Only a Game

Implicit Game Aesthetics (6): Caillios and Malaby

The penultimate part of the new game aesthetics serial is over on ihobo.com right now – what are you waiting for? Click a link and check it out!

When I Am Gone

Life is given to us without our choice, and it ends for us whether we like it or not. The fear of dying is only natural, although we cannot fear it the way we fear, say, getting burned since that would mean we'd have to experience death to fear it. Conscious of our mortality, we fear when we shall not be conscious of anything – which is an odd state of affairs.

Hamlet, contemplating suicide as a way to escape his guilt and indecisiveness over his father's murder, suggests that all that keeps him from ending it all is the “dread of something after death”. Today this has ceased to be most people’s concern since those who believe in an afterlife also tend to believe it will be pleasant for them. What holds most people from suicide is either a prudent cowardice or a sense of waste: if (as many believe) this is all there is, there is little to gain from checking out of the game. Most people in the grip of such intense depression fail to recognise the anguish they will cause those around them, or else this inflicted pain is spitefully desired.

Suicide has never been on the table for me, and although I was tortured by intense depression in my youth, the prevailing winds in my life have blown me to ever fairer harbours. I'm not sure when I stopped fearing death, if indeed I ever did have such a fear. When, as a child, I believed in hell as punishment I perhaps knew some anxiety about dying but now I see hell as something we take ourselves into, the despair that for Kierkegaard was synonymous with sin. Now my concern is how to keep my friends safe from such anguish, as much as I can hope to do so. It is often impossible for one on the outside to render aid to someone who has fallen into a hell of their own making.

One day, I will be gone. Vanity hopes I will leave something by which I might be remembered, but in a century, a millennia, an aeon, the only trace of me that might remain will be inconsequential. I don't mind one jot: shorn of my flesh, my vanity will equally be dust. Scatter my ashes at Steephill Cove and go on with your lives. But despite no fear of death – at least, no fear of my own death – I find myself for the first time concerned about when I will die. I worry not for myself, nor even for my wife, but for my son.

I became a parent willingly and knowingly, with far more anxiety than mere death could cause! I was unprepared for what my intimate connection to this tiny creature would do to my experience of life. If I had died two years ago, well, it was a hell of a ride! If I die two years hence, I condemn my son to grow up without a father. That weighs heavily upon me now, although I could not wish to erase my wild youth for it made me who I am today.

When I am gone the world will still be much as it was. People will still mistake their ingenuity for wisdom, their desires for needs, their fears for hopes. They will decry intolerance and persecute difference from themselves, thus becoming what they hate. They will dance and love and sing, and bring such beauty into being they ought never fear the illusionary sense of meaninglessness that is the intellect’s revenge on humanity. When I am gone, the world will go on. Somehow, that is enough.

Implicit Game Aesthetics (5): McGonigal and Suits

This week, the new game aesthetics serial covers Jane McGonigal and Bernard Suits – check it out on ihobo.com now!

Review of Imaginary Games

Allen Zhang has published an absolutely wonderful review of Imaginary Games in MAKE magazine. He concludes:

Fittingly, Imaginary Games is published by Zer0 Books, which is committed to resurrecting the figure of the public intellectual. Chris Bateman, whose scholarship is astonishingly honest, refreshingly cogent, and thoroughly meticulous, earns that title.

What a wonderful start to my morning!

Low Fidelity Immortality

What happens to the notion of digital immortality when the transfer from the flesh is imperfect?

Recently, I replaced my ailing iPhone with a newer robot of the same lineage. Apple were confident the ‘consciousness’ of my old device would be perfectly transferred to the new body using iTunes built-in backup restoration software. Of course, this isn’t what happened. While my contacts, calendars and (most importantly!) notes were correctly transferred, none of my music or photos reappeared and only about two out of every three apps installed themselves. You could say my new iPhone is a clone of my old one, but only a low fidelity copy.

