CONTENTS

1. The philosopher within you 6

2. Passing time 8

3. The woman of my dreams 10

4. My mind is elsewhere 12

5. Do the right thing 14

6. Putting into words what goes without saying 16

7. God’s odds 18

8. Everything that exists 20

9. True colors 22

10. There is no path not taken 24

11. The one thing I know is that I know nothing 26

12. Don’t worry, be happy—unless worrying makes you happy 28

13. Mental billiards 30

14. The rational thing to do is to act irrationally 32

15. A rose by another name wouldn’t be a rose 34

16. Two hands in a bucket 36

17. Can Jesus make a burrito so hot he couldn’t eat it? 38

18. Surgeon general’s warning: everything causes everything 40

19. Seeing red 42

20. You choose, you lose 44

21. Really moved, by the unreal 46

22. You are not what you eat 48

23. The Devil made me do it 50

24. Cyber-romance 52

25. “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” 54

26. God’s top ten 56

27. The proof is in the (vanilla) pudding 58

28. There’s more to the world than what there is 60

29. It’s all relative 62

30. What you see is not what you get 64

1. THE PHILOSOPHER WITHIN YOU

There’s the legend of the fish who swam around asking every

sea creature he’d meet,“Where is this great ocean I keep hearing

about?”A pretty small legend, true—but one with a pretty

big message.

We are very much like that fish.

For consider, it’s hard to look at a newborn baby without

thinking: what an incredible miracle. But when was the last

time you looked at an adult and had the same thought? But why

not? Every adult was a little baby; if the latter is a miracle then

so is the former. But it never occurs to us to think this way for

one simple reason:we’re so used to seeing people that we stop

reflecting on them.

Or you drop something, a spoon, and it falls to the floor.

But why? Couldn’t it, in theory, have remained floating in air or

moved upwards? And how exactly does it fall to the floor, by

“gravity”? There are no strings connecting the earth to the

spoon. How can the earth pull on something from a distance,

that it’s not even attached to? Why don’t we pause every time

something drops and say: what an incredible miracle!

The most ordinary things contain a whole lifetime of questions,

if only we are reminded to start asking them.

Children already know to ask these questions. Every

answer you provide to one of their “Why?” questions just generates

the next question. But we were all children once.What

we need to do now is to let the child still within us—the

philosopher within us—re-emerge. What we need now are a

few seconds out of our ordinary conceptual habits. We need to

take a cold wet plunge into the great deep ocean of thought.

It’s time to start thinking.

2. PASSING TIME

Nothing is more familiar than the passage of time. “Seize the

day!” they say, because “What’s here today is gone tomorrow.”

But while it admittedly seems to us that time moves along, it’s

just not clear how it does so. For time is not a physical object or

a thing: it doesn’t exist first in one place, then in another. But

then in what sense, exactly, does it really move?

Indeed if it were truly moving we ought to be able to say

how quickly. You may think that clocks measure that rate, but

actually that’s not quite right.

What a clock measures, in fact, is not time but rather how

some physical things are correlated with other physical things.

You glance at the clock and see that it reads 1:13 p.m., and then

glance again and see 1:15 p.m. Those two glances are correlated

with those two readings, apparently measuring two minutes

of time. But now imagine that between those glances

everything in the universe sped up together, including your

brain activity and thoughts and sensations and the mechanisms

of the clock. Those two glances would still be correlated with

those two readings, but less than two minutes would have

passed—and you’d never notice the difference. So the clock

isn’t actually measuring the time itself!

If we’re really to imagine time itself moving, distinct from

all physical things, we must imagine the universe to be entirely

empty of all physical things and ask ourselves whether time

would still flow. Again, it’s tempting to say yes. But then

remember that it’s an empty universe: there is nothing in it. But

if there is truly nothing in it, then nothing can be happening,

nothing can be occurring, and nothing can really be moving.

“Time flies”, they also say,“when you’re having fun.” I’m all

in favor of having fun. But having fun won’t pass the time more

quickly, if time doesn’t really pass at all.

3. THE WOMAN OF MY DREAMS

We all know that experience: some exquisite, beautiful dream,

into which the alarm clock suddenly and rudely intrudes. We

wake up, and our day begins.

Or does it?

Can you in fact be sure that you’re not dreaming right

now—that you haven’t been dreaming your entire life? This is

not merely a sleepy philosophers’ question. For if you can’t be

sure you haven’t been dreaming, then how can you be sure that

anything you believe about the world is true?

Could you pinch yourself? Well, you could. But then how

would you know that you didn’t just dream the pinch itself and

then transition into a different dream?

Indeed I once decided to keep a log of my dreams. I quickly

found that on waking I couldn’t remember the dreams I’d had

earlier in the night, so I started waking up during the night to

write them down.A few nights of this interrupted sleep and I

was exhausted! So my body (or mind) got the better of me: I

woke up one morning to discover that my notebook was actually

empty. I had only dreamed I had woken up to write down my

dreams!

At that point I knew I was defeated. But I also knew I had a

deep problem. I am positive, right now, 100%, that I am awake

and writing this. I’m also positive, right now, 100%, that I have

a wife, that I have a physical body, and that other physical

objects exist, because I perceive all these things. But then again

I was equally positive during my failed experiment that I was

awake and writing down dreams. And look how far that got

me.

Could it be, then, that nearly everything I believe about the

world is false? That even my lovely, lovely wife is only literally

the woman of my dreams?

4. MY MIND IS ELSEWHERE

You can’t deny that your mind exists. After all, the very act of

denying requires the ability to form thoughts, which seems to

be a mental ability—so denying that you have a mind would

amount to proving that you do! What’s unclear, however, is just

what it means to have a mind. We know that we have brains,

which are purely physical objects. The question is whether our

minds just are our brains. And important differences between

the mental and physical suggest that they are not.

For example, ordinary physical things have spatial properties:

they take up space, they have sizes, shapes, locations, etc.

But the mind does not seem to be spatial. It doesn’t make sense

to ask how “big” that thought is, or what the shape of your consciousness

is. Nor does it make sense to ask where a thought or

perception might be located. If you were to shrink down inside

a brain, all you’d see would be lots of molecules zipping about.

You would never find a “thought” or “perception”—since they

are not literally located anywhere in the brain.

Minds also have a unique feature: their owners have a special

access to them. You can directly know what you are thinking

in a way no one else can know what you are thinking. But no

physical objects have this feature. Since physical objects all

exist in space we all have equal access to them, even to each

other’s brains. In fact, doctors have even greater access to

what’s going on in your brain than you do, by means of medical

imaging! But simply looking into your brain will never allow

them to feel whatever you are feeling. That belongs to you

alone in a way your body and brain do not.

It’s not clear exactly what a mind is, unfortunately. But it is

clear that the only thing in the head is the brain, and that the

mind, in the deepest of senses, is elsewhere.

5. DO THE RIGHT THING

If only we knew what that was. Or rather, if only we knew how

we knew what that was.

Consider an action such as feeding a helpless hungry child.

Everyone agrees that that is a morally good thing to do. But

now if you were to witness someone doing this, what would

you see? You’d see the person feeding and the child fed; you’d

see the food, the chewing, perhaps you’d see the child smile.

But here’s something you wouldn’t see: the actual goodness of

the action. “Goodness” is not the kind of property which is literally

visible.

Our eyes see only light and color, after all. But good and bad

and right and wrong are not equivalent to light or color so of

course our eyes can’t see them. And more importantly, what

our eyes see at best is how things actually are at a given

moment. But moral properties are about how things ought to

be.To say that feeding a hungry child is good is to say that one

ought to do it.And our eyes are just not equipped for seeing that

sort of thing.

It’s easy to overlook this fact since we reach our moral judgments

so quickly. If you witnessed a murder you’d be so immediately

aware of its wrongness that you wouldn’t realize that its

wrongness is not something you can actually see. But now you

might wonder: if you don’t know about whether an action is

right or wrong by your senses, then how do you know it?

So you might be pretty confident you know which actions

are right and wrong. Feed that hungry child; be kind; don’t

steal donuts. You might even be confident in your moral beliefs

about more controversial issues. But unless you can say a little

more about how you know what rightness and wrongness are,

you ought not be so confident about what it is you’re confident

about.

