Some postcard-sized records of mental events

2009-06-07T13:22:00.000-07:00

On maximally desirable forms of friendship

(Preliminary caveat: Note in what follows that I'm not really speaking from my philosophical side but rather from my essayistic, Montaigne-cum-Valéry side. This side draws from philosophy, but I certainly wouldn't commit myself to any of this as a philosopher without much more detailed arguments. This is just fun idle speculation. It's also a matter of exploring certain systematic opinions I have that I ought to formulate clearly and defend in some way.)

I've always been attracted to a very specific form of close friendship. It strikes me as the interpersonal pinnacle of sweetness and light. I feel obligated to explain its special value. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there is no special value, and there are better forms that I should seek. Perhaps I am right, but I should have my reasons. Hence the following start of an attempt to justify this idée fixe.

Most people have a dominant vocation. Some lucky people love it deeply, so that it actually merits the full etymological force of the term I'm using. And then most people have an avocation. Few people fail to love their avocation, although it's not terribly uncommon, I guess, for people to fail to be utterly passionate about it. But, insofar as they fail to be wholly fervid about it, that's usually because they've picked the wrong one. One does, after all, engage in an avocation for its own sake and just for the hell of it, just to get it off. One would have to be irrational or psychologically defective if one had the time to pursue it, recognized it as desirable for its own sake, believed it to be highly pleasurable, and yet didn't get passionate about it.

We can abstract away from these little problematic quirks and idealize a bit to see clearly. By and large, it seems true that for each person S, there is a special class of vocations {V_i,S} that S could do better than she could do anything else. Moreover, it seems that, among the V_i,S, there will be one that S enjoys more than the rest. Call this S's haloed vocation, and pick it out by "V*_S". And it seems true that, for each person S, there is a special class of avocations {A_i,S} that S would enjoy more than she'd enjoy any others. Moreover, it seems that, among the A_i,S, there will be one that S can do better than the rest. Call this S's haloed avocation, and pick it out by "A*_S". Say that the ideal active profile for S is the pair (V*_S, A*_S).

I'm inclined to say in an Aristotelian vein that if a rational person can find her ideal active profile and realize it, she will flourish maximally. And so I'd then venture to say that a life in which S realizes this ideal active profile is the good life for S. (Right now, I'd say that mostly because the Aristotelian picture of the good life strikes me as intuitively on the mark, though there are surely things to dispute about it.) This is conditional, however, on everything else going perfectly well in her life. To use the cliched pop-psych way of talking about this, a person can't get to the top of Maslow's hierarchy without having the other tiers in the hierarchy firmly set up. I'll abstract away from this trouble, and presuppose for simplicity's sake that the people I'm talking about have all this background set up for them.

OK. Now I can state the ideal vision of close friendship to which I am attracted. Then I'll have to see whether it's rational to give it the haloed status that I give it. In the form of close friendship that I find most desirable, there are two people S₁ and S₂ who have ideal active profiles (V*_S1, A*_S1) and (V*_S2, A*_S2), where V*_S1 = A*_S2 and A*_S1 = V*_S2. In more causal words, S₁'s haloed vocation is S₂'s haloed avocation, and S₂'s haloed vocation is S₁'s haloed avocation. Call this form of friendship the Aristotelian Jigsaw. There's something extraordinarily beautiful about the Aristotelian Jigsaw. It seems perfect to me.

Why? Although I may be wrong that there is no better form of intimate friendship, it does strike me that there is a lot that speaks in favor of the Jigsaw. I'll get at this slowly, since this is the first time I've tried to justify my opinion on this score.

Assume what seems inevitable from the way I've set things up -- viz., that a person S is exercising her faculties in the way that is simultaneously best for her and good for the world when she engages in her haloed vocation, and hence is flourishing. Now suppose some other person S* comes along who naturally finds S's haloed vocation the most enjoyable of all pastimes. Moreover, among the pastimes that S* finds highly enjoyable, this is one that S* can do best, though it's not her vocation.

The most genuine form of love, I think, is unconditional desire for another person's flourishing. If one person is just naturally disposed to find what makes another person flourish pleasurable and desirable, and, indeed, seeks what makes the other person flourish as a hobby that she does just because she finds it wonderful and can also do it pretty well, then the first person is in a perfect position to have the most genuine form of love for the other person. The form of friendship that I've envisaged is one in which this is a mutual thing. In the Jigsaw, two people are just naturally disposed to find the things that make each other flourish highly enjoyable as pastimes, and they are both good enough at these respective things that they can share them in a deep way. Hence, the form of friendship I've sketched is one in which it is maximally easy for people to have the most genuine form of love for each other. That's a pretty big consideration that speaks in favor of the Jigsaw.