Since this is far from the first time a computer backup has resulted in less than perfect fidelity, I began to wonder about digital immortality – the idea of copying a person’s memory and identity (their engrams, as some science-fiction writers put it) via a computer. This is a fantasy that many nerds cling to, in a manner wonderfully parallel to the old Christian notion of ‘the resurrection of the flesh’ (bodily resurrection) that is no longer popular. As I’ve said before, I'm agnostic about all kinds of immortality, although at the same time I see biologically enhanced longevity as a path to immortality that would be a population disaster of epic proportions, and fervently hope it proves impossible.

The question I want to explore for now is: would becoming digitally immortal be only a low fidelity immortality? And if so, would that render it pointless?

Derek Parfit, the main voice in contemporary Western philosophy on matters of personal identity, argues that the sense of identity we feel is an illusion, and what really matters is the continuity of our  memories and experiences – if these could be copied (his example is a Star Trek-esque teletransporter), it wouldn't matter how or how many copies resulted. Personal identity isn’t important, Parfit argues, just continuity of experience. (He was unaware, as he derived his conclusions logically, that he was espousing a form of Buddhist metaphysics derived in this case from science-fiction thought experiments). Suppose we grant Parfit his claim: it doesn’t matter is you persist in your body, only that some essential copy still exists. (I have counter arguments but now isn't the time to pursue them). The vital question remains whether any of the usual techno-immortality scenarios would be of sufficiently high fidelity.

Taking just one example, could you copy your brain’s engrams onto a computer, clone your body, then transcribe your engrams back into your ‘new brain’? Probably not, or at least not with any guarantee of fidelity. Clones are genetic copies but what any given gene pattern produces depends in part upon the circumstances of its development. As Richard Lewontin noted, even if you knew the genome and sequences of environment, you wouldn’t know the organism that results. Given that the neural ‘wiring’ related to anyone’s mental capabilities and experiences is part of this unique developmental process, this kind of technology could only ever produce low fidelity copies.

If clone-and-program is insufficient, what about pure digital immortality – the computer simulation of engrams? Again, since much of what makes each individual who they are is specific to the  precise nature of their physical body and brain, there are strong reasons for doubting such a simulation could achieve anything more than a low fidelity duplication. Even if the technology required to digitally simulate neurology were plausible, questions about how to read the necessary ‘data’ would remain. Because a change of ‘platform’ is entailed, perfect fidelity is highly unlikely.

What about Parfit's chosen example: teletransportation. Alas, as the writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation knew, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle casts unavoidable doubt about the capacity to perfectly ‘read’ matter for copying – which is why they invented “Heisenberg compensators” as technobabble to brush the obvious problem under the carpet. Similarly, given the role of connectivity in neurology even a quantum-level ‘scan’ (assuming such a thing were possible) might not be a way of reproducing the necessary conditions. This would mean even a transporter-copy scenario would be low fidelity, if it was not in fact completely impossible.

The only conceivable kinds of techno-immortality duplication have inherent problems. These give us reasons to believe that any form of ‘personal copy’ could only be low fidelity, and so we should doubt the validity of calling what might result ‘immortality’. Besides, if the best we can hope for is not our continuation but the creation of a new human being with some connectivity to who we are, we already have low fidelity immortality, and always have: it’s called ‘children’. That this isn't remotely what geeks fantasize about when it comes to immortality helps to reveal that these techno-mythologies are ultimately about alleviating the fear of death.

Techno-immortality is another example of the psychological continuity between nonreligion and traditional religion. One of the important roles of religious beliefs is to help orient us towards death – what is true about such stories is not necessarily the important point. We all have to die (whatever may or may not happen after death), and the ways we think about dying are conditioned in part by our cultural and personal beliefs. These are not optional, as opponents of religion sometimes like to suggest – even the nonreligious mythologize death, as techno-immortality reveals. The best approach may be to set aside concerns about truth in this regard, and leave everyone to decide for themselves what to believe about death.

