Ethics Explainer: Plato's Cave
Plato’s allegory of the cave is a classical philosophical thought experiment designed to probe our intuitions about epistemology – the study of knowledge.
This story offers the reader an insight into one of Plato’s central concepts, namely, that eternal and unchanging ideas exist in an intellectual realm which we can only access through pure Reason.
Western philosophy may be traced back to Ancient Greece. We have a record of Socrates’ (469-399 BCE) oral teachings through the writings of his student, Plato (427-347 BCE). In these Socratic Dialogues, Socrates argues with his interlocutors in an effort to seek truth, meaning, and knowledge. Plato’s Republic is the best known of these and, in book VII, Socrates presents Glaucon (Plato’s older brother) with an unusual image:
Imagine a number of people living in an underground cave, which has an entrance that opens towards the daylight. The people have been in this dwelling since childhood, shackled by the legs and neck, such that they cannot move nor turn their heads to look around. There is a fire behind them, and between these prisoners and the fire, there is a low wall.
Rather like a shadow puppet play, objects are carried before the fire, from behind the low wall, casting shadows on the wall of the cave for the prisoners to see. Those carrying the objects may be talking, or making noises, or they may be silent. What might the prisoners make of these shadows, of the noises, when they can never turn their heads to see the objects or what is behind them?
Socrates and Glaucon agree that the prisoners would believe the shadows are making the sounds they hear. They imagine the prisoners playing games that include naming and identifying the shadows as objects – such as a book, for instance – when its corresponding shadow flickers against the cave wall. But the only experience of a ‘book’ that these people have is its shadow.
After suggesting that these prisoners are much like us – like all human beings – the narrative continues. Socrates tells of one prisoner being unshackled and released, turning to see the low wall, the objects that cast the shadows, the source of the noises as well as the fire.
While the prisoner’s eyes would take some time to adjust, it is imagined that they now feel they have a better understanding of what was causing the shadows, the noises, and they may feel superior to the other prisoners.
This first stage of freedom is further enhanced as the former prisoner leaves the cave (they must be forced, as they do not wish to leave that which they know), initially painfully blinded by the bright light of the sun.
The liberated one stumbles around, looking firstly only at reflections of things, such as in the water, then at the flowers and trees themselves, and, eventually, at the sun. They would feel as though they now have an even better understanding of the world.
Yet, if this same person returned to the dimly lit cave, they would struggle to see what they previously took for granted as all that existed. They may no longer be any good at the game of guessing what the shadows were – because they are only pale imitations of actual objects in the world.
The other prisoners may pity them, thinking they have lost rather than gained knowledge. If this free individual tried to tell the other prisoners of what they had seen, would they be believed? Could they ever return to be like the others?
The remaining prisoners certainly would not wish to be like the individual who returned, suddenly not knowing anything about the shadows on the cave wall!
Socrates concludes that the prisoners would surely try to kill one who tried to release them, forcing them into the painful, glaring sun, talking of such things that had never been seen or experienced by those in the cave.
Interpreting the Allegory of the Cave
There are multiple readings of this allegory. The text demonstrates that the Idea of the Good (Plato capitalises these concepts in order to elevate their significance and refer to the idea in itself rather than any one particular instantiation of that concept), which we are all seeking, is only grasped with much effort.
Our initial experience is only of the good as reflected in an earthly, embodied manner. It is only by reflecting on these instantiations of what we see to be good, that we can start to consider what may be good in itself. The closest we can come to truly understanding such Forms (the name he gives these concepts), is through our intellect.
Human beings are aiming at the Good, which Medieval philosophers and theologians equated with God, but working out what the good life consists of is not easy! Plato claims each Soul (or mind) chooses what is good, saying:
“But, whether true or false, my opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort.”
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BY Dr Laura D’Olimpio
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-edits the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
Ethics Explainer: Aesthetics
Aesthetics is the philosophical study of art. If you think about what is enjoyable, or valuable about artworks, and why art is important, then you are considering issues to do with aesthetics.
The study of aesthetics is tricky because there are so many different kinds of artworks and it is difficult to think about what they have in common or how they should be categorised or judged. A seminal question in the field of aesthetics is ‘what is art?’ – how ought art be defined? And this question alone has various answers depending on which theory is being applied.
Art defined.
Art includes sculpture, painting, plays, films, novels, dance and music. And it isn’t always clear what the category of art excludes – in large part because artists are always pushing boundaries. The creative nature of art sees works or objects being considered as ‘Art’ that provoke shock, outrage, censorship or exclamations of ‘That’s not Art!’.
