Oxford University Press's Blog, page 378

Fake news, circa 70 A.D.: The Jewish War by Josephus

Concern about fake news is nothing new. Readers have long doubted the truth of Josephus’ contemporary history of the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. to the Roman general Titus. Many have assumed that any author who could accept a post as a general on the side of the Jewish rebels in the war against Rome but abandon his comrades and end up writing an account of the war from the Roman side as a self-proclaimed friend of the Roman emperor could not be trusted.

It does not help that Josephus himself described in detail the process by which he swapped sides. According to his own account in The Jewish War, when he found himself trapped with forty comrades in a cave on the fall of Jotapata in Galilee, where he had been the rebels’ commander, he arranged that they would kill each other in turn, throwing lots to fix the order in which they should kill each other. But when, “by chance or divine providence,” he found himself alone with just one companion in a sea of corpses, he persuaded his fellow survivor to surrender with him to the Romans.

Why should anyone trust an author who so blatantly transferred his allegiances and tricked his fellow Jews?

The real answer lies in the fact that we owe our knowledge of Josephus’ tortuous political career entirely to Josephus’ own writings. Other ancient authors who refer to him know him only as the Jewish prophet who correctly predicted the rise to power of the future emperor Vespasian at a time when it would have been inconceivable to more or less anyone in the Roman world (including Vespasian himself). We may still debate whether Josephus was a traitor to his people—and the debate has been common among Jewish readers of his history for at least the past two centuries—but bad men can write good history, and it would be quite wrong to think of the Jewish War as Roman propaganda.

On the contrary, there was plenty in Josephus’ remarkable history which ran counter to the official message of the imperial regime in Rome in the seventies A.D., when Josephus was writing, not least Josephus’ reiterated claim that Titus had not wanted to destroy the Jerusalem Temple and that the conflagration which had consumed it had been an unplanned accident.

The public statements of the Roman state, as expressed on coins and in architecture (such as the Arch of Titus, which still stands above the Roman forum), revelled in the defeat of Judaea and the humiliation of the Jewish God. Josephus, by contrast, claimed that the whole course of the war, including the defeat of the Jews, had been brought about precisely by the Jewish God as a way to punish the Jews for their sins—a theological explanation for world events familiar from the biblical book of Deuteronomy. Indeed, it had been on the direct instructions of God that, so he claimed, Josephus himself had chosen to transfer his own allegiance to the Roman side.

In many respects, among the most surprising features of Josephus’ history was thus his decision to write it. He is explicit that he owed his life and his livelihood to Vespasian and Titus who had destroyed Jerusalem, but he does not disguise his own heartfelt passion at the disaster which had befallen the Jews. He draws his readers into every twist and turn in the fortunes of war, constantly reminding them that there was nothing inevitable about the dreadful climax in which the hills groaned with the cries from Jerusalem as the city and its famous Temple were burned to the ground.

The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans Under the Command of Titus, A.D. 70, by David Roberts (1796-1864). Oil on canvas. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

We do not know whether many of Josephus’ contemporaries read his book, but we do know that there was enough dissent for him to feel the need to respond to his critics in his later works. But, so far as we know, these critics were all fellow Jews (who accused him of being keener on rebellion and more opposed to Rome at the start of the revolt than in retrospect he felt he had been), although Josephus’ book was aimed primarily at Roman readers – hence the title “The Jewish War,” which was Josephus’ own title for his history.

For the original Roman readers of Josephus’ eyewitness account of the war, interest in the violent suppression of an uprising in an obscure province in the southern part of Syria lay almost entirely in the role of the Roman commanders, Vespasian and Titus, who had used their victory over the Jews as the springboard to power over the Roman Empire: two thousand years ago, just as in the present, events in this small corner of the Middle East had huge political consequences for the wider world.

For readers in the 21st century, the literary force of Josephus’ testimony, with set piece descriptions such as the mass suicide of the Jewish defenders of Masada, has ensured that his narrative continues to draw readers to his dramatic narrative of these tragic events through which he had lived.

Featured image credit: “Wailing Wall, Jerusalem” by BRBurton23. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Looking beyond “America First”: war, politics, and human community

The polarity between self-assertive and integrative tendencies is characteristic of all human life on earth, even including the life of separate states in world politics. In this connection, regrettably, President Donald Trump’s conspicuously proud emphasis on “America First” represents an unambiguous preference for the former. In time, this unfortunate preference could subvert any still remaining chances for wider human community, residual opportunities for cooperation now so desperately needed to prevent some “final” form of global catastrophe.

The president’s core mantra is inherently crude and injurious. Instead of “America First,” the only sensible posture for any US president must soon be some variant of “All the world together.” Indeed, it is already discoverable in the soaring words of Pierre Teilhard De Chardin: “The egocentric ideal of a future reserved for those who have managed to attain egoistically the extremity of everyone for himself,” intoned the gifted Jesuit scientist and philosopher, “is false and against nature. No element can move and grow except with and by all the others with itself.”


The fundamental “Teilhardian” message here is both simple and persuasive. It is that no single country’s individual success can ever be achieved at the painfully sacrificial expense of certain other countries. In essence, no such presumptive success is sustainable if the world more broadly, or even in its entirety, must simultaneously expect a diminished future.

