today

Posted by Eugene Alper

The term 'metaphysics' was born with Aristotle. He was the first who aspired to gathering together all previous philosophical knowledge, and integrating it in a single great work.

Perhaps he felt hopeful – as one might feel on a fresh morning in the woods, with the first rays of the sun filtering through the trees. Although he was teased by a few outstanding questions, perhaps Aristotle felt that the end was truly in sight.

Yet if Aristotle visited us today, he might conclude that philosophy is in major crisis. For we have been asking the same fundamental questions – the same perennial questions – for two and a half millennia. And because of that, he might note, we are in a less enviable position than he was. For accumulated knowledge without obvious fruit affects one’s sense of self-confidence. It also undermines hope: the more knowledge, the less hope.

It is natural for the teenager – by way of analogy – to be hopeful about the future, to think that by the age of forty she will certainly know how to live a life, as opposed to her parents who, for some reasons, still do not. But when the age comes, and the former teenager asks the same question and still finds no answer, and suspects something even worse—that at the age of fifty and sixty and seventy she may still have no answer—a sense of unease dawns on her. This is what they call midlife crisis.

One wonders whether Aristotle might see, in the philosophic state of humankind today, the same sort of midlife crisis. He himself had a limited literature or recorded history to look back upon – but we, he might observe, have 2 500 years. This long view of the well-recorded past might give him – as it gives us – a deep sense of unease.

On the one hand, seeing so much treasure accumulated in literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, one can reasonably say, 'Look at the baggage of fine thought we are bringing along. Does this not give hope that its accumulation in the future may be even greater, and that, just as we have seen in technology, there may soon come a qualitative breakthrough? Isn’t this the evidence that we may be onto something? Just one more step, just one more realisation, and we may understand what the good life is?'

On the other hand, this very outlook on the past shows that our thinking, in the most fundamental ways, does not improve with time. Like the bird which greets each morning with the same old song, we fail to recognise that there is nothing new, that our questions are not different from the questions already asked by Aristotle long ago, or better than the answers he already gave.

Our baggage today, Aristotle might observe, is dubious and heavy, for the very ability to know the past and to observe the distance one has travelled without much philosophic growth may make one lose heart. Our human thinking, he might conclude, is somewhat defective, somewhat limited by nature. It could be that, by nature, our mind is incapable of going beyond the Biblical God, Plato’s One, or Aristotle’s Primary Cause. Or it could be that, by nature, our mind does better when dealing with things measurable, yet not so well with things abstract.

Perhaps, then, there is no exiting from the loop, no jumping out of the rut. On the most fundamental issues we will still think in inescapable circles, resembling the fish in the bowl, who thinks it is moving forward while sliding along the concave glass.

Time and Timers: A Good Resolutions Post for 2016

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Posted by Perig Gouanvic

Some say that the Internet age is deleterious for our brains, that we have become scattered and shallow; others applaud this change, insisting that we are simply adapting to a new and better age of connectivity and openness. Being prone, from birth, to being scattered, I would have some advice for those who are starting to wonder what their brains are becoming in the Internet age.

I made the discovery of a technique (wait, this is not promotional material -- I have nothing to sell!) that is based on the hypotheses that the brain is not really capable of focusing, to its best, on a single thing for more than 25 minutes maximum (on average) and that hearing and controlling a timer can help exorcise the anguish of time. I did not try this technique to boost my "brain power" but rather because I was intrigued by the idea of devoting such short periods of time to the 10 or 15 different things that I have in mind everyday (15 times 25 minutes fits in a single day). These things are extremely different one from the other, and it is the fact that they kept nagging me, even becoming intrusive, one idea coming into conflict with the other one, that caused me to be mentally too exhausted to do anything at all.

I guess this is how most of us feel when they have about 15 different tabs open in their browser.

Only a few days after I started to practice the first elements of this pomodoro technique (that's how its called; tomato in Italian, because timers often are tomato-shaped down there), the heap of other things to do stopped bothering me and I could focus for about 20 minutes on a single thing. And then on another one. And so forth.

After a few days I had to stop using this technique because it had changed my personality  rather profoundly. I drew several lessons from this tomato-free day. But the most important is that there is a time to be frantically scattered and superficial. It is the daytime version of REM (random eye movement) sleep, and it is as important. The only problem is that we are REM awake too often, these days, because of the Internet; ultimately this REM awakeness becomes counterproductive. Learning to manage my own inner tabs not only helps me to be more structured, but to be more positively scattered, more intuitive, when I decide to stop structuring myself.

The Bridging Inference

A Pi Special Investigation into the workings of language

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

How is a definition defined? Much may depend on the answer to this simple question—including, arguably, the shape of our entire (post)modern society today. But more of this in a moment. The way that one typically defines a word is with the most economical statement of its descriptive meaning. Therefore the Oxford English Dictionary defines a 'dog' as 'a domesticated, carnivorous mammal'.

However, not every linguist would agree that this is how one should go about definition. Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen took a suspicious view of this notion—considering that such definition is necessary but inadequate ¹. It is, they suggested, 'a mere abbreviation'. A true definition of a word would require so much more.