The Mythology of Evolution: Publication Date

The publisher has given me the street date for The Mythology of Evolution, namely 28th September 2012. It should appear in the databases of book retailers such as Amazon sometime in the next few weeks.

Implicit Game Aesthetics (4): Cook’s Chemistry

What aesthetic value judgements lie behind Cook’s Chemistry? Find out on ihobo.com today!

The Mythology of Evolution – PDF available!

The publisher has delivered the final proofs of The Mythology of Evolution, which is now available for reviewers! If you are a book reviewer, an academic, or a blogger, you can email me to ask for a copy of the PDF for review. (If you don’t have my email address, use the Contact link on ihobo.com).

Implicit Game Design (3): Koster's Theory of Fun

Part three of the new game aesthetics serial arrives on ihobo today – check out Koster’s Theory of Fun over on ihobo.com!

Getting Wasted (A Moral Question)

Contains discussions of drug use that some readers of a sensitive disposition may find offensive.

A famous adage, often erroneously ascribed to the philosopher Bertrand Russell, states that ‘the time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted’. But what of the time you enjoy being wasted?

The ethics of drug use is a topic I often have cause to ponder. By ‘drugs’, I mean to include alcohol and tobacco, as well as painkillers, serotonin-inhibitors and all manner of other things that are permitted as ‘medicine’, a category about which I have severe doubts. It is far from clear to me, for instance, that someone in depression is helped by a doctor absolving them of any responsibilities and whacking them out on pills – they could achieve the same mindless state on their own, which makes this seem to be yet another example of doctors inheriting the social power once possessed by priests to make moral pronouncements with authority. Either it is acceptable to be out of your gourd or it isn’t – the doctor’s medical training should have no bearing on the moral dimensions therein and certainly can’t make the routine daily obliteration of personality acceptable, whether we’re talking about anti-depressants or merely mood-savaging ADHT ‘medication’. Next to what is thoughtlessly done to people under the guise of medicine, most drug use borders upon innocence.

Despite my general suspicion of the medical exculpation of mind-wrecking pharmaceuticals, I have certainly partaken of my share of drugs in my time, both legally (primarily, in this regard, vast quantities of alcoholic beverages) and illegally. During my wild years living in London there was basically nothing short of heroin I didn’t partake of on at least one occasion, and even this I was offered, admittedly by a man who strongly advised me to stay away from it at all costs and denounced the film Trainspotting for presenting heroin addiction as something hip. It would be wrong to think that I enjoyed everything I took, but I explored all these experiences because to me at that time, a person in his twenties enjoying the dangerous combination of personal freedom and disposable income, this was an aspect of life with inescapable appeal – especially since it was always done, without fail, in the company of friends and colleagues.

It did not trouble me that what I was doing was illegal, since law and morality had long since parted company for me at that time. I could see no reason the State should be the final arbiter of what I could do to my body, let alone why it should waste it’s precious finances applying force against those people whose drug use was not endorsed by medical orthodoxy. At a ‘Legalize Pot’ rally in London, I saw many people with multiple sclerosis being ported about in wheelchairs and offered marijuana to smoke to alleviate their discomfort. I find it offensive to suggest they should not be allowed to do so. But of course, these were far from the majority of attendees, many of whom took a certain joy at the fact that they could smoke their preferred drug openly in front of the many police officers on patrol without any fear of reprisal. One man, lit joint in hand, asked a passing policeman: “Aren’t you going to do anything?” The officer replied wryly: “Why, sir, do you know of anything illegal I should know about?”

