Modern WisdomIs Being Smart Worth the Depression? - Alex O’Connor & Joe Folley (4K)
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,423 words- 0:00 – 6:04
Can Philosophy Actually Help You Live Better?
- CWChris Williamson
Was philosophy always meant to be practically applicable, or is that some modern reinterpretation?
- AOAlex O’Connor
Ah, that's Joe question.
- JFJoe Folley
Oh, well, I mean, (laughs) I suppose one of the, uh, differences between, like, very broadly speaking, between something like ancient, uh, ancient Greek philosophy say, and the way that we conceive our philosophy today is that, you know, philosophy today is largely thought of in terms of different fields. You've got your kind of epistemologists who discuss questions like, you know, what is knowledge, and, you know, more importantly, like, how do we, how do we attain knowledge? Um, what are the kinds of systems and processes that produce reliable knowledge? That kind of stuff. And then there are kind of ethicists talking about, you know, what is the good life, you know, uh, vitally important question. Also, you know, what are, what are the right things to do? And then you've got kind of logicians talking about, um, you do, (laughs) do a lot of proofs and try to often model, uh, ordinary things, um, using formal s- mathematical or at least semi-mathematical systems. You've got philosophers of language, philosophers of science. But, um, suddenly, uh, for, uh, in the ancient world, these weren't as differentiated, (laughs) certainly, as they are today. And so, um, uh, you know, Aristotle wrote different treatises on these different topics. But, um, eh, even in his philosophy, everything is so interlinked, and if you go, you know, back before Aristotle, it's very, very hard to separate these. So for example, um, the Stoics, uh, although, you know, you know, in kind of popular discourse around Stoicism today, we talk a lot about Stoic ethics. Um, the Stoics thought that their ethics fell out of their metaphysics-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
... and their logic, which was their word for what we would call today things like logic and epistemology. And, um, so I think that's, that's, um, that's one major difference. In terms of practicality, I mean, yeah, the, uh, a lot of ancient philosophy is incredibly practical. You know, these are, especially, you know, the, the, one of the paramount, um, questions that are asked, that's asked by almost every, um, ancient philosopher is, you know, how to live a good life. The, the first, uh, philosopher, um, like, in, like, received wisdom is Thales. Uh, uh, he's a kind of ancient, ancient Greek philosopher. Um, but before that, there, there are lots of kind of, we have scraps of, like, ancient, uh, Egyptian, um, philosophies and things like that, and they're, they're often concerned with, you know, what's the good life? How do we live it? Um, so I, I, I think philosophy, philosophy is eminently practical. I also think, you know, maybe this is just my own bias showing, I, I think, I think that, I think that, um, today philosophy at its best is, is often very practical.
- CWChris Williamson
How... Has something gone awry? Is there some sense that modern philosophy, a lot of that is kind of like string theory in physics-
- AOAlex O’Connor
I think-
- CWChris Williamson
... where there's not much progress being made in quite the same way for people's practical applicability?
- AOAlex O’Connor
We're trying to do the ethics without the metaphysics. As Joe just said, like, a lot of these ancient philosophers in particular are remembered for their ethical teachings. The Stoics, you might know what a Stoic is, it's someone who sort of is resistant to, to suffering and pleasure and is sort of neutral, but, but why? Because of their metaphysics, because of what they believed was true about the world. Same thing with Epicureanism. Uh, people might know that Epicurus, for example, thought that you shouldn't worry about death. You know, like, "Death is nothing to us," he said, "literally nothing to us because when you're alive it's not with you, and when it's with you, there's no you." That stems out of the Epicurean tradition of materialism. They were staunch materialists. They believed that everything, including the human soul, was made up of matter, so that when that goes, there's, there's nothing left. And it seems like they really thought that these metaphysical commitments were what led to these ethical commitments. And so if all you have are the ethical commitments now, that there isn't really a way to make progress, because ethics is kind of conjectural if it doesn't have a metaphysical grounding. It's just like, you know, what feels like it works, what feels like it vibes with your worldview. I mean, I think a lot of people approach these philosophies now, they'll look at Stoicism and Epicureanism, utilitarianism, emotivism, and they'll sort of think, "Which of these do I, do I like? Yeah, that makes sense to me."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And they sort of adopt it. So all that's really being done by reading these philosophies is some ancient guy elucidating something you already kind of believe. So you're not gonna make much progress in terms of actually developing your thought-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... unless you believe something new that's true about the world that will cause you to commit to something else. You know what I mean?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
So it, it's like, you know, if you ask someone what Stoicism is on the street, or indeed in a podcast, they would list, you know, 50 different things before they told you anything about their metaphysical claims, about what they actually thought the world was made of.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
It'd all be about, you know, how to live your life.
- JFJoe Folley
And, um-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Oh, sorry. No, absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
Go ahead.
