Niether Duck Nor Rabbit

As a follow-up to my last post and the comments: as I was reviewing my discussion with Reshef, it occurred to me that my not knowing what the "right" response is on some nights when I stare into the vast sky and can, on the one hand, be filled with thoughts of our smallness and the seeming groundlessness of things, and then, on the other hand, with thoughts about how wondrous the whole world is--perhaps this state of not knowing, of not moving decidedly into either aspect (or way of viewing the world), is itself a "position" rather than a failure to know what the "right" position is? Perhaps this is obvious to those who have considered the issue of aspect-seeing, that the real temptation is to think that the tension between seeing things one way or another must ultimately, in all cases, be resolved. That the true "resolution" is to resolve to learn to accept certain fundamental ambiguities, to accept the tension between apparently contradictory aspects. Perhaps this is why Simone Weil says, in Gravity and Grace:

The contradictions the mind comes up against—these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

This might shed a different light on Wittgenstein's distinction in the Tractatus between the worlds of the happy man and the sad man, or show that there are different ways of being the happy or the sad. On the one hand, the happy man might be the one who sees the world as a wondrous miracle, and the sad man the one who sees everything as awful and pointless. But on the other hand, the happy man might be the one who has accepted the tension between the two aspects (and yet sees and feels the weight of both aspects, at different times, forcefully), and the sad man the one who cannot accept this ambiguity.

Competent Judges

I always forget how hard it is to teach J.S. Mill on "quality" until I'm in the middle of class. Hard because it's not clear at all what "quality" is. (That always makes me think about Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.)

However, I had a little breakthrough in thinking about who counts as a "competent judge" in questions about which of two pleasures is higher. Mill says, as you will recall:

If I am asked, what I mean by difference of quality in pleasures, or what makes one pleasure more valuable than another, merely as a pleasure, except its being greater in amount, there is but one possible answer. Of two pleasures, if there be one to which all or almost all who have experience of both give a decided preference, irrespective of any feeling of moral obligation to prefer it, that is the more desirable pleasure. If one of the two is, by those who are competently acquainted with both, placed so far above the other that they prefer it, even though knowing it to be attended with a greater amount of discontent, and would not resign it for any quantity of the other pleasure which their nature is capable of, we are justified in ascribing to the preferred enjoyment a superiority in quality, so far outweighing quantity as to render it, in comparison, of small account.

Many students take all this to mean that the higher pleasure of any two is the one that most people prefer, but this way of putting is it misleading, I think. What I've probably not ever stressed enough is that Mill's point is that in order to be a competent judge, you have to have experienced the pleasure of both kinds. So, if you never got pleasure from reading Shakespeare, you're not a competent judge of the pleasure of reading Shakespeare. Ditto for NASCAR, Mozart, heroin, and the rest.

Stressing this seems to make Mill's point more interesting, and makes clearer, I think, why it isn't just elitist posturing. (Because someone who has never taken pleasure in a NASCAR event is not a competent judge of the pleasure of watching NASCAR.)

This is perhaps an obvious point about reading Mill, but it's one that I, at least, have found easy to overlook. I think this is because Mill isn't just saying, "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it"--which is something we've all heard before, and close to what Mill is saying--but something quite different. Roughly: "Don't knock it 'til you've cultivated an ability to take pleasure in it and done so"--which is different from "trying it," since you might try something and just take no pleasure in it. And that could just be an odd fact about you.

How Much Study Does a Person Need? (Aristotle & Contemplation)

In the final book of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book X), Aristotle notoriously advances the view that the happiest human life--in his sense of happiness which means to be living and faring well--will necessarily include the activity of contemplation (also translated by T. Irwin as "study"). This is because:

1. Human happiness (flourishing) must consist in virtuous (excellent) activity of the distinctively human capacities--which are the rational capacities.