The question I want to pursue here, however, is independent of questions of legality – it is a simple moral question. Is it permissible to get wasted? How wasted? So wasted you become a danger to yourself? To others? So wasted you lose your life? There is a classic sliding scale argument to be applied here, and it will not be easy to place a clear dividing line anywhere upon its slippery slopes. To proceed, we must immediately hurdle that kind of nihilistic scepticism that leaps wantonly from the lack of permanent foundations for ethics to the total absence of morality, and instead accept that at least three moral systems are available to us: virtue ethics, which considers morality from the perspective of the ideal traits of good people; duty ethics (deontology), which considers morality from the perspective of rules and rights; and outcome ethics (Consequentialism), which considers morality in terms of the best events that might follow.

The Scottish philosopher, David Hume, speaks most strongly in favour of getting wasted. He not only praises the merits of a good night’s drinking, he provides a morality for its undertaking:

I hate a drinking Companion, says the Greek Proverb, who never forgets. The Follies of the last Debauch should be buried in eternal Oblivion, in order to give full Scope to the Follies of the next.

(The Japanese drinking ethic, which asks that no-one repeat in the office what was said at the bar, is close to this). Hume advances a position broadly at the intersection of virtue and outcome ethics, one with great appeal to modern liberals and youth. A more conventional virtue ethics view, of the kind advanced by Aristotle (for instance), would argue for temperance, that is, for moderation. I feel there is much to be said for the idea of moderation when pursuing the question of the ethics of drugs, although part of the very problem is that once you become intoxicated, you cease to become a reliable judge of what is moderate.

Immanuel Kant raises objections of this very kind under his version of duty ethics. “A human being who is drunk”, he objects, “is like a mere animal, not to be treated as a human being”. He continues:

It is obvious that putting oneself in such a state violates a duty to oneself. The first of these debasements, below even the nature of an animal, is usually brought about by fermented drinks, but it can also result from other narcotics, such as opium and other vegetable products. They are seductive because, under their influence, people dream for a while that they are happy and free from care, and even imagine that they are strong; but dejection and weakness follow and, worst of all, they create a need to use the narcotics again and even to increase the amount.

Yet even stuffy Kant isn’t calling for total abstinence, since he immediately counters:

Can one at least justify, if not eulogize, a use of wine bordering on intoxication, since it enlivens the company’s conservation and in so doing makes them speak more freely? – Or can it even be granted the merit of promoting what Horace praises in Cato: virtus eius incaluit mero (his virtue was enkindled by unmixed wine)?

But he cautions:

The use of opium and spirits for enjoyment is closer to being  a base act than the use of wine, since they make the user silent, reticent and withdrawn by the dream euphoria they induce. They are therefore permitted only as medicines. – But who can determine the measure for someone who is quite ready to pass into a state in which he no longer has clear eyes for measuring?

This indeed is the nature of the problem. If, as both Hume and Kant are willing to allow, a little drug use can serve the social good of a group of friends, how to address the problem that once intoxicated there is momentum already pushing towards greater and greater excess. Who among drinkers has never been out for ‘a quick drink’ that ended in a mighty bender, with only a catastrophic hangover as a memorial for whatever it was that took place the night before?

I don’t propose to provide answers here, merely to raise the question. If, as most liberals tend to believe, a little drug use is fair game, how can it be prevented from escalating? Can it? I have nothing more to say on this for now, beyond taking this opportunity to apologise to the people of the great city of Amsterdam for abusing your most excellent hospitality and vomiting on your trams. As ever, I went with friends and I do not regret our revels, only the deplorable consequences of my ultimate excess. Like Hume, I find a wondrous beauty in a good debauch – but like Kant, I still hold myself accountable for my shameful conduct therein. Today, my wild days are far behind me, and although I still enjoy a good night's drinking with friends, I do so only in moderation. I am at a loss to explain how this transformation happened if it was not that the impropriety of my youth earned me this later wisdom.

Implicit Game Aesthetics (2): Costikyan's Critical Language

Part two of the new serial is up on ihobo today!