But so it is: In terms of classical linguistics, in order to define a word, one enumerates its 'necessary and sufficient features' ². Such definition may also be referred to as the denotative meaning of a word, or its 'hard core of meaning'—as opposed to its 'meanings around the edges', or its connotative meaning ³.

How is a definition defined?

In probing the answer to the question here, the linguistic feature the anaphora provides a useful starting point. The anaphora, in turn, is related to a lesser-known linguistic feature, the bridging inference. This promises to be more useful still.

But first, the anaphora.

The Anaphora

The anaphora, according to linguists Simon Botley and Tony McEnery, is particularly useful in telling us 'some things about how language is understood and processed' ⁴. That is, it opens windows into the inner workings of our language, which would normally seem closed to us.

The anaphora is called a referring expression—for the reason that it refers to another linguistic element in a text. Typically, it refers back. An example: 'Aristotle owned a house. He lived in it.' Here, 'He' refers back to Aristotle, while 'it' refers back to his house. Both 'He' and 'it', therefore, are anaphoras.

A fact less emphasised is that the meaning of the anaphora must match the meaning of the linguistic element which it refers to—otherwise an anaphora is 'unresolved'. For example: 'Aristotle owned a house. It popped,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It chased rabbits.' In these two examples, the meaning of the anaphora and the meaning of the referent do not coincide—as they ought to.

This deserves special emphasis: the anaphora refers to a linguistic element which is well defined, on the surface of it reflecting its denotative meaning.

 So a house is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'a building used for human habitation,' or (Collins) 'a building used as a home,' or (Macmillan) 'a building for living in'. Thus the anaphora 'it', above, takes on the definition of a house—or so it would seem.

Thus far with the anaphora.

The Bridging Inference

Closely related to the anaphora is the lesser known referring expression the bridging inference. Like the anaphora, this typically refers back.
Here follows an example of a bridging inference: 'Aristotle owned a house. The plumbing was blocked.' At first glance, this might seem identical to the anaphora—yet it is quite different.

While no one should have a problem understanding these two sentences, the house is now no longer in explicit focus ⁵. Or to put it another way: one typically recognises a bridging inference by the fact that one cannot replace it with a pronoun. One cannot say, for instance: 'Aristotle owned a house. It was blocked.'

In the above example, the inference is that a house contains plumbing. However, there is something apparently inexplicable that meets us here. No definition of a house includes plumbing. The bridging inference assumes that when one speaks about a house, one knows something that one should not know, or does not need to know.

In fact, we intuitively relate many things to a house: 'Aristotle owned a house. The karma was bad,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The ceilings were sagging,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The valuation was too low.' In all of these examples and more, a house is intuitively understood to have karma, ceilings, value, and so on. To put it simply, all of these sentences work—in spite of having nothing to do with the definition of a house, as one finds it in the dictionary.

This is important. If something has nothing to do with the definition of a house, yet is intuitively understood to be a part of what it is, then we have a problem with the common notion of a definition.

The ease with which one uses inferences is all the more appreciated when incompatible inferences are made: 'Aristotle owned a house. The crank shaft was broken,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The preservative was vinegar.' One sees here, all the more clearly, how inferences are dependent on the meaning of the referent.

We return now to the anaphora.

The Anaphora Again

On the surface of it, the anaphora would seem to refer to the stock standard definition of a word—namely, its 'necessary and sufficient features'—while the bridging inference would seem to stray into 'meanings around the edges'. That is to say, on the surface of it the anaphora has more to do with the denotative meaning of a word, while the bridging inference has more to do with its connotative meaning.

Yet does this hold true?

If it does not, then there may be many more inferences in our language than we have supposed. Or to put it another way: the features of our definitions of words may not be as 'necessary' or 'sufficient' as they seem.

By way of experiment, consider what happens when one converts some of the bridging inferences above to anaphoras: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had bad karma,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had sagging ceilings.'

At first glance, there may seem to be no inferences here: the anaphora 'It' would seem, in each case, to refer back to the house. However, it becomes clear that one is dealing with inferences as soon as one tries some false ones. For example: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had a broken crank shaft,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It was preserved with vinegar.'

What we see here is that the anaphora has to be compatible with various inferences which relate to a house. It is a precondition for the anaphora to work.

In fact we might go so far as to say that the English language depends on innumerable inferences. Both the bridging inference and the anaphora reveal that we make inferences which exceed the definition of a word—and with that, 'play old Harry' with the notion of the denotative meaning of the word.

'Every utterance, no matter how laboured,' said philosopher and linguist Max Black, 'trails clouds of implication' ⁶.

For what reason, then, might the bridging inference and the anaphora instantly be understood—where they have nothing to do with the definition of a thing?

Here follow some broad suggestions:

The Definition of a Definition

An answer to the puzzle may lie in what we have already seen, although it might seem alien to our analytical thinking today:

If there is any apparent relation between two things—between a house, say, and the plumbing—or between a house and its karma—then these will inevitably have something to do with each other's definition. If there is no apparent relation—between a house and a crank shaft, say, or a house and its preservative—then these will have nothing to do with each other's definition.