What should we really expect from President Trump’s literally glaring contempt for wider world community? Here on earth, the tribe, in one form or another, has always undermined indispensable global community. Today, it is precisely this degrading and potentially lethal expression of national tribalism that is openly fostered by “America First.”

“America First” is wholly misconceived. If left unchallenged, this atavistic and bombastic mantra will further harden the hearts of our most recalcitrant enemies, and thereby retard the obligatory search for viable American remedies. What we need now is the very opposite of retrograde nationalism; this “antithesis” is a steadily broadening acknowledgment of human interconnectedness and global solidarity.

From the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 to the present “self-assertive” American national moment, international relations have been shaped by (1) a shifting “balance of world power,” and (2) certain relentless correlates of war, terror, and genocide. To be sure, hope still exists, but now, it must sing softly, in a prudent undertone. Although counter-intuitive, the time for visceral celebrations of science, modernization, technology, and even social media is already partially over, or perhaps even past altogether.

In a uniquely promising paradox, “America First” expresses a lie that can help us to see the truth.

Merely to survive on an imperiled planet, all of us together must seek to rediscover an individual life that is consciously detached from patterned conformance, cheap entertainments, shallow optimism, and disingenuously contrived expressions of American tribal happiness.

With such refreshingly candid expressions of an awakened human spirit, we Americans may yet learn something that is useful and redemptive at the same time. We may learn, even during the national declension time of Trump, that a commonly felt agony is more important than astrophysics; that a ubiquitous mortality is more consequential than any transient financial “success;” and that shared human tears may reveal much deeper meanings and opportunities than narrowly self-serving tax reductions or imbecilic border walls.

In The Decline of the West, first published during World War I, Oswald Spengler asked: “Can a desperate faith in knowledge free us from the nightmare of the grand questions?” It remains, to this day, a noteworthy query, one that will likely never be insistently raised in our universities, let alone on Wall Street, or anywhere in the White House. We may, however, still learn something productive about these “grand questions” by studying American responsibility in world politics.

At that time, we might finally learn that the most suffocating insecurities of life on earth can never be undone by militarizing global economics, by building larger missiles, abrogating international treaties, or by replacing one abundantly sordid regime with another in the naively presumed interests of “national security.”

In the end, even in our currently squalid American politics, truth is exculpatory. Accordingly, in a uniquely promising paradox, “America First” expresses a lie that can help us to see the truth. This immutable truth is that we Americans require, above all else, a distinctly contrary (to “America First”) consciousness of unity and relatedness between both individual human beings, and their respective nation-states.

Such lucidity is integral to all plausible possibilities of extended American security and well-being. Now, before it is too late, is the last best time to replace the prospectively lethal intensity of international tribal competition, with an improved national commitment to global oneness. Privileged by the informed conviction that correctly denounces “everyone for himself” behavior in world politics, the multiple internal contradictions of “America First” could quickly recede into decreasing influence, and then into an increasingly well-deserved oblivion.

Featured image credit: earth globe north america by TheDigitalWay. Public domain via Pixabay.

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Conor Gearty speaks to the Oxford Law Vox about human rights

In this episode of the Oxford Law Vox podcast, human rights expert Conor Gearty talks to George Miller about human rights in the UK.

Together they discuss myths surrounding the Human Rights Act and its relationship with the European Court of Human Rights. The question of the potential implications of getting rid of, or replacing, the Act after the event of the UK leaving the EU through Brexit is also addressed. Conor particularly highlights how the Act impacts on society and who it affects, as well as the basic guarantees it gives that are available to us all.

Below are selected excerpts from their wide-ranging discussion, with access to the full conversation via the Oxford Law Vox.

Conor and George begin by discussing the Human Rights Act and how it is surrounded with apprehension and myth:

“Take one of the myths as an example of what I’m saying… the Prime Minister, as he then was, and the Home Secretary, as she now isn’t, Theresa May, [said] they were forced against their best interests and wishes to implement a dreadful court case on the Human Rights Act which put Britain at risk… Which was simply untrue… The Human Rights Act goes out of its way to say that the Strasbourg case law, that’s the case law in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, should not govern British law… Yet ministers, critics, sceptics, went on and on and on about how Strasbourg, the Strasbourg Court, now govern British law. [This is] simply not true from the point of view of the Human Rights Act.”

Conor also discusses the “assault” on the Human Rights Act from quite a number of sources, including people in the academic and judicial world, and politics, who have been in defence of common law:

“I think what’s happened shows how deep the battle over the soul of Britain is. I’m referring to Brexit… [The] position of nostalgic supremacism has gathered pace. What Brexit has, in my opinion, authorised is a return to previously unsayable interventions… a certain sense of social and economic rights being less important and a return to a more traditional approach, and I think that the Human Rights Act will be next in that particular cultural war… The level of connection between the assault on Europe (EU) and the assault on the European Convention of Human Rights (Human Rights Act) is integral.”.

Conor discusses the wider implications of the Human Rights Act and the influence it has on the UK’s changing culture:

“The Human Rights Act reached into a culture and strengthened directions within the culture… Take the present: I think what’s going on is a massive rollback from that. And what that entails is an attempt to reverse the culture so it becomes easier to use abusive terms about an immigrant… The Human Rights Act has become a hugely important symbol of resistance to the effort to reverse the culture.”

