The brain in the vat

I haven’t, so far, burdened you with news of my Epistemology class, fraught as it is with scepticism, realism, anti-realism, a priori knowledge, foundationalism, coherentism, internalism, externalism, semantic externalism, contextualism, invariantism....arrgghhhh!!!!! But recently some of these –isms were brought into focus through the consideration of a rather popular philosophical thought experiment known as ‘the brain in the vat’ (or BIV to its friends). Epistemology is the study of knowledge: what it is, how we get it, how we know we know anything, and other such interesting and fundamental issues.

In the ‘brain in the vat’ scenario, you are to imagine a brain which is en-vatted in a nutritive liquor, perhaps by a mad scientist, perhaps it just evolved that way; and it is hooked up to a computer which sends signals to it along its neural pathways. These signals reproduce exactly the sensations and thoughts that the brain would have if it was at home in a human body. Now, say this BIV had a thought of a tree. Say you have a thought of a tree. Qualitatively, the two thoughts are the same, because the computer has sent signals to the BIV which ensure that. Can we – should we – conclude that the two thoughts, yours and the BIV’s, are identical?

A philosopher who is a Semantic Externalist will say ‘no’. And his or her reason will be because the thought of a tree is meaningless unless it is caused by the external experience of a tree. In other words, your thought of the tree is informed by, referenced by, your having seen a tree at some time. The BIV’s thought of the tree is not caused by any such reference.

Why does this matter? I hear you ask. Actually, this is pretty fundamental. The problem in Epistemology is a pesky character named The Sceptic. This character is sometimes personified in a renegade philosopher, sometimes in a member of the doubting laity (such as your good self, perhaps). But even if only theoretical, The Sceptic is always there. He or she is the person who asks: ‘but how do you know that?’ One of his/her favourite questions is: ‘how do you know the external world exists?’ How do you know you have a hand? How do you know there is a tree there? How do you know you are not just dreaming? Or hallucinating? How do you know that an Evil Demon (or deceiving god) hasn’t taken you over and implanted these false ideas in your mind?

You think this sounds too weird to be bothered about? have a look at this particularly weird website.  I also refer you to the movie ‘The Matrix’, which was based on the hypothesis that the entire human race had been placed into giant vats and fed a virtual reality at the hands of a malignant artificial intelligence. You might also consider ‘The Truman Show’. How do you know you aren’t in one of those situations?

Jim Carey wonders...

Unless we can show that the ‘brain in a vat’ premise is wrong, we can’t refute the sceptic who says: ‘but how do you know that what you think you see, even what you think you think, is reality?’ The BIV scenario also throws up interesting features about the relation between mind and world, and meaning and reality, which get a lot of philosophers excited, if no-one else.

So what about the Semantic Externalist who says that the BIV hasn’t really had a ‘thought’ about a tree, because it has never experienced a tree? How does this help us refute the sceptic? If you’ll just bear with me, I now have to bring in a teensy weensy syllogism or two. This is a version of the sceptic’s argument:

1.       You do not know that you are not a brain in a vat.

2.       If you do not know that you are not a brain in a vat then you do not know that you are currently drinking water.

3.       So, you do not know that you are currently drinking water.

To overcome this valid and seemingly true logical argument, it is necessary to attack either (or both) the first or second premise. For example, you could try attacking the first premise by arguing that the mind is a complex physical system and it is not possible for your mind to exist in a matterless world (you would then be called a ‘Materialist’). You could also argue that the second premise is not logically sound.

Perhaps the anti-sceptic could come back with:

1.       I think that water is wet.

2.       No brain in a vat can think that water is wet.

3.       So, I am not a brain in a vat.

You will notice that to support premise 2 above, it is helpful to argue that the BIV’s ‘thoughts’ are not causally based and therefore it does not ‘know’ that water is wet.

Have I lost you? I think I’ve had enough myself....If you want to read more about it, the Wikipedia short-version is here; and a more scholarly Stanford Encyclopedia entry is here. 

