As I lay in bed last night at 1 AM, brooding about the world and this and that, my mind turned to Mel Brooks’s great film Blazing Saddles. I recalled the wonderful scene in the saloon when Madeline Kahn, playing Lili von Stupp, does her spectacular send up of Marlene Dietrich with her song “I’m Tired.”
I have been blogging regularly since the first day of June,
2009. In those 14 years, despite a number of lengthy trips to Paris, to South
Africa, and even to Botswana, I have managed to post slightly more than once a
day, 5183 posts in all. And like Lili, I am tired.
So I have decided to step back a bit from blogging. I will
continue to post as the spirit moves me, but I will permit myself not to feel
negligent when I fail to do so. I have been touched by the fact that on several
recent occasions when I went for as much as a week without posting, several of
you expressed concern about my well-being, so I have hit upon the following
plan. Each day that I do not post, I will simply put up the message “still
here.” Those of you who have developed relationships with one another through
the comments section of this blog should feel free to continue communicating
with each other. I cannot promise that I will read the comments so if anyone
wants to contact me, please just send an email and I shall respond. At some point, not soon, I hope, but one
never knows, the message “still here” will cease to appear.
It may be that having relieved myself of the obligation of
posting, I shall be more rather than less inclined to do so. There is no
telling. It has been great fun using
this medium to give voice to my thoughts, but like Lili, I am tired.
21 comments:
Dr. Wolff,
I forgot about something you posted countless posts ago about trying to figure out Kant's belief that it is possible to use someone as an end & never as a means? You said something to the point that there will always be some motive of a good action that will never allow anyone to do something for someone & using them as an end only. But what if someone asks you for ten bucks and you give it to them without thinking? E.g. like when someone drives to the store and drives safely but on autopilot a short portion of the way? Surely if you can do a routine action without thinking about it, then surely you can do a good action without thinking about it? Plus, only realize it was a good deed afterwards. Although, I could be mistaken.
How about instead of "still here" jotting down a phrase every day or every Tuesday and Friday (days named at random)? No need for a complete paragraph explaining the phrase.
Your phrase can provide food for thought and will let us know that you're still with us.
Speaking only for myself, of course, I like the "still here" plan.
I'm glad that you will occasionally post when the spirit moves you.
BTW, I'm rereading The Dawn of Everything, and I consulted your excellent review of that book.
Re Kant's second formulation of the Categorical Imperative:
It is usually formulated as the negative injunction that one always treat others as ends in themselves and never AS MERE MEANS.
That is compatible with the view that whenever a rational human being acts on an injunction backed by the demands of pure practical reason, and thus does the morally right thing, there is always also some empirical motivation in the explanation of her action.
That possibility would be explicitly ruled out only if the second formulation of the CI said something like "Always act on AND ONLY ON the demands of pure practical reason.
I don't know what Kant scholars say about this.
Thank you, Professor Wolff. I've been quietly reading your blog daily for most of those past 14 years -- at least 10 or more.
I completed my master's degree in philosophy about 20 years ago, and your writings here have helped keep my brain challenged and inspired while normal life happened. In particular, you have deepened my understanding of both Marx and US race issues, neither of which I had studied much before (I'm a New Zealander who lived in China for almost 10 years). Without a doubt I am very influenced by you on what I think about those issues now.
Thank you again, and all the best to you and your family (who I have also come to know through your writings here).
re: production functions and the deindustrialization of Europe
Steve Keen is one of my favorite economists, and I think his ideas are highly relevant now, as I'll try to show here.
Steve believes that we were waylaid by Adam Smith when he took the attention off of the physiocrats, who said all value came from land, and turned it the focus on labor. By land, he means energy, which then extends to the fossil fuel revolution, fossil fuels being stored energy.
A couple of links on the physiocrats, the first by Professor Wolff, and the second a one-minute video by Steve Keen:
Marx, Robert Paul Wolff Lecture 3
THE GENIUS OF THE PHYSIOCRATS | Steve Keen
Of course labor theory of value is what got Marx started and Steve, while having a high opinion of Marx, thinks he also got some things wrong. A couple of links:
Why Karl Marx was a genius | Steve Keen and Lex Fridman
What Karl Marx got wrong | Steve Keen and Lex Fridman
In any event, Steve takes economists to task for not including energy in production functions. As Steve says:
Labour without energy is a corpse; capital without energy is a sculpture.
In the cases where they did include it, you could have no energy and the production function would still show an output, which is nonsense. So Steve is bringing energy back into production functions, but in a way that is more realistic. Here is an abstract (read a bit more at the source, which makes it clear what the modified production function looks like):
Energy plays no role in the standard Cobb-Douglas Production Function (CDPF), and a trivial role in a three-factor CDPF where it is treated as a third input, independent of labour and capital. Starting from an epistemological perspective, we treat energy as an input to both labour and capital, without which production is impossible. We then derive an energy-based CPDF (EBCDPF) in which energy plays a critical role. We argue for the redefinition and measurement of real GDP in terms of exergy. We conclude that the “Solow Residual” measures the contribution of exergy to growth, and that the exponents in the EBCDPF should be based on cross-country comparative data as suggested by Mankiw (1995) rather than the “cost-share theorem”.