6. PUTTING INTO WORDS WHAT GOES

WITHOUT SAYING

Language is as important to human beings as it is mysterious.

You make some sounds and people somehow respond

appropriately. But of course only certain sounds, namely the

meaningful ones, such as words. And only certain people,

namely those who understand your language, who grasp the

meanings of your words. So if we want to understand language,

we must know more about what “meaning” is.

The first surprising result is that meaning is abstract. That

means that it isn’t a physical thing and it doesn’t exist anywhere

in space. Someone has just uttered the word “dog,” let’s say. The

word itself is a physical object, a sound, some vibrating air molecules.

A physicist could discover every physical property of

that object: its location, its motion, its frequency, etc. But its

meaning won’t be found amongst those properties. The sound

may convey a meaning, but its meaning is not literally found

with or inside the sound.

Similarly, the reason you may not understand Chinese is not

that your ears aren’t working properly. Rather it’s because ears

only detect physical objects such as sounds, and meanings

aren’t physical objects. You could have the finest ears around

and you’ll still stare blankly when someone addresses you in

Chinese.

But there’s another surprising result.

Consider these two sentences:“It is raining” and “Il pleut.” If

you know French then you know that these sentences have the

same meaning. But now what language is the meaning in, so to

speak? It isn’t in English because then the French sentence

would lack it; nor vice versa. So the meaning itself is in no language

at all.

Understanding a language thus somehow requires us to

grasp abstract things that are not detectable by our senses and

which are independent of language altogether.

It’s a good thing it’s much easier to do than to say how it is

done!

7. GOD’S ODDS

You’re playing poker with friends. Your buddy Fred draws the

Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten of spades—a Royal Flush, the

highest ranking standard poker hand—the odds against which

are roughly 650,000 to 1. Lucky Fred! In the next hand he

draws those five cards again. OK that’s unusual, but hey, you’ve

known each other since childhood. But then he draws them

again, and again. Yes you were best man at each other’s weddings

but that doesn’t suppress your homicidal feelings. When

he draws them yet again you find yourself reaching for a

weapon.

When something incredibly unlikely occurs, it’s very difficult

to believe it occurs by chance. Fred is obviously cheating.

He will plead that he isn’t, even as you beat your lifetime of

shared memories out of him. But it’s nearly impossible to

believe.

But now consider. There are some basic physical properties

of the universe, such as the charge of the electron, the precise

strength of gravity, the speed of light, etc. Each one could have

had any of an infinite number of values. Gravity (for example)

could have been slightly stronger, or a lot stronger, or slightly

weaker. Had any one of these properties been even slightly different,

then our universe could not have existed—with its

planets and stars and life and us, we conscious, rational,

morally aware beings. The odds against all these properties

simultaneously having precisely the one value necessary for

this universe are quite literally astronomical.

And yet here we are.

If you reached for your piece when Fred got his fifth Royal

Flush then perhaps you should be reaching now. For when

something incredibly unlikely occurs it is very difficult to

believe it occurs by chance. And there is nothing quite as

incredibly unlikely as precisely this universe, amongst all the

possible universes that might have been.

There would obviously be only one being capable of stacking

this deck.

If it’s likely that Fred is cheating, then it’s all the more likely

that God exists and is responsible for this universe.

8. EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS

If we’re going to think about things, then we need to think

about just which things there are to think about. So let’s try to

make a list of everything that exists—starting with the questions

which arise immediately as one sets out to construct such

a list.

Let’s start simply, with some ordinary physical things. You

might want to list trees, say. But there are many different kinds

of trees. Is merely listing “trees,” and thus leaving out all those

differences, to leave something crucial off the list? On the one

hand, no; “trees” covers all trees. But on the other hand, that

there are different kinds of trees is a significant fact about the

world, one which seems necessary for our list to be comprehensive,

which a list of “everything” should be! And then what

about forests—are these redundant once we’ve listed the

trees? On the one hand, again, a world with scattered trees is

different from one where they’re collected into forests; but on

the other, what exactly is a forest over and above its trees?

Wouldn’t it be redundant to list the trees and the forests? But

then by the same reasoning, what is a tree over and above its

atoms? Perhaps we should just list the basic particles that physicists

tell us compose the world, or perhaps just “matter.” Or

again, would leaving off the list the different collections of matter

into objects be to leave our list, of everything, somehow

incomplete?

And what exactly is an object, anyway? We often speak

about an object by listing its properties. We say of an apple that

it is round and red. So should we say that the apple, the object,

is somehow distinct from those properties since “it” has

“them”? And if so, does the apple deserve a separate line on our

list from the roundness and redness? But then again, what is the

apple once you take away its roundness, redness, etc.?

Our list of everything, regretfully, does not yet include

itself.

9. TRUE COLORS

I’m a terrible dresser—but my dressing problem is not entirely

my fault. My shirt and sweater today in fact matched perfectly

in my walk-in closet , but then in front of my class they suddenly

didn’t match at all. I could solve the practical problem by

holding my class in my closet. But that wouldn’t solve the

philosophical problem.

What color is this shirt in my closet, anyhow? I’ll say blue.

I’ll still call it blue outside at noon on a sunny spring day in New

York, even though it looks a slightly different color here than in

the closet.And I’ll still call it blue under the fluorescent lights

of my classroom though it now looks nothing like the sweater

that matched its color in my closet. But using the same word

can’t mask the fact that this shirt keeps changing colors on me.

Or does it? Nothing about the shirt has changed. How can it

have changed colors when it hasn’t changed at all?

Maybe I should just say that it appears different colors to me.

But now if it appears to change colors when it really hasn’t,

then some of my perceptions must be wrong. But which ones?

Perhaps my dimly lit closet is not the “true” viewing context,

but it’s not obvious that natural sunlight is any better. After all,

the sun on a spring noon in New York produces quite a different

color from the sun on a wintry late afternoon in London, so

which sunlight is the “true” one? And why not say that fluorescent

light improves on sunlight, and that it lets us see the true

color?

Maybe we should drop the idea that physical objects have a

“true”color altogether. That way we don’t have to decide which

light gives us the true color, because there is none. Rather we

can say that objects have every color they appear to have, in

their different contexts. So my shirt does not have a true

color—only true colors.

Now everybody out of this closet.

10. THERE IS NO PATH NOT TAKEN

Every choice I make seems to present two options: the one I

choose, and the one I instantly regret not having chosen. I find

myself wishing for a “do-over,” as if I could roll back time and

make the other choice. But of course you can’t do that. Even if

you could roll back time you couldn’t make the other choice.

For what explains the choices we make? Well, lots of things.

Sometimes we have hunches and instincts. We have complicated

features such as our personality and character. Many of

our choices are brought about by our particular beliefs and

desires, or values. And there are the laws of nature. We are at

least physical creatures and our bodies and brains operate

according to those laws. And what we do next is pretty much

what our brains tell us to do.

But now, do we control any of these things?

Certainly not our hunches; these just happen to us.

Certainly not our personality: if nerdy people could, wouldn’t

they become cool, like us? Can we control what we believe?

Just try to believe that there’s an elephant directly in front of

you. You can’t do it. Your values? Just try to switch your opinion

on some current moral controversy. You can’t. And we certainly

don’t control the laws of nature controlling our brains.

We don’t control any of the factors which control our

behavior.

Living life forward it often feels like we have genuine

options before us; that the road forks, and it’s up to us which

path to take. But that is an illusion. There are no forks. What

you “choose” is entirely determined by all these factors out of

your control. In fact there’s just a single road ahead, stretching

on with all its twists and turns, and you’ve simply got no choice

but to follow it.

11. THE ONE THING I KNOW IS THAT

I KNOW NOTHING

Falser words have rarely been spoken. But it’s not because

Socrates—their famous utterer—knew plenty, but because

it’s doubtful that he knew that he knew nothing. For knowing

that would require an understanding of what knowing is, in

order to be sure that one lacked it.And that’s one thing that we

don’t yet seem to have.

For sometimes what we know are facts or sentences: Fred

knows that there was a French Revolution. Other times it’s

more like a skill or an ability: Frederique knows how to tie her

shoes. Other times it’s more like an experience: you don’t

know what sushi tastes like until you taste Harushi’s sushi. But

is there anything these share, by virtue of which they all count

as examples of “knowing”?