My Epistemology lectures are given by A C Grayling, whom I have mentioned before on this blog. The lectures are erudite, swift (we have never yet filled the allotted two hours) and – to me - obscure. Professor Grayling now and then says airily “as you will know from your undergraduate epistemology...” Yeek! Since I don’t have any undergraduate epistemology, this necessitates a lot of back-reading and furious study between lectures. I make frantic notes about things I’ve never heard of (Gettier problems? What’s a Gettier problem?) and dash home to look them up. Not all of them are as dramatically interesting as the brain in a vat.

The Prof.

This week Professor Grayling favoured the class with a glimpse of his new book, forthcoming in April. It is called “The Good Book – A Humanist Bible”. It is a large hard-cover tome, vying with The Bible in terms of door-stopping usefulness. He explained that The Bible is (as you probably know) a collection of a wide variety of documents from antiquity, put together by many different authors, and heavily redacted – that means cut and pasted, inserted and rearranged, with, as Professor Grayling put it, inconvenient ‘nots’ removed: edited, in a word. He has followed the same process with his Humanists’ Bible, drawing on many historical texts, ‘shamelessly plagiarising’, as he also put it. He too has redacted and edited and re-arranged these texts. His criteria was that none of those he chose should refer to a divine being, or encourage adherence to the word of a divine being, or promise an afterlife. He told us there was a lot of good stuff in it...I will naturally snap up a copy when it hits the shops.

The book is already on on-line bookshop sites fro pre-order. Here's the blurb:

Drawing on the wisdom of 2,500 years of contemplative non-religious writing on all that it means to be human - from the origins of the universe to small matters of courtesy and kindness in everyday life - A.C. Grayling, Britain's most popular and widely read philosopher, has created a secular bible. Designed to be read as narrative and also to be dipped into for inspiration, encouragement and consolation, "The Good Book" offers a thoughtful, non-religious alternative to the many people who do not follow one of the world's great religions. Instead, going back to traditions older than Christianity, and far richer and more various, including the non-theistic philosophical and literary schools of the great civilisations of both West and East, from the Greek philosophy of classical antiquity and its contemporaneous Confucian, Mencian and Mohist schools in China, down through classical Rome, the flourishing of Indian and Arab worlds, the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, the worldwide scientific discoveries of the 19th and 20th centuries to the present, Grayling collects, edits, rearranges and organises the collective secular wisdom of the world in one highly readable volume. Contents of this title include: "Genesis"; "Proverbs"; "Histories"; "Songs"; "Wisdom Acts"; "The Lawgiver Lamentations"; "Concord Consolations"; "Sages"; and, "The Good Parables".

He told us that his 'Genesis' begins with the apple falling from the tree in Newton's garden.

Meanwhile, Professor Grayling hasn’t yet issued any essay questions for Epistemology, which on the one hand means I don’t have to start the essay struggle; but on the other hand is merely putting off the evil day. Perhaps I am just a brain in a vat and none of this is real.

Images from:

http://www.manoneileen.com/2011/02/25/intelligence-1/

http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-most-famous-thought-experiments.php/brain-in-a-vat

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/a-c-+grayling/the+good+book/7927053/

Why Philosophy?

Food for thought?

I have often been asked why I have chosen to study philosophy, of all things. Many people look a bit wistful and say that they envy me and ‘would love to do it’ if only there was the time (and, unspoken, if only there was a living to be earned from it). Others look slightly aghast, and say that they couldn’t imagine concerning themselves with something in which there is never an ‘answer’.

This morning as I read the newspaper there was yet another of those angst-ridden modern social dilemmas which seem to regularly afflict us. It seems that history teachers in Arizona have been – shock, horror – teaching Mexican American history. The politicians have passed a law to squash this endeavour, for a variety of ideological reasons I won’t go into, because they are not really relevant except insofar as they exist. The point is: revision of history? Hello?

Last weekend there was an article on the ongoing angst over use of the ‘n-word’ (ok, so I am conformist, and I also don’t want my blog to be blocked by ‘insult-filters’) in Mark Twain’s ‘Huckleberry Finn’ – to the point where there is a proposal to ‘sanitize’ the novel by changing the word. Amongst all the hand-wringing it seemed that virtually no-one had actually read the whole book – or hadn’t understood it. It is clearly abolitionist, which surely changes the debate. Here's an article succumbing to the perceived 'need' for censorship.

