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Continental Rifts • A Lament For Thought • Antinatalism and the Will to Live • Life and Death • Murdering Compassion • Peak Experiences • Property Duelling • How Hedgehogs Mate • Mental By Definition

Continental Rifts

Dear Editor: I appreciated Issue 175’s thoughtful exploration of Simone Weil’s ‘ethics of attention’ and the limitations of relying solely on legal personhood to protect non – human beings. The argument that moral imagination must expand beyond charismatic species and iconic landscapes is both timely and necessary. If vulnerability is the basis of moral attention, then mosses, bogs, insects, and rivers deserve protection too, alongside whales and forests. But I found myself wondering whether our moral imagination needs to stretch further still. Weil’s framework is not confined to the environmental realm; it applies to any being whose vulnerability is shaped by human action. If we are to truly see non ‑ human beings in their dependence, then the animals most entangled with our daily lives – chickens, pigs, cows, and the trillions of fish pulled from the ocean each year – must also enter our circle of attention. These beings are not just vulnerable, they are subject to direct, continuous harm. Their suffering is not abstract or distant, but is woven into ordinary life. If vulnerability is the moral criterion, then the beings whose lives are shaped most intensely by human choices deserve at least as much attention as rivers or forests. Our moral imagination must widen not only to those threatened by environmental change, but to all beings whose vulnerability needs to be seen.

Sara Crane, Toronto

Dear Editor: I have an issue with Muzainy Shahiefisally’s ‘Why Classical Liberals Should Embrace Foucault’ in PN 175. On first reading, it felt like some kind of right-of-center Trojan horse: Shahiefisally made it seem as if towards the end of his life Michel Foucault turned to Hayek’s neoliberalism (even if he calls it ‘classical liberalism’). The problem is that in all my readings of texts on Foucault (I admit I have yet to read his originals), I have never seen anything supporting Shahiefisally’s narrative. All it took was a search on Wikipedia to find out that towards the end of his life Foucault supported President Mitterrand, who was a socialist. Granted, Foucault, like many of his post-structuralist contemporaries, was disappointed by developments in Russia and China. But that hardly showed itself as them converting to free-market-fundamentalism, at least in my readings of their texts. I also found that while Hayek clung to the idea of the market as a form of emancipation, Foucault saw it as a form of oppression and social control.

I cannot imagine a thinker as prominent as Foucault spending most of his life on post-Marxist critiques of power relationships and then converting to the other side without that becoming part of the general cultural understanding of him. The only thing I see Foucault embracing in Hayek’s capitalism is the same thing Deleuze and Guattari did: its capacity for deterritorialization. But Foucault, like D&G, also saw capitalism’s capacity for re territorialization, to the point of overcoding, as Shahiefisally did.

D.E. Tarkington, Nebraska

Dear Editor: I much enjoyed Terence Green’s philosophical haiku about the great fraud Jacques Derrida in Issue 175, but not your accompanying comment that this was the deconstruction of ‘an icon’. There is already too much blasphemous misuse of ‘icon’, in which this sacred word is applied to everything from Taylor Swift’s newest album to brands of phones. It is disappointing to find your esteemed mag joining the impious rabble.

Rev’d Dr Peter Mullen, Eastbourne

A Lament For Thought

Dear Editor: I was sad to read ‘University Philosophy Crisis in UK’ (News, PN 175), where you mention that Dundee is planning to end philosophy as a named degree from 2027. I graduated in Philosophy from Dundee 2007 as a mature student. At that time only Dundee offered a refreshing and innovative degree based on European philosophy rather than the often (dare I say it?) dry Anglo-American variety. But no matter what school of philosophy you prefer, it ought to be taught as a subject, starting in schools. Philosophy teaches us to think critically, and the world is in need of that more than ever.

Eva Tyson, Dalgety Bay, Fife

Antinatalism and the Will to Live

Dear Editor: I admit I hadn’t heard of antinatalism until I read Deniz Kose’s article in Philosophy Now 174. Antinatalists have an extreme view –that humanity should deliberately go extinct because it is far better to have never been born. It takes enormous cognitive dissonance to want to not exist (or for the human race to not exist), though there are situations where it unfortunately occurs, because people have lost the precious commodity called hope. One of the themes of Kose’s essay is the significance of social connection, and I’d argue that our social interdependencies are our greatest and most important wellspring for hope. Kose argues quite cogently that life, by its very nature, is both challenging and inspiring – we all endure both failures and triumphs. But there’s another aspect Kose doesn’t discuss, and that is the role of storytelling, which is as old as humanity. We’re all addicted to stories. And the thing about stories is that they all involve protagonists facing adversity with whom we vicariously identify. We watch, read and listen to stories because they imitate life. Socrates said, ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’, but in reality, a life without obstacles and rewards would not be worth living. This is the universal attraction of stories.