One might suggest that having a skill, or knowing what

sushi tastes like, just amounts to knowing a set of facts or sentences.

But it is almost impossible to express most skills in sentences

at all. When you teach your child to tie her shoes you

inevitably do it by demonstrating it, precisely because you don’t

have the words. I once had a jazz piano teacher who explained

how to improvise:“There are twelve tones, man. You just gotta

get into it.” No wonder I stink at the piano.

And even if we could express various skills in sentences,

simply “knowing” the sentences wouldn’t give you the skill. If

it did there’d be no need for golf pros—you could just read a

good golf book, then beat Tiger Woods.

Nor do experiences reduce to knowing sentences.

Knowing what Harushi’s sushi tastes like doesn’t allow you to

put it into words, food critics notwithstanding. Indeed even

animals could know what it tastes like, and they lack language

abilities altogether.

So we’ve got all these different things, and there is nothing

they share by virtue of which they all count as “knowing.”

Despite everything we may take ourselves to know, then, we

just don’t know exactly what it means to say that we know

them.

12. DON’T WORRY, BE HAPPY—UNLESS

WORRYING MAKES YOU HAPPY

There’s plenty of moral controversy, to be sure. But there’s also

a lot of moral agreement. Make quick lists of some actions you

think of as uncontroversially morally good ones and morally

bad ones and ask a friend to do the same. You and your friend

will probably find much overlap in your two lists. In fact it’s

easy to generate lists that most people more or less agree with.

What’s harder is explaining just why that’s so easy.

The lists just can’t be arbitrary. There must be something

that all good actions have in common by virtue of which they

count as good and something else that all bad actions have in

common. Well here’s one idea: the moral value of an action is

determined by how much overall happiness the action produces.

Morally good actions maximize that happiness, while

bad ones fail to.

Treating happiness as the fundamental moral value makes a

lot of sense. Suppose you ask your friend why he chose to go to

a certain college. He might say: because that college will help

him get a good job. And why does he want that? Because he

wants a nice home and to buy lots of nice things. And why

those? Eventually he will say: because that will make me happy.

If you then ask him why he wants to be happy he will stare at

you like you’re crazy. That’s because everything we want, we

want for the sake of the happiness it brings us;but happiness we

want for its own sake.

Happiness is the fundamental thing we value.

Some may object by insisting that morality must ultimately

be traced back to God. But our theory is perfectly happy (so to

speak) with doing that, if you happen to believe in God. For

presumably a benevolent God would want human beings to be

happy, so whatever morality God provides would increase

human happiness.

If it didn’t, then that would truly be something to worry

about.

13. MENTAL BILLIARDS

Nothing is more familiar than the causal interaction between

our minds and our bodies. Light travels from this page into

your eyes, jiggles your physical brain, and then you have a mental

perception, namely the visual experience of this page

before you. Or you have some thoughts in your mind about this

book—such as “I must tell all my friends about it immediately!”—

and then your physical arm starts moving towards the

telephone.

How familiar; and how mysterious.

For minds and bodies seem to be very different sorts of

entities. For example, physical things (like our brains) have

spatial properties while mental things do not. And how can

there possibly be causal interactions between spatial and nonspatial

things?

After all, ordinary physical things exert causal influence by

contact or collision. One moving billiard ball collides with a

second and sets it in motion. But the mind, not being spatial in

nature, could never literally make contact or collide with anything

physical. So how exactly can mental events cause physical

ones and vice versa? How can brain jiggles cause mental perceptions

and mental thoughts cause physical arms to pick up

the phone, if literally neither can make contact with the other?

There’s another problem. The brain is a physical object

undergoing a sequence of physical events. As far as science can

tell, the laws of physics govern all physical activities including

these. But then the complete causal story about why your arm

moves can be told in terms of brain jiggles and muscle contractions.

Yes you desire to tell your friends about this book and

your arm moves—but what causes your arm to move is your

brain jiggling, not your desire! But then what did your mind,

your thoughts, have to do with anything? The mind seems

unable to cause or do anything in a world which seems completely

explainable by physics.

Quite mysterious.

Now about those phone calls?

14. THE RATIONAL THING TO DO IS

TO ACT IRRATIONALLY

There are two boxes. You may choose Box 2 alone or both

boxes. Box 1 contains $100. Box 2 contains either zero or a

million dollars, depending on what a certain “Predictor” has

predicted. If she predicted you will take Box 2 alone she put

$1M into it. If she predicted you’ll take both boxes she left Box

2 empty. The Predictor has done her work and left the room. A

billion people have done this experiment before you, and the

Predictor has predicted correctly for every one.

What is the rational choice for you to make?

Well, if she has predicted your choice correctly, then if you

take Box 2 alone she’ll have put $1M in it and if you take both

boxes she’ll have left Box 2 empty, yielding you only the $100

from Box 1. So it seems rational for you to take Box 2 alone.

But on the other hand, right now Box 2 has either zero or

$1M in it. If zero you’re better off taking both boxes because at

least you’ll get Box 1’s $100; if $1M then again you’re better

off taking both boxes because you’ll get the $1M plus the $100.

So either way you’re better off taking both boxes. So the rational

thing to do seems to be to take both boxes!

So which to choose?

While it seems unbelievably improbable, with her track

record, that the Predictor will predict wrongly for you, in fact

it is not absolutely impossible. But the second argument

exhausts all the logical possibilities. It is literally impossible for

that reasoning to go wrong. And when you must choose

between what’s unbelievably improbable to go wrong and

what’s impossible to go wrong, you must choose the latter.

So you take both boxes. And for the billionth plus one consecutive

time the Predictor predicted correctly and left Box 2

empty. You slink home with your $100, having only the small

consolation of knowing that at least you did the rational thing.

Unless the rational thing would have been to act

irrationally?

15. A ROSE BY ANOTHER NAME

WOULDN’T BE A ROSE

There’s a riddle. How many legs does a dog have if you call its

tail a “leg”? There are at least three possible answers. Five: its

four legs plus its tail, now called a “leg.” One: if its tail is called

a “leg,” it’s only got one of those. And four: calling the tail a “leg”

does not make it one. Which is the best answer? Well, it just

doesn’t matter. Your answer depends on what you mean by the

word “leg,” and you’re free to attach whatever meaning you

like, at least for this riddle.

But what do you mean when you use the most straightforward

words in language, namely names?

Sometimes we refer to a thing by describing it: “the man

who wrote Hamlet.” Sometimes we refer to that same thing by

a name:“Shakespeare.” The difference is that the name refers to

the thing without actually describing it in any way. This

suggests a natural answer to our question: names simply mean

the things they refer to.

But now consider the sentence “Santa Claus does not exist.”

Sad, I know, but true. And if our sentence is true then Santa

does not exist, in which case the name “Santa” does not refer to

any actual thing. But then by our natural theory the name

“Santa,” now referring to nothing, would be meaningless, in

which case the original sentence would be meaningless. And if

the sentence were meaningless it’s hard to see how it could be

true—which it clearly is.

So we need a better theory.

The meaning of a name must, in other words, be something

other than the thing it refers to; then “Santa” can perhaps be

meaningful even without the jolly old fellow himself. Of

course it’s hard to say what the meaning of a name could be if

it’s not the thing the name refers to. But at least it’s clear that the

natural theory does not have a tail to stand on.

16. TWO HANDS IN A BUCKET

My wife and I fight regularly over only one thing: the thermostat.

I lower it when she’s not looking and she raises it when I’m

not looking. Recently I took it to the next level. When she wasn’t

looking I installed a special lock on the thermostat. The next

time I wasn’t looking she installed a new lock on the front door.

Now I walk around the house half-dressed a lot.

Now if only she believed that the room were (say) below

seventy degrees Fahrenheit! Then, with a thermometer, I could

gleefully demonstrate her error. But unfortunately we both

agree that it’s seventy degrees. What we disagree about is

whether seventy degrees is warm or cold. And it’s just not clear if

either of us can be wrong about that.