The purpose of this paper is to provide an aggregate production function—that is, a function relating a single measure of output (Q) to single inputs of Labour (L), Capital (K) and Energy (E)—in which energy plays an essential role, and to follow through the consequences of this function at the level of aggregate inputs and output.
By “an essential role”, we mean incorporating energy in a way in which its role in production is neither trivial, nor reducible to zero via a suitable choice of parameters, and which is also compatible with the Laws of Thermodynamics.
source: A Note on the Role of Energy in Production
Now why all this matters is that a country like Germany previously relied on cheap pipeline natural gas from Russia but now imports LNG from the Middle East at 5 times the price. The German economy, which is energy-intensive, is simply not competitive at that price, which is why production will shift elsewhere.
'That possibility would be explicitly ruled out only if the second formulation of the CI said something like "Always act on AND ONLY ON the demands of pure practical reason.
'I don't know what Kant scholars say about this.'
David,
Does that include if you don't think about a beneficial act for someone before & during that act?
There could be several reasons:
1. Bored presently so on autopilot.
2. Tired presently so on autopilot.
3. Brain illness so on autopilot.
--if this is true, then only the subconscious mind (working with the body) can do a truly selfless good deed.
To Michaell L:
Interesting questions.
I don't think that Kant gave much consideration to sub- or semi-conscious motivational states. (He wrote well before Nietzsche, Freud, etc.)
For him, acting for the sake of duty (as opposed to merely acting in accordance with duty) involved acting on the deliverances of pure practical reason, and nothing else. Empirical motivational states, e.g. egoistic or sympathetic desires, could accompany moral motivation, but were no part of it.
The post I was addressing raised the question whether Kant also believed that a human being on a given occasion could act solely on such a deliverance of ppr, or whether there always had to be some empirical motivational state at play. I suspect that Kant did believe that pure practical motivation was possible, a view that would be in accord with his general view about "the autonomy of reason", to quote the title of one of Prtofessor Wolff's books.
ML, I don't think Kant would regard a truly "mindless act" as having moral significance. It'd be a natural occurrence, an event involving the human organism which merely happens, like a sneeze - neither moral nor immoral - though such an event could indeed have beneficial effects (e.g. a passenger arriving at a destination safely, a needy friend receiving 10 dollars). But for Kant, having beneficial effects does not mean the same thing as being morally praiseworthy. (That's not to say we should bring about harmful effects instead - it's just to say that it's a philosophical error to evaluate our moral character by merely examining the consequences of our behavior.)
The one thing for Kant that we may regard as worthy of moral praise or criticism is the will, in accordance with its respect for the moral law. Genuine acts, of a morally significant kind, proceed from the will alone. The question for moral reflection is: "Did I do X because it was morally right, or was X only an expression of habit, inclination, and prudence?" (But I don't really have an idea how Kant claims to recognize a moral act in practice, as distinct from a natural, mechanical occurrence involving human bodies and their environments.)
(I'm not an expert etc.; the usual disclaimers apply.)
I'll also echo the other commenters gratitude to and admiration of Prof. Wolff. It's a rare and impressive thing to maintain a blog of this quality for such a long time.
(Edited to add: I was still composing this comment while Prof. Zimmerman submitted his. I don't see any conflicts between his reading and mine.)
Thank you Professor Wolff. It has been a pleasure keeping up with your blog, watching your online lectures, and discovering your scholarly work in the process over the last 15 years.
"still here" must mean some post that you make. If there is no " still here", you may well be still here in the greater sense. I've enjoyed many of your writings, YouTube clips, and videos. A certain sense of sadness prevails.
"It's just to say that it's a philosophical error to evaluate our moral character by merely examining the consequences of our behavior."
Michael
This may sound foolish, but if zombies exist, who are undead creatures bent on harming people, why wouldn't they be considered evil even though the majority of their brain is inactive?
Although zombies never took over the planet before, there are individual zombies in African culture that have harmed human beings, supposedly, at least in myth & legend. But such things may have happened in the past no matter how unlikely. Many things are still unexplained.
And if zombies are too impossible for some, then how about cyborgs?
What a wonderful gift your blog has been. It really has been a source of enjoyment, stimulation, - something always there for me, genuine pleasure, insightful and such beautiful writing, a kind of music, music of the mind. Thank you!!
ML: I think in recent philosophy, zombies are said to be automata devoid of conscious minds, whose observable behavior, however, is indistinguishable from that of their conscious, human counterparts.