The podcast closes with Conor’s final comments on the British Bill of Rights and the potential consequences that may come from it:

“There would be a hierarchy of rights – the British Bill of Rights would come with marvellous rights for a British passport holder. The rest might not be tortured, but they’d have separate rights… The Human Rights Act would have to go to accommodate that because its rationale is the human not the location.”

To hear the full interview with Conor Gearty, and to listen to a bonus podcast about his career and background, visit the Oxford Law Vox on SoundCloud.

You can also learn more about Conor Gearty and On Fantasy Island in Conor’s video introduction to the book on YouTube.

Featured imaged credit: “33/365 Atlas” by Joe Lodge. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr. 

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How green became green

The original Earth Day Proclamation in 1970 refers to “our beautiful blue planet,” and the first earth day flag consisted of a NASA photo of the Earth on a dark blue background. But the color of fields and forests prevailed, and today when we think of ecology and environmentalism, we think green not blue.

The connection of the color green to growing things is found in nature, of course, and the word green has “associations with verdure, freshness, newness, health, and vitality [that are] are widespread among the Germanic languages,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary. So in Old and early Middle English, we find forms of the word used to refer to the color of living vegetation, grass, and to grassy areas or leafy trees.

The meaning was extended to refer especially to tender or unripe vegetation and then more generally. The expression “green cheese,” for example, from the late fourteenth century, refers to cheese that still needed to be aged. The notion of green as unripe provided the basis for its later extension to people, so by the mid-sixteenth century, green could be used to refer to immaturity, rawness or inexperience.

In medieval and Renaissance literary symbology, green retained that sense of immaturity. Green became the color of young love as well, and sometimes of fickleness, and it was the color of both the sea and of fortune. Green was also associated with “greensickness,” referring to the jaundice of chlorosis, a type of anemia common in young women.

By William Shakespeare’s time, green had a variety of symbolic possibilities, and he used most of them in his plays. In Love’s Labor’s Lost Don Armando’s page Moth jokes with his master, who is discoursing on famous loves:

“Green became the color of young love as well, and sometimes of fickleness, and it was the color of both the sea and of fortune.”

Armando: O well-knit Sampson, strong-jointed Samson!…I am in love too. Who was Sampson’s love, my dear Moth?

Moth: A woman, master.

Armando: Of what complexion?

Moth: Of all the four, or the three, or the two, or one of the four.

Armando: Tell me precisely of what complexion.

Moth: Of the sea-water green, sir.

Armando: Is that one of the four complexion?

Moth: As I have read, sir, and the best of them, too.

Armando: Green indeed is the color of lovers; but to have a love of that color, methinks Sampson had small reason for it. He surely affected her for her wit.

Moth: It was so, sir, for she had a green wit. (I. ii. 72–89)

The four complexions mentioned are the four humors of Hippocrates and green refers to the phlegmatic type. The expression the “green wit” could indicate an immature wit or one that remains fresh, and Shakespeare is likely punning on the “green withs” or fresh vines with which Delilah bound Samson in the Biblical tale.

In other plays, Shakespeare used green to refer to youth (Cleopatra refers to “My salad days, when I was green in judgement”) or freshness (Claudius tells his court “Though yet of Hamlet our dear brother’s death, the memory be green”). When Lady MacBeth chides her husband for cowardice, she perhaps refers to the greensickness associated with young women:

“Was the hope drunke, Wherein you drest your selfe? Hath it slept since? And wakes it now to looke so greene, and pale, At what it did so freely?”

And of course, Shakespeare draws on an association of green with envy and jealousy, in expressions like “green-eyed jealousy” and “the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

For writers like Shakespeare, the color green was full of potential, but it shows up in popular neology as well. In the nineteenth century, we find expressions like “greenhorn” with a first OED citation of 1824, referring initially to immature cattle then to inexperienced soldiers. The Civil War brought “greenbacks” for the paper money backed by government credit. In the early nineteenth century, red and green signals were used on railways for nighttime visibility, leading to the association of green and go.

The early twentieth century saw the gardening expression “green thumb,” from 1937, and by the 1960s the term “green revolution” was being used to refer to the transformation of agricultural practices for increased food production. From 1979 on, the green refers to environmentalism broadly, though sometimes writers would signal that they were using the word in a novel way by placing it in scare quotes.

The OED noted these new compounds over the last forty years: green fuel (1979), green-minded (1984), green-economy (1986), green marketing (1988), green consumerism (1988), green electricity (1989), green chemistry (1989), green audits (1989), and green burial (1991). The association of green with ecology is here to stay.

And to think, it might have all been blue. Happy Earth Day.

Featured image credit: “Green” by Silver Blue. CC BY 2.0 via Flickr.

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Why are we all so frightened?

Knowing what you should fear, and quickly recognizing the biological changes in your body that indicate fear, can save your life. This critical task is processed by a small almond-shaped structure, the amygdala, which lies deep within the bottom of the brain, not far from your ears. The amygdala receives information from many brain regions, your internal organs, and external sensory systems, such as your eyes and ears. The amygdala integrates this information with various internal drives, such as whether you are hungry or thirsty or in pain; it then assigns a level of emotional significance to whatever is going on.

For example, when the amygdala becomes aware that you are alone and hearing unfamiliar sounds in the dark, it initiates a fear response, such as panic or anxiety. It then activates the appropriate body systems, the release of hormones, and specific behaviors to respond to the (real or imagined) threat. 