Imagine an experiment. Stick one hand in a freezer and the

other in a heated oven. Then dunk them both into a bucket of

room temperature water. What would you experience? No

doubt the freezer hand would feel a warm sensation while the

oven hand would feel a cool sensation. But now: is the water

itself warm or cold?

Well, it can’t be both. The very same water cannot be both

warm and cool since those are opposite properties. Nor have

we any basis to say that it’s one over the other. Both hands are

sensing equally well, after all; it would be entirely arbitrary to

decide that one is correct and the other not.

Rather we should conclude that it’s neither. Warmth and

coolness are not really properties of the water, despite all

appearances, but instead only sensations in the perceiver’s

mind. The water may be seventy degrees Fahrenheit but that

temperature is itself neither warm nor cold. We just perceive it

that way, and each perception is equally legitimate.

So now maybe my wife can just put on another layer?

17. CAN JESUS MAKE A BURRITO SO HOT

HE COULDN’T EAT IT?

Even the cartoon character Homer Simpson (who posed this

question) has a philosopher within. And though he is not

exactly the paradigm of reverence, the question is a real one for

any philosophically reverent person. For one of the first properties

that believers ascribe to God is that He is omnipotent or

all-powerful, which means at least that there is or could be

nothing God cannot do. And here is where Homer’s question

fits in—or at least a somewhat more reverent version thereof:

Can God create a stone so heavy that He cannot lift it?

There are only two possible answers here: yes or no.

Suppose, first, we say no. But then there is something that

God cannot do: create such a stone. And if there’s something

He cannot do then He is not omnipotent after all.

So suppose we say yes. If God can create such a stone then

there could exist a stone so heavy God could not lift it. But then

there could be something God cannot do, namely lift that

stone. And if there could be something God cannot do, then

again He is not omnipotent after all.

Some try to avoid this conclusion by insisting that God simply

never will make the stone, so there never will actually exist

the thing He cannot do. But this doesn’t work. To be omnipotent,

it’s not enough that there happens to be nothing He cannot

do. Rather, there could not even possibly be something He cannot

do.And if He can create that stone—even if He doesn’t—

then there could be something He cannot do, namely lift it.

Since yes and no are the only possible answers and each

leads to the same conclusion, then either way there is no

omnipotent being. So if God is supposed to be omnipotent it

follows that there is no God.

That’s some powerful burrito!

18. SURGEON GENERAL’S WARNING:

EVERYTHING CAUSES EVERYTHING

A longtime smoker dies of lung cancer. The family says the

smoking caused it; the physician says it was the victim’s weak

lungs; and the tobacco company (who paid the physician)

blames it on everything except the smoking. Who is right?

Well, they all are. And no one is.

Let’s take a simple a case: you strike a match and it lights.

Most of the time we’d say the striking was the cause of the lighting.

But in fact there were many other factors as relevant to the

lighting as the striking. For starters, it’s obviously crucial that

the match was coated with appropriate chemicals, that it was

made of a flammable wood, that oxygen was present, and so

on. Equally necessary were the physical properties of the surface

on which it was struck: had it been struck on butter or on

water or on your nose, it would not have lighted. And even

more fundamentally, we must include the very laws of physics

and chemistry which dictate that when matches so made are so

struck etc., a lighting will ensue.

But even these are just the beginning. For it was also necessary

that no stiff wind was blowing; that no rain was falling and

that you were not in the shower; that no earthquake covered

the match in debris; and that no other gases antagonistic to

lighting were present. So too was it necessary that no other

match or lighter or fire-breathing dragon had lit the match

before it was struck, that it did not spontaneously disappear at

the moment of striking, and that (most generally) God did not

intervene with some inconvenient anti-lighting miracle.

In short, we can’t simply say that the striking of the match

caused its lighting. We ought rather to say that more or less

everything existing in the universe caused the lighting, as well as

more or less everything not existing.

I’m sure the tobacco companies will be happy to hear that

the same goes for the lung cancer.

I wonder why they never invite philosophers to testify.

19. SEEING RED

Human beings, as we have seen, are a house divided. On the

one hand we are physical bodies; but on the other we have mental

features such as consciousness, and thought, and perception.

Many insist that the physical facts about us—about our

brain and its activities—are ultimately all the facts there are:

after all, the mind is admittedly very mysterious, and doesn’t

seem to fit very well with the operations of our brains so successfully

studied by science. And yet we might perhaps resist

this insistence.

Imagine that Mary has been raised in an entirely black and

white environment. Though her life is quite literally drab she

does receive a first rate education, both by black and white

textbooks and by lectures on a black and white TV, and she

devotes herself to the study of the brain. This is far in the future

of course, so by this time brain science is perfectly complete.

Mary thus comes to know every physical fact there is to know

about how the brain and its related systems operate: how brain

cells work, how they’re connected to sensory organs such as

the eyes, what happens when the eyeball is stimulated by light,

etc. She knows literally everything physical there is to know

about what the brain does when (for example) someone sees

colors, such as red. Of course she herself has never had that

experience, although she knows precisely how her brain would

respond if she did.

One day it happens. Mary is released from her room, and

boy does she see red when she sees red for the first time. Damn

them for depriving me of this! she exclaims. It’s gorgeous! Mary,

at last, has learned something: what red looks like, or what it’s

like to see red.

But wait: if she already knew everything physical about

perception and yet she learns something—then this new fact

she learns must not be a physical fact.

Mysterious as it may be, there’s more to us, then, than the

purely physical.

20. YOU CHOOSE, YOU LOSE

You notice five children playing on some railroad tracks.

Absorbed in their play, they don’t notice the train coming

down the track towards them. But luckily, the track forks

before them and you are standing right at the switch. By merely

pressing the button you can divert the train and thereby spare

the children. But then you notice that down the other track is a

single child playing alone. To do nothing is to allow the train to

kill the five children on the first track; to press the button is to

save those five but send the solitary child to her destiny.What

should you do?

To many people it’s as obvious as it is unpleasant that you

must press the button: the right thing to do is to kill the one in

order to save the many.

But now consider a different scenario. You are a doctor in a

pediatric emergency ward. Five children are about to die from

different failing organs: heart, kidney, lung, etc. You notice that

outside, playing in the hospital playground, is a single healthy

child playing alone. You happen to know that she has the same

blood type as all the dying children. Technology has improved

so much that it would be a relatively simple matter to snatch

the playground child, harvest her organs, and transplant them

into the respective dying children, thereby saving them all. For

you to do nothing is to allow the five children to die; to give the

word is to save those five but send the solitary child to her destiny.

What should you do?

To many people it’s now as unpleasant as it is obvious that

you must not press the button: the right thing to do is to spare

the one and kill the many.

But the two situations seem fundamentally analogous. So

are people’s moral beliefs deeply confused here? Or is it that

morality itself, perhaps, is confused—that whichever way you

choose, you lose?

21. REALLY MOVED, BY THE UNREAL

I’m a weeper. I rarely make it through a decent book or movie

without the tears flowing. I bawl when Jimmy Stewart begs

Clarence, in It’s a Wonderful Life, to let him live again. In the cinema

I could not suppress an embarrassingly loud sob when the

Beast, astonished, murmurs to the Beauty, “You came back,

Belle; you came back.” And Bogart putting Bergman on that

Casablanca plane? Always good for at least three hankies.

What I don’t understand is why. Why am I moved when the

joys and sorrows in fact are not my own—nor even real?

One idea is that when immersed in a movie we temporarily

forget that we’re observing a fiction. But that seems hard to

accept. If I’m watching a DVD I may well get up, make a phone

call, then resume watching and weeping. Or I might continue

munching popcorn right through my tears. I certainly wouldn’t

do those things during some real-life sorrow. And similarly

I might feel terror when watching Jurassic Park—yet I’m never

tempted to run screaming from the cinema, which I surely

would do should I even briefly forget that those raptors aren’t

real.

Another idea is that we are moved out of empathy or compassion.

After all, I rarely make it through the evening news

without weeping at the misery, either. Yet even so, it seems, the

question remains. The pain I learn about this way is not my pain.

The awful events reported did not happen to me, nor, typically,

have I even experienced anything very similar in my own life.

To say I have empathy is to say that I am moved. But it is not to

explain why I am moved.