And so there seems to be a Kantian kind of argument for the desirability of the Jigsaw. Kant's formula of humanity says that one should treat all persons never merely as a means, but always as ends. Two people in a Jigsaw are just naturally disposed to enjoy and to participate in what respectively makes them the people that they are -- i.e., what makes them flourish. As a result, it's just a cakewalk for two people who share a Jigsaw to satisfy the formula of humanity with respect to each other. They don't have to think about it: it just naturally falls out of the way they're set up.

Now, one might wonder why the best form of friendship isn't instead one in which two people share the same haloed vocation and the same avocations. In this competing form of friendship, we have (V*_S1, A*_S1) and (V*_S2, A*_S2), where V*_S1 = V*_S2 and A*_S1 = A*_S2. In other words, the ideal active profiles of two people here are just identical. Call this form of friendship Profile Identity. Why prefer the Aristotelian Jigsaw to Profile Identity?

I concede that Profile Identity is highly desirable. It would be crazy to deny that. We should want some cases of Profile Identity in our life. Phrased quite casually, we should want colleagues who have similar pastimes. But I'm still more attracted to the Jigsaw. And there are reasons.

The same kind of large-scale consideration that we used to support the Jigsaw does not seem to support Profile Identity.

Suppose A and B form a case of Profile Identity. A and B wouldn't desire to hear about each other's professions primarily because they think it would be enjoyable. They would rather primarily want to hear about each other's professions because, well, they're the same. They'd be engaging in "shop talk" with each other. Of course, because their jobs are their haloed vocations, it would certainly be pleasant to do this. But they wouldn't really be learning anything new. And they wouldn't be interested in hearing about what they did at work just for fun, just for the hell of it. If they'd be deeply interested, it would be because they're going to set forth in solving a vocational problem together, in getting some shared work done.

Now, of course, A and B also share the same avocations. And it is certainly nice to be with someone who wants to do the same things for fun. Again, I don't deny that this lends value to Profile Identity. But what's missing in Profile Identity is nontrivial, and it's present in the Jigsaw. People who share an Aristotelian Jigsaw want to hear about each other's haloed vocations just for fun, and are competent enough to be able to discuss them in a quite serious way. People in a Jigsaw value each other's flourishing in a way that people who share Profile Identity don't, and simply enjoy seeing and participating in each other's flourishing as an end in itself. This is a deeper and more substantial kind of interaction, one in which two people are profoundly affirming each other's foundations just for the hell of it, because that's naturally what they want to do. That is missing from Profile Identity.

Is there anything important missing from the Jigsaw that Profile Identity offers? I don't see anything. Sharing similar foundational commitments and similar hobbies is good. But when your hobby is to promote someone else's foundational commitments for the hell of it and vice versa, you're going to end up getting a lot more out of your friendship and your life. You'll enter into your job with renewed confidence and vigor, and you'll be inspired by the wonder that this other person has for what you do. At the same time, you'll be learning a lot from this person about something you do well that you just want to do for the hell of it. In doing so, you'll be promoting that person's foundational commitments. Everything that was really good about Profile Identity is present in the Jigsaw, and there's more in there, too.

I can set this in an older context to highlight the advantages of Jigsaws and to clarify why they're better than both Profile Identity and other, simpler forms of friendship.

Aristotle recognized three forms of friendship -- friendships of utility, pleasure, and virtue. In the first, the friendship exists just for achieving some extrinsically worthwhile, temporary aim. It is not going to last very long at all. Other things being equal, it will be over when the aim is achieved. In the second, the friendship exists for the sake of getting it off. It will last as long as it's still easy and desirable to get it off, which may not be long at all. In the last form, the friendship exists for promoting virtue. This friendship will last insofar as the friends continue to give a damn about virtue -- insofar, that is, as they're substantively rational and so give a damn about flourishing and the promotion of intrinsic value. This form was, by Aristotle's lights, the best.