2. While there are several different excellent uses to which we can put our rational capacities (politics, social justice action, and perhaps also--I would suggest--various creative activities, as well as raising good children, etc.), contemplation is the most complete and self-sufficient of these activities, because it has no further end (like the aim toward happiness itself), requires only modest external fortune, and unlike some of the other virtues, does not require an object (or other agent) which is the recipient of one's virtuous acts (you need social trouble for the practice of the social virtues, children to practice the virtues of parenting, etc.).

3. In addition to being the most complete and self-sufficient of rational activities, contemplation is also divine (a point that becomes hugely important for Aquinas). While we have all sorts of human needs, and so can only participate in divine activities to a limited extent, it's still good to strive in the direction of transcendent activity.

The last point sounds a lot like things Plato says about philosophy--that it is training that prepares one for death (and the separation of the soul from the body, and so a transition, in that respect, to a more godly state). (I just note this because Aristotle tends to give Plato a hard time in the NE.) But putting that aside, I want to reflect a little on the oft-noted observation that it's tempting to see Aristotle's move here as a typical self-congratulatory universalization of one's own preferred dominant activity as the best one. Aristotle's a philosopher, so of course he's going to think that the best life is the philosopher's life--or more specifically, the life of the philosopher who has found some truth.

(That is an important point. As Irwin notes in his translation, "study" (or contemplation) should not be confused with inquiry, or any sort of attempt to figure things out. The person who is able to engage in study has already discovered some truth and is now gazing upon it. The Greek root of the term translated as "study" (and contemplation) has this visual meaning. Thus, the wise person is something more than just any aspiring philosopher or intellectual, and such people, too, might fail to reach a point where study is possible.)

It's usually pointed out that not many people have the intelligence, formal training, or resources (including free time) to engage in contemplation of complex deductive systems. Aristotle leaves it unclear, too, just how much of our lives should be devoted to study--the point about it's divine nature would suggest that the ideal answer is, "as much as possible, and the more the better," so that the happiest person would be something like a sage living in a hole somewhere, with no interruption and near-constant attention to the beauty and magnificence of the truth, with a couple potty breaks and some modest Wittgensteinian meals. ("Hot ziggety!") The alternate picture, less austere, would be basically a rich dude with servants (or better, slaves) to cook stuff for him and so on, and a nice cozy library into which he confines himself to do the serious activity of contemplation. Either way, and so for possibly varying reasons, this has got to be where a lot of people, would get off the bus...at least if the suggestion is that this is the happiest life even in Aristotle's sense of living and faring well. Not to say that the sage isn't, but since Aristotle's apparent ideal contemplative would, by the nature of his or her activity, become withdrawn from society, it becomes a rather peculiar life.

However, given the importance of friendship for Aristotle, and also given that he allows that even the contemplative must possess the moral virtues in order to deal well with others (like his or her friends), it's probably very wrong to see the disengaged sage as Aristotle's happiest person. Importantly, this would seem to mean--since we are not gods--that there will often be very good reasons to STOP contemplating and, say, help our friends move to a new house. So, it appears--and Irwin also reads Aristotle this way--that the important thing is to MAKE TIME for contemplation/study. So, like most issues in the NE, there's not a tidy answer at all to the question, "How much contemplation?"

There are other things worth exploring here. One is whether we might challenge the (snobbish) idea that acquiring wisdom requires lots of technical training rather than something else like the experience of age and an attuned and sensitive mind. If there are ways to widen the potential objects of contemplation/study, then perhaps Aristotle's ideas can be made to seem more appealing. (The point isn't to democratize the idea, but at least to make it seem like other things besides formal logic and mathematics and analytic metaphysics can get you to the right place...)

Second, I think of Wittgenstein's claim from the Philosophical Investigations: "The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question." Once Aristotle's contemplation is understood not to be inquiry but something else, I wonder whether there might be some resonance with W's point about what a "real discovery" is. One might then combine this with a suggestion that Thomas Nagel made in his early paper, "Aristotle on Eudaimonia" in which he suggests (if I recall correctly), that contemplation of wisdom might actually be the sort of thing one can couple with many kinds of lives and maybe even do (if you're really good) while doing other things like sweeping the floor. Which often seems like the kind of thing W wanted to do instead of philosophy. (There are a lot of differences here, too, so I don't want to overstate the extent of this comparison.)