This has an important corollary.

It has to mean that the definitions of words are relational, not analytic: definitions are not first about features, they are about relations—and there may be a great many relations.

In fact it was Aristotle who first suggested that definitions are not features 'piled in a heap', but that they are 'disposed in a certain way' ⁷. That is, their features stand in a certain relationship with one another—as many as these may be.

Now if linguistics is a descriptive endeavour, not prescriptive—if it is about 'how people actually speak or write' ⁸—then what shall we do with the customary definition of a definition?

If definitions are relational, not analytic—then it may be suggested, on the basis of the way that we use words today, that the (post)modern era has gone vastly astray. Is it not our dissection of reality—rather than our being able to see its relatedness—that has led to environmental degradation, social disintegration, and a host of other ills?

The analytical view of the world should be compensated by a relational one. This may begin with the way that we see language. Or to put it another way: the way that we see language today may shape the entire society in which we live.

---

Matters arising - and some notes




The Question

Let us pause, to pose the question(s):

• What is a definition—in light of the bridging inference in particular?  
  
• What is it that denotation denotes?
  
• And if a word is to be seen in relational terms, then how does one define it?
  
  

---

Citation

This post was written by Thomas Scarborough for PI Alpha, February 2014.

• 1 Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen. Logical Propaedeutic, p. 65, 1984.
• 2 John Taylor. Linguistic Categorization, p. 23, 1995.
• 3 James Hurford and Brendan Heasley. Semantics, p. 90, 1990.
• 4 Simon Botley and Tony McEnery. Corpus-Based and Computational Approaches to Discourse Anaphora, p. 3, 2000.
• 5 Alan Garnham. Psycholingusitics, p. 156, 1985.
• 6 Max Black. The Labyrinth of Language, p. 137, 1968.
• 7 Aristotle. The Metaphysics, Book VII, 11.
• 8 David Crystal. Linguistics, p. 595, 1999.
  

The Bridging Inference

A Pi Special Investigation into the workings of language

Posted by Thomas Scarborough 

How is a definition defined? Much may depend on the answer to this simple question—including, arguably, the shape of our entire (post)modern society today. But more of this in a moment.

The way that one typically defines a word is with the most economical statement of its descriptive meaning. Therefore the Oxford English Dictionary defines a 'dog' as 'a domesticated, carnivorous mammal'.

However, not every linguist would agree that this is how one should go about definition. Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen took a suspicious view of this notion—considering that such definition is necessary but inadequate ¹. It is, they suggested, 'a mere abbreviation'. A true definition of a word would require so much more.

But so it is: In terms of classical linguistics, in order to define a word, one enumerates its 'necessary and sufficient features' ². Such definition may also be referred to as the denotative meaning of a word, or its 'hard core of meaning'—as opposed to its 'meanings around the edges', or its connotative meaning ³.

How is a definition defined?

In probing the answer to the question here, the linguistic feature the anaphora provides a useful starting point. The anaphora, in turn, is related to a lesser-known linguistic feature, the bridging inference. This promises to be more useful still.

But first, the anaphora.

The Anaphora

The anaphora, according to linguists Simon Botley and Tony McEnery, is particularly useful in telling us 'some things about how language is understood and processed' ⁴. That is, it opens windows into the inner workings of our language, which would normally seem closed to us.

The anaphora is called a referring expression—for the reason that it refers to another linguistic element in a text. Typically, it refers back. An example: 'Aristotle owned a house. He lived in it.' Here, 'He' refers back to Aristotle, while 'it' refers back to his house. Both 'He' and 'it', therefore, are anaphoras.

A fact less emphasised is that the meaning of the anaphora must match the meaning of the linguistic element which it refers to—otherwise an anaphora is 'unresolved'. For example: 'Aristotle owned a house. It popped,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It chased rabbits.' In these two examples, the meaning of the anaphora and the meaning of the referent do not coincide—as they ought to.

This deserves special emphasis: the anaphora refers to a linguistic element which is well defined, on the surface of it reflecting its denotative meaning.

 So a house is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'a building used for human habitation,' or (Collins) 'a building used as a home,' or (Macmillan) 'a building for living in'. Thus the anaphora 'it', above, takes on the definition of a house—or so it would seem.

Thus far with the anaphora.

The Bridging Inference

Closely related to the anaphora is the lesser known referring expression the bridging inference. Like the anaphora, this typically refers back.
Here follows an example of a bridging inference: 'Aristotle owned a house. The plumbing was blocked.' At first glance, this might seem identical to the anaphora—yet it is quite different.

While no one should have a problem understanding these two sentences, the house is now no longer in explicit focus ⁵. Or to put it another way: one typically recognises a bridging inference by the fact that one cannot replace it with a pronoun. One cannot say, for instance: 'Aristotle owned a house. It was blocked.'

In the above example, the inference is that a house contains plumbing. However, there is something apparently inexplicable that meets us here. No definition of a house includes plumbing. The bridging inference assumes that when one speaks about a house, one knows something that one should not know, or does not need to know.