However, my aim here is not to debate these issues, but just to let out the secret that in the privacy of our usually less-than salubrious lecture rooms, we of the philosophy faculties of Birkbeck and Kings College London abandon the horribly restrictive notion of ‘political correctness’. Thank goodness we are not having our debates in the full glare of public scrutiny, and we don’t have to mind the sensitive toes of whole varieties of constituencies. Don’t get me wrong – humankind are social beasts, and we all must live together and hopefully we can find the most suitable way to do that. But ‘political correctness’, or a misunderstanding of it, has the strong tendency to stifle the debates that really should be had.

The fierce Herr Nietzsche

For example: you might like (or you might not like, depending upon the strength of your stomach for these things) to be a fly on the wall in our Nietzsche lectures. There, the professor strides about explaining how Nietzsche characterised the Christian as a bad case of repressed drives, turned on him/herself, leading to horrible self-hate and a view that the after-life is something to aspire to rather than this life; to say nothing of creating an abhorrence of bodily functions of all kinds. We then moved on to Nietzsche’s ‘Genealogy of Morality’ where he characterises the Jewish people as ‘slaves’ under Roman ‘masters’ and has a theory about the Jews underhandedly making up Christianity and tricking the Romans into it, all as a kind of revenge for the powerlessness of their position.  (Just to interpolate, he also considered the Jews to be ‘creative’ for doing this, and the text doesn’t support the anti-Semitism he was later accused of).

Nevertheless, other than in a philosophy classroom, these frank dissections of such matters could cause – at the least – a bit of discomfort. At the worst, you could get your head kicked in, figuratively or even literally. Just for discussing.  Yet Nietzsche is an important and pivotal thinker with great insights into human psychology and some deeply important things to say about the role of religion (and many other things) in human life. It is utterly exciting to not merely read these thoughts, but to hear scholars and engaged alumni debating the ideas.

Often I find myself reading the press these days, where some human foible or other is related, and reacting with the thought ‘but surely you know...’ My middle of the road western liberal ideology is undergoing a subtle shift, and I find myself reacting to news developments in the world not with a ‘knee-jerk’ or ‘gut reaction ‘ ‘feel’, but with a question, or with a different paradigmatic viewpoint.

Hey – I just used the word ‘paradigmatic’ in a sentence. That proves I’m a real philosophy student, right?

Apart from freedom to think without constraint, there is also the unfettered range of things with which philosophers concern themselves. If it’s interesting, there’s a class on it. If it’s uninteresting, that’s for one of the sciences to get on with. For example, I have just decided that my essay on Schopenhauer and music is in final form. It was with some regret that I had to excise, due to word limit constraints, an excellently interesting passage on how Wagner’s ‘Tristan & Isolde’ is a musical embodiment of Schoppy’s metaphysics.

In a similar way, there’s no constraint to a particular period of human history – in fact, a great deal of time is taken up dissecting the ideas of Plato, Aristotle and the pre- and post- ancient philosophers. P & A (especially A) had so much influence on what our world is today that it seems almost too much to ascribe to one (or two) sets of shoulders.  And those two lived many centuries before Christianity was even a glint in the eye of...Paul?

Waiting in the corridor for class to begin the other day, a couple of students were discussing what they were getting out of philosophy. One (who I know for a die-hard empiricist – not that there’s anything wrong with that) said that it was giving him a lot of food for thought and helping him understand new ideas. The other said that in his case he found himself becoming more confused: just when you thought you understood a subject, or had a view on it, an afternoon in philosophy class left you doubting everything and needing a re-think from scratch. ‘You should try Epistemology’, I said. ‘After that, you don’t even know if it's possible to know.'