Just think about the first time Marcel Duchamp tried to display an artwork called ‘Fountain’ in 1917. The urinal, a ‘found object’ was signed by the artist ‘R. Mutt, 1917’, and caused a riot of disagreement as to whether art must be created or made with one’s own hands or whether it can be intentionally chosen and displayed.
Is it the creation or the reception of the artwork that matters the most?
Who decides whether something is a work of art? Is it ‘the artworld’ of experts and critics? Is it the artist? Or is it the viewer? Many viewers may not understand what they are seeing or may not truly appreciate the skill involved in creating a particular artwork.
For instance, the first time one looks at a Rothko painting, which may appear as a blank canvas painted with a couple of coloured squares, a viewer may think, ‘I could have painted that!’ It is only with an understanding of Rothko’s technique that one may start to appreciate the effort he put in to create it.
And even if we appreciate the skill and effort an artist exerts, we may or may not feel any particular ‘aesthetic experience’ when looking at a piece of abstract or contemporary art, while watching an opera, or while reading a novel by Dostoevsky.
An individual perspective
One’s experience of art is subjective as individual tastes differ. And yet, if we are to claim that some artworks are better than others, or explain why some artworks stand the test of time and are valued by generations, we need to refer to some standards by which to judge them. Are there any features artworks must have to be considered as art? Should artworks be beautiful? Do they need to be moral? And who decides whether or not they meet this criteria?
Despite the historical interference by political and religious leaders who worry about the influence art may have in a society, debates as to what constitutes good art, aesthetically and even morally, has been a matter for debate for aestheticians.
Sometimes it takes time for something to be considered art, let alone to be considered aesthetically valuable. Think about Banksy’s graffiti art. It has been the case that unsuspecting council workers have removed graffiti from the side of a building only to later discover they have inadvertently eliminated a valuable artwork. And yet, not all graffiti is considered art or deemed valuable.
In fact, the opposite is true!
What makes Banksy an exception?
Definitions of art have changed over time. Traditional views of art usually cited ‘beauty’ as an important feature of artworks, but that has since altered. Indeed, is one meant to find the displayed urinal ‘beautiful’? An artwork need not be beautiful to be skilfully executed, meaningful and valuable.
The value of art in society
The defenders of art and its unique role in society usually claim art should be valued for its own sake. Aesthetic value is not to be valued instrumentally, for its financial value or for its status, or even for what we can learn from it or because it is deemed morally ‘good’. It may do any and/or all of these things, or none! Art is valuable because it affords an aesthetic experience.
In its creation and reception, as a form of self expression, imaginative engagement, cognitive as well as affective experience, source of individual and social reflection and contemplation, art has always been central to human life. If it is true that the arts capture and express something unique, and aesthetic experience is intrinsically valuable, then we should consider the place for the arts in society and support and value artists for the important contribution they make.
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is a senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK.
BY Dr Laura D’Olimpio
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-edits the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
BY ethics
Ethics Explainer: Existentialism
If you’ve ever pondered the meaning of existence or questioned your purpose in life, you’ve partaken in existentialist philosophy.
It would be hard to find someone who hasn’t asked themselves the big questions. What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose? Why do I exist? For thousands of years, these questions were happily answered by the belief your purpose in life was assigned prior to your creation. The existentialists, however, disagreed.
Existentialism is the philosophical belief we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Our individual purpose and meaning is not given to us by Gods, governments, teachers or other authorities.
In order to fully understand the thinking that underpins existentialism, we must first explore the idea it contradicts – essentialism.
Essentialism
Essentialism was founded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle who posited everything had an essence, including us. An essence is “a certain set of core properties that are necessary, or essential for a thing to be what it is”. A book’s essence, for example, is its pages. It could have pictures or words or be blank, be paperback or hardcover, tell a fictional story or provide factual information. Without pages though, it would cease to be a book. Aristotle claimed essence was created prior to existence. For people, this means we’re born with a predetermined purpose.
This idea seems to imply, whether you’re aware of it or not, that your purpose in life has been determined prior to your birth. And as you live your life, the decisions you make on a daily basis are contributing to your ultimate purpose, whatever that happens to be.
This was an immensely popular belief for thousands of years and gave considerable weight to religious thought that placed emphasis on an omnipotent God who created each being with a predetermined plan in mind.
If you agreed with this thinking, then you really didn’t have to challenge the meaning of life or search for your purpose. Your God already provided it for you.
Existence precedes essence
While philosophers including Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Friedrich Nietzsche questioned essentialism in the 19th century, existentialism was popularised by Jean-Paul Sartre in the mid-20th century following the horrific events of World War II.
As people questioned how something as catastrophically terrible as the Holocaust could have a predetermined purpose, existentialism provided a possible answer that perhaps it is the individual who determines their essence, not an omnipotent being.
The existentialist movement asked, “What if we exist first?”