- JFJoe Folley
I'll say it, in Stoics for, you know, the kind of one of the reasons why, um, Stoics are so big on, uh, acceptance and accepting things, uh, things that happen to you and accepting the, the, the kind of state of the world, um, in kind of very, very broad strokes is that, um, the Stoics were big believers in what today we would recognize as something like divine providence. Um, you know, there's, they had a, a real kind of teleological view of reality. So they thought that the universe was inherently rational, inherently reasonable, and as a result, this whatever is happening is in accordance with the rational will of the universe. So there's kind of, you know, there, there's, it's sort of a, you know, in modern Stoicism, people tend not to have that assumption baked in.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
But it's, this is a huge part of, of ancient Stoicism, and it's actually interesting to the kind of, we see, you know, (laughs) we talking about kind of how, um, things get stripped away over time, even in the difference between Greek and Roman Stoicism, you already see less emphasis placed on Stoic logic, for example. You know, um, Chrysippus, I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but he wrote s- you know, reams and reams of parchment on Stoic logical systems, and, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't even see that in my favorite Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, you know. There's, there's, he's, he's not that concerned with Stoic logic, and I think, you know, he's the kind of the GOAT of Roman Stoicism. And, you know, so it's, it's not like, it's not like a necessarily just a modern thing of this, of stripping back aspects of, of, of philosophies. But of course, you know, there is an argument to be made that this is part of what development consists of. Um, although I do think it's sometimes worth going back and, uh, going back and revisiting some of the assumptions that maybe, um, we ought to, ought to
- 6:04 – 11:44
Is Modern Philosophy Trying to Be Too Intellectual?
- JFJoe Folley
reconsider, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Is it fair to-... say, well, I, I guess, at least for me, good avatar for the layperson. Uh-huh. Uh, when you think about development, you think about sort of refining over time, about becoming sort of more accurate, more detailed, uh, seeing things with a higher resolution. Uh, how fair is it to say that modern philosophy is more sort of concerned with intellectual masturbation than it is-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... teaching people fundamental questions about themselves and the world?
- AOAlex O’Connor
Very fair, indeed. Um, I think that philosophy doesn't develop in the way that something like physics does. The idea with something like physics is that you're born into a world with a particular understanding, you develop that understanding, you learn new things. You maybe dig a bit further down into an atom, and you find out what it's made of, and then you have children, and you tell those children as a starting point, "This is what atoms are made of." And then they're off to the races, trying to go even further. Philosophy, I don't think, quite works in the same way. You might disagree with this. I don't know. I think it's instead of something which you sort of go from ignorance to knowledge over the course of 20 generations, you go from the course of... You go from ignorance to knowledge over the course of one generation, and everybody has to sort of start afresh, which is why you find that these ancient philosophers and early modern philosophers and modern philosophers and guaranteed future philosophers, too, are all essentially saying the same thing. You know, if you read, um, if you read Epicurean philosophy, it's kind of very similar to utilitarianism. It's- it's got a very sort of similar thread. At the very least, it seems to be based on similar intuitions. So, you might sort of think that philosophy is a bit stagnant, that it hasn't actually progressed anywhere, but that's g- maybe not kind of what it's supposed to do, you know. Y- you're supposed to do that throughout your own, your own life, you know?
- CWChris Williamson
Somebody asked ChatGPT what it's like to be itself.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
I imagine you've probably done this. You've done everything with ChatGPT. Everything within reason.
- AOAlex O’Connor
N- n- not everything, not everything.
- CWChris Williamson
E- Everything within reason.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Within reason.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ha ha ha ha c- ha ha subscribe.
- AOAlex O’Connor
He said it.
- CWChris Williamson
Um, and one of the things that it said was, uh, imagine basically, uh, every time that you had a conversation, your memory of the last one was wiped.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
Each new context window is a brand new... So it makes me think about what you're talking about here, this generation-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... needs to rediscover, or it- it tries to answer the same questions over and over and over again.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah, because the important stuff with philosophy is probably the way that it allows you to live a- a good life or- or a life that you see fit, um, or to console you in some- some regard. And- and that is something that will happen over the course of an individual life. I would take what ChatGPT says with a pinch of salt, um, because, of course, it probably is not, in fact, conscious. But it does give us an interesting sort of, (laughs) like, uh, in for thinking about what it might be like to be such a creature.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
What would it be like not only to have your memory wiped every time you started a new day or conversation, but also to kind of be one thing with many avatars? You know, like, ChatGPT is one thing. We're speaking about it as one entity. But you've- could have a conversation on your phone. I could have a conversation on my phone with it. And it's this sort of one thing, but having two distinct and separable-
- CWChris Williamson
Personalities.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... and I think that a lot of- a lot of philosophies kind of view human beings in the same way. You know, this is how, uh, this is how an ancient, uh, Indian philosopher, like, who's reading or indeed composing the Upanishads might think about human consciousness, that it's sort of all one consciousness, that somehow the- the localizing of- of individual selves is- is kind of an illusion, and it's all just sort of one big thing. And eh- we're probably somehow restricted in the sense that we have our- our like memories and our localized experiences. But if we knew the truth, if we could somehow step outside of that, we'd recognize that we're all actually just one big thing.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
So, I imagine if ChatGPT was conscious, it would probably be a little bit like that. It would be this sort of illusory, uh, individuation across-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... across different computers and things, which is what a lot of philosophers think is going on in human beings.