At the moment I am not taking any classes (specifically) in what is termed ‘practical philosophy’: ethics,  political philosophy and so on (although such issues creep into everything). I find that there you can become quite angst-ridden with trying to decide what is the best way for an individual or a society to live life. I am more interested in considering ontological (or metaphysical) questions (what is the world?) and epistemological questions (how can we know anything?). These are the ones where there probably isn’t going to be an ‘answer’, folks, and even defining the question is far from easy.

I did find a quote from A C Grayling (my Epistemology lecturer) which you might enjoy:

One can describe philosophy as the attempt to make clear, and if possible to answer, a range of fundamental and puzzling questions which arise when, in a general and inclusive way, we try to understand ourselves and the universe we inhabit.  Among many other things these questions concern existence and reality, knowledge and belief, reason and reasoning, truth, meaning, and value both ethical and aesthetic. ..Philosophical problems are not problems which can be solved by empirical means – by looking through a telescope or microscope, or by conducting experiments in a laboratory. They are conceptual and logical problems, requiring conceptual and logical investigation...

Just what you need after using a word like 'paradigmatic'.

The Theory Theory

A C Grayling

Today in my readings for Epistemology I learnt that there is a theory known as the Theory Theory. I thought my head might explode. However, I held it together and went off to my first lecture in the subject, with the (justly) famous A C Grayling, Birkbeck's celebrity philosopher. As expected, the class was well-attended (including by people doing their PhDs, keen to quizz the professor); and the room - I use the term loosely - was ghastly. A word from the wise - don't ever enrol in anything that meets in the 'Lecture Room' in the Philosophy Building at Kings College London. Outside, as night fell,  London was chilly and pouring with rain; inside the puke-yellow walls of the 'Lecture Room' and it's sealed windows pulsated with the dripping sweat of the class, as the tropical and air-less conditions saw student after student drop senseless from their uncomfortable wooden chairs...I exaggerate, but only slightly. But as a friend pointed out to me, there are no upgrades in university. If I want to be taught by A C Grayling, this is what I must endure.

Happily, I can report that the lecture was absorbing, witty, erudite and replete with interesting aphorisms and anecdotes with which I can regale my blog readers. But first, I can hear some of you asking - 'What is an epistemology for? What do you do with it? And does it come in different colours?' Epistemology is the study of knowledge - it asks how can we 'know' anything. It informs all philosophic enquiry; as Professor Grayling put it, epistemology is a 'bleeding chunk' of philosophy wrenched from its place in other branches of the subject. Personally, I found the use of this somewhat graphic turn of phrase a bit disturbing, so soon after I had been incarcerated in the Yellow Hole of KCL. I took a sip of water and concentrated.

We began with Descartes ('I think, therefore I am') - Professor Grayling called him 'Rene' and did a funny French accent - and moved on through Locke to Bishop Berkeley. We paused at the old question: 'if a tree falls in a forest and there is no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound?' Grayling referred to this as a 'question for children', though I have seen it get the Sydney Morning Herald letter writers excited for weeks on end. Grayling (and we went smoothly along with him) said: of course it makes no sound. Sound is something heard. QED. He also gave us a 'sexist joke' version of the story (which he incorrectly - or perhaps ironically -characterised as a 'feminist joke'): if a man says something in the forest and there is no-one there to hear him, is he still wrong?

Bertrand Russell, at about the time
of the perambulator incident.

We also heard about Bertrand Russell's great work, the Principia Mathematica, which was such a huge manuscript that it had to be delivered to Cambridge University Press 'in a perambulator'. (I want you to imagine that anecdote told in a posh British voice and with excellent comic timing). Russell had to pay the CUP £50 to publish the Principia Mathematica, in a successful example of self-publishing. Russell apparently said that he didn't know of anyone who had read past Principal 26.

One student asked Professor Grayling if he was going to expand on the views of Heidegger, to which the answer was a fairly unequivocal 'no'. He described Heidegger as being, like Kant, 'a deep end from which many have not be able to get out'. We ended - after a lot more serious stuff, which I assure you we covered - with an anecdote about Wittgenstein, who had only one book published in his lifetime, his Tractatus. He submitted the manuscript of this for his PhD at Cambridge in 1929, which he was duly awarded - the only university degree he ever held. PhDs were considered a bit new-fangled by the Cambridge dons at the time. They originated in Germany, and came to England via the USA. Nevertheless, the chief examiner, G E Moore, said of the Tractatus: "I myself consider that this is a work of genius; but, even if I am completely mistaken and it is nothing of the sort, it is well above the standard required for the Ph.D. degree."