Kant on Filthy, Dirty Sex

Writing in 1797, Kant’s exploration of the doctrine of right or the pure theory of right, strays into some interesting tangents here and there, including a couple of pages about a topic that Kant himself had very little personal experience: sex. Naturally, a lot of Kant’s views are coloured by the time he is writing, but nonetheless an examination of his claims – and an expansion of them in line with contemporary thought – offers some interesting perspectives. (I suggest suspending judgement on Kant’s views as written until we see what they actually imply today).

“Sexual union” Kant states “is the reciprocal use that one human being makes of the sexual organs and capacities of another”. He further suggests that this is either a natural or an unnatural use, the latter being “either with a person of the same sex or with an animal of a nonhuman species”. Kant claims:

Since such transgressions of laws, called unnatural (crimina carnis contra naturam - “carnal crimes against nature”) or also unmentionable vices, do wrong to humanity in our own person, there are no limitations or exceptions whatsoever that can save them from being repudiated completely.

Harsh words! Contemporary liberals, as de facto allies of alternative sexuality (at least as far as homosexuality), vilify this line of argumentation, and Kant does not so much develop this part of his argument as assume that everyone is more-or-less in agreement with his assumption here. It was, after all, the end of the eighteenth century – society was coming to terms with the end of feudalism, and was in no way ready to think about sexuality outside of the context of procreation, and “unnatural” sex is by definition not procreative.

Kant claims that natural sexual union can occur “either in accordance with mere animal nature or in accordance with law” the latter being marriage “that is, the union of two persons of different sexes for lifelong possession of each other’s sexual attributes”. He does not suggest that having children is a necessary requirement for marriage:

The end of begetting and bringing up children may be an end of nature, for which it implanted the inclinations of the sexes for each other; but it is not requisite for human beings who marry to make this their end in order for their union to be compatible with rights, for otherwise marriage would be dissolved when procreation ceases.

Even if it is supposed that their end is the pleasure of using each other’s sexual attributes, the marriage contract is not up to their discretion but is a contract that is necessary by the law of humanity…

In other words, Kant proposes that ‘no sex before marriage’ is “necessary in accordance with pure reason’s laws of right”. His argument is intriguing: Kant claims that when one person uses another’s sexual organs for enjoyment (which is a “natural use”) they make themselves into a thing – that is, they give up their autonomous will (the hallmark of humanity that grounds Kant’s ethical system) and become like animals i.e. things as opposed to persons. Ordinarily, treating people as mere things is forbidden by Kant’s ethics, however, he allows one condition that might make it permissible:

…that while one person is acquired by the other as if it were a thing, the one who is acquired acquires the other in turn; for in this way each reclaims itself and restores its personality.

In other words, it’s okay to use someone for sex as long as the other person is also using you for sex. Kant requires, however, that this is possible only under the condition of marriage – which seems strange by today’s standards. His argument against the alternative rests on the idea that a rightful contract for sex could not possibly hold since:

…everyone will admit that a person who has concluded such a contract could not rightfully be held to the fulfilment of her promise if she regrets it… Accordingly, either party can cancel the contract with the other as soon as it pleases without the other having grounds for complaining about any infringement of its rights.

Or, to put it another way ‘no means no even if you earlier said yes’. Since contracts between people are, at least in terms of the theory of right, binding, Kant sees the inability to make a contract for sex (other than a marriage contract) as the reason why marriage is a requirement for sex: it is the only kind of contract that can legitimise consensual sex in his eyes, and the fact that this also prepares the way for the raising of children (the natural, but not required, outcome of conjugal intercourse) this satisfies Kant as to the justice of his position.

Now Kant did not believe that ethics was something that could be worked out entirely in advance, but rather held that there was a metaphysical aspect to moral thinking which, being untestable but reachable by reason, could be worked out in advance. But this metaphysics of morals could only be made into an actual moral or legal system by taking into account what he terms a “practical anthropology” i.e. the empirical study of the nature of humanity. Since our practical anthropology has come along quite considerably since Kant’s time, we can reasonably update Kant’s claims in line with contemporary empirical views on the human animal.