At the time it was a revolutionary thought. You were created as a blank slate, tabula rasa, and it is up to you to discover your life’s purpose or meaning.
While not necessarily atheist, existentialists believe there is no divine intervention, fate or outside forces actively pushing you in particular directions. Every decision you make is yours. You create your own purpose through your actions.
The burden of too much freedom
This personal responsibility to shape your own life’s meaning carries significant anxiety-inducing weight. Many of us experience the so-called existential crisis where we find ourselves questioning our choices, career, relationships and the point of it all. We have so many options. How do we pick the right ones to create a meaningful and fulfilling life?
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does” – John-Paul Sartre
Freedom is usually presented positively but Sartre posed that your level of freedom is so great it’s “painful”. To fully comprehend your freedom, you have to accept that only you are responsible for creating or failing to create your personal purpose. Without rules or order to guide you, you have so much choice that freedom is overwhelming.
The absurd
Life can be silly. But this isn’t quite what existentialists mean when they talk about the absurd. They define absurdity as the search for answers in an answerless world. It’s the idea of being born into a meaningless place that then requires you to make meaning.
The absurd posits there is no one truth, no inherent rules or guidelines. This means you have to develop your own moral code to live by. Sartre cautioned looking to authority for guidance and answers because no one has them and there is no one truth.
Living authentically and bad faith
Coined by Sartre, the phrase “living authentically” means to live with the understanding of your responsibility to control your freedom despite the absurd. Any purpose or meaning in your life is created by you.
If you choose to live by someone else’s rules, be that anywhere between religion and the wishes of your parents, then you are refusing to accept the absurd. Sartre named this refusal “bad faith”, as you are choosing to live by someone else’s definition of meaning and purpose – not your own.
So, what’s the meaning of life?
If you’re now thinking like an existentialist, then the answer to this question is both elementary and infinitely complex. You have the answer, you just have to own it.
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Ethics Explainer: Hope
We hope for fine weather on weekends and the best for our buddies – an obvious statement that hardly screams ethics.
But within our everyday desires for good things, lies a duty to each other and ourselves to only act on reasonably held hopes.
The ethics of hope
One of Immanuel Kant’s simple but resonant maxims is ‘ought implies can’. In other words, if you believe someone has an ethical responsibility to do something, it must be possible. No person is under any obligation to do what is impossible. You might call me a bad person for failing to fly through the sky and save someone falling from a great height. But your condemnation will be rejected as ill-founded for the simple reason only fictional characters can perform that feat.
Many other things – including extremely difficult things – are reasonably expected of others. A person might promise to climb Mount Everest (or at least make a serious attempt) prior to their 50thbirthday. This might present the greatest challenge imaginable. Yet we know scaling the heights of Everest is possible. As such, the person who made this promise is bound to honour their commitment.
Of course, at the time of making such a promise, no person can know with absolute certainty they will be able to meet the obligation they have taken on. There are just too many variables outside of their control that can frustrate their best laid plans. Weather conditions might lead to the closure of the mountain. The need to provide personal care to a loved one could extend well beyond any anticipated period. Given this, our ethical commitments are almost always tinged with a measure of hope.
What is hope?
Hope is an expectation that some desirable circumstance will arise. Hope sometimes blends into something closer to ‘faith’ – where belief about a state of affairs cannot be proven. However, for most people, most of the time, ‘hope’ is a reasonable expectation.
For example, if a person makes commitments that critically depend on other people keeping their promises, that person cannot know for certain they can honour their word. Yet, if these people are known and trusted, perhaps based on past experience, then a hopeful dependence on their performance would be reasonable.
The same can be said of other commitments, such as promising to meet for a picnic on a particular day. You might make the plan in the hopeful expectation of fine weather and do so with good grounds based on a checked forecast predicting clear skies.
There are two things to be noted here. First, some aspects of hope depend (for their reasonableness) on the ethical commitments of other people (for example, to keep promises). It follows there will often be a reciprocal ethical aspect to the practice of ‘reasonable’ hoping.
Second, it’s not enough to be naively hopeful. Instead, one needs to take reasonable efforts to ensure there is some basis for relying on a hoped-for circumstance. This is especially so if the hoped-for circumstance is of critical importance to matters of grave ethical significance – such as making a promise to someone.
Given this, there may be good grounds to calibrate commitments in line with the degree to which you might reasonably hope for a particular circumstance to prevail. For example, rather than making an open commitment to meet for a particular picnic on a particular day it might be better to qualify the point by saying, “I promise to meet you if the weather is fine”.
‘It’s not enough to be naively hopeful.’
We often see the absence of this kind of forethought when it comes to the promises made by politicians during elections. They will make promises – probably based on hopeful projections about the future – only to find themselves accused of lying or having acted in bad faith when the promise is not honoured.