In fact, we intuitively relate many things to a house: 'Aristotle owned a house. The karma was bad,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The ceilings were sagging,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The valuation was too low.' In all of these examples and more, a house is intuitively understood to have karma, ceilings, value, and so on. To put it simply, all of these sentences work—in spite of having nothing to do with the definition of a house, as one finds it in the dictionary.

This is important. If something has nothing to do with the definition of a house, yet is intuitively understood to be a part of what it is, then we have a problem with the common notion of a definition.

The ease with which one uses inferences is all the more appreciated when incompatible inferences are made: 'Aristotle owned a house. The crank shaft was broken,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. The preservative was vinegar.' One sees here, all the more clearly, how inferences are dependent on the meaning of the referent.

We return now to the anaphora.

The Anaphora Again

On the surface of it, the anaphora would seem to refer to the stock standard definition of a word—namely, its 'necessary and sufficient features'—while the bridging inference would seem to stray into 'meanings around the edges'. That is to say, on the surface of it the anaphora has more to do with the denotative meaning of a word, while the bridging inference has more to do with its connotative meaning.

Yet does this hold true?

If it does not, then there may be many more inferences in our language than we have supposed. Or to put it another way: the features of our definitions of words may not be as 'necessary' or 'sufficient' as they seem.

By way of experiment, consider what happens when one converts some of the bridging inferences above to anaphoras: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had bad karma,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had sagging ceilings.'

At first glance, there may seem to be no inferences here: the anaphora 'It' would seem, in each case, to refer back to the house. However, it becomes clear that one is dealing with inferences as soon as one tries some false ones. For example: 'Aristotle owned a house. It had a broken crank shaft,' or: 'Aristotle owned a house. It was preserved with vinegar.'

What we see here is that the anaphora has to be compatible with various inferences which relate to a house. It is a precondition for the anaphora to work.

In fact we might go so far as to say that the English language depends on innumerable inferences. Both the bridging inference and the anaphora reveal that we make inferences which exceed the definition of a word—and with that, 'play old Harry' with the notion of the denotative meaning of the word.

'Every utterance, no matter how laboured,' said philosopher and linguist Max Black, 'trails clouds of implication' ⁶.

For what reason, then, might the bridging inference and the anaphora instantly be understood—where they have nothing to do with the definition of a thing?

Here follow some broad suggestions:

The Definition of a Definition

An answer to the puzzle may lie in what we have already seen, although it might seem alien to our analytical thinking today:

If there is any apparent relation between two things—between a house, say, and the plumbing—or between a house and its karma—then these will inevitably have something to do with each other's definition. If there is no apparent relation—between a house and a crank shaft, say, or a house and its preservative—then these will have nothing to do with each other's definition.

This has an important corollary.

It has to mean that the definitions of words are relational, not analytic: definitions are not first about features, they are about relations—and there may be a great many relations.

In fact it was Aristotle who first suggested that definitions are not features 'piled in a heap', but that they are 'disposed in a certain way' ⁷. That is, their features stand in a certain relationship with one another—as many as these may be.

Now if linguistics is a descriptive endeavour, not prescriptive—if it is about 'how people actually speak or write' ⁸—then what shall we do with the customary definition of a definition?

If definitions are relational, not analytic—then it may be suggested, on the basis of the way that we use words today, that the (post)modern era has gone vastly astray. Is it not our dissection of reality—rather than our being able to see its relatedness—that has led to environmental degradation, social disintegration, and a host of other ills?

The analytical view of the world should be compensated by a relational one. This may begin with the way that we see language. Or to put it another way: the way that we see language today may shape the entire society in which we live.

---

Matters arising - and some notes




The Question

Let us pause, to pose the question(s):

• What is a definition—in light of the bridging inference in particular?  
  
• What is it that denotation denotes?
  
• And if a word is to be seen in relational terms, then how does one define it?
  
  

---

Citation

This post was written by Thomas Scarborough for PI Alpha, February 2014.

• 1 Wilhelm Kamlah and Paul Lorenzen. Logical Propaedeutic, p. 65, 1984.
• 2 John Taylor. Linguistic Categorization, p. 23, 1995.
• 3 James Hurford and Brendan Heasley. Semantics, p. 90, 1990.
• 4 Simon Botley and Tony McEnery. Corpus-Based and Computational Approaches to Discourse Anaphora, p. 3, 2000.
• 5 Alan Garnham. Psycholingusitics, p. 156, 1985.
• 6 Max Black. The Labyrinth of Language, p. 137, 1968.
• 7 Aristotle. The Metaphysics, Book VII, 11.
• 8 David Crystal. Linguistics, p. 595, 1999.
  

Painting Change

Will Kemp Art School: How to Paint Over an Acrylic Painting

Posted by Tessa den Uyl, with Pi

We all arrange the world in our minds. I should say, our world in our minds. I am a painter – so let me speak rather of 'painting' our world in our minds. 

We paint our village streets in our minds -- to remember them and make sense of them. We paint our supermarket shelves and bus routes there. We paint social networks and personal schedules. We even paint university curricula and religious beliefs there. In short, we paint a vast number of things, which we place upon the easel of our minds for easy reference.