- JFJoe Folley
It's interesting to talk about kind of, 'cause there- there are clearly elements to how, um, you know, people kind of go on their own, uh, uh, have to wrestle with the questions of what makes a good life for themselves.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
I do have a thing that, you know, we can- we can chart progress in certain philosophical problems, and it's- it's more nebulous than others. One of the, um, one of philosophy's historic successes is just creating lots of new fields. So, of course-
- 11:44 – 22:35
What Do Philosophers Often Overlook?
- CWChris Williamson
you mentioned, uh, Stoicism there. Are there some ancient schools that you think have been most unfairly ignored? You know, we- we, if you were to ask any person about, "Give me some ancient schools of philosophy," Stoicism would be up top. Maybe they'd think Buddhism, Taoism, or something. They'd go, "Oh, I'm gonna be like, real, uh, a- a- a different approach to this. I'm gonna go to the other side of the planet."
- JFJoe Folley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But beyond that, we're probably really bouncing off the limit of most people's knowledge.
- JFJoe Folley
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Are there some schools that you think...
- JFJoe Folley
He should have got a little bit more time at the table.
- AOAlex O’Connor
I think, uh, well, yeah. I mean, y- you're quite right to point out that certainly any Western thinker is, is probably going to have neglected Eastern philosophy to a significant degree. But even within so-called Western thought, um, yeah, I suppose one thing that jumped out at me while you were speaking, it's not so much a school but an idea, which is like, um, I've been thinking a lot about, like, Aristotelian metaphysics. So from Aristotle, right? And when I ask people about cause and effect, like what causes particular things to occur, Aristotle famously, one of the foundational, like, uh, doctrines of his, of his metaphysics is that there are four kinds of causation that go into any- anything. Like, why is this beautiful and tasty can of Newtonic on the table? Well, it's got four different kinds of explanations. There is its formal cause, which is sort of the, the, the shape that it takes. There's its material cause, which is the stuff that it's made out of, right? We, we don't think of the stuff that it's made out of, strictly speaking, as a cause. But it's clearly part of the causal story that puts this on the table. There is the efficient cause, which is like, who actually made it, right? You put this together. Somebody put it in a can. I put it on the table. And finally, there is the final cause, which is what it was done for, what it's going towards-
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... the teleological cause.
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
In the modern era, we essentially, when we talk about causation, we just talk about the efficient cause. If I say, like, "Why is that on the table?" And you say, "Well, because, because I put it there," question is answered.
- JFJoe Folley
Yeah.
- AOAlex O’Connor
But I think that neglects a lot of really important questions about, like, the nature of the thing itself, why it's there in that particular time slice, taking that shape with that particular form. I think we neglect that, and I think that modern science is lacking in that it's only seems to con- uh, concern itself ultimately with efficient causes and maybe a little bit of the, the material cause too, in that, like, if you ask a scientist in a laboratory, in a laboratory, um, you know, "Why is that shuttle, like, flying and escaping the atmosphere?" They'll say, "Oh, because it has an, uh, an escape velocity and the thrust of the rockets." But if you ask the same scientist at the pub, they'll say, "Because we wanted to go to the moon," and suddenly they become an Aristotelian again.
- JFJoe Folley
Mm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And I think that the, the influence of these other kinds of causation isn't, isn't really there. The only other thing that came to mind is, um, potentially the, the pre-Socratics, you know? I mean, and Joe already said that the, the sort of first philosophers as it was, uh, as it were, was Thales. Um, but people might have thought when he went to say that, well, the first philosopher that people generally think of is Socrates, right? If you ask somebody who was the first philosopher, they'll say Socrates. But there's, you know, Socrates didn't just spring up ex nihilo, you know? He's, he's working, uh, in sometimes ... And him and Aristotle and Plato, they're working sometimes in response to, but certainly after and contemporary with other thinkers too, who a lot of the time their ideas just, you know, because they weren't particularly popular or didn't win the war of ideas-
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... we don't even know about. Parmenides didn't think that change could occur. In fact, you've heard of Zeno's paradoxes.
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
So Zeno had this, these wonderful paradoxes of motion where like, I can't clap my hands because first I'd have to half the distance, then half the distance, then half the distance, and you can't complete an infinite series of tasks, so I can't clap my hands. Everybody knows about Zeno's paradoxes, but do they know that the reason he came up with them is because he was following in the school of Parmenides, who believed that change was literally impossible, and these were paradoxes which were kind of supposed to demonstrate the paradoxical nature of change for that reason? Like again, we've got the conclusion but we haven't got the working, and sometimes the working is the most interesting stuff, you know?