I like this idea. But Aristotle oversimplified things. He missed out on more complicated possibilities. What if your pleasure is the other person's virtue, and your virtue is the other person's pleasure? That's my Jigsaw. It has all the pleasant advantages of Aristotle's second type, all the moral advantages of the third, and the two reinforce each other and keep each other afloat indefinitely. Profile Identity, on the other hand, is just the mere sum of the second and third types. They both exist, but they don't reinforce each other. In this case, the pleasures of hobby might dissipate and linking of avocations might be cut, leaving only the promotion of virtue as the shared thing. But with the Jigsaw, there is a feedback loop. And what was dangerous about the pure friendship of pleasure has been avoided. And what seemed just a bit too stolidly moral and perhaps prissy about the pure friendship of virtue has also been shirked. The two are bound, not simply set side by side.

We could go on and point out the more obvious advantages of the Jigsaw -- e.g., the respects in which it is better than obviously inferior, simpler forms of friendship, or relationships that don't even amount to friendship. Since these things are obvious, I'll ignore them. The considerations we've so far set up at least start to make clear why Jigsaws are better than the only other forms of friendship that seemed good enough to compete -- viz., Profile Identity, the pure link of pleasure, and the pure link of virtue.

I should concede that even more complex possibilities are imaginable. I've oversimplified things just as much as Aristotle did. While it's true that people can be correctly represented as having haloed vocations and avocations, there's a lot more to people than this. There are many more minor avocations that people might share. And I'm perfectly willing to grant that a friendship in which there is not just a Jigsaw, but also a sharing of these further more minor avocations is better than a pure Jigsaw. This isn't incompatible with anything I've said. It just shows that we should generalize the Jigsaw a bit.

So, I'd say that if two people form a Jigsaw and share a bunch of more minor avocations, they're better suited to be deep, avid, intimate friends than people who just form a Jigsaw but otherwise diverge. I guess we can imagine beings that are much more cognitively talented and long-lived than us who can have several near-haloed vocations to which they can devote themselves equally. These better beings might then form even more complex Jigsaws. Suppose that one of them devotes himself to near-haloed vocations V_i,S and avocations A_i,S. And suppose that another of them has near-haloed V_i,S* avocations A_i,S*. If each V_i,S = A_i,S* and V_i,S* = A_i,S, then we'd have an even more complex and preferable Jigsaw. But that, of course, is probably only possible and desirable for such sophisticated beings. Humans only have time and mental capacity for one or two near-haloed vocations and a fair but still smallish number of near-haloed avocations and minor avocations. So, we here have a case in which idealizing too much won't have any practical relevance.

In practical life, what should one look for? Well, I think we all have to first figure out what our haloed vocations and avocations are. One hard thing in life is just getting this straight. Another, even harder thing is finding jobs that allow us to pursue our haloed vocations and that leave enough free time to allow us to pursue our haloed avocations. Most people don't even get that far. But, to the extent that it can be achieved, we should then look for Jigsaws. They're awfully rare. We have to protect them when we find them, and pursue them as avidly as we can. (And, for heaven's sake, don't express too much avidity initially, which scares people away!) They will offer us something truly amazing, something that is the pinnacle of both pleasure and virtue, something deeply affirming in a Kantian way and thickly pleasurable in a straightforwardly utilitarian way. And, to be sure, we should look for other good but less haloed friendships. A given person will only have enough time and energy for one or two Jigsaws in a given stretch of his life. He should also look for cases of Profile Identity, and for plain and simple friendships of pleasure and virtue.

That, then, is a deep belief of mine. I'm probably missing out on something even subtler and better, but I've at least hit on some preliminary arguments for something that we really ought to desire very strongly, and value enormously.

Just a few little things from Ken Koch

2009-06-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

Aesthetics of Paul Valéry

Being a single line that I have worked on
Than a whole epic dictated by the Muse!
Better to walk, even lost, in my own direction--and find the way.
If not...not count the day.

Aesthetics of Saying Goodbye to a Friend

Walk him to the place
Where he can get a taxi
And say good-bye
If he is wearing an overcoat
Place one hand
On his shoulder--or if he is not.
Shake hands, embrace
Your friend and say good-bye
Soon the sky
Will cover him
With only a plane between

Aesthetics of Being a Bird

Eat brusquely
With a half-closed mouth;
When another speaks, glance up
But don't respond.
After you have eaten
Take off
And sing
Portuguese songs--a fado, if you please!