The amygdala is also activated by sensory stimuli that seem ambiguous or unfamiliar to us, such as unfamiliar sounds or people. In response to ambiguous or unfamiliar stimuli, we become vigilant and pay closer attention to what is happening in our immediate environment. If you were a dog, your ears would perk up. Your amygdala gathers as much sensory information as possible, compares it to what you already know, and then instructs other brain regions to respond.

Almost without fail, and regardless of the nature of the information gathered by your vigilant brain, the amygdala usually comes to the same conclusion: be afraid. If a sensory event, such as a sight or sound or taste, is unfamiliar; your brain almost always assumes that the situation is potentially dangerous and should be treated as such. If everything is assumed to be dangerous until proven otherwise, you are much more likely to survive the experience and pass on your “be-fearful-first” genes. Thus, humans tend to fear everything that is unfamiliar: we fear unfamiliar dogs, people who look or dress differently, unfamiliar places, unfamiliar odors, things that go “bump” in the night, people who stare at us for too long, heights, enclosed small spaces, dark alleys, unknown people who follow us, etc. You get the idea.

Child by kheinz. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

We all have witnessed the consequences of fear: we hide behind closed doors, we hide in protected or gated communities, we keep a loaded gun by every door and under the pillow, we hire bodyguards, we install security systems, we build walls. Brains evolved to perform one primary function: survival of the individual and the species; fear plays a critical role in survival. Unfortunately, your fear-inducing amygdala occasionally overreacts to trivial or harmless stimuli. Sometimes the amygdala induces behaviors that may get a person mentioned on the evening news.

Your brain evolved to help you survive to pass on your genes to the next generation. The best way to achieve this goal is to induce a response immediately to imagined threats regardless of whether that response is appropriate or not. By now you have clearly gotten the point that being frightened of everything all of the time is a safe and effective way to maintain our species. Unfortunately, it is also quite stressful, and chronic stress ultimately will have negative consequences upon our health. The brain, due to the impact of evolution, does not concern itself with the long-term effects of chronic stress on the body because these negative consequences usually appear long after you have finished reproducing and passing on your be-fearful-first genes to the next generation.

The amygdala also controls how your brain processes sensory inputs that are associated with emotional experiences. This is an extremely important function because it determines whether you will remember the details of fearful events. For example, mugging victims tend to distort the details of the tragic event by “remembering” that the mugger was bigger and uglier, the gun was bigger, the alley was darker, etc. The influence of the amygdala makes it less likely that you will walk down that alley alone again. Your amygdala has succeeded again and your “be-fearful-first” genes live to breed another day!

Featured image credit: “Brain, Electrical, Knowledge…” by HypnoArt. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Better alternatives to President Trump’s foreign policies

President Donald J. Trump has hastily undertaken many misguided foreign policies. They are purported to meet terrible threats; but the threats are misdiagnosed and the crude policies to deal with them are often inconsistent with each other and counter-productive. Going beyond just saying “no,” I will discuss a few core ideas of the constructive conflict approach and relate them to current Trump policies and better alternatives.

A primary idea of the approach is that adversaries wage conflicts by various mixtures of non-coercive as well as by coercive inducements. Coercion itself ranges widely in degrees of violence and non-violence. Non-coercion includes diverse forms of persuasion and the provision or promise of benefits for compliance. Trump clearly unduly stresses reliance on military and other forms of coercion. This over reliance in countering the threat of terrorism against the American homeland is particularly misguided. In significant degree, the groups resorting to terrorist attacks are waging an ideological war, which requires recruiting supporters and fighters. Persuading members and potential recruits to such groups that America is not an enemy that aims to harm them is a central element in wining that war. Indeed, America is widely seen in many parts of the world as a model society. It possess great soft power, and was crucial in winning the Cold War. American-Soviet cultural exchanges and other experiences helped undermine Soviet leaders’ faith in their authoritarian Soviet system and seek democratic changes.

Another core idea is that conflicts are socially constructed, since the adversaries seek to define who the enemy is and seek to define themselves. Adversaries contend about these definitions, which undergo changes in the course of a conflict. It is generally useful for an adversary party to characterize the enemy in terms that shrink its size and capacities and characterize itself as large and inclusive. Since each side in a large-scale conflict is heterogeneous, the possibility of splintering the adversary is often present. This and related ideas have important implications for US efforts to defeat ISIS and other such organizations deriving from extremist Islamic thinking. This includes strengthening ties with Muslims in the United States and abroad as well as with the governments of countries with predominantly Muslim populations. Nearly all of them are already hostile to the extremists who claim their radical views of Islam are the only correct one. Another implication is to avoid US immigration policies that target Muslims in any categorical way. That lends credence to Islamic extremists’ accusation that the United States is against all Muslims.

Another core idea is that each conflict inter-connects with many others. Thus, adversaries in smaller conflicts are often also adversaries in larger ones (over time and space) and adversaries in one conflict also engage in different sets of other conflicts. Consequently, a change in salience of one conflict may affect the salience of others, as when a minor enemy moves up to be a major one, new alliances are likely. Bi-lateral relations turn out not to be isolated. Trump is beginning to recognize the problems this can cause, for example in trying to improve bi-lateral relations with Russia. However, there are also opportunities that these complexities can foster constructive conflict transformations. This is the case especially in the Middle East.