- JFJoe Folley
Yeah. The, um ... I, I, I definitely concur with the kind of neglect of aspects of Aristotle's thought. I mean, especially really w- with regards to something like Aristotle's ethics even. You know, the, the... Mm. Aristotle's book, The Nicomachean Ethics, is, I would say, you know, even after over 2,000 years, the most useful book of philosophy for anyone to read. I would say e- You know, go on and get yourself a copy. They're great. There are some excellent translations. And, um, the, the most recent Penguin one is an excellent translation. And Aristotle's ethics is, I think ... One of its real strengths is it's incredibly realistic, so he's, he's very, very concerned with, with virtues. Um, but as opposed to, say, someone like certain Stoic thinkers and also the Cynics, um, Aristotle denies that virtue is sufficient for a, for a good or flourishing life. He's very ... When he, you know... He's, he's very good at getting down to brass tacks. You know, kind of at one point during The Nicomachean Ethics, he basically says, "You know, like, there is no philosophy that's going to make you happy on the rack." You know there- Mm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
You, you, you always need certain, like, minimal levels of, of your physical needs fulfilled in order to just like calm down the, the, the bestial part of you that recognizes that you need to eat and breathe and sleep in order to live. Um, and I think that, you know... And, and again, Aristotle has a number of incredibly, um, I think still incredibly insightful, um, ethical insights. They sometimes sound obvious when you say them out loud, but, uh, we were talking before, before we started filming about the, the idea that actually sometimes very, very obvious things bear repeating because we just forget them very, very easily. I mean-
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... you know. Uh, this was, again, a, a point that Tolstoy made where he talked about, uh, that idea of loving your neighbor as yourself. And Tolstoy basically says, "Yeah, like, that sounds trite, but have we ever got round to doing that?"
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And he argues that we haven't, and I probably concur. And one of Aristotle's ideas here is, is... I should focus on two. One of them is, is the idea of a golden mean. So his, um, his idea that, that virtue lies between the poles of two vices. You know, being brave is, is in between being cowardly and being reckless. Uh, being generous is in between being, you know, profligate and being miserly. And, uh, you know, he has... And I, I think that that's a very useful framework. You know, it sounds, you know, almost like common sense when you say it out loud, but actually attempting to think in these terms can be incredibly useful. And the other thing that Aristotle really, that I'm so bullish on, um, with regards to, to Aristotle is he's got an incredibly work- well worked out theory of friendship. It's in two books-
- JFJoe Folley
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... book eight and nine of The Nicomachean Ethics. And it's...... some of the, the best writing on friendship, I think, there, there's ever been. Aristotle, um, in some ways following in the footsteps of, of, um, some previous thinkers. Like, E- Epicurus was, was, uh, very- very big fan of, of friendship. Actually, I've gotten- I've gotten my timelines confused there. But either way, you know, Aristotle is incredibly, um, he thinks that, uh, having a group of friends, and, and moreover, friends that you're, uh, that are friendships of virtue, so friends that you're not just, you're not just there because you enjoy their company, you're not just there because you, you know, they- they have something that you want or you're trying to get at-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... you know, in the way that someone might schmooze up to their boss or, or, or just, uh, you're friends with somebody b- simply because you enjoy their company. These are friends who are sort of, uh, getting together in order to make one another more virtuous, and moreover, hold, like, duties and loyalties to one another. You know, Aristotle thinks that this is, these are enormously contributive factors to your life. You owe them things.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- 22:35 – 33:41
Why Philosophy Can Feel a Bit Depressing
- CWChris Williamson
You are somebody who tried nihilism as a life philosophy.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yes, I suppose. Inter- look, the thing, nihilism, man, it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Here we go, bull case for nihilism.
- AOAlex O’Connor
(laughs) Nihilism is often thought of as a synonym for all things depressing and upsetting, and in many cases it is. But nihilism just means there's sort of no purpose to it all. There- there's no... I- it's a difficult thing to define in analytic terms. That's why it's generally in the wheelhouse of, like, existential philosophers who tell stories to try and sort of grasp at a feeling. Um, but in theory, you know, if you're, if- it's not just that you're suffering. You could be suffering but not be a nihilist. It's if you're suffering, and suffering all the more because you think you're suffering without reason. That makes you a nihilist. But I think you could just as easily be having a wonderful time and think, "There is no rhyme or reason to this. I'm having a great time, but there's absolutely no purpose to this," and you'd still be a nihilist because you think that there's no purpose behind it all. But it doesn't mean-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... you have to have a bad time doing so. Um, so I think it is worth, if you are somebody who wants to toy with the idea that there is no meaning, like, try it on. See how it fits. That's what you've got to do with all philosophies. You know, if something seems like it sort of chimes with you a little bit, like, live in accordance with it for, like, a week. And a lot of time-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... it will be way too hard, but sometimes it will teach you something.
