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Rejection of human solidarity, obtuse and cynical indifference to the suffering of others, abdication of the intellect and of moral sense to the principle of authority, and above all, at the root of everything, a sweeping tide of cowardice, a colossal cowardice which masks itself as warring virtue, love of country and faith in an idea.

Primo Levi

Zeno’s Paradoxes

In the fifth century B.C.E., Zeno of Elea offered arguments that led to conclusions contradicting what we all know from our physical experience—that runners run, that arrows fly, and that there are many different things in the world. The arguments were paradoxes for the ancient Greek philosophers. Because many of the arguments turn crucially on the notion that space and time are infinitely divisible, Zeno was the first person to show that the concept of infinity is problematical.

In the Achilles Paradox, Achilles races to catch a slower runner—for example, a tortoise that is crawling in a line away from him. The tortoise has a head start, so if Achilles hopes to overtake it, he must run at least as far as the place where the tortoise presently is, but by the time he arrives there, it will have crawled to a new place, so then Achilles must run at least to this new place, but the tortoise meanwhile will have crawled on, and so forth. Achilles will never catch the tortoise, says Zeno. Therefore, good reasoning shows that fast runners never can catch slow ones. So much the worse for the claim that any kind of motion really occurs, Zeno says in defense of his mentor Parmenides who had argued that motion is an illusion.

Although practically no scholars today would agree with Zeno’s conclusion, we cannot escape the paradox by jumping up from our seat and chasing down a tortoise, nor by saying Zeno should have constructed a new argument in which Achilles takes better aim and runs to some other target place ahead of where the tortoise is. Because Zeno was correct in saying Achilles needs to run at least to all those places where the tortoise once was, what is required is an analysis of Zeno's own argument.
There are ten known paradoxes. In the Achilles Paradox, Zeno assumed distances and durations can be endlessly divided into (what modern mathematicians call a transfinite infinity of indivisible) parts, and he assumed there are too many of these parts for the runner to complete. Aristotle's treatment said Zeno should have assumed instead that there are only potential infinities, so that at any time the hypothetical division into parts produces only a finite number of parts, and the runner has time to complete all these parts. Aristotle's treatment became the generally accepted solution until the late 19th century. The current standard treatment or so-called "Standard Solution" implies Zeno was correct to conclude that a runner's path contains an actual infinity of parts at any time during the motion, but he was mistaken to assume this is too many parts. This treatment employs the mathematical apparatus of calculus which has proved its indispensability for the development of modern science. The article ends by exploring newer treatments of the paradoxes—and related paradoxes such as Thomson's Lamp Paradox—that were developed since the 1950s.

Supervenience and Mind

This article is an informal introduction to the concept of supervenience and the role it plays in the philosophy of mind.  It surveys some of the many ways the concept has been used to reveal the manner and degree to which mental phenomena depend on facts about our bodies and their physical features. Philosophers usually construe the supervenience relation as a relation between classes of properties, where a class of properties, F, supervenes on a class of properties, G, just in case there is no difference in F-properties without some difference in G-properties.  As David Lewis puts it, “no difference of one sort without differences of another sort” (1986, p. 14).  It is in the philosophy of mind that we find the term’s most frequent contemporary occurrence.

The goal of asking whether one set of properties supervenes on another is to better understand the ontological relation between the two sets — especially, whether the one set of properties depends entirely on the other.  Suppose, for example, that two individuals can have different moral properties while being exactly alike in terms of their actual and potential behavior; that is, suppose that one’s moral features do not supervene on one’s behavioral features.  Then we can conclude that the former depend on something more than the latter.  And if we accept this conclusion, we are then led to search for a set of properties on which our moral features do supervene, a set of properties in terms of which any two individuals must differ with any moral difference.  The goal is to isolate just that set of features on which our moral properties do wholly rely.

Suppose we succeed in identifying a set of features on which F-properties supervene (where F-properties might be moral, mental, aesthetic, economic, or any other higher-level properties).  Then we can try to discover the nature of the dependence of F-properties on the underlying G-properties (for example, behavioral, physical, neurological, or intrinsic) by asking about the manner in which the former supervene on the latter.  Is it a logical truth that a difference in F-properties requires a difference in G-properties?  Is this covariance due to the causal laws that actually obtain?  Is it a matter of metaphysical necessity?  Asking these questions about the way in which F-properties supervene may help us decide whether the dependence is, for example, a wholly analytic affair, a type of causal dependence, a matter of constitution, or a matter of genuine identity.