  American citizens must resist the current backward steps and work for the better possibilities.

Finally, an important constructive conflict idea is that understanding the perspectives of one’s opponents is conducive to better policies. Interestingly, the new Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis (retired Marine General), stresses this. Having expert knowledge of the countries where US officials are engaged should not be limited to bilateral issues. Indeed, such knowledge can help discover shared or complementary interests and thereby transform a conflict.

A major implication of these observations is that the possible contributions of the US State Department are more important than ever. The State Department must play a major role in expanded persuasive efforts on many fronts. It needs to help assess the priority of various foreign issues, utilizing expert knowledge of the foreign actors’ perspectives. Furthermore, much work must be done to alleviate the consequences of wars and prevent their recurrence. Civilians fleeing wars and oppression and entering nearby countries desperately need assistance. The State Department is needed to help build peace in war-devastated countries so that wars do not re-emerge. Yet Trump is dangerously deconstructing the Department of State.

Trump and his close advisers are disrupting many achievements of US foreign policy. The considerable influence of Stephen K. Bannon on Trump regarding these matters is unfortunate. He offers a grand political theory about economic, ethnic, and cultural nationalism, the primacy of sovereignty and borders, and the deconstruction of the administrative state. This theory consists largely of assertions or preferences, but they are not grounded on solid evidence.

Reality matters. Denying, or lying or even distorting evidence is harmful. Trump seems to think ignorance and exaggeration are okay when it serves his grander purposes. The early actions by Trump are demonstratively harmful to the interests and values of the United States. They have greatly reduced American attractiveness in the world and thereby reduced the appeal of democracy, human rights, and mutual tolerance. They enhance the attraction of authoritarian governance and the influence of Vladimir Putin and his Russia. They weaken America’s position in the Pacific relative to China’s position.

Prior American foreign policies certainly had faults. However, there are better alternatives. American citizens must resist the current backward steps and work for the better possibilities. Widespread public pressure can influence the US Congress so that it corrects the unwise policies pursued by President Trump’s administration. It can even influence Trump and others to whom he listens.

Featured image credit:Peace by Alice Donovan. Public domain via Unsplash.

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On multiple realization

There’s no overestimating the significance of the multiple realization thesis in the past fifty years of theorizing about the mind’s relationship to the brain. The idea behind the thesis is simple enough, and most easily explained in terms of a comparison. Suppose you thought that the relationship between the mind and the brain is like that between water and H2O. This latter relationship involves an identity. To say that water is H2O is to claim that the kind water just is the kind H2O. Where there’s one, there’s the other; the words ‘water’ and ‘H2O’ are just different ways of referring to the same thing. Similarly, you might suppose, where there are minds there are brains, and the words ‘mind’ and ‘brain’ are just two different ways of talking about the same thing.

It’s the idea that minds are brains that the multiple realization thesis is meant to challenge. However, unlike the dualist, who denies mind-brain identity on the grounds that minds are a sui generis kind of spooky substance—entirely distinct from physical substance—advocates of multiple realizability deny the identity in a way that’s friendly to anyone with a broadly physicalist outlook. Minds—that is, mental states and processes—are functional kinds, defined not in terms of what they are made of but in terms of what they do. Mental capacities like memory or perception are to be specified in terms of operations or activities, and, as such, can be implemented—a.k.a., realized—in various ways. Being a mind is like being a watch.  Given that watch is a kind defined by the function of keeping time, an object can be a watch whether realized by a digital or analogue mechanism. So too, the realization theorists expect, mental capacities can be realized by different sorts of devices— those in the heads of human beings, but also those in Vulcans or artificial intelligences.

In fact, some realization theorists have gone so far as to claim that minds can be realized in virtually an infinite number of ways. Consequently, psychology, qua science of the mind, is assured of its distinctness and independence from neuroscience which (while no doubt useful for understanding how brains work, they might concede) cannot possibly provide us with information about how minds work.

In short, the relationship between mind and brain is not like that between water and H2O, because while only one kind of thing can be water—namely, H2O—many different kinds of things can realize minds—can do the job of minds. And so, the realization theorist argues, minds are not identical to brains.

We take a close look at the thesis that minds are actually multiply realized or, perhaps, even possibly multiply realizable. Surprisingly, given that claim of multiple realizability has enjoyed nearly unanimous assent among philosophers of mind and psychology, it has never been clearly articulated. As far as we know, until we began our work on multiple realization no one thought to specify conditions for what it is required for a kind to be multiply realized, such that the realizing kinds could do the work required by the realization theorist intent on denying mind-brain identity. Having thought long and hard about these conditions, we now believe that the multiple realization thesis is false, or, at any rate, hardly the obvious truth that it has for so long seemed to so many.

The route to this conclusion begins with an insight about the burden that realization theorists must meet. They must provide an account of what it means for different kinds of realizers to be the same kind of thing. Just as a realization theorist about, e.g., watches, must explain why digital watches and analogue watches are different in one sense but the same in another, so too the realization theorist about minds must be able to justify the claim that mental kinds can be in one sense different but the same. We contend that on a reasonable formulation of what it means to be different but the same, realization theorists fail to make their case.