Paul P. Mealing, Melbourne

Dear Editor: In Issue 175’s Letters section Avril Danczak found it hard to take antinatalist ideas seriously because they originated from “childless, withdrawn, joyless, pessimistic, insomniac males.” She suggested that antinatalists should consider the perspectives of mothers. But should mothers themselves not at least consider the non-negligible possibility that their sons might become those very same childless, withdrawn, joyless, pessimistic, insomniac males? Dostoevsky sharpens this question in The Brothers Karamazov. Through Ivan Karamazov, Dostoevsky asks if any future harmony or universal happiness could justify even a single innocent child’s undeserved suffering. Ivan’s answer is an unequivocal no.

Mark Rosen, Edgewater, Florida

Dear Editor: In her letter in Issue 175, Avril Danczak suggests “Perhaps antinatalists should be called ‘antihumanists’ instead.” This view seems to me to be indisputable, given that were antinatalism to prevail there would be no humans left! But to me that’s not the most concerning aspect of antinatalism. Even while all the unborn are raucously celebrating not having been born, we would eventually reach a stage where the human race comprised only elderly people. I, being seventy-seven years old, am rather glad that there are young people about to perform the tasks my age and decrepitude render me unable to perform. I’m not too worried about antinatalism, though. As long as people keep on having sex, babies will continue to be born.

Dave Mangnall, Wilmslow

Life and Death

Dear Editor: Joshua Clement’s ‘Death as Life’s Picture Frame’ in Issue 174 left me wondering whether his metaphor might be pushed a bit further. A frame does not merely tell us where the picture ends; it determines what belongs inside it. Mortality does something similar. To choose one life is necessarily to abandon countless others. We marry one person not another, pursue one vocation while sacrificing another, read one book while thousands remain unread. An immortal person could always say ‘later’; but for us mere mortals, every choice contains a loss. Perhaps, then, death does not give life meaning simply because it ends: perhaps it gives our choices their weight because they cannot all be made. The tragedy of mortality and its value may be the same thing, then: a finite life demands that we choose.

Kennedy Brown, St John’s, Newfoundland

Dear Editor: What makes killing a person morally wrong? According to the philosopher Don Marquis, the wrongness comes from depriving the victim of whatever future ‘experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments’ would have been present had that person’s life continued (‘Why abortion is immoral’, Journal of Philosophy, April 1989). And as Jimmy Alfonso Licon pointed out in Issue 174, if this idea of what makes killing a person wrong is correct, then it also applies to chickens. Killing a chicken is wrong because it robs it of whatever future experiences, activities, projects, and enjoyments would have come its way during its life. Not only does the idea extend to chickens, but also to anything else sentient – that is, that can participate in activities and pursue goals. This includes not only crabs and lobsters, but also snakes, mice, and sheep. It might even include some future AIs if they have subjective consciousness: it would be wrong to turn them off if it deprived them of future experiences and enjoyments, or of achieving goals.

But should we accept Marquis’s idea at all? Consider the analogous thought that what makes stealing morally bad is that it deprives people of the use and enjoyment of things they own. Now imagine I live in Alaska, or northern Scotland, or Quebec – somewhere where the winters are fierce and freezing. I have a good coat to protect me from the wind and cold and frostbite; or at least I did until someone took it from the cloakroom at college. I have been deprived of the future use and enjoyment of my coat. I can no longer safely participate in outdoor activities now, for example. I have been wrongly treated. One day however I see a person wearing my coat. I have absolutely no doubt that it’s mine and not a copy. I approach them and say they’re wearing my coat and I’d like it back. I’d like it back even though that would of course deprive the individual now wearing it of the benefits of using the coat in the deadly cold. I don’t force the person to take it off right now while standing in the frigid wind, but I do insist on getting it back. Is my insistence on getting the coat back morally suspect, even though it deprives this person of the future use and enjoyment of the coat? Surely not.

Another way of stating the same point is that some deprivations are certainly morally wrong but others are clearly not. Taking a warm coat from someone is wrong when it wrongly deprives them of the continued use of the coat. but taking your coat back from someone who is wrongly making use of it isn’t ethically improper. And yes, taking someone’s or something’s life is surely ethically wrong when it unjustly deprives them of their future life. But just depriving the individual of a future of a certain kind does not always automatically guarantee that the taking is itself morally bad.

Leslie Burkholder, University of British Columbia, Okanagan

Murdering Compassion

Dear Editor: Thank you Yossra Hamouda (‘Life Sacrifice’, Issue 173): I now understand the ‘Murder of Compassion’ – a life strategy, common everywhere in varying degrees. I am vegetarian and agree with Tolstoy that if most people were vegetarians there would be no war. Most people I am sure prefer Art and Nature. Diplomacy – nonviolent communication, listening and understanding – is the best way. Why do people murder compassion? Are they scared of sensitivity and vulnerability?