Yet as we paint this painting, we find that everywhere the subjects of our painting are changing. From year to year, even day to day, the painting no longer matches the world we are fixing in paint. The ubiquity of the word 'change' in our language says it all: 'The times are changing,' and 'We change with the times' – it's 'a change of tack,' or 'a change of pace' – 'Let's change the channel,' and 'Let's change the subject' – 'Ring in the changes!' and 'Plus ça change!'

And even as we paint our world in our own minds, we are aware, too, that other people have other paintings of the world in theirs. While my painting is my own – their painting, too, is theirs. This becomes a problem both for me and for them, in equal measure. Let me explain.

This morning, in a small village in Morocco, I went out to buy a washing powder called 'Tide'. Ilias understands 'tête' (which is paté) instead of 'Tide'. Now why would one buy tête in a shop where they sell products for the home? For more than two years, Ilias and I have continued our dispute over misunderstandings surrounding pronunciation. His French is not my French, and my French is not his French. I try to apprehend his pronunciation, I speak slowly – but we’re still on the same track where we started off.

Now what does this small situation have to do with 'change'? It goes to the heart of the problem of change, insofar as to communicate profitably, both parties need to pay attention, not to pronunciations of 'Tide' or 'tête', but to the painting of the world in the other one's mind – to different cultures and perceptions, different languages and foci. They have to look at another painting, instead of their own.

How overly simplistic this example might sound – but it presents the difficulty of finding mutual understanding, to change something in each other's understanding – so that my lack may become his lack, and his lack may become mine. Ilias thinks that I should learn to speak better French – which means, from my point of view: his French. It is the problem of who will leave the territory in which the 'proper' conviction lies.

There is always a defence of the 'proper' vision. We think that one painting is more preferable than another. How then can we change? Change probably only can come about through the genuine awareness of diversity. To put it another way, truth does not have common ground. A change – or rather, a transformation of attitude – always faces the problem of 'property': the 'ownership' of truth. To change something means to let go of the ownership of the painting in my mind, and the effects that it has on me.

An example. A Yemeni woman exclaims: 'Sometimes I hope a missile will just blow us all away' (meaning her and her family). The woman’s desire for the impossible, to resolve her suffering, is the desire to obtain consolation over a painting of the world which is lost. And this present desire is based on the same painting which the woman painted back then. It is a double painting of the same scene – a painting painted twice.

We recognise it when we lose control of something – that it is about a painting of our world in my mind. Losing control is due to a present idea that doesn’t correspond to the first idea any longer. This is what makes change difficult. Change poses the problem of a reconstruction within a previously painted painting.

No thoughts are uprooted while change is based upon the logic of some existing principle. Such 'change' merely serves the function of that principle. We desire change without the desire to discard the painting we painted previously. We want to continue to recognise something, while including within that something the yet-to-be experience of change – forgetting that change cannot happen that way.

Change is not adapting to previous notions. Perhaps this is why the Yemeni woman 'desires' death. She senses that only through death can real change come to be.

Can change be thought? And if change is something that does not conform to the world that we know, then where is it found? That which is changing, we do not yet know. It can only exist in an unknown space in our psyche. One might say that our nature evolves continually in 'the instability of our stability'. How contradictory our being is!

And yet, if change needs to be something truly new, then how wonderful it may be – meaning: full of wonder. Because change is about more than we can subtract. It is not about painting over an existing painting, or obliterating it. It is about new colours and composition, new moods and perspective, new connections. It is everything new – or it cannot be called 'change'.

While we cannot forget all the previous strokes of the brush, we can understand the brush's potential for more. We can come to see new directions, new perceptions, new affections – destabilising the old, as we look not so much to the painting which we had, as to intuitions which lie within. And when there is a meeting of hearts which so desire change, it is the beginning of all possibilities.

NEW VERSION How the Body Keeps Human Nature in Check

From Bauentwurfslehre, 1936, by Ernst Neufert

Posted by Eugene Alper, with Pi

One of the greatest problems of our time is the problem as to how ethics may be incorporated into metaphysics. The problem was first brought to the fore by David Hume, and became acute with Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously wrote, 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.'   He was referring to ethics.  

Yet beyond Hume and Wittgenstein – beyond Plato, Immanuel Kant, George Moore, and many others – beyond ethical naturalism, objectivism, rationalism – beyond all philosophy and all theory – it may be as simple as the human body. 

Imagine, with me, a man (or a woman) who is dropped into this world from the sky – not knowing anything at all.

He would very quickly discover that his body needs to be fed every five hours, and put to sleep every sixteen.  His skin, he would notice, is sensitive to cold, heat, and many kinds of pain.  He would find that food is not readily available – that it is dangerous to have to fight for it with other people and animals.  He would find that it is helpful to cultivate plants and domesticate animals – and counter-productive to wantonly destroy them.

He would find that blankets need to be of a certain size and thickness – being predicted, too, by the size and function of his body.  He would find that door handles need to be mounted at a certain height, and made for fingers such as his.  He would find that his body predicts the dimensions of many things: the size of a soccer ball, the shape of a boat – even the location of a university, or the power of rocket boosters.