Our guiding idea is that the “sameness” in the formula must be sufficiently robust, and, similarly, that the “differences” must be sufficiently relevant. The reason that an hour glass does not count as a way of realizing a watch is that it is not sufficiently “watch-like.” Likewise, the reason that two analogue watches, alike in all respects except that the minute hand on one is slightly longer than the minute hand on the other, do not count as distinct kinds of realizations of a watch is that their differences are not sufficiently relevant.

Of course, making more precise what counts as sufficiently similar and relevantly different is not easy. However, we hope that it should strike you as obvious that such a task should be pursued prior to dismissing the possibility of mind-brain identity on the grounds that minds are multiply realizable. Even if we are wrong, in the end, about how to understand similarity and difference, we are quite sure we are right that any realization theorist who rejects mind-brain identity on the basis of the multiple realization thesis owes such an account.

So how do we propose to analyze the similarities and differences that constitute multiple realization? As follows. Things of types A and B are multiple realizers of some kind if:

As and Bs are of the same kind in model or taxonomic system S1;
As and Bs are of different kinds in model or taxonomic system S2;
the factors that lead the As and Bs to be differently classified by S2 are among those that lead them to be commonly classified by S1;
the relevant S2-variation between As and Bs is distinct from the S1 intra-kind variation between As and Bs.

The appeal to taxonomic systems or models in (i) and (ii) provides a broad characterization of the multiple realization formula. Digital and analogue watches are the same kind of thing relative to the way watches are distinguished from toilets or toasters; yet they are different kinds of things relative the way a jeweler might think about how to repair them. Conditions (iii) and (iv) are designed to capture the right kinds of similarities and differences between distinct realizers. The digital and analogue watches both perform the same watch-qualifying function by means of different kinds of mechanisms (condition (iii)), and the differences between them are more than those one would expect to see between variants of the same kind, such as that between two analogue watches with minute hands of different lengths (thus satisfying condition (iv)). Thus, on our analysis, digital and analogue watches count as different realizations of the kind watch; but digital watches and hour glasses do not;nor do two analogue watches that differ only in minute-hand length.

We next apply this analysis of multiple realization to an assortment of cases that philosophers have used to support the multiple realization thesis: cases involving neural plasticity, artificial intelligence, and instances in which evolution appears to converge on different neural architectures to produce the same psychological functions. Stacked up against our analysis, we argue that these lines of evidence often fall well short of exhibiting definitive cases of multiple realization. Of course, we’re in no position to assert that no evidence for the multiple realization of psychological states will ever be forthcoming; and we’re even open to the possibility that good evidence for some cases of multiple realization already exists. Our concern is the more modest one of defending a limited sort of identity theory, where we’ll find that neuroscience motivates identity claims between some psychological capacities and neurological processes, while permitting the possibility that other psychological capacities may well be multiply realized.

In the end, we propose a picture of the relationship between psychology and neuroscience that is rather more complicated than those that either identity theorists or realization theorists have traditionally painted. Some (but not all) psychological kinds will be identical to neural kinds; some (but not all) psychological kinds will be multiply realized in neural or other kinds; some (but not all) psychological kinds will be identical to neural kinds which in turn will be multiply realized in more basic molecular biological kinds; some (but not all) psychological kinds will be multiply realized in neural or other kinds, some (but not all) of which might be identical to more basic molecular biological kinds. It’s a messy and perhaps inelegant conception of how psychological kinds stand in relation to other scientific kinds. But we ought to be long past thinking that book of nature will be an easy read.

With a more sophisticated rendering of the connections between psychology and other sciences, questions about how to understand the autonomy of psychology might seem to become more pressing. However, we think that the issue of autonomy can be addressed straightforwardly. The reason to retain psychological models and explanations, despite our belief that parts of psychology might be reducible to more basic sciences, emerges from the fact that psychological processes are in fact difference makers. That is, psychologists and cognitive scientists regularly demonstrate that interventions on psychological processes make differences to an organism’s behavior. This remains true even if interventions on psychological processes are also ipso facto interventions on the neural processes with which they are sometimes identical. This suffices, we argue, to furnish psychology with everything one can ask for from an autonomous science.

We end up a view of psychological kinds as autonomous, but sometimes reducible. As real, but not always realized.

Featured image: Ocean whirlpool. CC0 via Pexels. 

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On the origins of “dad bod”

A few years back the phrase “dad bod” emerged to describe men, especially fathers, who have hints of lean muscle lurking beneath noticeable body fat, perhaps particularly around their bellies. There’s increasing evidence that men in industrialized countries like the United States tend to gain weight after they move in with a partner, marry, or become parents, lending some credence to the “dad” in dad bod. Explanations for the dad bod phenomenon seem to focus around what men do, for example, indulging in pizza or beer and too often skipping the gym. As far as we know, these pop culture and casual conversations about dad bod have not considered the biological changes that men can experience as they get married or become fathers, but maybe they should.

When women become pregnant, give birth, and breastfeed there are clear physical signs and behaviors associated with those biological experiences of parenthood. Only over the last two decades have we learned that men’s bodies also respond to parenthood. Investigations into the “biology of bonding and parenting” reveal that women and men physiologically change as their commitment deepens in romantic and family relationships. Large long-running studies of men’s health and physiology demonstrate that the hormone testosterone typically declines when men become committed partners and parents.