Supervenience: The Basic Idea

Nora’s latest sculpture has many intrinsic features, including its shape, density, texture, and constituent matter.  It also has various aesthetic properties — beauty, grace, elegance, and expressive power.  No doubt, the aesthetic properties of the sculpture are in some way and to some degree a result of its intrinsic features.  But in what way exactly, and to what degree?  Thinking in terms of supervenience is a good start to finding the answer.  Imagine an artwork, x*, that is intrinsically indistinguishable from Nora’s sculpture, x — a perfect duplicate of x.  Is it possible that despite the indiscernability, x* might differ aesthetically from x?  If it is not possible for x and the intrinsically indiscernable x* to differ aesthetically, then we say that the object’s aesthetic features supervene on its intrinsic features, where a class of properties, F, supervenes on a class of properties, G, just in case a difference in F-properties requires a difference in G-properties; in other words, all the same G-properties guarantee all the same F-properties.

If we decide that the object’s aesthetic properties do supervene on its intrinsic features, then we are led to inquire whether the former are identical with the latter or whether the dependence relation is of some weaker sort — for example, causal dependence or constitution.  On the other hand, if we conclude that the object’s aesthetic properties do not supervene on its intrinsic features, that is, if x* might differ aesthetically from x despite their intrinsic similarity, then we can conclude that those aesthetic properties are at least partly a function of certain relations the object bears to external items.  We are then led to ask what the relevant external relations are.  We think in terms of supervenience again, imagining various changes in x’s environment (different origins, differences in historical context, different standards of the qualified judges, differences in popular opinion), and for each of those changes we decide whether x’s aesthetic features might also differ, until we isolate just those features of the environment on which the aesthetic properties do rely.  The conclusion would then be that the object’s aesthetic features supervene on its intrinsic properties together with those external features.

As this line of inquiry shows, the concept of supervenience is an invaluable tool for deciding whether and how one set of properties depends on another.  An analogous line of inquiry is found in discussions of mental content.  The content of one’s mental states depends largely on what the individual is like internally — on the state of the brain and the brain’s causal relations to other parts of the body, including sense organs and limbs.  But does the content of one’s mental states depend entirely on these intrinsic features?  To decide this issue, we consider whether it is possible for an indistinguishable individual, a molecule-for-molecule duplicate, to differ in terms of the content of her mental states.  And thanks to the thought experiments of Hilary Putnam (1973, 1975) and Tyler Burge (1979), it is widely thought that intrinsic duplicates can indeed differ in the content of their mental states.  Putnam has us imagine a twin-earth that is exactly like earth except that what they call “water” on twin-earth is comprised of something other than H2O molecules.  The content of your water-thoughts, it seems, differs from the content of your doppelganger’s “water”-thoughts on twin-earth — simply because of the difference in the liquid toward which those thoughts are directed.  (But note that Putnam’s example is actually designed to show a difference in linguistic content, meaning, which does not in itself entail a difference in mental content.)  Likewise, Burge shows that given suitable differences in surrounding linguistic practice, the thoughts one expresses with the word ‘arthritis’ might differ in content from those that one’s doppelganger expresses.  For example, if your duplicate inhabits a possible world in which ‘arthritis’ is regularly used to describe various conditions in addition to inflammation of the joints, then it seems that the content of the duplicate’s ‘arthritis’ thoughts will differ from yours.  Examples such as these seem to show that the content of one’s mental states does not supervene on one’s intrinsic features alone, but only on a set of features that includes features of one’s environment.

While Putnam and Burge do not use the term ‘supervenience’ in the essays mentioned above (though Burge does use it in his 1986 discussion of externalism), it is clear that the concept of “no difference of one sort without differences of another sort” is being utilized.  It was Davidson’s use of ‘supervenience’ in “Mental Events” (1970) that made the term popular in the philosophy of mind.

Sir Francis Bacon - Life and Thought

Sir Francis Bacon (later Lord Verulam and the Viscount St. Albans) was an English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. Early in his career he claimed “all knowledge as his province” and afterwards dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and re-structuring of traditional learning. To take the place of the established tradition (a miscellany of Scholasticism, humanism, and natural magic), he proposed an entirely new system based on empirical and inductive principles and the active development of new arts and inventions, a system whose ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for “the use and benefit of men” and the relief of the human condition.