It’s insufficient for the politician to say they merely ‘hoped’ to be able to keep their word and that they now find their situation to be unexpectedly different. It would have been far better and far more responsible to qualify the promise in line with what might explicitly and reasonably be hoped for.
Two final comments. First, it should be understood a person often has some control over whether or not their hopes can be realised. As such, each person is responsible for those of their actions that impinge on the way they meet their obligations – we are not simply ‘bystanders’ who can idly hope for certain outcomes without lifting a finger to make them manifest.
Second, given our inability to know what the future holds, hope always plays a role in the process of making ethical commitments. The key thing is to be reasonable in what we hope for and to calibrate our commitments accordingly.
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The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Anarchy
Anarchy isn’t just street protests and railing against the establishment.
It’s a serious political philosophy that believes people will flourish in a leaderless society without a centralised government. It may sound like a crazy ideal, but it’s almost worked before.
A hastily circled letter Aetched into bus windows and spray painted on walls. The vigilante anarchist character known only as V from V for Vendetta. The Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten singing, “I wanna be anarchy”.
Think of anarchy and you might just imagine an 80s punk throwing a Molotov cocktail in a street protest. Easily conjuring rich imagery with a railing-against-the-orthodoxy rebelliousness, there’s more to anarchy than cool cachet. At the heart of this ideology is decentralisation.
Disorder versus political philosophy
The word anarchy is often used as an adjective to describe a state of public chaos. You’ll hear it dropped in news reports of civil unrest and riots with flavours of vandalism and violence. But anarchists aren’t traditionally looters throwing bricks through shop windows.
Anarchy is a political philosophy. Philographics – a series that defines complex philosophical concepts with a short sentence and simple graphic – describes anarchy as:
“A range of views that oppose the idea of the state as a means of governance, instead advocating a society based on non-hierarchical relationships.”
Instead of structured governments enforcing laws, anarchists believe people should be free to voluntarily organise and cooperate as they please. And because governments around the world are already established states with legal systems, many anarchists see their work is to abolish them.
The word anarchy derives from the ancient Greek term anarchia, which basically means “without leader” or “without authority”. Some literal translations put it as “not hierarchy”.
That may conjure notions of disorder, but the founder of anarchy imagined it to be a peaceful, cooperative thing.
“Anarchy is order without power” – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the ‘father of anarchy’
The “father of anarchy”
The first known anarchist was French philosopher and politician Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. It’s perhaps notable he took office after the French Revolution of 1848 overthrew the monarchy. Eight years prior, Proudhon published the defining theoretical text that influenced later anarchist movements.
“Property is theft!”, Proudhon declared in his book, What is Property? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle of Right and Government. His starting point for this argument was the Christian point of view that God gave Earth to all people.
This idea that natural resources are for equal share and use is also referred to as the universal commons. Proudhon felt it followed that private ownership meant land was stolen from everyone who had a right to benefit from it.
This premise is a crucial basis to Proudhon’s anarchist thesis because it meant people weren’t rightfully free to move in and use lands as they wished or required. Their means of production had been taken from them.
Anarchy’s heyday: the Spanish Civil War
Anarchy has usually been a European pursuit and it has waxed and waned in popularity. It had its most influence and reach in the years leading up to and during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), a time of great unrest and inequality between the working classes and ruling elite – which turned out to be a breeding ground for revolutionary thought.
Like the communist and socialist movements that grew alongside them, anarchists opposed the monarchy, land owning oligarchs and the military general Francisco Franco, who eventually took power.
Many different threads of the ideology gained popularity across Spain – some of it militant, some of it peaceful – and its sentiment was widely shared among everyday people.
Anarchist terrorists
While violence was never part of Proudhon’s ideal, it did become a key feature of some of the more well known examples of anarchy. First there was Spain which, perhaps by the nature of a civil war, saw many violent clashes between armed anarchists and the military.
Then there were the anarchist bomb attackers who operated around the world, perhaps most notably in late 19thand early 20thcentury America. They were basically yesteryear’s lone wolf terrorists.
Luigi Galleani was an Italian pro-violence anarchist based in the United States. He was eventually deported for taking part in and inspiring many bomb attacks. Reportedly, his followers, called Galleanists, were behind the 1920 Wall Street bombing that killed over 30 people and injured hundreds – the most severe terror attack in the US at the time.
No one ever claimed responsibility or was arrested for this bombing but fingers have long pointed at anti-capitalist anarchists inspired by post WWI conditions.
Could it come back?
While the law-breaking mayhem that can accompany a protest and the chaos of a collapsing society are labelled anarchy, there’s more to this sociopolitical philosophy. And if the conditions are right, we may just see another anarchist age.
