Offerings, Plans, Reflections

Finding Refuge; Nihilistic times; Civil Disobedience; Berkeley's subjective idealism

Dear all,

Having got the new print issue out and the new events series up and running, things now feel calmer than they have for a while. Having frequently turned to the teachings of the Buddhist monk, Ajahn Sucitto, to guide me through stressful periods these past weeks, it seemed appropriate to finally upload an interview I did with him a few years back on a rainy day as we drove along the M27 (a UK motorway) on a rainy autumn day. The link for it is below.

Also: our new events series continues tomorrow with Wendy Brown talking about nihilism; Eraldo Souza dos Santos is offering a course on “What is Civil Disobedience?”; Jeffrey Anderson helps us understand Bishop Berkeley’s subjective idealism; and much more. Enjoy!

Offerings

Your Sunday Read
“Finding Refuge”: This wide-ranging conversation with Theravadan monk Ajahn Sucitto offers some Buddhist perspectives on some perennial philosophical themes, including the mind-body problem, free will, and the nature of truth. In the course of the conversation, Buddhism emerges “less as a rigid set of beliefs so much as a set of inquiries into the nature of direct experience designed to stimulate the mind of the listener”. I hope it stimulates your mind. But not too much.

Event
“Nihilistic Times”: How has politics become a playpen for vain demagogues? Why has the university become an ideological war zone? What has happened to Truth? In this conversation with the always wonderful Jana Bacevic, Wendy Brown, one of the preeminent political theorists of her generation, will place nihilism at the centre of these predicaments. Join us tomorrow to find out why - and what we can do about it.

The slightly delayed poster for the new series is now finished. Isn’t it pretty!? I asked our designer, Nick Halliday, to create something that lifts the heart. And I’m not sure if we will ever better this line-up. But we’ll keep trying…

Also, I just created an archive of all the posters since we started this series back in autumn 2020. You can find it here. Big thanks to Olive Richardson and Nick for designing them.

If you missed Tuesday’s event, “The Political Theory of Algorithms”, you can watch it here. For details of the remaining collaborative events with Boston Review, click here.

New Group: “What is Civil Disobedience?”
Starting on 10th May and running for six weeks, our friend and long-time collaborator Eraldo Souza dos Santos will be exploring the global history of civil disobedience through readings of some of the key thinkers of civil disobedience, including Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, John Rawls, Hannah Arendt, and Bertrand Russell. This group is free (albeit with a recommended donation). You can find out more and sign up here.

Plans

This autumn, Peter West, Berkeley scholar and esteemed editorial board member, will be guest-editing a companion issue to our newly published “Where is Philosophy Going?” volume. Titled “Where is Public Philosophy Going?”, it will build on Peter’s essay (co-written with Jon Hawkins), “What is Public Philosophy? A Democratic Approach” (which will be published as a lead essay in that issue).

This autumn, we will also be running some events at a time that does not exclude pretty much all of the Asia-Pacific region (unless you sleep funny hours or very little). Big thanks to another esteemed editorial board member, Yarran Hominh, for his help setting this up.

Reflections

This week, Jeffrey Anderson uses an ingenious thought experiment to help us understand Bishop Berkeley’s subjective idealism:

The Party-Goers
Bishop George Berkeley (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753) revolutionised philosophy back in 1710 with his seminal work, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. This work introduces the world to Berkeley’s central idea, subjective idealism, which denies the existence of material substance. According to this, everyday objects, like trees or the grass growing around them, are ideas perceived by the mind and, consequently, cannot exist without first being perceived. For Berkeley, to be is to be perceived.

This is a notoriously difficult idea to understand, but I have found that a good starting point is to consider limitations of our own human-specific perceptions of the world. This is probably best achieved by way of a thought experiment. I have called this “the Party-Goer” thought experiment:

In this scenario, 16 people are at a party to celebrate human diversity. 4 guests are deaf and have been so from birth. They rely solely on sign language to communicate. They have no idea what it is like to have hearing. That is, what it is to be like to be those other 12 people with hearing.

A further 6 people are completely blind and have been so from birth. Consequently, they have absolutely no idea what the other 10 party-goers look like, nor do they have any idea how many people are actually at the party, either blind or otherwise. They have no idea what it is like to have sight. That is, what it is to be like those other 10 people with sight.

Unbeknown to the party-goers that are either blind or deaf, however, it turns out that a further 2 people at the party are both blind and deaf, having been so from birth. They do not have any idea of what it is like to have either hearing or sight. That is, what it is to be like those other 14 people with hearing and/or sight. They have no way of truly knowing how many other people are at the party.

In addition, 4 people at the party are neither blind nor deaf. They have no real idea what is like to be either blind and/or deaf from birth. That is, what it is to be like those other 12 people at the party. They are able to perceive that there are 16 people at the party.

It turns out that there are 2 extra people at the party, who have “extra sensory capability”, as they have something “other” in addition to, above and beyond, the perception of all the other party-goers (think of them a bit like ghosts). The other party-goers have not only no idea what it is like to be them, they have no idea that they exist at all as their “mere” perception of “reality” does not permit this. Furthermore, only 1 of these 2 extras can perceive the other 16 people at the party plus his fellow extra, as the other extra is unable to perceive any of the other people, including his fellow extra. Therefore, his existence, as far as the party goes, is not perceived. He is aware only of his own existence. The 4 with sight and hearing cannot deny with any certainty the non-existence of these 2 extra party-goers as this would also permit the party-goers without sight to deny the existence of the same 4.

Bishop Berkeley had a problem. The problem was one of continuity, in that, if the existence of something is dependent on being perceived, then what happens to that something when no one is perceiving it? Berkeley’s solution to this problem was to argue that as God is omnipresent it is He that is doing the necessary perceiving of things when no one else is. The idea behind “the Party-Goer” thought experiment above is to introduce the possibility of the notion that existence can, in actual fact, exist above and beyond the perception of every human. This “existence” doesn’t necessarily have to be God or any other entity with supernatural powers able to determine what does or does not exist. The idea is to hold a door open in order to speculate about the nature of reality beyond our perception. In summary, we cannot deny “a” reality that exists beyond our perception as that would be equivalent to denying a reality that exists beyond the perception of a blind and/or deaf person which, of course, we know it does.

Jeffrey Anderson is an independent thinker with an MA in Philosophy from The Open University. He has a special interest in human perception.

Ending

For now, The Philosopher remains unfunded and relies on your support to keep going, pay our contributors, and so on. Please consider becoming a supporter via Patreon or offering a one-off/monthly/annual donation.

Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.

Anthony Morgan
Editor