And surely not to explain why I am moved by things which

aren’t real.

So no, nobody is really put on a plane when Bogart puts

Bergman on that plane; and nobody really comes back when

Belle the Beauty comes back. But for some reason that doesn’t

stop me from really reaching for yet another box of Kleenex.

22. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU EAT

Take a bite of that burger. What are now entering your body are

various atoms such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, etc. Most of

these, it turns out, were originally created inside distant stars

which then exploded and scattered across the cosmos. So

what’s now becoming you originally arose inside a star. (Your

mother always said you were stellar; for once she was right.)

But wait: becoming who, exactly?

You are what you eat, people say. The idea is presumably

that you are just the molecules which make up your body. Only

here’s the problem. Those molecules are constantly changing.

At every moment, you are exhaling and sweating and shedding

lots of molecules, and inhaling and ingesting others. But if you

are the same person who started reading this chapter a

moment ago while your molecules are not the same, then you

can’t just be your molecules.

In fact, every molecule in your body is replaced approximately

every seven years. If you are just your molecules then

you are not merely a somewhat different person than you were

seven years ago, you are a totally different person. On the plus

side you can truly dissociate yourself from that loser you were

back in school; but on the down side, it’s no longer obvious

why you should be entitled to cash his savings bonds.

Imagine now that the molecules constituting you seven

years ago were to be recollected and reassembled. If you are

just your molecules then that collection is also you, if a younger

version. But then there would be two yous, which certainly

seems odd—at least as odd as the argument you two would

have over who owns those savings bonds.

I personally am an awful eater. Forget whole grain—I’ll

take parts. There’s nothing which doesn’t taste better to me

with sugar, including sugar. The philosopher in me is not sure

exactly who or what I am, but he can at least take comfort in

knowing that we are not what we eat.

23. THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT

In the beginning was the excuse. Adam blamed Eve, she blamed

the snake, and the rest is human history. The Devil is particularly

prominent here, of course, since he loves making people

misbehave. He also works in subtle (i.e. not disprovable)

ways—very conveniently for the blame-shifting evil-doer.

Now, implicit in all this is the idea that if you are made to do

something then you are not morally responsible for it. And

implicit there is the idea that if you are unable to do otherwise

than you do, then you are not morally responsible for doing it.

Since the Devil presumably takes away your ability to do otherwise—

perhaps by tempting you beyond your resistance—

he also takes away your moral responsibility.

But is this principle really true? Could you be morally

responsible for doing something even if you could not have

done otherwise?

Imagine that Fred is contemplating murdering Frederique.

That’s a really evil deed, so the Devil decides to ensure that Fred

will do it. He listens in on Fred’s thoughts. If Fred is about to

decide to murder, the Devil will do nothing. But if he observes

Fred deciding against murder then he will fiddle with Fred’s

brain to change Fred’s mind. Fred is therefore unable to do

otherwise than to terminate Frederique: the Devil will either

act or not, and either way Frederique’s a goner.

Suppose now that Fred’s deliberations conclude as the

Devil wanted: goodbye Frederique. The Devil never intervenes.

We’d obviously hold Fred morally responsible for this

action. After all he decided on his own to do it, with no intervention

by anybody else. And yet it remains true that he was

unable to do otherwise. So we have here a case where someone

is morally responsible for an action even if he couldn’t do otherwise.

Which means that the general principle above must be

incorrect.

But then why should someone making you do something

ever free you of responsibility for it?

24. CYBER-ROMANCE

I met my wife online. The philosopher in me was matched to

the philosopher in her and the rest followed logically, as they

say. I wanted to thank the program that brought us together,

but was disappointed when the florist refused my order.

Programs aren’t people, he insisted. They don’t want your

flowers.

So unenlightened!

Could a computer be programmed to be a person, genuinely

to have a mind? To determine that, we must know

exactly what minds are. But all we have to go on there is our

conscious awareness of our own minds, and we never have that

kind of access to anyone else’s “inner” mental life. So how could

we ever decide if (say) Star Wars’ R2D2 is one of us—or just a

complicated impersonal thing, like a thermostat?

There’s only one way: by observing its behavior. So suppose

a computer, connected to a robotic body, could navigate

through a cluttered room, carry on a conversation, and display

common sense in its behavior. Suppose a computer robot

behaved such that you couldn’t detect any difference between

its behavior and that of an ordinary person’s. Should you say

that such a computer is a person?

It’s tempting to say no, that it only seems to have a mind. But

if you deny a mind to such a computer then shouldn’t you do

the same to other human beings? For what makes you think that

they have minds other than the fact that they behave as if they

do?

In fact people really are just complex programs already,

running on the hardware of the brain. If my wife turned out to

have a lot of circuits inside, why should that matter? She’d still

be a whiz at calculating tips, fixing my spelling, and finding

cheap airfares. And her beautiful deep brown optical detectors

would still light up every time I brought home flowers.

And that’s good enough for me.

25. “IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE

MEANING OF THE WORD ‘IS’ IS”

Philosophers, lawyers, spin doctors—and the former U. S.

President who infamously uttered the sentence above to a

grand jury—all suffer from a bad reputation: they play games

with words. That may well be true, but we shouldn’t blame the

philosopher in a person for those offenses. We should blame

the English language for making those offenses possible in the

first place.

For English, like other languages, is a mess: it’s vague,

ambiguous, and inconsistent. And it is most notoriously

unclear with respect to one of its most basic words: “is.”

Sometimes (for example) “is” indicates the present tense: “Fred

is eating now.” But other times it indicates the future: “Fred is

coming later.”And other times it is used timelessly: “The number

3 is odd,” or “‘Is,’ simply, is a mess.”

And even if we restrict ourselves to the present tense, “is” is

no better. For consider the following sentences:

Fred is red

Fred is lead

Fred is Ted

Fred is

To say that Fred is red is to say that redness is one of his

properties. (Maybe he’s blushing.)

But to say that Fred is lead is to say that he is composed of

lead—maybe “Fred” is the name of a statue—in a way we’d

never say that blushing Fred is “composed of ” redness.

When we say that Fred is Ted we’re identifying Fred with Ted:

Fred and Ted are one and the same person. (Perhaps he’s been

two-timing some women by using different names.) But we

don’t say that Fred the statue is “identical”to lead. After all there’s

plenty of lead in the world that’s not affiliated with Fred.

Finally, when we say “Fred is,” we’re not saying anything

about his properties, what he’s composed of, or what he’s identical

to. We’re merely saying that he exists.

So “is” is a very difficult word. So don’t blame the philosophers,

the lawyers, the spin doctors, or the former U. S.

President (who may be all of the above)—it’s English itself

which deserves to be impeached.

26. GOD’S TOP TEN

If you believe in God then you probably believe that God created

everything. If you believe in morality then you believe that

certain actions are morally right and others wrong. So if you

believe in both God and morality, then you probably believe

that God created morality.

But not so fast.

Let’s assume that God’s “creation of morality” may be represented

by His dictation of the famous Ten Commandments.

And now ask: did God dictate these commandments

because those things are what’s right and wrong to do, or are

those things right and wrong simply because God dictated

them?

Suppose it’s the former: God said do it because it’s the right

thing to do. But then the commanding comes after the rightness

of the action; it is not what makes the action right. The action is

already right on its own and God merely informs us about it. So

on this view God has not in fact created morality.

So suppose we go for the other option: honoring your parents

(say) is the right thing to do simply because God tells you

to do it. Here the rightness is due to God, as God’s decreeing it

is what makes it the right thing to do. Only now we have no

explanation for why God told us to do this thing as opposed to

its opposite. God is a free agent after all and could just as easily

have said: “Thou shalt dishonor your parents.”Was it simply

arbitrary or random that God commanded us to honor rather

than dishonor?

No. Genuine morality is not arbitrary in this way. There

must be a reason that God commands honoring and forbids

murdering (say), rather than their opposites. And the reason is

that honoring and murdering are already right and wrong,

before His commanding. We’re back in the first option, in

other words—according to which morality is not created by

God.

So if you believe in morality you cannot believe that God

created everything.