At the same time that he was founding and promoting this new project for the advancement of learning, Bacon was also moving up the ladder of state service. His career aspirations had been largely disappointed under Elizabeth I, but with the ascension of James his political fortunes rose. Knighted in 1603, he was then steadily promoted to a series of offices, including Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613), and eventually Lord Chancellor (1618). While serving as Chancellor, he was indicted on charges of bribery and forced to leave public office. He then retired to his estate where he devoted himself full time to his continuing literary, scientific, and philosophical work. He died in 1626, leaving behind a cultural legacy that, for better or worse, includes most of the foundation for the triumph of technology and for the modern world as we currently know it.

Thought and Writings

In a way Bacon’s descent from political power was a fortunate fall, for it represented a liberation from the bondage of public life resulting in a remarkable final burst of literary and scientific activity. As Renaissance scholar and Bacon expert Brian Vickers has reminded us, Bacon’s earlier works, impressive as they are, were essentially products of his “spare time.” It was only during his last five years that he was able to concentrate exclusively on writing and produce, in addition to a handful of minor pieces:
Two substantial volumes of history and biography, The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh and The History of the Reign of King Henry the Eighth.

De Augmentis Scientiarum (an expanded Latin version of his earlier Advancement of Learning).

The final 1625 edition of his Essayes, or Counsels.

The remarkable Sylva Sylvarum, or A Natural History in Ten Centuries (a curious hodge-podge of scientific experiments, personal observations, speculations, ancient teachings, and analytical discussions on topics ranging from the causes of hiccups to explanations for the shortage of rain in Egypt). Artificially divided into ten “centuries” (that is, ten chapters, each consisting of one hundred items), the work was apparently intended to be included in Part Three of the Magna Instauratio.
His utopian science-fiction novel The New Atlantis, which was published in unfinished form a year after his death.
Various parts of his unfinished magnum opus Magna Instauratio (or Great Instauration), including a “Natural History of Winds” and a “Natural History of Life and Death.”

These late productions represented the capstone of a writing career that spanned more than four decades and encompassed virtually an entire curriculum of literary, scientific, and philosophical studies.

The Self in Philosophy

 

The Place of the Self

The idea of the self covers a central role in most philosophical branches. For instance, in metaphysics, the self has been seen as the starting point of inquiry (both in the empiricist and rationalist traditions) or as the entity whose investigation is most deserving and challenging (Socratic philosophy). In ethics and political philosophy, the self is the key concept to explain freedom of the will as well as individual responsibility.

The Self in Modern Philosophy

It is in the seventeenth century, with Descartes, that the idea of the self takes a central place in the Western tradition. Descartes stressed the autonomy of the first person: I can realize that I am existing regardless of what the world I live in is like. In other words, for Descartes the cognitive foundation of my own thinking is independent of its ecological relationships; factors such as gender, race, social status, upbringing are all irrelevant to capture the idea of the self. This perspective on the topic will have crucial consequences for the centuries to come.

Kantian Perspectives

The author that developed the Cartesian perspective in the most radical and appealing way is Kant. According to Kant, each person is an autonomous being capable of envisaging courses of action that transcend any ecological relationship (customs, upbringing, gender, race, social status, emotional situation …) Such a conception of the autonomy of the self will then play a central role in the formulation of human rights: each and every human being is entitled to such rights precisely because of the respect that each human self merits in as much as it is an autonomous agent. Kantian perspectives have been declined in several different version over the past two centuries; they constitute one of the strongest and most interesting theoretical core attributing a central role to the self.

Homo Economicus and the Self

The so-called homo-economicus view sees each human as an individual agent whose primary (or, in some extreme versions, sole) role for action is self-interest. Under this perspective, then, humans’ autonomy is best expressed in the quest to fulfill one’s own desires. While in this case, an analysis of the origin of desires may encourage the consideration of ecological factors, the focus of theories of the ​self based on homo-economicus see each agent as an isolated system of preferences, rather than one integrated with its environment.

The Ecological Self

Finally, the third perspective on the self sees it as a process of development that takes place within a specific ecological space. Factors such as gender, sex, race, social status, upbringing, formal education, emotional history all play a role in shaping up a self. Furthermore, most authors in this area agree that the self is dynamic, an entity that is constantly in the making: selfing is a more proper term to express such an entity.