To Knowledge, My Skeleton, and an Aesthetic Concept

We're sitting around, as usual
Hotcha-nothing-to-do sort of summer
Afternoon-evening and you, Skeleton, aching a little
Ask for a song
From An Aesthetic Concept. You, Concept, explain
That no songs today but, rather, discussion
Of you and they say
What do you think, Knowledge? You
Lounging in a corner, pull up your knees
To your robust chest and say Listen
To both parts and make a conclusion.
A few friends are dropping over
As lazy as we. I say Knowledge your answer didn't
Make very much sense and you say
(To Skeleton) Have some tortellini. It's
Good for you. And Aesthetic Concept
You're humming a tune that in some ways bears yourself out.
I go out to get some coffee and Skeleton
You with me. You say, you know, Knowledge
Is knowledge but all the same
It would be good to hear a song don't you agree
It would help get some of these cricks out of me.
Skeleton, Concept, and Knowledge, all on a summer's day
Turned evening thirty-five years ago
When gin drinks were still popular, the acanthus was blossoming
And each of you said what you felt you had to say
No matter the consequences either to head or to heart.

Postscript to "Cruddy Concepts...."

2009-05-13T19:44:00.001-07:00

I realized that there is a somewhat compelling but bad objection to what I was saying that's worth answering. One might easily take my suggestion to speak in favor of political correctness norms. And then one might advance the following Cynical Argument:

(1) Your view requires us to endorse political correctness norms.

(2) Political correctness norms are dumb.

(3) So, your view is false.

I like the Cynical Argument in a certain way, although I'll be picky. I think (2) is on the right track. It strikes me as right to say that political correctness norms are dumb. But I only say "on the right track", because, strictly speaking, it's the enforcement of political correctness norms that is dumb, not the norms themselves, which are presumably just propositions, and propositions can't really be dumb. Propositions are just abstract objects. Assertions of propositions can be dumb. And so can imperatives that have such propositions as their contents. But the propositions themselves are distinct, and we shouldn't transfer properties of speech acts to propositions. This is certainly not the worst problem with the argument, but it's not irrelevant. The argument is invalid because of this mistake. (2) doesn't entail (3) because an assertion of a proposition can be dumb and hence it can seem correct to say that the "proposition itself" is dumb even though the proposition is true. For example, asserting 2 + 2 = 4 is dumb.

I mainly don't like the Cynical Argument because (1) is false. My view says that there are certain concepts that are cruddy because they don't accurately represent the world. But, as I said all along, while I think the non-cruddy concepts are better because they represent more accurately, and I think it's worth thinking in terms of them when the differences are relevant, I certainly don't say that we should start using crush*** in ordinary talk because it's more precise. That would be dumb, because it's a waste of words to speak that way, and there are circumstances in which the fineness of crush*** is irrelevant. This is why (1) is false. Political correctness is based on a correct idea, but it's dumb. The correct idea is that certain concepts don't represent the world with a high degree of accuracy, and it's bad to neglect the nuances when they're important, and to base norms on ignorance of the nuances. It's dumb because it's usually a waste of words to use the more nuanced concept. But it's not dumb to see the differences. That's smart. And it's even smarter to see the differences in weird cases, like the case of crushes. And that's all that I was suggesting. So, the Cynical Argument can't be pressed against me.

What Happens When Parfit Gets Ticked Off

2009-05-13T15:22:00.000-07:00

Derek Parfit is actually a very sweet man. But sometimes he fires really nasty rockets at people. And it's really funny -- and justified, because he's usually right. One of the funniest snarky passages in his forthcoming book is the following, which comes at the end of a long section that completely blows the tar out of Alan Gibbard's entire new metaethical program (pardon the length; it's just so hilarious):

"When Gibbard sums up his aims, he writes:

Above all, I hope, the analysis will help us understand why it matters which acts and feelings are rational.

But as before, if Gibbard's view were true, there would be nothing to understand. Since there is no expressivistic sense in which anything could be rational, there would be no point in asking which acts and feelings are rational. Nor could anything matter. Just as our normative beliefs could only mimic the search for truth, things could only mimic mattering. Since a mimic is a fake, or sham, such mimicry is not enough.

Gibbard's analysis, he also claims,

can transform our view of what we are doing when we ponder fundamental normative questions, and allow us to proceed more effectively in our normative thinking.