27. THE PROOF IS IN THE (VANILLA)

PUDDING

I simply love vanilla pudding. But the philosopher in me loves

proving things even more. And unfortunately the former is a

lot easier to obtain than the latter.

For what constitutes a “proof ” of something? One possible

model might come from science. The scientist has a certain

theory; according to that theory, if she runs a certain experiment

she will get a particular outcome. She then runs the

experiment. If she gets the outcome the theory is proved. If

not, it is disproved.

But it’s not so simple.

In fact all sorts of ultimately false theories have stuck

around for years because many of their predictions happened

to come true. So simply getting the outcome you expect provides

no actual “proof ” of your theory. Nor does an unexpected

outcome actually disprove your theory. For you may have calculated

the prediction wrongly; something might have been

wrong with your apparatus; or unknown factors might be

interfering with your result.

So no experiment can prove anything. What we might say

instead is merely that various experiments can provide some

evidence for or against a theory.

But even that doesn’t get us all the way.

Suppose you had the theory that “all ravens are black.”

Obviously the more black ravens you observed the more confident

you’d feel about the theory; and if you saw a non-black

raven you’d probably give the theory up. But now saying that

“all ravens are black” is actually equivalent, if you think about it

for a moment, to saying that “all non-black things are not

ravens.”And if these are equivalent, then any evidence for one

must also be evidence for the other.

So here comes the pudding and the problem. If a black raven

provides evidence that “all ravens are black,” then a non-black

non-raven—which vanilla pudding is—would provide evidence

that “all non-black things are not ravens.” But since those

two sentences are equivalent, evidence for one is evidence for

the other—so vanilla pudding ends up counting as evidence

that “all ravens are black”!

Something has gone wrong somewhere.

28. THERE’S MORE TO THE WORLD

THAN WHAT THERE IS

Sounds pretty paradoxical. But of course by now we know

what the philosopher within will say: it is and it isn’t.

What there is, is what’s actual. What’s actual is everything

that exists. At the time of writing, I exist, London exists, the

number 3 exists, and lots more. But now not all actual things

are alike. Yes, you exist as you read this—but you didn’t have to

exist, since there are many possible circumstances in which

you wouldn’t have. Suppose the Big Bang had never occurred;

suppose life on Earth had never arisen; suppose your mother

hadn’t hiccupped precisely at the moment of insemination.

These things didn’t happen but could have, and had they, you

wouldn’t have. And that means that your existence is “contingent,”

i.e. contingent on all the things which brought you about

but didn’t have to.

To the contrary, consider mathematical objects like the

number 3. It was never created; it didn’t come into existence

by being conceived or born or made, and there are no possible

circumstances in which it wouldn’t have existed. So the number

3 exists not contingently but necessarily.

The actual, then, divides into the contingent and the necessary.

But there’s more—for not everything is actual.

What makes your existence contingent is that there are

possible circumstances in which you wouldn’t have existed,

and perhaps other things would have existed in your place.

(Think of that hiccup!) But if there really are other possibilities,

then the world contains more than what is actual. It must

also contain these possibilities.

Think of it as follows. If you merely listed everything that

actually exists you wouldn’t have given a complete account of

the world—for that list leaves off the true fact about the world

that other things could have existed. And that’s what we mean

when we say that the world also contains these possibilities.

So no, there’s no more in the world than what there is, if

what there is is everything actual and possible. But there is

more to the world than merely what’s actual.

29. IT’S ALL RELATIVE

Philosophers frequently disagree. But even normal people have

trouble reaching agreement. Think about all the nations at war,

the litigation in courts, the children arguing over what game to

play. Not surprisingly, it’s no different with respect to morality.

There are tremendous moral differences across the world.

In various cultures it is morally right to arrange marriages, to

suppress political dissent for group harmony, to assign women

lesser status than men; in the West these are all wrong. In some

cultures it is even a moral obligation to circumcise daughters,

while the label “female genital mutilation” pretty much tells

you how Westerners feel about the practice. At the same time,

many aspects of Western culture are seen as morally objectionable

elsewhere, whether it’s the materialism and consumerism,

the stress on individual self-interest, the immodest

modes of dress, and so on.

What shall we make of these differences? Is there any way to

determine, in the face of such widespread moral disagreements,

who is right and who is wrong?

As far as one of the philosophers in me can see, morality

isn’t out there in the world in the way that scientific or mathematical

facts are. These latter exist independently of human

beings and are thus things we need to discover; consequently,

all cultures agree about them. Morality, to the contrary, is not

something discovered but something invented, by different

groups at different times and places. And as with any invention,

it’s entirely up to the inventor to decide what goes in and what

stays out. Thus different cultures can establish whatever moral

rules they like, and each culture is the only judge of what is

right and wrong within that culture. By the same token, no one

is in a position to judge other cultures’ moralities.

So who’s to say, then, who’s right and who’s wrong when

cultures disagree on morality? Everyone and no one: for everyone

can pronounce on their own culture’s morals, but nobody

can pronounce on another’s.

30. WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET

People regularly tell me to come to my senses, but the

philosopher in me thinks we should run as far from our senses

as we can.

To concentrate just on vision, our eyes deceive us all the

time. A square tower may look round from a distance. Our bed

sheets look spotless yet harbor more hungry dust mites than

we want to know. The moon looks larger on the horizon than

above us and yet it isn’t. A straight stick in water looks bent.

The sky looks blue when in fact it consists only of gas molecules

which aren’t themselves blue. Objects seem to move across

the movie screen when all we’re actually seeing is a rapid

sequence of still pictures. And that dining room table we paid a

month’s salary for, for what looks like its solid cherry surface?

In fact it’s composed mostly of the empty space inside its

atoms. Suckers!

Indeed the whole idea that our eyes can tell us how things

really are doesn’t make a lot of sense. Our perceptions are constantly

varying, for one thing, without our having any basis for

choosing one perception to be the “true”one. In fact (for example)

I shouldn’t have suggested above that the stick “really is”

straight since even that information only comes from other

conflicting perceptions. Instead we should just say that to our

visual perception the stick looks crooked while to our tactile

perception of it under the water it feels straight. There is no way

of saying how things “really” are. We can only say how things

appear to us in different circumstances.

Even more importantly, to tell that our visual perception of

a thing is accurate we’d have to compare that perception with

the thing itself. But how can we do that? Every time we look at

the thing we only get another perception of it, and never the

thing itself!

Things are simply not, in short, as the eyes have it. So next

time you’re told to come to your senses—say nay!

31. IT DOESN’T ADD UP

There’s a Sesame Street episode where the muppet Grover has

just mastered adding 1 and 1 to get 2, using blocks. But then

oranges are brought out and he begins to weep; he only knows

how to add blocks.

This little skit raises some very big questions about

numbers.

The humor here relies on our assumption that if you can

add blocks, you should be able to add oranges. But why assume

that exactly? Because we also assume that numbers are real

properties of objects. If the “oneness” of each orange is as real

as the “oneness” of each block, then if Grover can grasp one he

should be able to grasp the other.

But are objects really intrinsically numbered in this way?

Consider an automobile and ask yourself what number

applies to it. Well, it’s 1 Jaguar, say. But it’s also (say) 4000

components (tires and engine and steering wheel and so on)—-

and 8 gazillion molecules, and 80 gazillion gazillion atoms, and

still a lot more elementary particles. So what number applies

to this thing? Think of it as an auto and it’s 1; think of it as its

components and it’s 4000; think of it different ways and different

numbers apply. What numbers apply to something depends

not just on the thing but on how you choose to think about the

thing.

Are numbers only in the mind, then? After all, you can

know that 1 + 1 = 2 simply by thinking about it. And further,

we are confident of our arithmetic even when the world conflicts

with it! Sometimes one cloud runs into another, forming

a single larger cloud. So 1 cloud plus 1 cloud yields: 1 cloud.

Does this prove that 1 + 1 does not equal 2? Of course not. But

why not? Because the numbers in our mind don’t really apply to

things like clouds, or any objects in the world at all.

What’s surprising, then, is not that Grover couldn’t add the

oranges—-but that he, or any of us, could even add the blocks

in the first place.

32. SAME OLD SAME OLD

Your everyday experience is very repetitive: you wake up, you

get dressed, you go to work: most days have the “same old”content.