(I think nonhuman animals, including e.g. dogs, horses, apes - on Descartes's view of them, specifically - might've qualified as zombie-like, speaking a bit loosely and anachronistically. I'm not sure if Descartes's view was ever popular in his time, rather than just an unfortunate curiosity in the history of thought.)
But anyway, I don't think there's any reason in Kant's view to think of zombies, cyborgs, and other mindless automata as ethical beings, unless as a figure of speech, somewhat as tumors and viruses might be called "evil." (And although, unlike Descartes, he did not (IIRC) claim that nonhuman animals were all mindless automata, I think Kant likewise excluded "lesser," nonhuman species of animal from the sphere of moral concern. Animal rights advocates, including Kantian ones, find this a terrible mistake, of course.)
Sidebar on zombies:
There are two kinds: Movie zombies and philosophical zombies. Despite the name in common, they could hardly be more different.
Movie zombies are the "walking undead" (I guess)--- characterized by a distinctive shuffling walk, visible wounds around the face and neck, groaning/screaming sounds, a menacing attitude toward living human beings and so on. (The classic: George Romero's "The Night of the Living Dead". The comic: Simon Pegg's "Shaun of the Dead").
Philosophical zombies, by sharp, sharp contrast, look just like you and me: They walk like us, talk like us, flirt like us, kvetch and kvell like us and so on and on.
The point of movie zombies (I guess) is to scare the bejeesus out of moviegoers, which "The Night of the Living Dead" did very nicely back when it first came out, a trope that "Shaun of the Dead capitalizes on to brilliant comic effect. (Fun fact: It is hard to watch Romero's film now without laughing out loud --- Thanks, Simon Pegg.)
The point of philosophical zombies is to dramatize certain themes in the philosophy of mind: For example, it is deployed to test the plausibility of various versions of philosophical behaviourism, the view that the analysis of mental concepts must make essential reference to molar behaviour. The idea is that if the concept of a philosophical zombie is coherent, then philosophical behaviourism, even in its more subtle versions (Gilbert Ryle, L. Wittgenstein, Daniel Dennett [?]) is wrong, because philosophical zombies are behaviourally indistinguishable from you and me in all occurrent and dispositional respects, but they do not embody mentality and we do.
One thing that the two kinds of zombies have in common: neither kind is a good candidate for an embodiment of Kantian pure practical reason. So, neither kind can act under the idea of reason.
And thus ends the sidebar on zombies.
Addendum on sidebar on zombies (just for the fun of it):
In the debate over the plausibility of philosophical behaviourism in the philosophy of mind, the inverse of a philosophical zombie would be a creature who instantiates mental states, especially intentional attitudes such as beliefs, but who exhibits no occurrent molar behaviour and who instantiates no molar behavioural dispositions. An example from the literature are Galen Strawson's "weather-watchers," hypothetical creatures whose sole purpose is to observe the meteorological world around them and to form beliefs about the weather, without ever expressing those beliefs in molar behaviour. (G. Strawson, "Mental Reality")
Strawson's point is that such creatures would be a counterexample to analytic and/or ontological behaviourism since they would instantiate mental states that are analytically and/or metaphysically independent of molar behaviour.
Philosophical zombies: Molar behaviour but no mental states.
Weather-watchers: Mental states but no molar behaviour.
These putative counter-examples to one of the dominant views in the philosophy of mind would be defeated if it could be shown that philosophical zombies and/or weather-watchers are incoherent notions. Daniel Dennett argues against the coherence of philosophical zombies. I can't offhand name someone who does the same for weather-watchers. (A bit of googling would not doubt come up with someone.)
Fun examples from the philosophy of mind. Isn't philosophy great!
I had never encountered, as best I can recall, the phrase "molar behavior" until just now.
Micheal L Can there be a moral action without the will? I may be wrong but I think Heidegger would say there can be due to our natural history of beings. For example, I go to the hotel swimming pool, and the lifeguard is talking to a pretty girl, distracted. Meanwhile, a young boy is having difficulty keeping his head above water. I jump in without giving it a moment's thought. I Have no intention in my head. I act automatically given I come from a family of top-flight college athletic swimmers.
To LFC:
In psychology "molar" (as opposed to "molecular") has a technical meaning that plays out in disputes between "holistic" purposive accounts of the explanation of behaviour, as in Edward Tolman, on the one hand, and minimalist stimulus/response accounts, as in B.F. Skinner and Clark Hull.
I do not mean anything so fancy. I just mean observable and comparatively extended bodily movements, of the kind that could figure in dispositional accounts of mentalistic concepts such as belief, desire and the like. As in: "S believes that it is raining now" = roughly "If S were to leave the house now, he would take an umbrella," and so on.
DZ
Thanks. That distinction (molar/molecular) rings a bell now.
I read some Skinner a long time ago. Operant conditioning is not a simple stimulus/response phenomenon. But that's bye the bye.
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