Gibbard's analysis would indeed transform our view. If we became convinced that there are no truths about what is rational, or about reasons, or about what we ought to do, we would cease to believe that normative questions could have answers. Our normative thinking would then be easier, since we would cease to worry that we might be getting things wrong. But that would not make our thinking more effective, since it would not help us to get things right. There would be nothing to get right.

…

Gibbard also hopes that, when we are trying to decide 'what really matters and why', his account of normativity can make some 'fruitful' answers 'seem evident and right'. If Gibbard's view were true, no answer could be right. And if we really accepted and understood this view, none could even seem to be evident or right. Phrases like 'what really matters' would be seen merely to mimic the search for the truth.

As Gibbard writes, his main question is:

Can I ever be mistaken in an ought judgment?…Do we discover how best to live, or is it a matter of arbitrary choice…?

On Gibbard's view, I have argued, there would be nothing to discover. We could never be mistaken in our judgments about how it would be better or worse to live, since this would just be a matter of arbitrary choice.

Unlike many noncognitivists, Gibbard realizes that his view cannot be restricted to practical reasons: reasons for caring and for acting. In his words, 'Norms are fundamental to thought…we cannot think at all without some implicit guidance by norms'. Just as 'what it is rational to do settles what to do…what it is rational to believe settles what to believe'. Remember finally that, on Gibbard's view, 'to call a thing rational is not to state a matter of fact, either truly or falsely'. If there could not be facts or truths about what it is rational to believe, as Gibbard's view implies, it could not be rational to believe anything, including Gibbard's view."

This is from ch.28 of On What Matters, a manuscript for a two-part book that Parfit has made available for wide public circulation.

As Parfit said in class, you also know that a philosopher must have something wrong when he can only state his view by inventing locutions which are transparently ungrammatical. And the funny thing is that when you realize why they're ungrammatical, you realize that he really is pulling a pathetic trick. If one looks at the semantics of infinitives like "to do", one finds that these fellows admit of several readings -- among others, a 'could' reading...and an 'ought' reading. Kinda funny.

Revision and Generalization of Cruddy Folk Concepts: An Introduction

2009-05-10T14:52:00.000-07:00

Preamble

I think we sometimes think in concepts that are much too coarse-grained, open-textured, and underdeveloped, and we end up getting badly confused as a result. Let me start with an example to give you a sense of what I have in mind. Then, I will generalize the proposal. I suggest that we start thinking with new concepts, concepts that are more fine-grained, definite-textured, and generalized. I don't exactly suggest that we get rid of the old concepts. We can keep them as special cases of the more general concepts, and think in terms of them when we don't have a use for more refinement. But the upshot here is that we do have good reason for more refinement, and hence have a reason to revise and generalize cruddy concepts.

The Crush: A Cruddy Concept and Some Refinements

First of all, the classifications for desires that we have are way too coarse-grained, insufficiently general, and underdeveloped. In short, they're pretty cruddy, although they're onto something importantly real. Suppose that one has an intense desire to interact with some person, and that it has a certain qualitative feel that most of us would call a "crush". This concept is insufficiently general. When we say that someone has a crush on someone else, we acknowledge the following implication: "If the other person had the same feeling, and both recognized this, then they may very well want to have a romantic/intimate relationship together." But why assume that this desire+crushy-feeling we have is specifically about a romantic relationship? Couldn't it be about something like that, but not quite that? Well, I guess one might insist: "Oh, if it were only about something like that, it wouldn't really be a crush, you silly goose."

I think the person who says this is the silly goose. Why don't we generalize the concept of a crush? Introduce some more general concept that picks out a desire with a certain insistent, crushy qualitative feel that is directed at engaging in a certain kind of interaction with that person. Instead of talking simply about crushes on people, we could talk about crushes on people for a particular kind of relationship. We could introduce a three-place relation crush*(x, person, type of relationship). Why stop there? Why not generalize a little more? A person can certainly have a crush on another person. But why can't a person have a crush on a cat, a tree, a book, a painting, or a city? I guess one could again insist: "No, goofball, you're really missing the point. You can't have crushes on those kinds of things." I say that this person is the goofball. This person is missing out on a better concept. We can replace "person" with "interactive entity", and introduce a yet more general three-place relation crush**(x, interactive entity, type of relationship).