- CWChris Williamson
There's a lot of memes about philosophy making people depressed.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That the more that you learn, the worse that you see the world. What's the darkest philosophies that you guys have been exposed to?
- AOAlex O’Connor
Cioran? I- I- I mean, I- I love Cioran. I think that, um-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AOAlex O’Connor
Cio- Cioran is a, Cioran is an incredibly underrated kind of Romanian-stroke-French. Wrote lots of his work in French, but was Romanian, kind of adopted France-
- CWChris Williamson
Okay.
- AOAlex O’Connor
... um, in his, in his, uh, later years.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, that'll make you depressed-
- AOAlex O’Connor
That's-
- CWChris Williamson
... straight off the bat.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Well, poten-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- AOAlex O’Connor
And- and, uh, Cioran, um-
- CWChris Williamson
Comma Emile, Emile Cioran.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yes, Emile Cioran, um, writes...
- JFJoe Folley
... these incredibly pessimistic, uh, tracts of philosophy. And one's called The Trouble with Being Bored, and another's called A Short History of Decay. And he- he's just-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JFJoe Folley
... kind of incredible.
- CWChris Williamson
Love him already.
- JFJoe Folley
His first book-
- CWChris Williamson
Are you sure he's not British?
- 33:41 – 44:47
Is Life Worth Living?
- CWChris Williamson
okay, so Benatar's got this... I remember you... His whole thing is this balance between suffering and pleasure.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Is that even a, a tiny microcosm of suffering-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... is so great that it doesn't... It, it outweighs any amount of pleasure you could have.
- AOAlex O’Connor
He calls it, like, an asymmetry argument between pleasure and pain. So a lot of-
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, I've just pulled that out of a five-year-... five-and-a-half-year-old Canteen Connoisseur.
- AOAlex O’Connor
I've got a memory on you.
- CWChris Williamson
Thank you. I mean-
- AOAlex O’Connor
This is, this is why you've made it so far.
- CWChris Williamson
... if that's not a great advert for a tasty drink-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yes.
- CWChris Williamson
... with zero calories available now at utonic.com/modernwisdom-
- AOAlex O’Connor
Some three million subscribers later.
- CWChris Williamson
... I don't know what is. Come on.
- AOAlex O’Connor
(laughs) And he remembers.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Um, it's... I think when a lot of people would consider, is life worth living? One crude way of working it out is adding up the pleasure, minusing the pain, and sort of seeing what you're left over with. You know, is it, is it worth living overall? Benatar thinks that, crucially, before you exist, the potential pleasure that you might experience if you come into existence doesn't matter one, like, one jot. It's literally irrelevant. But the potential pain that you would avoid does matter. And he tries to prove this through some sort of intuitive thought experiments. For example, there are no conscious beings on Mars, right? We don't really think that it's a bad thing that all this pleasure that could be on Mars is, is being missed out on. We don't think, "What a tragedy that all, all of the potential pleasure that could exist on Mars isn't actually happening." But we might think that it is a good thing that there's no suffering up there. And some people hear that kind of example and go, "Yeah, that makes sense." Some people go, "Well, no, I am. I am. I am sad that there's no pleasure on..." It, it's sort of an intuitive thing. Um, he also... One other way of thinking about this, at least for the imbalance, might be a question, which is, would you take five minutes of the worst imaginable conceivable suffering that you could experience if afterwards you got to have five minutes of the b- best possible bliss? I mean, I don't know what you guys would do. You wouldn't take it?
- CWChris Williamson
No, thank you.
- AOAlex O’Connor
I, I think that's... I don't think I'd take five minutes of the best possible bliss anyway. (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- AOAlex O’Connor
The rest of your life. The rest of your life would just be-
- CWChris Williamson
Expectation.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah. You'd just-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Good point.
- AOAlex O’Connor
You'd just be complete... You'd just feel empty, you know? So...
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I mean, that's a, another asymmetry.
- AOAlex O’Connor
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
That's an additional asymmetry.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And that, that actually might be just a, a sort of good response to this kind of thought experiment 'cause what, uh, Benatar's trying to say is that most people would say no. And so crudely, it seems like the suffering kind of counts for more. Um, but a- as so much of philosophy does, it kind of relies on intuitive... That y- your sort of feeling of thought.
- 44:47 – 54:24
Why Context Matters in Understanding Philosophers
- AOAlex O’Connor
but-
- CWChris Williamson
Why?
- AOAlex O’Connor
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Why do- why do you not like The Myth of Sisyphus?
- AOAlex O’Connor
I- I- I sort of... I don't have an aversion to existentialist philosophy s- sort of generally, but it- it sort of doesn't really capture me. Like, I think that... I don't know. I mean, I don't know if Camus, like, sufficiently answers the question. His- his famous conclusion is imagining Sisyphus happy, right? And I just... I don't know if that's, like, a satisfying thought to me. For some it might be, but- but for me it's- it's not. It's just as- as meaningless as the situation that we- that we began with, you know? This- this sort of happy pushing of the boulder. Um, I don't know. Uh, Joe, you can probably make a case for something, right?