The low down on partnering, parenting, and low(er) testosterone

Decades of research in birds and other (non-human) mammals identified the testosterone decline when males went from beefcake bachelors to dedicated dads and inspired our work in humans. Along these same lines, human fathers are thought to have evolved the capacity to reduce testosterone when they were committed partners and fathers because lower testosterone promotes empathy and relationship commitment and possibly attunes men to the needs and cues of their babies. Partnered parents with reduced testosterone may also be less reactively aggressive and competitive, enabling them to focus their time and energy on the demands of being sensitive and attentive in family relationships.

Pool vacation by 4547. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

Life history status, physiology, and health for American men

Studies of the biology of partnering and parenting in humans often focus on these types of behaviors. But, hormones such as testosterone have many other roles in our bodies that can affect our physical and mental well-being and be shaped by our health behaviors, such as sleep. In societies such as the United States, people often eat lots of calories and tend to be sedentary and levels of infectious disease are low. Under those circumstances, men with higher testosterone generally have less body fat. Men with reduced testosterone have higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and are at greater risk of dying (overall), particularly as they age.

Our new insights on these questions

After bringing all of this information together, a clear set of questions emerged about American men’s testosterone, partnering and parenting status, and their risk factors for CVD. Against the backdrop of evolutionary medicine, which draws on evolutionary perspectives to understand contemporary human health and biology, our team has proposed that there is a potential mismatch between the biology of partnering and parenting and contemporary lifestyles and social demands for men in some societies.

We tested the relationships among testosterone, men’s partnering status and residence with children, risk factors for CVD, and their health behaviors using a large, nationally-representative sample of young to middle-aged men in the United States. We found that partnered men living with children had lower testosterone, higher abdominal fat, and lower “good” cholesterol compared to never-married men who did not live with kids. Those body fat and biological marker differences are all risk factors for the long-term development of CVD. As we predicted, the higher levels of abdominal fat among partnered men residing with kids was linked to their lower levels of testosterone. In other words, if we removed (or controlled for) the testosterone differences between partnered men living with children and never-married men who did not live with children, the groups had similar body fat.

We remain cautious about our findings because data in this study are cross-sectional, reflecting a snapshot in time. These findings, however, indicate that a biological change (reduced testosterone) that likely helps promote men’s sensitivity and focus within their families also contributes to them gaining weight, especially around their midsection. Also important, we studied these dynamics in the context of a US lifestyle, which, on average, involves the consumption of abundant calories, low infectious disease risk, and sedentary lifestyles. Combined, these factors make it relatively easy to accumulate excess body fat. We think that the lower testosterone associated with the “biology of partnering and parenting” in this “WIERD” context may particularly heighten these changes in men’s bodies, perhaps contributing to the slightly chubby look we know as the “dad bod.” As scientists are prone to say, “future studies are needed,” but we think it’s possible that healthier lifestyles and behaviors among partnered men and fathers may diminish these effects. So, new dads, do not go running for a prescription to boost your testosterone. Maybe just go running.

Featured image credit: Girl and father by Daniela Dimitrova. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Peter Ohlin, philosophy editor at OUP USA, interviews philosopher David Benatar

Peter Ohlin: The title of the new book is The Human Predicament. How would you describe that predicament, in a nutshell?

David Benatar: Life is hard. We have to struggle, often unsuccessfully, to keep unpleasantness at bay. It would be easier to make sense of this if life served some important purpose. Yet, while we can create some meaning, our lives lack any ultimate purpose. Death can relieve our suffering, but it cannot solve our problem of meaninglessness. Moreover, because death is annihilation, it is part of our misfortune (even when, all things considered, it is the lesser of two evils). In other words, our predicament is that life is bad but that death is too.

PO: How did you become interested in this topic, and how does it connect with your previous book, Better Never to Have Been?

DB: Apprehending our predicament commands one’s interest. To be aware of the suffering, the pointlessness of it all, and the grotesque finale seems unavoidably interesting – or, at least, it is to me. Although there is no way to escape the human predicament once one is in it, there is a way in which it can be avoided, namely by never being brought into existence. Of course, it’s too late for us who exist, but because procreation involves replicating the predicament, the latter can be avoided by desisting from the former. That’s why it is better never to be or to have been.

PO: While the existentialists and some non-western traditions have addressed the topic of “the meaning of life” why do you think analytic philosophy has mostly neglected it? What value do you see in an analytic approach to these “big questions” of human life?

DB: It is hard to know for sure, but one reason might be that analytic philosophers have thought that the question whether life has meaning is hopelessly confused. That might explain why so much of what analytic philosophers have written on this topic has attempted to clarify the question. Of course, there are some analytic philosophers who have gone further and engaged the substantive question.

What the analytic approach brings to the “big questions” of human life is the quest for clarity and the rigor of argument. There is a danger that in its more stereotypic forms, this approach can answer engrossing questions in deadly boring ways. I have tried to avoid this pitfall by seeking to combine meticulous arguments and engaging writing.

PO: You oppose the idea that human life can have meaning, yet many find meaning or satisfaction in things such as religion, family and friends, career, etc. Does the satisfaction that people might find in those spheres affect your views about meaning in life?