Lastly, to the extent that the objects of contemplation (or how we navigate our way to them) can be widened or reconceptualized, it would appear that unless one has the silly idea that only philosophers (or physicists or mathematicians, etc.) discover truths worth gazing upon, then a lot of "rational activities"--perhaps all of them--will be conducive to the sorts of discoveries that make contemplation a possibility: including various aesthetic and literary activities (both the creating and the consuming) and perhaps also our very relationships with others.

Thoughts? (Sorry that's a bit long for a blog.)

Happiness (and not just having a good time)

Some favorite passages (as I'm brushing up on my Aristotle for class):

"Happiness, then, is not found in amusement; for it would be absurd if the end were amusement, and our lifelong efforts and sufferings aimed at amusing ourselves. For we choose practically everything for some other end--except for happiness, since it is [the] end; but serious work and toil aimed [only] at amusement appears stupid and excessively childish. Rather it seems correct to amuse ourselves so that we can do something serious...for amusement would seem to be relaxation, and it is because we cannot toil continuously that we require relaxation. Relaxation, then, is not [the] end; for we pursue it [to prepare] for activity. But the happy life seems to be a life in accord with virtue, which is a life involving serious actions, and not consisting in amusement." (Nicomachean Ethics, Book X, Ch. 7)

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only real tragedy in life is the being used by personally minded men for purposes which you recognize to be base. All the rest is at worst mere misfortune or mortality." - George Bernard Shaw (in the preface to Man and Superman, I think)

"Of one thing I am certain – we are not here in order to have a good time." - Wittgenstein (attributed by John King, see here)

I'm thinking pretty hard about Aristotle's remarks about study/contemplation, and may take another crack here soon at how Book X fits (or doesn't) with the rest of the NE.

An Ecological Paradox of Happiness

This is something I've been thinking about, as a new way of framing the intersection of my interests in well-being and environmental ethics. I'm calling it "An Ecological Paradox of Happiness," although it isn't, strictly speaking, a paradox. (Perhaps I should instead call it the tragedy of happiness, pace Hardin's "tragedy of the commons.")

Consider, for example, the "American Dream" of living comfortably, middle-class, free to move (and fly) where your dreams take you, settling down, having nice things, and so on. (Suppose something like that is the American Dream.) The carbon footprint of the average American is very high; if everyone on the planet lived like the average American, the result would be environmentally unsustainable. Now if more and more people pursue something like the American Dream--read: American happiness--and if more and more countries (e.g. India and China) are industrializing in ways like Western nations (including the United States), then it's obvious we're headed toward insustainability. The more people who pursue and acquire happiness [important caveat: of a certain sort], the more unsustainable global happiness becomes, and the closer we get to ecological disaster, which, of course, will be a cause of great unhappiness for many (future generations).

This leads to something that looks like the traditional paradox of happiness, which says that in order to be happy one must pursue something other than happiness. The ecological version is that it looks like in order to make the happiness of future generations possible, we should pursue something other than (American) happiness, i.e. if we want it to remain possible for future others (as well as others in other parts of the world now!) to live happily, we should give up our own pursuit of happiness.

Now, it seems to me that, to the extent that there is something that seems paradoxical here, it's actually a false paradox, and that, briefly, we don't have to give up happiness (or its pursuit), but instead certain aspects of the "American" part. In connection with this, I just finished a paper by Judith Licthenberg on "Consuming Because Others Consume," which provides some interesting insights on why people consume other than simple greed, particularly in order to maintain a sense of equality to those around them, which for most people, is (according to JL) necessary for self-respect. This is something worth bearing in mind, insofar as her argument makes it clear that the path to sustainable change is going to involve collective action (and policy) rather than exhortations to personal virtue (although that isn't particularly because not enough people are personally virtuous).