- CWChris Williamson
Is there a- is there a- a bull case for, "Well, just imagine this thing to be different. Just play pretend until you believe the theory"?
- AOAlex O’Connor
It's like an act of rebellion for- for Camus. It's- it's like a- it's almost like an existential irony, right? Like, he's sort of... You're just going to, like, enjoy the thing.
- JFJoe Folley
Well, it's interesting 'cause I- I find the development of Camus' thought over time very interesting for this, because The Myth of Sisyphus is often, you know... The thing that people take away is of course, you know, imagining Sisyphus happy.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJoe Folley
It's such a- it's such a famous image. But a lot of The Myth of Sisyphus is significantly more... I don't know what the right word is. Like, more intuitively abhorrent than that, if that makes sense. And even to Camus. So Camus writes The Myth of Sisyphus. He paints a bunch of characters who are meant to be, like, absurd men, and some of them are, like, really awful people. You know, like- like kind of philanderers or, you know, one of them is kind of the- you know, the actor who never becomes themselves and is just playing characters all the time, and... There... And he has this idea of, like, okay, well, if you're an absurdist and you are- you think there's no objective or- or, you know, no way to say that- that one aspect of life is better than any other, you're kind of trying to live out valuelessness, well then in that case Camus thinks, "Well, if you decided not to kill yourself, the only value that you're at least enacting is that life is better than no life, and so you should value the quantity of life over the quality of life." Now, of course, although that's not existential nihilism, that's pretty close to moral nihilism. And Camus clearly is troubled by this, because one of the next things he writes is a play called Caligula, which is all about the Roman emperor, a kind of fictionalized version of the Roman emperor Caligula, going absolutely batshit and killing lots of people. And, you know, there- there- there are various different analyses you can make of this. When I, um, read that, I think, "Yeah, this is Camus wrestling with his own philosophy." And he's go- he's painted himself into a corner whereby you can only value the quantity of life and not the quality of life. And then he's teasing out some of the- the consequences of that. And he's clearly not happy, because he then writes books-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
... that are ostensibly attempting to go, "No, hang on a sec. We can't... There are- there are further things that we can do with- with absurdism that isn't-"
- CWChris Williamson
That wasn't definitive.
- JFJoe Folley
Yes. Yeah, yeah. And we- you know, The Myth of Sisyphus is- is one of the first things that Camus writes-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
... along with The- The Stranger.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, it's the difficult-
- JFJoe Folley
Kinda comes-
- CWChris Williamson
... first album, let's say.
- JFJoe Folley
Well, and it's- it's like an-
- CWChris Williamson
Second EP.
- JFJoe Folley
... explication of- of the- of the outsider.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJoe Folley
And- and it's- it's... And it is... You know, I- I- I've- I like The Myth of Sisyphus partly because it's so counterintuitive. But some of his later works, things like The Plague.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- JFJoe Folley
The Plague is an amazing novel, sort of. It's- it's... It became, like, a bestseller during COVID-
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, during COVID.
- JFJoe Folley
... for obvious reasons.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- JFJoe Folley
And it's about a kind of- a plague hitting the- the town of Oran in, um... I think it's, you know, in French Algeria, what was then French Algeria, and how people cope with that. And it's... You know, it's... People have given various different analogical readings for this. So, um, one is to read it as an analo- an analogy for the Nazi occupation of France. Um, another is to... Uh, but- but- but part of the- the ki- kind of tying this back to the development of Camus' thought from The Myth of Sisyphus, one way of looking at it is to say, "Well, these are lots of things that Camus thinks when the chips are down."
- 54:24 – 1:08:40
Why is There Growing Interest in Panpsychism?
- AOAlex O’Connor
When it comes to history of thought, is there someone that you think changed thinking forever but was sort of useless in practice? Like, someone who contributed to moving thought forward most without having any real-life applicability?That's a tricky question. I'm, I'm tempted to say in a non-insulting way, theologians. Only because-
- GUGuest
(laughs)
- AOAlex O’Connor
The category, the category of. Only because like obviously, if you're a believer in God, the nature of God will, will greatly affect some practical things in your life, the way that you worship. You know, should you worship the saints or not? Are you worshiping a, a tripartite, you know, God or a, or a singular unity, you know? That kind of stuff will be important to your daily practice but if you're talking about in practice like for society, as it were, then it's probably not particularly relevant to anyone who doesn't care about that kind of stuff. Mm-hmm. So that, that sort of springs to mind. Um, but out- outside of that, I don't know. Um, maybe some of the more abstract... Wait, the name that actually sprung to mind was Bertrand Russell, which you might jump down my throat for. (laughs) But was he actually a practical philosopher? I don't know. Everything he tried to write in practice was, was awful. Well, it's a fact his... Bertrand Russell's very... I suppose it depends what you mean by practical. Bertrand Russell's very important, um, in the kind of history of studies of the foundations of mathematics- Mm-hmm. ... and stuff like that. And, and although his, uh... he wrote a three-volume (laughs) insane project, um... Is it two or three volumes? I always get too confused. No, no, nobody's read the whole thing. This is like... Because it's, it's deeply impenetrable and also failed. It takes him like, what, 300 pages to prove that one add one is two. Yes, i- I- It might... Yeah. It's, it's some, it's between... (laughs) It's, it's like, I think around the 200-page mark, um, because he's- Which is quite a thing to do from first principles, you know? It's, it's, it's a difficult... Yeah, yeah.