This relation subsumes the old notion of a crush as a special case. X crushes Y in the old sense iff crush**(X, Y, romantic partnership) & Y is a person. But we could have other crushes. How about crush**(me, Shane, intellectual partnership)? I certainly had a desire+feeling that feels a lot like the crushy desire+feeling that I've had for potential romantic partners when I first got to know my friend Shane. Why not crush**(me, New York City, intellecto-spiritual partnership)? I've certainly had a crushy desire+feeling a lot like the desire+feeling that I've had for potential romantic partners when I first got to know Gotham City. Why can't I call these crushes, and just generalize a little bit? Someone who tells me that I can't do this is missing out, and is limiting himself in a sad way. Why? Because there are important similarities between crushes in the old sense and a whole class of crushy desire+feeling states that we can pick out with crush**. We have a concept for crush**(X, Y, Z) when X = a person, Y = a person, and Z = a romantic partnership. I think we'd be missing out on a more general phenomenon if we stiffened the categories and refused to call something a crush unless X = a person, Y = a person and Z = a romantic partnership when crush**(X, Y, Z).

I think we miss out in other ways. When we refuse to generalize, we get really confused. Suppose that two youngsters have crushy desire+feelings directed at each other and come to a mutual recognition of this. They immediately jump to the conclusion: "Oh, I guess we're starting to fall in love. This could be romantic intimacy!" This is a bit of a parody. But it's not far from the truth. I don't mean to say to these youngsters: "No, it isn't going to be romantic intimacy." I rather mean to say: "The mere fact that you crush** one another doesn't entail that Z = romantic partnership. Sure, it might be. That would be cool, I concede. But Z could be a zillion things. Take a second to think more carefully." Why take a second to think more carefully? Because you probably don't really know what it is that you're wanting until you think more about it; your wants are not as luminous as you'd think, if you think about it. You know that you crush** this person. But do you really know much more than that? Without reflection, I doubt it. And if you don't dig a little deeper, you might end up being disappointed! Suppose that, in your case, it was really that Z = music-based intellectual/romantic partnership, and that, in the other person's case, it was really that Z = literature-based intellectual/romantic partnership. You might miss out on these fine-grained details. And you might realize later on what the details were, and that this is why things didn't work out. Take a second to think a bit about how precise the value for Z is. Do it all over the place, not just for your crushes** about people, but also for your crushes on graduate schools, professors, paintings, books, and so on.

In fact, we could generalize even further. I think when we have crushes on stuff, we in fact have crushes** on stuff for several types of relationship Z_i to various degrees. We could introduce a further generalization that has slots for the several types, and weights for the various degrees. Call it crush***. Let Z_i = Z₁, Z₂, Z₃, and so on, where these are the types of relationship desired. Let n_i = n₁, n₂, n₃, and so on, where these are respective weights on the Z_i. Measure the weights in the interval [0, 1] so that they add to 1. Crush*** is a four-place relation that has a slot for the ordered set (Z_i) and the ordered set (n_i), which are the weights on the various types of relationship chopped up in the unit interval. Suppose that Bob has a crush*** on you. What might that amount to? It might amount to this. Crush***(Bob, you, (Z₄), (n₄)), where Z₁ = literary partnership, Z₂ = sexual partnership, Z₃ = musical partnership, Z₄ = food-based partnership, and n₁ = .2, n₂ = .4, n₃ = .1, and n₄ = .3. If we were being realistic, we probably wouldn't really want pointy values for the n_i, but rather possibly overlapping sub-intervals of [0, 1], since people's degrees of crush probably aren't fine-grained to the point of wholesale pointiness. But I think this is a fair generalization.

Let me explain. One might plead: "How on earth could our crushes be that precise?" I say: "You aren't looking carefully enough." Suppose that there are three near duplicates of some girl, A, B and C. Suppose A has slightly shorter red hair, is a little more into German novels, likes classical music a little bit more than pop music, and likes fancy Co-Op food more than ordinary food. Suppose B has slightly longer darker red hair, is a little more into Roman poetry, likes pop music a little bit more than classical music, and likes ordinary food a little more than fancy Co-Op food. Suppose C has in-between lighter red hair, is a little more into late 19^th century English novels, likes classical and pop equally but also likes jazz, and likes fancy and ordinary food equally well. Apart from these factors, A, B and C are qualitative duplicates; surely this is possible -- although you might expect qualities to cluster, there are no necessary connections between distinct existences. Might you not have a preference ranking over them? I think you might. Let m₁ - m₃ be your degrees of crush on A, B, and C. If faced with the choice of pursuing a crush on one of them, it might very well be the case that m₁ > m₂ > m₃, or whatever. Our tastes are very picky. That's why I think we need something like crush***, not just crush**, crush*, or the really cruddy, plain and simple crush. We need to be able to think about these fine-grained differences -- not always, but sometimes. And so we have a good use for crush***. I don't say that crush*** is always the best. If your options are limited, it might suffice to think in terms of crush*. But if you're faced with a choice between thirteen graduate programs and you've got a generalized crush on all of them, I think you might very well want to think in terms of crush***. So would you if you were choosing to pursue a crush on one of a pair of identical twins. And so on, and so on, and so on, et cet., ad inf.