But then the fact that they are the same is also the same

each day. So it’s the same old same old each day.

But wait: in what sense exactly are things the “same”

every day?

Yesterday you brushed your teeth: six up and down strokes,

six horizontal strokes, etc. Today you do the “same.” But these

actions differ in many ways: one was on Tuesday the other on

Wednesday; in one your strokes were slightly faster than in the

other. So why do we consider them the “same”?

In fact how could any two things be the “same”? To be the

same is to be the same thing; it’s for there to be only one thing.

The whole idea of two things being the “same” doesn’t even

make any sense!

Or imagine two ketchup bottles exactly the same in every

respect. We normally don’t hesitate to say here that “those two

things are the same.” Sameness is everywhere! But again, if

sameness means “one,” then how can two things be the same?

Perhaps the two bottles are the same insofar as they have the

same properties: size, shape, color, etc. But that faces the

“same” problem. This bottle has this redness, that bottle has

that redness; how can their two rednesses be the “same”? Or

sometimes we say that the bottles “share” their properties. But

two people may share a condo, or a name, or (if conjoined)

even a kidney: in each case there is one thing to which both have

access. So if the two ketchup bottles share the property of

being red, is there literally one thing-“redness”-to which

both have access? But how could that be? The two bottles may

be separated in space, even miles or continents apart. How

could one single thing, one “redness,” literally be present in

both bottles?

“Sameness”is inconceivable. So in fact every day is the same:

utterly unique.

33. I CAN’T SEE FOR MILES AND MILES

Indeed you cannot. Not even for kilometers and kilometers, or

meters and meters, or feet, or inches. In fact you cannot literally

see any distance at all.

Imagine you have your eye on Jessie at the office. It certainly

seems that you can see how far away she is from you—-ten

meters and counting, as Jessie sees you staring and begins to

retreat. But all you can “see,” strictly speaking, is whatever is

available on your retina, the membrane in the back of your

eye—-which provides the only way for visual information to

get inside your brain. The distance between you and Jessie is

measured by a straight line from Jessie to your eyeball, namely

the line that each light ray travels from her to your eye. And

here’s the problem: your eye only receives the “end” point of

that line. You only receive the light when it hits your retina and

your retina simply cannot know how far that light has traveled.

So you cannot “see” how far away she is.

Yet Jessie is now fifteen meters away from you and picking

up speed.

It gets worse. Again, you see things only by means of the

image they cast on your retina. But now the very same retinal

image can be cast by objects at almost any distances. For example,

you see the moon because it casts an image of a certain size

and shape on your retina. But that very same image would be

cast there by a very tiny round object very close to your eye, a

medium sized object at some distance away, or a great big

object such as the moon at a great distance. The retinal image

itself therefore carries no information about how far away its

object is. And so you simply cannot “see” distance.

Yet there is Jessie now twenty meters away from you frantically

dialing the police on a cell phone. How do you know this,

if not by seeing it?

34. IF YOU READ ONLY ONE BOOK

THIS YEAR ……

Imagine you receive a book entitled Your Life. Chapter one

starts with your birth and first year of life, and so on, all in

impressive detail. Like all good biographies the book contains

all and only true statements about your life. But then you

notice that the book continues with (hopefully many) chapters

on your future.

Suppose (alas) there’s some horrible news ahead. The book

says that on Saturday night you will get in your car at 8:45 p.m.,

pick up your beloved at 9:05, then crash at 9:23 at Broad Street

and James, killing your beloved. You will obviously try to avoid

this outcome. You will not get in the car. But wait—-the book

contains only true statements. So somehow you must end up in

the car. So perhaps you will not drive to your beloved’s house.

But since the book says you will, your efforts to avoid doing so

must fail. How strange! You try to say “Don’t get in the car!”

But instead you find yourself saying, “Hop in, darling!” You try

to avoid the fatal intersection, but again cannot. Some miraculous

force compels you to turn the wheel just so, to place you

there at 9:23 as that other car runs its red light ……

This story is obviously implausible. It requires invoking

mysterious forces compelling you against your will, and

nobody believes in such forces. The more plausible thing to

believe is simply this: you will be able to avoid the predicted

outcomes, any number of ways.

But notice: what generated the whole incredible scenario

was the assumption that you could be reliably informed of your

future. If what follows from that assumption is something

impossible to believe then that assumption must be false. So it’s

impossible for you to be reliably informed of your future.

Nobody—-not even God!—-could accurately know your

future actions and inform you of them.

And why is that? Because for almost any prediction you

might be informed of, you could do otherwise.

It’s because, in other words, you have free will.

35. BY SHAKESPEARE—-OR SOMEONE ELSE

OF THE SAME NAME

Like other words names have meanings, and it’s natural to

think that the meaning of a name just is the thing it refers to.

Unfortunately this theory doesn’t work, as we saw earlier. So

we need another theory.

Consider then how you'd reply if you were asked who you

meant by the name “Shakespeare.” You'd provide some sort of

description, such as Shakespeare was the author of Hamlet.

That suggests another rather natural theory: the meaning

of a name is the description you associate with the name,

and the person referred to by the name is whoever fits that

description.

Sounds plausible. But this theory also doesn't work. For if

this theory were correct then, strangely, it would be impossible

ever to speak falsely about someone!

Suppose you assert that “Shakespeare was the author of

Hamlet.” It’s later discovered that that is false; a guy named

Marlowe actually wrote Hamlet, but Marlowe’s authorship got

lost to history (conveniently for Shakespeare). Normally we

would say here that your original assertion turns out to be a

false one about that glory-stealing Shakespeare. But according

to our theory the name “Shakespeare” refers to whoever fits the

description “the author of Hamlet.” But then the original sentence

was actually about Marlowe, since it is he who fits the

description! And Marlowe was the author of Hamlet, so what

originally looked like a false sentence about Shakespeare ends

up being a true one about Marlowe—-someone you’ve never

even heard of!

Something has obviously gone wrong here.

Indeed, something has now gone wrong with two very natural

theories about the meaning of names. Perhaps it’s time to

begin considering something a little more unnatural. I’m sure

the author of Hamlet would agree—-whoever the hell he is.

36. WHY ARE YOU STILL HERE?

Well, I was here a second ago and I haven’t left.

Of course when I’m asked this question the asker typically

isn’t seeking an explanation but rather my immediate departure.

But it turns out that that response provides neither.

For the deeper question is this: What keeps you, or anything—-

this book, this car, this earth—-in existence from

moment to moment? It certainly seems that any given thing

could, at least in theory, just go out of existence at any time. So

why doesn’t it?

Yes, you were here a second ago. But does your existing at

one instant explain your existing at the next one? It doesn’t

seem to. For if it’s not impossible for you to go out of existence

at any given time, then the fact that you exist at instant 1 doesn’t

mean that you must exist at instant 2. So we still need an

explanation why you’re still here at instant 2.

It’s tempting to say that things have some force or power to

endure and that’s what keeps them in existence. But this answer

won’t work, because the same problem confronts the force

itself! Non-existing things obviously cannot exert any causal

powers. So if the force itself doesn’t exist at instant 2 then it

cannot bring about its effect—-such as your existing—-at

instant 2. So the force itself must endure from instant 1 to

instant 2. But what keeps it in existence during that interval?

Could some other thing, distinct from you, explain why you

stay in existence? Not if that other thing could itself go out of

existence because then the same problem arises for it.

If we’re genuinely to explain why we persist from moment

to moment, then, it seems we need to invoke the activity of

something which could not possibly go out of existence.

Could the simple fact that you are here now—-and now—-

and now—-mean that God exists?

37. SURGEON GENERAL’S RETRACTION:

NOTHING CAUSES ANYTHING

Ask two surgeons general, we might say, and you’ll get at least

two opinions. Previously we saw the opinion that everything

causes everything. But that was then.

To return to the familiar example, we say things like this:

“the striking of the match caused it to light.” What we mean in

saying this, in saying that one thing causes another, is that the

first event makes or compels the second event to occur. And

that means that once the first event occurs the second event

has to occur: it is impossible for the first to occur without the

second.

But now are any two events ever actually connected in

this way?