- GUGuest
It's a real battle of attrition. Yeah.
- AOAlex O’Connor
But, you know, but, um... So, and, and that ends up... It's like the terms and conditions of philosophy. It's like, no one actually reads it, but you kind of, you kind of need it to be there because it, it's, it's important. Oh, I see. And he, he writes that with, um, Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead. And, uh, that, that, and that's, that's very influential, you know. The, it's, it... In... Even though the grand project failed, there were some operators they coined that are very important. Um, things like, uh, there exists a unique object such that, which is, is, is now very help- helpful in areas of maths. So, you know, not, not, not, not, kind, not kind of helpful on an everyday level. But a lot of, a lot of Russell's, um, academic writing is, is very much, um, in philosophy of language, philosophy of maths, foundations of, foundations of mathematics, logic. You know, these... Which I think are very handy. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But, um, you know, they, it's not necessarily like you're gonna read his theory of descriptions and then just- Mm-hmm. ... be out and about being like, "Oh, yeah. Like this is-" My life is so much better. Oh, okay. So I guess even broader than that, are there some branches of philosophy that should be just jettisoned entirely? Uh, any, uh, bits that are just intellectual cosplay dead ends? Mm, no, because philosophy, if you find a philosophy useful, then it is useful. Um, like that's, that's kind of what it's, what it's there for. This is your philanthropic side coming through again. It's like, it's like asking the question of, of sort of, you know, are there any like music genres that you think should, should, should get in the bin? And the answer is like, no, because somebody's enjoying that, right? Like I, I'm sure it's useful to somebody. Um, but, you know, if we had to get rid of one of them, I, I don't know. Um, maybe- Pure logic puzzles? Philosophy of mind? Philosophy of mind is, is way too important. (laughs) A philosophy of mind is the next big thing, you know. I, I... Like, it, it's excruciatingly boring for a lot of people. I mean, we've talked about how it's, it's quite difficult to, to, to talk about it in a concrete way that's of interest to an audience. No one on YouTube likes it and I can't work out whether it's because it's hard or because it's pointless. (laughs) You know, my, my audience have, have quite taken to the philosophy of mind. I think because I have too, and so I've got this like enthusiasm for it. Mm-hmm. I think it's really important. And I think like, watch this- Sell me, sell me on philosophy of mind. Watch, watch this space, as it were, I think- Uh, sell me on it. People are beginning to realize that consciousness... It's always been like, you know, you'll have someone and they'll say like, "Consciousness, it's just such a mystery." And like, you know, "It's like trying to view the windowpane through the windowpane 'cause we experience the whole world through con-" That's, that's interesting, but everybody kind of already knows that. That's why we're at the table having the conversation. Um, there is a, there is a stark increase happening in the view that consciousness is, so to speak, fundamental. Panpsychism. Here's the interesting thing. Yeah, so panpsychism, right? And here's an, one interesting observation, which is that there are these clichés that crop up basically everywhere you look, right? If you look at ancient, um, Vedic literature, if you look, uh, at a meditative monk who achieves enlightenment in the forest somewhere, if you look at Joe Blogs who took LSD last week and had like this insane experience at the peak of his hero dose, they will say similar things, which is this sort of cliché of everything is one, I am one with the universe, the ego death, the dissolution of the self- So this non-duality type thing. Exactly. And this kind of stuff has been, has been present in, in, in these (laughs) philosophical traditions, like from, from the beginning of history. The pre-Socratics talk about it a little bit too. Um, and I think that we're beginning... Like people are beginning to become much more open to the idea that there is something true about that, and there's a reason why that keeps coming about. Panpsychism is, is growing in popularity because the problem is, like we believe that there is a world of matter, and we know that we are conscious. And you've got a few options available to you. Either the consciousness is like a totally separate thing from the material, which makes it seem really weird, and why does it interact with me? If consciousness is literally immaterial, if it's not made of, of matter that like my brain and my body is, then it is a complete mystery how it would interact with my physical body. Like, it's not like it's floating around out there. It has no spatial dimension. Mm-hmm. It's not, it's not materials. It's another piece of matter that is not matter- So the idea- ... but it must be some other kind of matter. The, the, the, the mys- Like, it is as mysterious that, that, that my mind would interact with my brain as it is, as it would be if my mind suddenly started interacting with your brain or with that can of tasty Nutonic on the table. Like, it would just be like, "Wha- what are you talking about?" The, if these are two separate kinds of things, you're talking about like taking the number two, adding in a chair, and like getting, you know, the color orange. It's j- just like, just categories of different things that seem like they shouldn't be able to interact. Okay, so then maybe the mind is just made out of material, but then you run into some intuitive problems about the, the nature of thoughts. You know, people keep coming at me because I like to sort of froth at the mouth over the thought of closing my eyes and imagining a triangle and asking where on earth that triangle is. There are true facts about that triangle. It's got three sides.... right? That's true. It's really, like I can see it in my head. It's true that it's got three sides.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
But where is that triangle? It's not just made up of the matter of my brain. If I cut open your brain, I'm not gonna find a triangle in there. Uh, it- it's- you can sort of find the- the material activity that's correlated with the experience of the triangle, but that's not the same thing as the triangle. So you've sort of got this- this sort of barrier problem of where you get from this material stuff to this non-material stuff. And the panpsychist says there is no barrier, but instead of saying everything's made out of material and so is consciousness, they just say that everything is consciousness from the get-go and therefore you get, uh, consciousness. The biggest myth for the panpsychists and other related schools in consciousness is that complexity is required for consciousness. That might be the big myth that needs to dissipate in the philosophy of mind.