He would find that it is troublesome to anger others – and to find a new shelter every night, to evade them.  He would soon guess that it is more energy efficient to get into a peaceful exchange with others, where he could trade for food something of his own – a thing or a service, or even a promise to be fulfilled in future.  He would find that his own body, with its vulnerabilities and frequent needs, force him to cooperate with others rather than destroy them.

He would find that, even if he were the biggest and strongest of all, he could not be big and strong twenty-four hours a day. For some eight hours daily he would be as defenseless as a baby, and would have to have someone trusted next to him not to get hurt. Even the meanest tyrant with the worst kind of human nature could not be bad all the time under these circumstances. The vulnerability of his own body in sleep and its dependence on non-poisonous food would make him be good at least to his closest circle.

In short, personal ethics, social ethics, political ethics, aesthetic values – building codes, agricultural norms, communications networks, and everything under the sun – would be governed by the body in which this man found himself at the start.  And not only that, but whatever his nature may be – whether 'good' or 'bad' – he would find that his needy body kept it under control.

It is not a new idea.  Theologians proposed it many centuries ago – namely, that a person is designed for certain ends – of whom Thomas Aquinas was the pre-eminent proponent.  Yet it may be precisely because it was a theological idea that it did not gain much traction.  The theology – whether true or false – may be set aside, yet the situation of this man remains the same, who fell from the sky.

We make no moral prescriptions here – no judgements, no commands, no commitments.  We simply leave a description of what a man (or a woman) is.  And whatever it may mean that he has a body or a soul, it finally comes down to this: 'Don't be too cocky', says the body, 'or you will get hurt.'

Not Really a Picture Post

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what 

they seemed to be, neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Command prompt

I can't help thinking that this one is philosophical, but my mind is a complete blank ... I took it at a parade.

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Understanding the Geneva Convention

“No physical or mental torture may be inflicted on prisoners of war
to secure from them information of any kind whatever.” – Article 17,
Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War ”

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A poem by Chengde Chen 

Yugoslavia, sometime in World War II. A refugee family in Serbia

Understanding the Geneva Convention

We are enemies –
why can we kill in war but allow no torture?
Does physiology regard death better than pain –
the struggle for survival is a race to the end?
Or philosophy holds ends higher than means –
loving God requires rushing to heaven?
Anyone who can prove either of these
proves Geneva is larger than the world; otherwise,
aren’t the Conventions like the RSPCA of carnivores –
protection ensures slaughtering only the undamaged?

This humanitarian law, solemn and noble as it is,
is just a desperate supplement to a Platonic maxim.
Although “only the dead have seen the end of war”,
let’s conduct barbarity in the most civilised manner –
seeing the gaps between battles as peace, or the seconds
between drawing the sword and striking as kindness.
War, however, has to be the war animal’s way of life –
no matter how we pursue “off-battlefield humanity”.
Part-time animals are animals still, hence a red cross –
to acknowledge the bloodiness of humanitarianism!

Words can’t redeem the mountains of white bones,
because ideals can’t domesticate genes.
Our ability to idealise ourselves
can only deepen the tragedy of civilisation.
Oh, the ever extending ripples of Lake Geneva,
you are not leisure waves by wind flirting with water,
but man’s unending hopelessness about human nature.
If you aren’t the longest sighs of the hopeless,
you must be the deepest sadness of the sighs.

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Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems. Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here

Rationalism and Relationality in Roman Catholicism

The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Thomas Scarborough unravels links between metaphysics and theology in the writings of Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen.

About the size of a modern A4 sheet of paper, a painting of Benozzo Gozzoli (1471) hangs in the Louvre in Paris. Titled The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas, it depicts St. Thomas, seated with a completed metaphysic on his lap, flanked by Aristotle on the left, and Plato on the right. At his feet lies the Arabic philosopher Averroes.

It happened chiefly through the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas. Through Aquinas' writing, the thought of the Roman Catholic Church was tainted by barren metaphysics – which further opened the door, in time, to Enlightenment rationalism and scientific-technological reason. Such reason is linear, mathematical, geometric, and finally, analytic. It is epitomised by Newtonian logic, which works on universal laws. This means that everything rests on experiment, and thus the (observing) senses.

Such rationality, while it is rightly a part of the universal structure of what we are and who we are, has limitations of narrowness. Reason in its fulness, wrote Pope Benedict XVI, is far larger than that. It is the all-meaning logos, which is the reason of the mind of God. This includes the reason which asks: What is the meaning of all things? Why do things ‘hold together’ in the way that they do? Why are we here? To what personal purpose, and what end?

We may approach such questions in two ways:

1. By broadening our idea of what reason really is, and
2. By taking into account our human relationality.

THE FIRST APPROACH: Is our reason really capable, through the mind alone, of finding the ‘big’ answers tolife? The Roman Catholic Church has traditionally held: Yes. Yet what kind of ‘reason’ might this be? It cannot be the same as the narrow reason we have just described. Or does the Church's ‘reason’ really include insight as intuition – into and behind reality? Such a human capacity would lie beyond linear reason – beyond physics – a capacity which was partly perceived by Aristotle in his Meta-physics.