On that encouraging note, we all gratefully left the Yellow Hole of KCL, until next week. It was an interesting lecture, engagingly presented (not something that can be said of all lectures) and I look forward to the rest of the course - though not to spending more time in you-know-where.


By the way, here's an interesting factoid: Wittgenstein came from a wealthy Austrian family, and his sister Margaret was painted by Klimt for her wedding, in 1905: nice, eh?

Divine!

Images from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Wittgenstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grayling_Meaning.JPG

Random news

The Fifth Floor corridor at St Pancras Chambers

St Pancras: the hotel and entranceway is nearing completion – the tall lights on the walkway are in, the paving nearly finished – you can see the sweeping carriageway now; there are signs that the scaffolding may disappear by Christmas. How fun it will be to have a beautiful five-star hotel on the premises. I’ve got to know or at least recognise all the concierge staff. The night-time staff (the concierge desk is manned 24 hours *safe*) are, I must admit, merely nodding acquaintances.  Stuart, from the day-time contingent, is a cheerful guy, often found exchanging his smart concierge jacket and tie for a hard hat and hi-viz jacket as he supervises a major delivery (e.g. someone moving in) across the construction zone. In what is, for us, welcome news, we have a new door closer on the front so that it doesn’t slam in the wind. I know you wanted to know that. Oh yes – and I have also made the acquaintance of the cleaning lady who’s unenviable job it is to vacuum the corridors on Monday mornings. She calls our Fifth Floor corridor “the big one”.

Today an email was circulated saying that the residents' representatives had met with the Renaissance Hotel people and given them a 'wish list' of what we residents would like to be able to avail ourselves of once the hotel is open. Along with discounts on catering, accommodation for family & friends, and in the restaurants and bars, there was also gym, spa and swimming pool use, room service, housekeeping, catering for functions, managing our apartments like serviced apartments when we're away, and internal secure access through to the hotel. It is quite a list. We'll see what comes of it.

The sunny courtyard of the Hotel Orfila, Madrid

The Weather: ah, yes. Way too dark. Like the Arctic in winter. I find myself consulting my watch to check what time of day it is – morning? Evening? It is not particularly cold yet – my iPhone says today was 3˚ - 8˚; similar to a Sydney winter. At breakfast this morning, around the big communal table in Le Pain Quotidian where I like to sit, there was fellow on his way back home to New York. He said he was looking forward to better weather. 'But surely it's cold in New York?', someone said. 'Yeah, but it's much lighter!' A kindred soul. I find most indoor places very overheated. I’m still perfecting a system of clothing layers and various efficient methods of shedding them and putting them back on. So far there has been no need to heat the flat much at all – being in the rafters, I probably benefit from everyone else’s heating. The corridor radiators have, I noticed, been turned on. In fact, I open the highest window (the one from which a patch of grey sky can be glimpsed) sometimes to let out some heat. I don’t mind the cold, or the misty drizzle that passes for rain here. The darkness is a bit more challenging – however, I have a plan! Next week I’m going to Spain for a day. It will be lighter, I hope – though possibly not much warmer: the iPhone predicts 12˚ or 13˚. If there is light, I will sit in the courtyard of the Hotel Orfila and renew my Vitamin D stores.

Le Pain in St Pan - breakfast central

Books: I thought you might also like to know about ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’ by Neil MacGregor, (you can buy it here) Mr. MacGregor is director of the British Museum, and the book tie in with a BBC radio series, as well as exhibits scattered throughout the museum. I saw a few of these interesting objects when I made my visit to the Greek and Roman antiquities, but seeing this book review recently reminded me that I need to go back and check out The Rosetta Stone:

"This lump of granite from Egypt, "about the size of one of those large suitcases you see people trundling around on wheels at airports", is, as he frankly admits, "decidedly dull to look at". It earns its place in A History of the World in 100 Objects because in the 19th century the equally dull text  on tax breaks for priests, inscribed upon it, in three different languages (Greek, demotic Egyptian and hieroglyphs)  became the key to decoding the hieroglyphic script of the ancient pharaohs.