DB: Actually I don’t think that life is devoid of any and all meaning. Our lives can have meaning as a result of their impact on other individuals, communities or, in rare cases, humanity as a whole–all forms of what we can call “terrestrial” meaning. What I deny is that life can have a more ultimate form of meaning–a “cosmic” meaning if you will. There is no broader purpose that we serve. Thus the fact that people can find some meaning in life supports rather than challenges my view. Creating or finding terrestrial meaning makes life go much less badly than it otherwise would. This does not mean, however, that everything people find meaningful is actually meaningful. For example, somebody might find praying to some deity meaningful. If, however, that deity does not exist, the praying might not actually be meaningful.

PO: What is your view of suicide and how does it differ from our conventional attitudes toward it, as somehow an immoral or self- indulgent act?

DB: Suicide is, on my view, a reasonable response to some but not other features of the human predicament. Death does not solve the problem of life’s cosmic meaninglessness and will often (but not always) diminish the kind of meaning that is attainable. Suicide is thus not typically a solution to deficiencies of meaning. By contrast, suicide can bring relief from suffering. When life becomes so bad that continued life is not in one’s overall interests, and there are no other overriding considerations, I see suicide as neither immoral nor self-indulgent, but as a reasonable response to one’s circumstances. These circumstances are not restricted to the final stages of terminal diseases. It may well be reasonable for individuals to set the threshold for a life worth continuing lower than that. However, even in such circumstances, suicide comes at a cost, both to the person who dies and to his or her family and friends, which is why, even when it is clearly reasonable, suicide remains tragic.

PO: Some readers might say your views are dark or pessimistic about life. What would you say to them, and are there aspects of human life that mitigate the predicament you describe?

DB: I agree that my views are quite grim, but that, I argue, is because the truth about these matters is deeply unpleasant. In other words, I think that my pessimism is warranted. That is not to say that there is nothing good about our situation. At least we can attain some (albeit limited) kinds of meaning in our lives, and the quality of lives could always be worse. It also does not follow from our unfortunate situation that we should constantly be morose. We should seek from life what joy, satisfaction and meaning we can (compatible with the constraints of morality). And we should laugh, for both the pleasure and the relief it brings. To that end, I have included some (sometimes delicious) humor in the book’s notes.

Featured image: Thomas Cole – The Voyage of Life Childhood, 1842. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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The power of globalization: Singapore’s economic rise

Singapore is a controversial subject, described as “The Big Apple of Asia,” or “Disneyland with Capital Punishment.” On the one hand, there are those who admire its efficient government and material accomplishments; on the other hand, there are those who deplore its antipathy to freedom of expression. We can all ask how much an authoritarian government stifles the creativity necessary to nourishing a productive society.

Singapore, now the world’s leading trading nation, is a sovereign state analogous to the great maritime city-states of early modern times, Venice or Genoa. Yet unlike them, it is not merely regional, but global in its interests. Established in 1819 as a British colony, its development faced many obstacles at the time and thereafter, most notably its dependence on the will of the outside world. International politics brought a brutal and destructive Japanese occupation in World War II; the vagaries of the international market have brought disruptions and challenges to its trade flows and livelihood. But Singapore successfully sought and received foreign technology and investment that catapulted economic growth.

Today it is among the world’s richest nations. Its GDP per capita income is more than that of the United States. Singapore’s modern rise was based on a continuing emphasis on its maritime assets. Its deep sheltered harbor, the best within a thousand miles, situated on the Straits of Malacca, and historic salt water commercial crossroads, offered huge advantage. Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew could say “without the harbor, we would not be half ourselves.”

President George W. Bush welcomes Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore to the Oval Office Monday, Oct. 16, 2006. White House photo by Eric Draper. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Timing helped. Singapore’s life since 1965 as a sovereign nation coincided with huge growth of international trade and wealth in the latter half of the twentieth century. Today Singapore is one of the world’s top three ports and works hard to sustain that position.

For Americans, Singapore is not a danger, not a problem; but an opportunity. It has served us as a traditional entrance to China and Asia, an introduction to Asian cultures yet offering a veneer of glossy modernity. With that in mind, the tourist industry terms it “Asia Lite,” hoping to lure many visitors. Although most Americans scarcely know where it is, we have substantial interests there, both monetary and military.

We have more money invested there than in Japan or Australia, twice as much in that tiny place than in all of China. More than 700 American companies are members of the local Chamber of Commerce, representing a wide sweep of business activity, such as pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, banking, insurance, electronics, scientific research, education, and transportation. An American engineering company will design Singapore’s high speed rail system linking it to the Eurasian mainland.

27,000 Americans are now living in Singapore. So we have a strong financial interest. Thus we rely upon Singapore’s political and social stability and we have found that to be dependable.

Furthermore, having long ago replaced Britain as guardian of the global seas, we have a strong strategic interest in ensuring open passage through the Straits. If for any reason this passageway should be closed to traffic, the entire world economy would feel painful reverberations, most acutely oil-importing China, Korea, and Japan, but America inevitably too. Singapore has become our strategic anchor in Southeast Asia, offering us the use of a naval base where we are putting our new combat littoral ships, designed to operate in shallow coastal waters, and the base is large enough to accommodate our giant aircraft carriers.

Singapore, the contemporary world’s unique maritime city-state, exemplifies the power of globalization. Globalization is now under fire, but those who reject this great phenomenon will ultimately be losers because it is here to stay. And, if America turns its back, Asia, China especially, will seize leadership.

Featured image credit: “Night view of Bishan in Singapore” by Eustaquio Santimano. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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