What then should we call this capacity or faculty ‘beyond reason’ – this something that we naturally, innately possess – this capacity which is somehow tied back to the ‘Being’ behind the universe: the religious spirit, the Jewish heart, the Greek pneuma, the breath of life, and the Christian soul? Aha, now we have passed further than the ‘mind alone,’ so that we need to rethink how we are constituted by our anthropological capacities, which are more than just a brain and a body.

The Roman Catholic tradition, when it speaks of reason, has failed to adequately distinguish reason in its fulness, as logos, from narrow Enlightenment reason or scientific-technological reason. Yet ‘reason’ clearly includes the insightful, spiritual capacities, or spiritual intuition. And there’s the debate set out for us! If we are content with rationalism coupled to our brains, we fool ourselves into shallowness. And such shallowness, as postmodernism has pointed out, cannot save us, or our planet.

What, then, is ‘the more’ of me and you about?

THE SECOND APPROACH: Most of all, each of us is heavily involved in relationships – or relationality. We find that what is most precious to us is our relations, which is the foci (persons!) that consume our energies. Aristotle and St. Thomas were more involved in things. So was Kant. Thus the category of relation was downgraded. So why has the Church pressed so heavily for thinkingourselves towards God (although this is valuable as far as it goes)?

We can think about relationships, but we do not think them. Those who are ‘in love’ don’t start there. They start with the experience of self-giving. The Judaeo-Christian religion begins with the Revelation of God, set in human history – above all through the Son of God on earth. A fresh, ‘humble’ metaphysics begins, not so much with God in himself as we think about him, but with God who is in relationship with me. It reverses the Church's traditional path. Through reason in its fulness, as logos, we may know God directly. This even a child can do. We’ve only made it hard because we double-think everything.

Relationality holds everything together in meaning. Therefore relationality has to be an essential category of our existence. Relations, then, occur in our experience – which makes experience an essential category, too. And we need to be able to intuit these relations, which requires a spiritual intuition or capacity beyond the brute force of narrow reason. Spiritual intuition, therefore, is as basic to our existence as scientific-technological reason.

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A seven-hundred page dissertation by Fr. Dr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen OFM Cap. may be accessed (free) at:  Thönissen C.J. 2015. Foundations for Spirituality: A 'Hermeneutic of Reform' for a Church Facing Crises Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. Pretoria: UNISA.

Terrorists, Secret Services and Private Incomes

Sceptical reflections and conspiracy theories relating to the politics surrounding the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the recent massacre in Saint Denis

 

The shooting at the start of this year of the cartoonists at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo has all the hallmarks of a CIA inspired brutal incident. November's massacre at Saint Denis looks much more like an attempt to replay, in the center of European social life, similar deadly outrages to those committed in towns and cities across the Middle East. Colin Kirk* teases out the links.

That most of the perpetrators of these atrocities were known to French secret services is now admitted. There are even several indications of what may have been secret service and police assistance to the Charlie Hebdo incident. Help apparently given to the get-away vehicle and discovery of the driving license dropped by the driver recalls some aspects of the slaughter of over 3000 people on the ninth of November 2001 in New York.

Charlie Hebdo was a satirical magazine before it got its current name after an atrocity in Northern France that resulted in over a couple of dozen deaths was reported in Paris as 28 dead in Northern France. It caused little stir compared with mourning for De Gaulle, who died a few days later. Un homme mort à Paris was the bold, black cover of what was thereafter called Charlie Hebdo.

President Charles De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in his own image with draconian rights of state surveillance of its citizens that are not dissimilar to those afforded by the American Patriot Act. The State of Emergency currently in force allows police entry without warrant and arrest without charge. There really isn’t any further to go in state legal rights of citizen control, is there?

The CIA is known to have funded media to promote certain political messages in America, Britain and France in particular. On his own account, Stephen Spender, the editor of the British literary magazine Encounter, originally founded by the poet Stephen Spender, resigned  when he discovered the source of much of its 'well-wisher' donations.

Satirical media and those critical of the state were important to western democracies to demonstrate state toleration of dissent in comparison with actions of totalitarian states. Egalité and Fraternité were far less important to politicians than the sacred notion of Liberté.



Heads of State who linked arms with President Hollande to lead the Liberty March in Paris the Sunday following the Charlie Hebdo massacres included central African dictators not to mention Prime Minister Netanyahu. The simultaneous attack on a Jewish supermarket was the reason for his presence and for President Hollande’s ostentatious attendance with him at the central Paris synagogue that evening.

Anti-Semitism is the most serious taboo in France, Semites in this context being Jewish rather than Arabian Semites. Charlie Hebdo itself dismissed a journalist for writing a somewhat anti-Israeli article not long before the murders of some of its staff for drawing cartoons of Mohammad.