But, more than that, the stone also has a powerful modern history of its own. It was fought over by French and British troops at the end of the Napoleonic wars, and finally taken to London. MacGregor is one of the few to point out that it is actually inscribed in four, not three, languages: on its side, we can still read, in English, "Captured in Egypt by the British Army in 1801." (from Mary Beard’s review in The Guardian on 13 Nov 2010)

I also found an interesting bookshop, but I think I'm afraid to go in. I picked up their events brochure, which advertises an evening session called "Through A Glass Darkly: Inside the Victorian Seances of the Fraudulent Mediums": 

"...but more than being told, you will be shown: magic will be performed, minds read, tales and fortunes told. Illusion, mentalism and magic meet, through a glass darkly. Performances sell out quickly, please book early."

Fancy a seance?

Interesting, you might think. Reading on, I see that other sessions have titles such as "So You Might Want To Join A Coven", "A Siberian Shamanic Storytelling Night", "Witch Hunts in West Africa" and "Jung and the Occult". There are also classes in Tarot, and monthly 'Pagan Ritual Evenings' - although there is a note saying that these "are not suitable for people who are unfamiliar with the ideas and theology of paganism", so that's me out. But there's always the "Introduction to Runecraft" or the "Goddess Workshop on Ceridwen".


Treadwell's Bookshop, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. Just in case you want to drop in for a little Wicca. 

Lovely pool - pretend it's summer.

Health & Fitness:  I continue to get to my gym session with Dan the trainer (of 'Stomp' fame), albeit a little creakily. It turns out that Dan is also an excellent remedial masseur, which saved the day recently. I have found a nutritionist (give up caffeine, drink less wine, eat less cheese - the usual!) And I have also found some time to enjoy the swimming pool at One Aldwych (home of the health club & gym) - this is indoors, but I can pretend, can't I?

The Press: Speaking of The Guardian, I think we’re in trouble over the cricket, folks (as if you didn’t know). The Brits are being polite about it, relatively. This I see as a bad sign. What are you doing about it? Today, Queensland was described as our “struttiest, brashest state”. I am not entirely sure what that means, though I have a suspicion, and I don’t think it’s complimentary.

On Sunday I moved my press allegiance temporarily to The Observer, and was rewarded by an interesting debate on the subject “Is religion a force for good...or would we be happier without God?” One of the five participants was A.C. Grayling, Birkbeck’s own high-profile philosopher, who has been mentioned before in this blog. The debate is available here as a podcast.

A C Grayling socks it to 'em

 Amongst some familiar rehashed arguments on all sides, possibly the juiciest bit from ACG was this:

                “I visited a faith-based school and they started by saying, ‘’At this school we promote mutual understanding, and tolerance, and conviviality,’ and they were very proud of themselves for doing it. And I said, that is not something that we should praise you for – that is something we should expect from you as a minimum. It happened to be a Church of England school, but it had Muslims in it, and Catholics. And I asked each of these girls, who were all friends – I said to the Muslim girl, ‘What’s going to happen to your Catholic friend here when she dies?’ And I said to the Catholic girl, ‘What’s going to happen to you Muslim friend here when she dies?’ And so on. Oh, gasps went up from the teachers and the bishop to say you’re being divisive and you’re asking un pleasant questions, and I said, ‘No, I’m not - I’m trying to get them to think through the consequences of what they’re really committed to believing.”

The C of E bishop in question may have echoed the reaction of one of the Catholic panellists to this: “Oh, Anthony – you must stick to philosophy, do not venture into unknown territory.”

Goodness, I thought that venturing into unknown territory was the whole point of philosophy. It certainly is for me.