One of the biggest changes in this regard is the divorce between sex and procreation. We not only no longer think of children as a necessary consequence of sex, we no longer think of sex as a necessary prerequisite for children – think, for example, of surrogate mothers. However, since Kant does not rely on this relation for any of his claims (even though his thinking is obviously underlined by it) this aspect of contemporary times doesn’t really bear on his ‘sexual ethics’. We can, perhaps, now assert at the very least that viewing (potentially) procreative sex as ‘natural’ and all alternatives ‘unnatural’ understates the nature of mammalian sexual biology. Canadian biologist Bruce Bagemihl has presented compelling evidence that what he terms biological exuberance in respect of sex is the norm; homosexual and bisexual behaviours occur in some 300 different species, and procreation is just one of many functions that this sexual activity serves (others including group cohesion and lessoning of tensions).

Another change that should be taken into account is in the way we now think about contracts with serious implications. If, for instance, we enter into a long-term contract with (say) a telephone service provider, we are allowed (say) a month in which to cancel this contract without prejudice. Once these kinds of clauses are accepted, Kant’s argument against non-marital contractual sex disappears: the fact that either party can (as he suggested) cancel a verbal contract for sex at any time needn’t invalidate the nature of that contract as long as it stands. As such, therefore, consensual sex becomes an extremely short-term substitute for a marital contract, allowing both parties to use the other’s ‘sexual attributes’ for enjoyment, even though so doing reduces both parties to the status of a thing (or, which is equivalent in Kant’s metaphysics, an animal). The breaking of the connection between sex and procreation via contraception does weigh in on this, and it may be possible to argue that this kind of ‘casual sex contract’ implies the use of contraception.

If our practical anthropology allows for homosexual sex – and the case for this has become quite strong, whether or not (as some people believe), homosexuality is genetically determined – then these two rightful contracts for sexual enjoyment extend naturally to gay people who are just as capable of exercising their autonomous will such matters. Certainly, the ‘casual sex contract’ presents no different issues once homosexuality ceases to be an “unmentionable vice”. Marriage too seems to extend naturally here – after all, Kant already allows that raising children is in no way a prerequisite for marriage. At the very least, it is implied by Kant’s pure theory of right that a contractual relationship equivalent to marriage must be allowed between a homosexual couple (once our practical anthropology validates this kind of sexual relation). That this relationship should be called marriage is neither a metaphysical nor an empirical matter, however, and the issue of what to call such a contract is thus a matter for individual legislatures to wrestle with according to the will of the people it represents.

Kant never married and, we can safely assume, was a virgin his entire life, but his thoughts on sex are not as dated as they may first seem. The idea of a contractual basis for rightful sexual congress is one that we still deem moral today – as indicated by the outrage that accompanies a verdict of rape. We can use each other for sexual enjoyment, even though in so doing we become ‘mere animals’ or ‘things’, solely on the provision that we are consensual equals when we agree do so. This is one of many examples demonstrating how Kant’s metaphysics of morals are as apt today as they were two centuries ago.

Implicit Game Aesthetics (1): Crawford's Taxonomy

Over on ihobo today, the start of a new seven-part serial on game aesthetics, in which I dig into various definitions of the term ‘game’ in order to excavate the underlying aesthetic value judgements.

Part one, Crawford’s Taxonomy, is up on ihobo.com today!

Note for Academics

I will be submitting a revised and edited version of the Implicit Game Aesthetics serial that starts today as a paper to an as-yet-undetermined journal or conference. Please help me decide where to publish it as I am really quite unsure!

Parfit's On What Matters

I recently finished Derek Parfit’s monstrous epic, On What Matters, Volume 1 and 2, and am currently processing my rather voluminous notes from it. It took me about four months to read this, which isn’t bad for a 1,440 page leviathan, all in all. Although it contains some great material it is far, far too long for what it is and would have seriously benefited from being broken up into shorter, thematically connected books. However, some of the things Parfit does in this work would be impossible in anything other than its current cyclopean tome format.