The murder of cartoonists horrified people who had adored Charlie Hebdo in its glory days, although it was, until the early January murders, a spent force. Je suis Charlie was displayed in posh shops. The t-shirts didn’t catch on. Here in the Normandy town where I live the Charlie Hebdo March was of elderly and middle aged lefties. And two weeks later it was all forgotten.

'Plantu', the cartoonist of Le Monde, the guy who always has a little mouse observer of the scene, made a film of international cartoonists (Caricaturistes, fantassins de la démocratie) that was released two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo killings. It was a brilliant film with world-wide coverage of cartoonists’ art, except from the sacred monarchies of Britain and Japan for some reason. Brilliant as it was it was not a box office success. Surely after the dreadful incident everyone would want to see it. But that was weeks ago, according to the local film projectionist when asked why such a small attendance in mid-February. Not here the spirited defence of the right to lampoon.

France is not unique in being media led. It certainly is media led. Flavour of the month has become flavour of the week as span of attention has contracted. The same tune is played in all the papers, on all the television channels, in almost all social gatherings; much as elsewhere world-wide.

Only the issues of immigration and Islamic terrorism are here to stay in France, as in the rest of Western Democracies or Civilisations or the International Community or any other feel-good appellation appropriate to smug arms manufacturing countries, which have caused mayhem in the Middle East and are beginning to do so in Africa. The CIA will see these issues retain top billing.

The CIA’s sundry billion dollar budget is not accounted for other than in the most general terms. The last 'almost serious' presentation to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was by Professor George Tenet, who himself had long been a member of it. President Clinton made him Director of Central Intelligence when they turned down his earlier choices. President George W. Bush kept him on as 'A charming diplomat liked by all '. Director Tenet admitted that hidden in the accounts somewhere are colossal expenditures on Hollywood films, computer war games, and subsidisation of all branches of the media on a grand scale. His wording was rather less transparent than here.

The question of the appropriate national reaction to atrocity has to take account of the reaction imposed by the media. Under and overlaying that reaction are ancient religious prejudices in a country where political prejudices have the psychic force of religious ones, not least because they tend to be interlinked. Bourgeois Catholic and Protestant Christian beliefs inform and are informed by the mainstream media feed, which is conformist and conservative. Since President Mitterrand’s second term most all politics in France have become conformist and conservative.

President Hollande, in his inaugural Presidential address, appeared to be about to break the mold: his only enemy was capitalism, which he said he was determined to release France from. He was quickly overcome by the same machinery that engulfed President Obama and will no doubt have the same success with Prime Minister Trudeau.  Shortly after, Trudeau informed Washington that Canadian planes were no longer available to the coalition, President Hollande authorized massive revenge air attacks on Islamic State (ISIS) for its agents’ revenge attacks on Saint Denis. When will we ever learn?

France, in the days of Freedom Fries, condemned the war on Iraq and subsequently fêted President Gadhafi, the key proponent, along with President Mandela, of Pan African government. These were when there were right wing governments in power. French oil interests are given as reason for government action whoever claims to lead the country. Right wing leaders have always tended to an independent line to Washington’s. In the Middle East French and Russian interests are at variance to those of the Anglo-Americans.

By and large the popular mood in France remains that of La Marseillaise - perhaps the most jingoistic and racist national anthem in the world. The French Third Republic, which led the world in consumerism, self-indulgence and free thought began with murder in 1870 of 20,000 communards and ended in 1945 with murder of a similar number of collaborators, all in Paris, and all without any legal process.

This is the country of the Dreyfus Affair, fire at the Charity Bazaar, loss of a million soldiers in the First World War, capitulation at the beginning of the second and loss of empire that was never as glorious as was made out. France has been a wounded beast ever since the Battle of Waterloo. Indeed, since Régis Debray published his Loués soient nos seigneurs; un education politique in 1996 there has been very little serious dissenting intellectual voice in France. He gives as explanation:

We are forced to witness the death throes in France of Marxist Socialists; a proud species that emerged in the nineteenth century from the crossing of the Revolution as myth with the Book as instrument but is now a technical anachronism, doomed to disappear in the global ecology of the videosphere.

These days, it seems to me that the Christianist and Christian Zionist control freaks are truly in control by means of the New York Council on Foreign Relations This private body links the State Department, Wall Street and every other power house in America. It was founded with $1000 donations of the 1000 richest Americans to control President Wilson, as honest broker at Versailles that produced the Peace Treaty signed 28 July 1919. He appeared to have achieved nothing for the United States except honest influence but appearances can be deceptive.

Alan Dulles the first Secretary of the Council went on to found the CIA, with brother John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, the family tinned fruit fortune escalated in value from millions to billions of dollars. In a democracy one looks after one’s own interests…and how!

As someone who loves France for its landscape and folkscape, probably in that order, and as someone able from personal experience to compare it with Britain and the United States, I think there’s little to choose between the three in terms of genuine dissenting analysis of the perilous state humanity is in.

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Colin Kirk writes on health and philosophical issues, poetry and classical history, whilst growing lots of fruit and vegetables in a mediaeval walled garden, to prepare and cook for guests - what has been described as a kind of ' Pythagorean GuestHouse'. A characteristic recent publication is Death of Augustus his Conversion to Christ