London’s Philosophers

London, I am told, has 60 full time professional philosophers. This seems to be quite a large number and might perhaps explain the buzz in the air. All those great minds whirring away. I thought you might like to meet a few of them from time to time, and I begin with two who could be considered celebrities, in a quiet philosophical kind of way:

A C Grayling

A C Grayling's website

I start with Birkbeck’s own ‘celebrity philosopher’, who has been mentioned before on this blog, Anthony C Grayling. In addition to his role at Birkbeck, Professor Grayling is also a Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford.

Professor Grayling has visited Sydney on a number of recent occasions, including as a guest of the Sydney Writers’ Festival, which was how I first became aware of his existence, and his books. In addition to writing numerous academic philosophy texts, Professor Grayling is also a literary journalist, broadcaster and editor. He presently writes a weekly column for The Times, and has been a columnist for other publications, and many of these interesting attempts to ‘apply philosophy to life’ have been collected into book form. I can recommend titles such as “The Meaning of Things”, “The Reason of Things”, “The Mystery of Things” – and so on.

There is also a very engaging short book called “Against All Gods – Six Polemics on Religion and an Essay on Kindness”, which places A C grayling as a fellow traveller with the current celebrity atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchins – though perhaps a softer version as least in his presentation of the arguments. Here’s a little sample quoted from “Against All Gods”:

And art – Raphael’s Madonnas, Bach’s sacred cantatas, exquisitely decorated psalters and Qur’ans, York Minster and the Blue Mosque of Istanbul – where would art be without religion? It would be exactly where it is now. Art is the outpouring of the human heart; its skill is human skill, it is the effulgence of the creativity, delight, passion and yearning of the human mind. When our gods were dogs and cats, in Egypt, people made exquisite effigies of dogs and cats, and painted them in their elegance on tomb walls. When gods lived in the clouds on Olympus, people built wonderful temples with marvellously wrought reliefs around their pediments, depicting Athene and Hermes, Zeus and Apollo...

I also have a copy of Professor Grayling’s book “Ideas That Matter: A personal Guide For the 21^st Century” which covers ‘Ideas: from Absolutism to Zeitgeist’. Are you thinking you might like to read a little of AC Grayling?

Lucky me – it is possible for me to choose an option in my course next Term which is taught by Professor Grayling. The subject is ‘Epistemology & Methodology’, and once I find out exactly what that is, I may well consider it!

But while Professor Grayling writes lovely and accessible prose in his ‘popular philosophy’ books, he is also quite capable of the denser obtuseness of academic philosophy. Consider this from “Truth, Meaning and Realism”:

There has been discussion of whether the notion of truth involved in any adequate theory of assertion has to be ‘substantial’ or not, but, because of the truth-involvingness of assertion is standardly taken for a platitude, there has been little discussion of whether a non-(realist)-truth-involving account is plausible.

You heard it here first.

AC Grayling is an engaging speaker. Before I left Sydney, Evan and I were privileged to hear him give an address at the Sydney Opera House (on the same bill as Richard Dawkins, who wasn’t half as much fun). He was also one of the debaters at the Humanist Society debate about the Pope’s visit to Britain which I attended during my first week in London. A Day Out in London

He is fond of making reference to his lovely head of hair when he speaks to an audience, so I assume that he would not mind me drawing it to your attention here too, as it is indeed a sight to behold and would occasion much envy in least one gentleman of my acquaintance:

But my personal favourite is this dapper picture presumably from earlier days which appears on the Birkbeck Philosophy Department's  website 

If you’re going to be a philosopher, why not look the part?

Raimond Gaita

Raimond Gaita KCL website

Over at Kings College London, where I take some of my classes, there is a philosopher with a similar bent, that is, bringing philosophy to the thinking layman. Raimond Gaita is – wait for it – Australian, from Melbourne originally.  He is Professor of Moral Philosophy at KCL, and his special interest is Ethics. My bookshelf does not (yet) contain any volumes of his, but excitingly I could go to hear him speak at a public seminar later this month entitled "Genocide and Collective Responsibility - an essay on Bernhard Schlink, novelist & legal professor” – and I DO have Bernhard Schlink on my bookshelf (read ‘The Reader’ and ‘Guilt About the Past’).