The first volume was rather less interesting to me than the second, simply because I found Parfit’s methods to be too systematic for his goal. He wants to pick up Kant’s task of uncovering the supreme principle of ethics – and indeed, has a serious stab at revising Kant’s formulae in order to achieve this goal. Revising and expanding some of his work on normative reasons from his earlier Reasons & Persons, Parfit is able to take his ideas much further – in part because he is now a “born again” Kantian, and thus isn’t as held up by the inherent problems with Utilitarianism (as showcased by Rawls and Parfit himself in his first book). Parfit ultimately concludes that Kant’s system, Scanlon’s Contractualism and Rule Consequentialism all coincide when cleaned up in certain ways that he finds plausible – rather than being competing ethical systems, their exponents were “climbing the same mountain on different sides”.

I have a lot of sympathy for Parfit’s (volume 1) conclusion, in so much as I believe that all ethical systems are in essence transformable from one to another. However, I see Parfit’s Triple Theory, like Shelly Kagan’s Kantian Consequentialism and other specific instances of apparent moral philosophy convergence, as being just one instance of the kind of crossover in ethical thinking that occurs because of commonality in imaginative ideals and underlying elements such as empathy. The Triple Theory is unsatisfying, however, in that Parfit has had to conduct some considerable violence to Kant’s project in order to make it reach his very high standards – namely, to make it logically and mathematically sound. He basically has to remodel it until it very nearly is Rule Consquentialism, and thus it’s not wholly surprising that after this make-over they seem to “fit together like two pieces in a jig-saw puzzle.”

Volume 2, however, immediately justifies itself by commencing with a series of essays by various moral philosophers that respond to and critique Parfit’s first volume. This odd state of affairs came about since the material originated as a lecture series, plus drafts of the book have been in circulation for quite some time. (Indeed, a book entitled Essays on Derek Parfit’s On What Matters was published two years before the book itself!) The response essays that open the second volume are all great reading – and in fact the contribution by Allen Wood is my favourite part of the entire project. Wood (perhaps the greatest living Kant scholar) supports some of Parfit’s points before cogently arguing against Trolley Problems and similar thought experiments (which are key to volume 1’s argument) claiming they are “utterly disastrous” and “far worse than useless for moral philosophy”. For me, this essay isn’t just the best thing about On What Matters, it’s my favourite paper on moral philosophy bar none. Parfit’s response to Wood’s contribution, frankly, doesn’t seem to wrestle with the depth of the objection it raises.

Parfit is at his best in the main body of the second volume, in which he presents his meta-ethical theory in a formal but slightly scattershot fashion. There are some great sections here, none of which depend on having read volume 1 – which makes me think some philosophers would do better to focus on the second part alone. Some of my favourite moments are here in the minutiae, particularly in Parfit’s critique of Nietzsche which lands right before closing time. With a straight face, Parfit writes:

In other passages, Nietzsche returns to the aim of revaluing all values. We need, he claims, new values. But Nietzsche says little about these values. In his last published attempt to revalue values, The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche merely returns to attacking Christian values. Nietzsche hopes for ‘a new nobility’, whose ‘formula for happiness’ would be ‘a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal’. That is not a helpful formula.

Nietzsche’s brand of poetic madness is about as perpendicular to Parfit’s logical, methodical process as is conceivable, and reading the latter’s thoughts on the former is thoroughly entertaining. Personally, I’d have put material like this up front instead of opening with the mind-numbing sequence of definitions that clog up the start of the first volume.