The General Point

The point I've been making generalizes way beyond the concept of a crush. And it is familiar to people who've done a bit of formal philosophy, although philosophers haven't pursued the method of generalization and refinement far enough. As philosophers know, the simple notion of all-or-nothing belief isn't very useful. It's more useful to think about degrees of belief, and to introduce a generalization of the concept of a belief that works like a probability function. Rational degrees of belief are values of a function that at the very least obeys the probability calculus. Just as we might want to replace belief with degrees of belief -- with credence functions -- so we might want to replace the concept of a crush with crush*, crush**, or even crush***.

We can generalize other cruddy concepts. I say that we get rid of the current concept of gender. We can represent the current concept of gender as a function from persons to the values M and F. This concept is not very useful. The function is undefined in certain cases. Let G be the ordinary function. Sometimes G(person) = undefined -- say, because G is a hermaphrodite. I say that we generalize even further. Stop thinking about categorizing people in terms of bits of flesh, and instead start thinking about people as collections of dispositions. Certain dispositions are more masculine, certain are more feminine. If we wanted to generalize just a little, we could let the gender function be a function from persons to ordered pairs of values in the unit interval that add to 1. The first value represents degree of masculinity, the second represents degree of femininity. Let the new gender function be G*. G*(Kurt) = (m, f), where m and f are numbers in [0, 1] such that m + f = 1. I think we need to generalize further. My gender degrees change from time to time. Today m_Kurt = .3 and f_Kurt = .7. Yesterday, it was the reverse. So, we need a binary function from people and times to ordered pairs. Call this binary function G**. We can then say: G**(Kurt, t) = (m, f). We could generalize even further. Get rid of masculinity and femininity, and replace them with an arbitrarily large number of distinctive sets of dispositions. Or, don't get rid of masculinity and femininity, but add some new stuff. Then, introduce G***. G*** is a function that maps person-time pairs to ordered n-tuples representing degrees of possession of distinctive, joint-carving sets of dispositions. Masculinity and femininity might be among these. So might a lot of other stuff.

In fact, we can use this idea to vindicate certain aspects of postmodern thinking without going relativist. The problem was that our concepts were too coarse-grained, too open-textured, and very, very insufficiently general. It's not that the old concepts didn't pick out anything. It's just that they didn't pick out anything very useful. We can get more useful concepts that are theoretical successors of these. That's what we should do. We shouldn't get rid of objective truth and joints in nature just because our concepts sucked. Instead, we should get new concepts, ones, I might indeed insist, that are closer to representing things accurately, and that hit at joints in nature better. The problem wasn't that there was no objective truth or there were no joints in nature. There is objective truth, and there are joints in the world. The problem was that our concepts were badly out of touch with both of them, or, if they were in touch, they were only in touch in a shallow, shallow way. So, I suggest we subject all of our concepts to the treatment of refinement and generalization, although I certainly don't suggest that we talk in terms of the more refined concepts. This would be progress in philosophy, and it would be progress in ordinary life, where we need better concepts.

Lines in thought: some analogies

2009-03-23T20:02:00.000-07:00

Too often the fumbling scribbles of a handful of distracted fingers in a pocket. At times an Exacto knife. But only at times. Then, at other times, different people -- children, imps, naïve loners, professionals -- cutting ice on skates. Most of the time, the paths of a wand in the air. Sometimes a finger tracing some handrail on the way somewhere -- exactly where is unimportant. Or, also sometimes, a thumb following the mostly rigid half-culverts that enfence bricks. Sometimes discontinuously precise: punching information into a temporary keypad. Very rarely (or perhaps not, but honesty is here hard to achieve), a palm following irrational curves in private opaque glass sculptures and then retreating, hopefully having not left too many smudges.