Professor Gaita also has a link with the Sydney Writers Festival, which featured his memoir and film (2007) ‘Romulus, My Father’ – see http://www.romulusmyfather.com.au/ (includes a trailer).

Raimond Gaita is also Foundation Professor of Philosophy at Australian Catholic University, and in his list of publications you can find a number of collaborations with Australian Robert Manne (an old lefty of whom I am fond); so clearly he still has strong links to Australia. I have found an article he wrote for The Age in August this year, on the subject of political spin, entitled ‘Even Socrates drew the line at spin’. Here’s a taste:

Socrates believed that oratory was not a morally neutral skill that can be directed at good, bad or indifferent ends, but intrinsically rotten because it betrays the trust necessary for genuine conversation and, in so doing, erodes the conditions of political (and other forms of) judgment. We should think the same about spin.

For many years, we in the democratic West have praised conversation in politics as though it expressed an ideal of democratic accountability. That may be a sentimental illusion about the nature of politics, encouraged by politicians who spin counterfeits of conversational intimacy to make us more vulnerable to manipulation.

See the whole article at: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/even-socrates-drew-the-line-at-spin-20100820-1390x.html

Photo from http://www.themonthly.com.au/taxonomy/term/182

                

A day out in London

What a day! Lots accomplished and lots experienced. I ventured into the city today, armed with my Oystercard, heading Overground to Waterloo, and then descended into the entrails of London, also known as The Underground (aka ‘the Tube’). Fortunately I had had a few trial runs at this on previous visits, and made my way unerringly to Bloomsbury. I staved off getting lost by memorising my route and muttering to myself ‘Northern Line, Northern Line...to Tottenham Court Road’ then ‘Central Line, Central Line...to Holborn’.

My main goal was to view a number of apartments. One was over a Japanese restaurant, one block from the British Museum. Another was in a divine little Georgian Crescent which had been spared the bombs of WWII. However, I can report that Georgian can be very attractive on the outside and very decrepit on the inside. I sent Pandora a postcard of a red London bus, and checked out one of the cycle 'docking stations', where you can pick up a bicycle and ride it to the next 'dock' and drop it off. The first half hour is free, and 24 hours costs 5 pounds. And no one wears helmets. This could be cool.

I lunched in a square behind The London Review of Books Bookshop(bangers & mash), then shopped for a Philosophy text - by A C Grayling: http://www.acgrayling.com/  Grayling is Birkbeck’s ‘celebrity’ philosopher. As chance would have it, I noticed his name on a poster advertising a debate tonight, run by something called The South Place Ethical Society. http://www.ethicalsoc.org.uk/spes/index.php What an interesting-looking institution:

South Place Ethical Society was a progressive movement founded over two centuries ago. Today the Society is an educational charity whose aims are:

• The study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism and freethought;
• The cultivation of a rational and humane way of life;
• The advancement of research and education in all relevant fields.

The subject of tonight’s debate was “that the Pope’s visit to the UK should not be a state visit”. It seems that the Pope is turning up here in about two weeks’ time, and views on the subject differ. I felt very tired by the end of the day, but couldn’t pass up this opportunity. At half past six in the evening on a Wednesday about 400 people crowded into Conway Hall on Red Lion Square, where the motto over the stage is "TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE", and listened to a very lively debate; the liveliness of which was only exceeded by the outright furore that erupted once the microphones were given over to the audience. All the foibles and failings of Catholicism in general and Pope Ratzinger in particular were debated with vigour. The ‘humanists’ did not have it all their own way. A very feisty Franciscan monk, in full black robe, did a bit of shouting of his own. Someone had the temerity to question Professor Grayling’s grasp of logic (!) but was soon put in his place (I thought). I had a wonderful time.

Humanists and Catholics go head to head in Bloomsbury

During the day I also managed to visit Birkbeck College itself and do a few administrative tasks. I identified the location of the Philosophy Department, so that is next on my list for a visit.

But of course I have saved the big news for last – I found an apartment I like very much, and have applied to rent it! I’ll put some pictures in a separate post. *very excited!*