Ultimately, reading On What Matters is like being locked in a room with a mad genius for a week while he carefully explains his theories. There is much to commend it, but it’s also seriously heavy going – not because it’s too complex, but just because it is so verbose, and so systematically unwieldy. Fans of Parfit’s earlier philosophy are likely to be underwhelmed by this new work, which doesn’t contain anything quite as spectacular as the discussion of Persons in part III of Reasons & Persons, although as a summary of the state of moral philosophy, a source of new points of departure, and as something to gainfully push off against through opposition, On What Matters has a great deal to offer. The books are essential reading for anyone interested in normativity – especially if you are looking for an impassioned defence of the idea that some things really do matter, despite the prevailing sceptical currents in meta-ethics. I can’t recommend it unequivocally, but I certainly don’t regret having tackled it.

Published by Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0199265923.

The Age of Recrimination

We live at a time in which almost everyone has allegations and insinuations to direct against others – politicians, co-workers, neighbours – yet almost no-one thinks ethics is an interesting subject. How can this be?

I fear the bad reputation that ethics has acquired is a result both of the dull tone that academic moral philosophy has fallen into sustaining, and the odd belief that the only thing ethics has to teach is what we shouldn’t do – as if ethics was merely the formal counterpart of law. The idea that ethics could still be, as the Greeks believed, about how we should live, has taken upon a negative context: any possible basis for ‘should’ is either discredited or simply disbelieved. Yet ethics is, and always has been, about our mutual happiness. Somehow, we lost sight of this.

We constantly make moral judgements against others, rarely against ourselves, and thus live within poisonous half-ethical mythologies that make no reference to virtue (except to note its absence), have no mention of duty (except when criticising others for not doing theirs), and have absolute certainty about the consequences of other people not sharing our beliefs, while discounting outright the idea that anyone else has any beliefs worth holding. Recrimination has replaced reflection in our moral world – never mind what I do or don’t do, what you did is so much worse.

The consequences of this corruption of our moral perspectives are deeper than are often credited. The belligerent stalemates in politics, the incremental devastation of the natural world, the return of international imperialism all stem from the same withered tree. In this respect, Alain Badiou has it right when he condemns traditional ethics as being built on an image of evil; we know what is wrong, and it isn’t ourselves but always others:

Ethics is conceived here both as an a priori ability to discern Evil (for according to the modern usage of ethics, Evil – or the negative – is primary: we presume a consensus regarding what is barbarian), and as the ultimate principle of judgement, in particular political judgement: good is what intervenes visibly against an Evil that is identifiable a priori. Law itself is first of all law ‘against’ Evil.

Thus the liberal blames the conservative for their traditional beliefs because this fails to live up to the standards of tolerance liberality demands – despite the fact that this demand (as Badiou also notes) becomes self-defeating. The liberal is hopeless at tolerance; they can only tolerate those people who share their specific liberal values. Thus too the conservative blames the liberal for their “godless” or “progressive” values, yet fails to live up to the demands of the religious traditions they claim to extol and bring about the kind of destructive ‘progress’ they abhor by an unholy alliance between tradition and ever-greedy capitalism. Always, the fault lies elsewhere.

We go awry when we think of ethics solely in the form of moral law because then it seems unachievable, and all that is left is to vilify, persecute and ultimately murder the worst excesses that lie outside this unattainable ideal. Instead, we can recognise our imperfection and uphold moral ideals from within, instead of reflecting them as hostility without. We can praise virtues when we find them, we can be dutiful for its own rewards, we can discuss consequences in the light of the uncertainty that inevitable obscures the future. In short, we can practice ethics personally instead of solely pursuing the persecution of the unethical nationally and internationally. We can return to the original ethical question – how should we live? – and answer it for ourselves by living well.

Clusterpuck

The puzzle game Clusterpuck, designed by International Hobo and developed by Codename, arrived on PlayStation Home yesterday! The concept and design was developed by Joel Atkinson, under my ever-watchful eye – but neither of us have actually played it yet! During development, Codename sent us videos of player trials and that was our only point of reference for the game.

We’d love to know what people make of Clusterpuck, so please leave a comment if you’ve played it.

Cross-posted from ihobo.com.