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BY Kym Middleton
Former Head of Editorial & Events at TEC, Kym Middleton is a freelance writer, artistic producer, and multi award winning journalist with a background in long form TV, breaking news and digital documentary. Twitter @kymmidd
Ethics Explainer: Scepticism
Scepticism is an attitude that treats every claim to truth as up for debate.
Religion, philosophy, science, history, psychology – generally, sceptics believe every source of knowledge has its limits, and it’s up to us to figure out what those are.
Sometimes confused with cynicism, a general suspicion of people and their motives, ethical scepticism is about questioning if something is right just because others say it is. If not, what will make it so?
Scepticism has played a crucial role in refining our basic understandings of ourselves and the world we live in. It is behind how we know everything is made of atoms, time isn’t linear, and that since Earth is a sphere, it’s quicker for planes to fly towards either pole instead of in a straight line.
Ancient ideas
In Ancient Greece, some sceptics went so far as to argue since nothing can claim truth it’s best to suspend judgement as long as possible. This enjoyed a revival in 17th century Europe, prompting one of the Western canon’s most famous philosophers, René Descartes, to mount a forceful critique. But before doing so, he wanted to argue for scepticism in as holistic a fashion as possible.
Descartes wanted to prove certain truths were innate and could not be contested. To do so, he started to pick out every claim to truth he could think of – including how we see the world – and challenge it.
For Descartes, perception was unreliable. You might think the world around you is real because you can experience it through your senses, but how do you know you’re not dreaming? After all, dreams certainly feel real when you’re in them. For a little modern twist, who’s to say you’re not a brain in a vat connected up to a supercomputer, living in a virtual reality uploaded into your buzzing synapses?
This line of thinking led Descartes to question his own existence. In the midst of a deeply valuable intellectual freak out, he eventually came to realise an irrefutable claim – his doubting proved he was thinking. From here, he deduced that ‘if I think’, then I exist.
“I think, therefore I am.”
It’s the quote you see plastered over t-shirts, mugs, and advertising for schools and universities. In Latin it reads, “Cogito ergo sum”.
Through a process of elimination, Descartes created a system of verifying truth claims through deduction and logic. He promoted this and quiet reflection as a way of living and came to be known as a rationalist.
The arrival of the empiricist
In the 18th century, a powerful case was made against rationalism by David Hume, an empiricist. Hume was sceptical of logical deduction’s ability to direct how people live and see the world. According to Hume, all claims to truth arise from experiences, custom and habit – not reason.
If we followed Descartes’ argument to its conclusion and assessed every single claim to truth logically, we wouldn’t be able to function. Navigating throughout the world requires a degree of trust based on past experiences. We don’t know for sure that the ground beneath us will stay solid. But considering it generally does, we trust (through inductive reasoning) that it will stay that way.
Hume argued memories and “passions” always, eventually, overrule reason. We are not what we think, but what we experience.
Perhaps you don’t question the nature of existence at the level of Descartes, but on some level, we are all sceptics. Scepticism is how we figure out who to confide in, what our triggers are, or if the next wellness fad is worth trying out. Acknowledging how powerful our habits and emotions are is key to recognising when we’re tempted to overlook the facts in favour of how something makes us feel.
But part of being a sceptic is knowing what argument will convince you. Otherwise, it can be tempting to reduce every claim to truth as a challenge to your personal autonomy.
Scepticism, in its best form, has opened up mind-boggling ways of thinking about ourselves and the world around us. Using it to be combative is a shortsighted and corrosive way to undermine the difficult task of living a well examined life.
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The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Stoicism
What do boxers, political figures, and that guy who’s addicted to Reddit all have in common?
They’ve probably employed the techniques of stoicism. It’s an ancient Greek philosophy that offers to answer that million dollar question, what is the best life we can live?
Hard work, altruism, prayer or relationships don’t take the top dog spot for the stoic. Instead, they zoom out and divide the world (if you’ll forgive the simplicity) into black and white: what you can control and what you can’t.
It’s the lemonade school of philosophy. The central tenet being:
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”
Stoics believe that everything around us operates according to the law of cause and effect, creating a rational structure of the universe called logos. This structure meant that something as awful as all your worldly possessions sinking into the ocean (Zeno of Cyprus), or as annoying as missing the last bus by a quarter of a minute, don’t make your life any worse. Your life remains as it is, nothing more, nothing less.
If you suffer, you suffer because of the judgements you’ve made about them. The ideal life where that didn’t happen is a fantasy, and there’s no point focusing on it. Just expect that pain, grief, disappointment and injustice are going to happen. It’s what you do in response to them that counts.