- CWChris Williamson
So is their argument that because the brain is the most complex thing we know, it's the one that's got the most consciousness?
- AOAlex O’Connor
It's got... It- the things that we think consciousness is, are actually sometimes just what consciousness does. Okay, let me- let me- let me-
- CWChris Williamson
What the fuck does that mean? (laughs)
- AOAlex O’Connor
I'll explain it this way, right? So- so if consciousness just means, like some kind of experience, some kind of awareness, right? When we talk about what makes somebody conscious, we might talk about things like memory, first person conscious experience, awareness, these kinds of things. But like rudimentary consciousness on its own wouldn't necessarily require any of those things. Imagine for a moment that you had no memory. I don't mean like you forget what happened yesterday, like you've got dementia. I mean, literally no memory laid down in any instant. What would that be like? It's kind of impossible to imagine. Imagine you were falling through the air and no memory was being laid down at any instant. Would you even know that you were falling?
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
You'd have no sort of instant before to compare yourself with.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
You- you wouldn't even know that you were a being. You wouldn't know that your feet are part of you. You wouldn't have, there- there's no time for that to happen. You would literally, like it's impossible to even conceive of what the content of your thoughts would be.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
They'd be the- the simplest possible thing that consciousness could experience.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And yet it would still be conscious and aware. And so this- this, like the laying down of memory is something that consciousness can do, which gives rise to more complex conscious behaviors, like our conversations and- and me knowing that, you know, we're in a building and that this is a microphone and that kind of stuff. But that is not consciousness. That's just one thing that consciousness does when it's complexly arranged. In the same... So when we look at like a- a rock and say, "There's no consciousness," and look at a brain and say, "There is," and it's because, "Oh, the brain is complicated," the panpsychist says, "No, consciousness is at the foundation of all of it, you've just got more complicated consciousness, which does things like memory and self-awareness and communication."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
"And you've got less complex consciousness, which is sort of at the atomic level. Just sits there and sort of fizzes around, right?" The- the analogy I sometimes give to explain this is imagine comparing the rock to the Empire State Building. And we said, "Look at the Empire State Building with its complexity, with its- with its elevators and- and cash machines, and it's got like light switches and electricity," and- and you kind of think it's this, it's- it can't be made of matter, you know, 'cause like a rock is made of matter. No, it is still made of matter, it's just arranged in a more complex way and sort of doing much more interesting things.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
And our brains are like the Empire State Building of, you know, fundamental consciousness, which is you arrange it in a particular way and suddenly it can do all these magical things, like- like have conversations and talk to each other.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- AOAlex O’Connor
But the panpsychist thinks that at root it's- it's consciousness.
- CWChris Williamson
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- AOAlex O’Connor
I- I- I like it in the sense that I- I think that it's kind of satisfyingly empirical, eh, which sounds very, a very strange thing to say. Um, but, you know, ultimately it's somebody saying, "Okay, we've got, um, matter and mind. It's very difficult to reduce mind to matter. We can't deny that mind exists because it is, in some sense, the precondition for thinking that everything else exists. And so, right, if we can't reduce the two, we'll just have to make mind, you know, and matter play together."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- AOAlex O’Connor
So I- I'm sympathetic in that sense. I think that, I think that, um, for me, the aspect of the panpsychist approach that will probably need to be worked out in more detail, somebody probably has 'cause I'm not that well-read regarding panpsychism, is a kind of detailed account of what complexity amounts to.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
Episode duration: 1:58:56
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