Lois Palframan, Sheffield

Peak Experiences

Dear Editor: I found Suleyman Moollan’s article in Issue 174 discussing the value of mountaineering stimulating, especially his conclusion that it helps develop virtues. But which virtues, and how? Mountaineers expose themselves to nature at its most challenging. Climb and descent, they experience the energies of wind, rain, cloud, sun, and snow. Rocks, slopes, and screes are varied and unreliable. Yes, the views are inspiring, but what lies beneath the wish to ‘become one with the mountains’, given the challenges? My idea is that mountains are nature’s manifestation of time, space, energy and matter, the vagaries of which have made up the challenges to nearly 4 billion years of life. So they reflect the makeup of our personalities. Time is the past, present and future; for the past we have a memory, for the present consciousness and five senses, and for the future, reason to work out what might happen from past memories, and imagination to intuit it. For space we have the geometrical aspect of reason. Energy changes our surroundings; we use the motivation part of our personality to cope with them. Matter in its animal, vegetable and mineral forms makes up us and our fellow creatures, and the plant world, and, naturally, the mighty mountains themselves. In line with all this, mountaineering can reconnect us with our roots, making us better humans by giving us more insight into our makeup. Other creatures share those faculties, so our moral behaviour has to take into account our kinship when encountering other humans and other life. But humans are special. We are curious about nature. We ask of it When? Where? Why? How? and What?, corresponding to its time, space, energy and matter questions – and no doubt this wonder is reinforced by the challenges of mountaineering.

Dr John Shenkman, Warwick

Property Duelling

Dear Editor: I enjoyed Raymond Tallis’ masterly dismantling of property dualism, which claims that mind is a property of brains (PN 174). He’s right that there’s no relation that adequately connects the mental and the physical domains. It’s an intractable metaphysical problem. A far more defensible solution is to make the connection epistemological. It seems to me there isn’t a problem of connecting the mental and the physical if they’re regarded as just two systems of thought. So the physical and the mental are different ways of cognitively representing the bit of reality we call a ‘brain/mind’ – both derived ultimately from processing sense data. But sense data is all we can ever have, as the nature of reality beyond sensation is always beyond us.

There does remain, however, the question of why we need two forms of representation of reality. That’s a separate thorny epistemological problem, but it’s theoretically tractable, because concepts are connectable. I believe the two domains have to do with our status as one bit of reality, our self, intentionally representing bits of reality other than the self.

Dr Christopher Burke, Rochdale

Dear Editor: Our Man with the Red Hat criticizes ‘Property or Aspect Dualism’ as though they were the same thing (Tallis in Wonderland, PN 174), but that is to miss a crucial difference. A property is intrinsic to the thing that bears it, but an aspect is a function of the viewpoint from which the properties are examined. That viewpoint can make all the difference.

Take, among many possible examples, the property we call ‘identity’. Is my grandfather’s hammer (which has famously been given two new heads and four new handles) still the same hammer? There seems to be no coherent answer; but add the words ‘from a functional point of view’ or ‘from a forensic point of view’ and the answer becomes obvious.

An aspect dualist would say that the reason the properties that seem to emerge from the workings of the embodied brain seem fundamentally different from those that emerge from the workings of our mind is precisely that we comprehend the former from an external viewpoint and apprehend the latter from an internal viewpoint, notably when we attend to our own consciousness. Explaining in detail the relationship between the two sets of properties – and especially, the capabilities they enable – remains a huge set of challenges, but for an aspect dualist they are challenges for science rather than a metaphysical mystery.

Roger S. Haines, Ealing

How Hedgehogs Mate

Dear Editor: In reply to Michael Shaw’s query (PN 174 Letters) on how hedgehogs reproduce despite their quills preventing intimacy? Actually, nature has taken steps to ensure the continuation of hedgehogs’ species. When a sow is ready to mate, she stretches out on the ground with her quills flattened.

Kes Karvelis, Queensland

Mental By Definition

Dear Editor: PN used to have a wee guide to definitions of the branches of philosophy at the beginning of the magazine that I occasionally referred to ensure I was on the right track when branches like epistemology or metaphysics were being referred to in the articles. While doing my degree, my favourite branch was philosophy of mind, and recently thinking on the wee guide, it occurred to me that the philosophy of mind doesn’t have a one word name of its own. So I wondered if PN readers would like to have bit of fun and see if they can think of a good name? I thought ‘mindology’, but I don’t know if that quite cuts it?

Kristine Kerr, Scotland