This philosophy was founded by said Zeno, who preached the virtues of tolerance and self control on a stone colonnade called the stoa poikile. It’s where stoicism found its name. It flourished in the Roman empire, with one of its most famous students being the emperor himself, Marcus Aurelius. Fragments of his personal writing survive in Meditations, revealing counsel remarkably humble and chastising for a man of his power.
Stoicism on emotion
Emotion presents an opportunity. There’s a reactive, immediate response, like blaming others when you feel ashamed, or panicking when you feel anxious. But there is a better reaction the stoics aim for. It matches the degree of impact, is appropriate for the context, is rationally sound, and in line with a good character.
Being angry at your partner for forgetting to put away the dishes isn’t the same as being angry at an oppressive government for torturing its citizens. But if it’s the emotion you focus on, all your good intentions aren’t guaranteed to stop you from messing up. After all, the red haze is formidable.
By practising this “slow thinking” and making it a habit, you can cultivate the same self discipline to develop virtues like courage and justice. It’s these that will ultimately give your life meaning.
For others, emotions are more like the weather. It rains and it shines, and you just deal with it.
Stoicism assumes that focusing on control and analysing emotion is how virtues are forged. But some critics, including philosopher Martha Nussbaum, say that approach misses a fundamental part of being human. After all, control is transient too. Emotions – loving and caring for someone or something to such an extent that losing it devastates you – doesn’t make you less human. It’s part of being human in the first place.
Other critics say that it leads to apathy, something collective political action can’t afford. Sandy Grant, philosopher at University of Cambridge, says stoicism’s “control fantasy” is ridiculous in our interdependent, globalised world. “It is no longer a matter of ‘What can I control?’ but rather of ‘Given that I, as all others, am implicated, what should I do?”
Controlling emotion to navigate through life cautiously may not be desirable to you. But it is easy to see how channelling stoicism in certain situations can help us manage life’s unfortunate moments – whether they be missing the bus or something more harrowing.
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Ethics Explainer: Authenticity
Is the universe friendly? Is it fundamentally good? Peaceful? Created with a purpose in mind?
Or is it distant and impersonal? Indifferent to what you want? A never ending meaningless space? We all have ideas of how the world truly is. Maybe that’s been influenced by your religion, your school, your government, or even the video games you played as a kid.
Whatever the case is, how we think about ourselves and what we consider a life well spent, has a lot to do with the relationship we have with the world. And that brings us to this month’s Ethics Explainer.
Authenticity
To behave authentically means to behave in a way that responds to the world as it truly is, and not how we’d like it to be. What does this mean?
Well, this question takes us to two different schools of thought in philosophy, with two very different ideas of the nature of the world we live in. The first one is essentialism. Now, essentialism is a belief that find its roots in Ancient Greece, and in the writings of Socrates and Plato.
They took it as a given that everything that exists has its own essence. That is, a certain set of core properties that are necessary, or essential, for it to be what it is. Take a knife. It doesn’t matter if it has a wooden handle or a metal one. But once you take the blade away, it becomes not-a-knife. The blade is its essential property because it gives the knife its defining function.
Plato and Aristotle believed that people had essences as well, and that these existed before they did. This essence, or telos, was only acquired and expressed properly through virtuous action, a process that formed the ideal human. According to the Greeks, to be authentic was to live according to your essence. And you did that by living ethically in the choices you make and the character you express.
By developing intellectual virtues like curiosity or critical thinking, and character virtues like courage, wisdom, and patience, it’d get easier to tell what you should or shouldn’t do. This was the standard view of the world until the early 19th century, and is still the case for many people today.
The rise of existentialism
But some thinkers began to wonder, what if that wasn’t true? What if the universe has no inherent purpose? What if we don’t have one either? What if we exist first, then create our own purpose?
This belief was called existentialism. Existentialists believe that neither us nor the universe has an actual, predetermined purpose. We need to create it for ourselves. Because of this, nothing we do or are is actually inherently meaningful. We were free to do whatever we wanted – a fate Jean Paul-Sartre, French existential philosopher, found quite awful.
Being authentic meant facing the full weight of this shocking freedom, and staying strong. To simply follow what your religious leader, parent, school, or boss told you to do would be to act in “bad faith”. It’s like burying your head in the sand and pretending that something out there has meaning. Meaning that doesn’t exist.
By accepting that any meaning in life has to be given by you, and that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are just a matter of perspective, your choices become all you have. And ensuring that they are chosen by the values you accept to live by, instead of any predetermined ones etched in stone, makes them authentic.
This extends beyond the individual. If the world is going to have any of the things most of us value, like justice and order, we’re going to have to put it there ourselves.
Otherwise, they won’t exist.
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Ethics Explainer: The Turing Test
Much was made of a recent video of Duplex – Google’s talking AI – calling up a hair salon to make a reservation. The AI’s way of speaking was uncannily human, even pausing at moments to say “um”.
Some suggested Duplex had managed to pass the Turing test, a standard for machine intelligence that was developed by Alan Turing in the middle of the 20th century. But what exactly is the story behind this test and why are people still using it to judge the success of cutting edge algorithms?
Mechanical brains and emotional humans
In the late 1940s, when the first digital computers had just been built, a debate took place about whether these new “universal machines” could think. While pioneering computer scientists like Alan Turing and John von Neumann believed that their machines were “mechanical brains”, others felt that there was an essential difference between human thought and computer calculation.
Sir Geoffrey Jefferson, a prominent brain surgeon of the time, argued that while a computer could simulate intelligence, it would always be lacking:
“No mechanism could feel … pleasure at its successes, grief when its valves fuse, be warmed by flattery, be made miserable by its mistakes, be charmed by sex, be angry or miserable when it cannot get what it wants.”
In a radio interview a few weeks later, Turing responded to Jefferson’s claim by arguing that as computers become more intelligent, people like him would take a “grain of comfort, in the form of a statement that some particularly human characteristic could never be imitated by a machine.”
The following year, Turing wrote a paper called ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ in which he devised a simple method by which to test whether machines can think.
The test was a proposed a situation in which a human judge talks to both a computer and a human through a screen. The judge cannot see the computer or the human but can ask them questions via the computer. Based on the answers alone, the human judge had to determine which is which. If the computer was able to fool 30 percent of judges that it was human, then the computer was said to have passed the test.
Turing claimed that he intended for the test to be a conversation stopper, a way of preventing endless metaphysical speculation about the essence of our humanity by positing that intelligence is just a type of behaviour, not an internal quality. In other words, intelligence is as intelligence does, regardless of whether it done by machine or human.
Does Google Duplex pass?
Well, yes and no. In Google’s video, it is obvious that the person taking the call believes they are talking to human. So, it does satisfy this criterion. But an important thing about Turing’s original test was that to pass, the computer had to be able to speak about all topics convincingly, not just one.
In fact, in Turing’s paper, he plays out an imaginary conversation with an advanced future computer and human judge, with the judge asking questions and the computer providing answers:
Q: Please write me a sonnet on the subject of the Forth Bridge.
A: Count me out on this one. I never could write poetry.
Q: Add 34957 to 70764.
A: (Pause about 30 seconds and then give as answer) 105621.
Q Do you play chess?
A: Yes.
Q: I have K at my K1, and no other pieces. You have only K at K6 and R at R1. It is your move. What do you play?
A: (After a pause of 15 seconds) R-R8 mate.
The point Turing is making here is that a truly smart machine has to have general intelligence in a number of different areas of human interest. As it stands, Google’s Duplex is good within the limited domain of making a reservation but would probably not be able to do much beyond this unless reprogrammed.
The boundaries around the human
While Turing intended for his test to be a conversation stopper for questions of machine intelligence, it has had the opposite effect, fuelling half a century of debate about what the test means, whether it is a good measure of intelligence, or if it should still be used as a standard.
Most experts have come to agree, over time, that the Turing test is not a good way to prove machine intelligence, as the constraints of the test can easily be gamed, as was the case with the bot Eugene Goostman, who allegedly passed the test a few years ago.
But the Turing test is nevertheless still considered a powerful philosophical tool to re-evaluate the boundaries around what we consider normal and human. In his time, Turing used his test as a way to demonstrate how people like Jefferson would never be willing to accept a machine as being intelligence not because it couldn’t act intelligently, but because wasn’t “like us”.
Turing’s desire to test boundaries around what was considered “normal” in his time perhaps sprung from his own persecution as a gay man. Despite being a war hero, he was persecuted for his homosexuality, and convicted in 1952 for sleeping with another man. He was punished with chemical castration and eventually took his own life.
During these final years, the relationship between machine intelligence and his own sexuality became interconnected in Turing’s mind. He was concerned the same bigotry and fear that hounded his life would ruin future relationships between humans and intelligent computers. A year before he took his life he wrote the following letter to a friend:
“I’m afraid that the following syllogism may be used by some in the future.
Turing believes machines think
Turing lies with men
Therefore machines do not think
– Yours in distress,
Alan”
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Ethics Explainer: Perfection
We take perfection to mean flawlessness. But it seems we can’t agree on what the fundamental human flaw is. Is it our attachment to things like happiness, status, or security – things that are about as solid as a tissue? Our propensity for evil? Or is it our body and its insatiable appetite for satisfaction?
Four different philosophical traditions have answered this in their own ways and tell us how we can achieve perfection.
Platonism
Plato’s idea of perfection is articulated in his Theory of Forms. The Forms represent the abstract, ideal moulds of all things and concepts in existence, rather than actual things themselves. In short, the idea of something is more perfect than the tangible thing itself.
Take ‘red’ for example. Each of us will have a different understanding of what this means – red lipstick, a red brick house, a red cricket ball… But these are all different manifestations of red so which is the perfect one? For Platonists, the perfect, ideal, universal ‘red’ exists outside of space and time and is only discoverable through lots and lots of philosophical reflection.
Plato wrote:
He will do this [perceive the Forms] most perfectly who approaches the object with thought alone, without associating any sight with his thoughts, or dragging in any sense perception with his reasoning, but who, using pure thought alone, tries to track down each reality pure and by itself, freeing himself as far as possible from eyes, ears, and in a word, from the whole body, because the body confuses the soul and does not allow it to acquire truth and wisdom whenever it is associated with it.
In Platonist thought, the body is a distraction from the abstract thought necessary for philosophical speculation. Its fundamental flaw? Its carnal desires that shackle the soul.
Perfection for the individual, to sum up, is the arrival back to the soul’s state of pure contemplation of the Forms. This out of body state of contemplation is far from the idea of the perfect face and physique we often think about today. Indeed, a perfect physical form for Palto is impossible. It is all in the imagination.
Hinduism
In Hinduism’s Advaita school of philosophy, perfection means the full comprehension and acceptance of Oneness.
It’s when you realise your soul (or your atman) is the same as everyone else’s and you are all part of the one, unchanging, metaphysical reality (the Brahman). In this state of realisation, the always changing, material world of maya reveals itself to be an illusion and anything attached to this world, including your actions, are illusions as well. (There are parallels with this and the idea of Plato’s Cave, which is narratively conceived of in The Matrix.)
To attain this status of perfection, an individual must surrender to their caste role and perform that duty to excellence. No matter what they did, they would understand their actions had no effect on the Brahman and to believe so, was a trick of the ego. They focused on renouncing all earthly desires and striving to become completely detached from the world through the specific rituals of their caste role.
Krishna said:
A man obtains perfection by being devoted to his own proper action. Hear then how one who is intent on his own action finds perfection. By worshipping him [Brahman], from whom all beings arise and by whom all this is pervaded, through his own proper action, a man attains perfection … He whose intelligence is unattached everywhere, whose self is conquered, who is free from desire, he obtains, through renunciation, the supreme perfection of actionlessness. Learn from me, briefly, O Arjuna, how he who has attained perfection, also attains to Brahman, the highest state of wisdom.
By “actionlessness”, Krishna means the supreme effort of surrendering everything, including your own actions, so they become “non-action”. If everything is an illusion in the face of Brahman, we mean everything.
Christianity
A sainted bishop named Gregory of Nyssa classified perfection as being and acting just like God’s human form, Christ – that is, completely free of evil. Nyssa said:
This, therefore, is perfection in the Christian life in my judgement, namely, the participation of one’s soul and speech and activities in all of the names by which Christ is signified, so that the perfect holiness, according to the eulogy of Paul, is taken upon oneself in “the whole body and soul and spirit”, continuously safeguarded against being mixed with evil. Perfection lies in the total transformation of the individual. He/she must live, act, and essentially, be all that Christ was, meaning that, as Christ was God manifest in human form, completely free from evil, so too the Christian individual must sever all evil from his/her being.
While the Socratic ideal of perfection requires pure “abstract” thought, and the Hindu ideal requires sublimating individualism into Oneness, the Christian ideal requires cultivating the characteristics of Christ and expelling all that is unlike him from yourself.
Sufism
The Sufi scholar Ibn ‘Arabi had a concept of perfection that echoes the three discussed above. For him, perfection is the individual’s complete knowledge of the abstract and the material, leading to a prophetic (or Christ like) character.
Let’s break that down. He says:
The image of perfection is complete only with knowledge of both the ephemeral and the eternal, the rank of knowledge being perfected only by both aspects. Similarly, the various other grades of existence are perfected, since being is divided into eternal and non-eternal or ephemeral. Eternal Being is God’s being for Himself, while non-eternal being is the being of God in the forms of the latent Cosmos.
The beginning of the passage states that perfection requires knowledge of the eternal and the material. The eternal is God in Himself, and the non-eternal is the Cosmos, including humanity, who in striving for the perfection of the eternal, expresses it.
But Ibn ‘Arabi stresses neither of these knowledges negate the other. In fact, by learning only of the eternal, or only of the material, both would be incomplete since they are simply different manifestations of the same Being. Perfection, then, is not about negation – but continual striving to transformation. Onwards and upwards!
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