To say something is impossible is to say that it involves a

contradiction. But there is never any contradiction in the idea

of any one distinct event occurring without another. It’s easy to

conceive (for example) of our match striking but without

lighting—-you just did! You may be tempted to object: “But

given the laws of physics and chemistry, if you strike that match

in those conditions it is impossible for it not to light!”Well, just

imagine the laws of physics being different. No contradiction

there either! And if you can conceive of that then you can conceive

of the match striking without lighting—-in which case it’s

not impossible to have the first without the second.

So the first does not make or compel the second to occur; it

does not, in other words, cause it. Not for the striking and the

lighting, and not for any pair of events in the world.

And so the truth of the matter is this: nothing causes

anything.

So why, then, do things happen?

38. WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW?

The obvious answer to this question is always yes.

But the not-so-obvious question is how you can ever be justified

in saying anything about tomorrow, or about the future.

Consider your walk to the bus this morning. You were confident

that the ground would support every step that you took.

But what justified you in believing that your “next” step wouldn’t

be into a suddenly appearing sinkhole? Past results are

surely no guarantee, as the small print says, of future performance.

But does the earth’s fine history of supporting your

previous billion steps at least make it highly likely that it will

support your next step?

It would do so only if you assume that the future will be like

the past—-for if it won’t be, then it wouldn’t.

But how would you justify that assumption itself?

Well, the future has always been like the past so far. So don’t

we have reason to believe that it will continue to be like the

past? No, for that just repeats the problem. It merely assumes

that past patterns will continue to hold into the future. But that

is the very assumption we’re trying to justify! And you can’t justify

it merely by assuming it’s true. Which means that you have no

good reason to believe the future will be like the past—-or, for

that matter, different from it. Which means that past results

don’t give you any guide to the future at all.

So you probably should refrain from saying anything about

tomorrow. The next time you’re asked the title question I

would advise you to run—-except that you have no good reason

to believe that the earth will support your steps. Perhaps you

should just silently stay put? Except that, by the same reasoning,

you also have no good reason to believe the earth will continue

to support you where you are. So maybe the thing to do

is as I said: just say yes. And quickly. If you’re asked about your

hesitation, just say you were contemplating your future

together.

39. AN INCONVENIENT TOOTH

There’s something about movie popcorn. My sweet tooth I can

satisfy anywhere but only movies can satisfy my popcorn tooth.

I also firmly believe that you should try to do some good in this

world.

And that precisely is the problem.

Think about the roughly $15 you spend whenever you go to

the movies. Then think about those commercials you’ve seen

on television: weepy, wide-eyed, hungry children staring at

you while you’re reminded that just pennies a

day could keep that very child from starving to death. You

are moved, you resolve—-and yet there you are chuckling

over Adam Sandler’s antics in his latest international blockbuster.

You are spending $15 munching popcorn while children

are literally dying.

It’s easy to rationalize your behavior. “What could my $15

do against the all the world’s problems?”Answer: It could save

a child’s life.“Hey I do plenty of good, I give to charity, donate

my time. Can’t I just go to the movies?” Answer: You could

always do more. Is your evening at the movies worth a child’s

life? “How can I be sure my $15 will actually do any good?”

Answer: Stop going to movies and get involved in the relevant

organizations.

In fact it’s very hard to justify going to the movies. Or going

out to dinner. Or buying new clothes. Or pretty much anything

we do. If all of us just cut back a little on our luxuries and

redirected our resources we could do an awful lot of good in

this world. Take global warming, for example. If everyone who

saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth had just applied their popcorn

money directly towards the problem in some way, perhaps

the movie wouldn’t have been necessary.

Oh wait—-the new Steve Martin movie has just come out!

40. THERE IS NO TIME, LIKE THE PRESENT

I know what time it is. I just don’t know what time itself is.

It seems to be composed of past plus present plus future.

But the past does not exist—-if it did, it would be present! And

the future does not yet exist, in which case it does not now exist.

So if time exists, it exists only as the present.

But what is the present?

The present is a moment of no duration. For if it had a duration

(a day, an hour, a millisecond, etc.) not all of that duration

would be present at once. And while a day is composed of

hours and hours of minutes, and so on, the present is not like

those temporal intervals: it is not composed of any smaller

intervals or parts. For if it were, not all of those parts would

be present at once. Rather the present is composed, quite

literally, of nothing.

But something composed of nothing must itself be nothing.

Similarly, think about ordinary physical objects. They are all

composed of smaller things which in turn are composed of

even smaller things. But eventually you reach the bottom level.

Today scientists think that the smallest physical objects are

things like electrons and quarks and maybe what they call

“strings.”

But time is not like this. There is no bottom level. No matter

how small a temporal interval you are talking about (a

microsecond, a nanosecond, etc.), there is always a smaller

interval. And if there is no bottom level, there can be no

moments of no duration—-for such moments clearly would be

the bottom level, in being indivisible.

The present, in other words, does not exist.

When people say they have no time for something, then,

they don’t realize how true that is.

For there is no time. Period.

41. MY IDENTITY CRISIS IS HAVING AN

IDENTITY CRISIS

It’s common on approaching adulthood to experience some

sort of identity crisis: Who am I really? What are my deepest

principles? Is it really right that my parents continue to support

me? When this happened to me, around the age of thirty-five, I

became deeply anxious. But then my identity crisis had an

identity crisis: what is identity, really? What are its deepest

principles? And if not my parents, then who?

Identity is actually a problem for all sorts of things. Is your

body identical to the molecules composing it? Are mental

states identical to brain states? Is the God of the Old Testament

identical to that of the New Testament? If we’re to evaluate

questions like these, we clearly need some guidance.

So consider the following principle:

“If there’s something true of x that’s not true of y, then x is

not the same thing as y.”

This principle makes good sense. But good sense can sometimes

lead to nonsense.

Is a statue identical to the clay (say) of which it’s composed?

It’s hard to deny it; there aren’t two things there, the statue and

the clay. But then there are many things true of the one that

aren’t true of the other. The statue was made by Michelangelo;

the clay was made by geological processes. The statue could

have been done in marble, but the clay could not have. And the

statue is beautiful and priceless while the clay itself is neither.

Somehow, they’re not identical!

And think about yourself as of a few moments ago. There’s

something true of you now that is not true of the earlier you:

your awareness of the problem of identity. So the later you is

not the same person as the earlier you. Indeed with each passing

instant you become one instant older. But then each later

you is of a different age than each earlier you so they’re not the

same person. So with each passing instant one person goes out

of existence and another arises.

So who are you, exactly?

42. I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

“You’re crazy; it’s all in your mind.”The philosopher in me is

used to hearing this, usually expressed with a finger pointed

towards the door. My typical response is to utter “Exactly!” as

the door closes behind me. For it is all in the mind.

Imagine the following dream. You’re on an island beach, the

sun is shining, the ocean is a gorgeous blue, you’re sipping a

cool margarita with that special someone …… And then you

wake up. And you’re in your bed, at night, in winter, in your

apartment, and desperately, desperately alone. We’re all familiar

with this phenomenon, as we saw earlier :how things appear

in our dreams is often not how things really are.

But now this phenomenon is not merely limited to our

dreams.

In the dream, at one moment, you gazed at a coconut tree.

But consider, now, what exactly were you seeing there?

It was not a real—-that is, physical—-tree, because there is

no physical coconut tree in your lonely apartment bedroom.

Indeed it was not a physical tree because your eyes were closed:

you weren’t physically seeing anything at all. You must have

been seeing something else: a mental image of a tree, a mental

tree. The same goes for everything else in a dream. What we see

in dreams, clearly, are just mental images.

Now you are awake. If you are lucky you’re reading this

book on an island beach, the sun is shining, the ocean is blue ……

Look at a coconut tree. Your visual experience is in every way

like your dreamed visual experience of that tree. That’s why it’s

so hard to distinguish dreams from ordinary waking perception.

But in a dream what you see are only mental images of

objects. So what you see when you look at a tree even when

awake is but a mental image, and not a real physical tree.

So even awake we never genuinely perceive the physical

objects in the world around us.

I’m not crazy: it is all in your mind.

43. GOD ONLY KNOWS WHAT YOU’LL

DO NEXT

God is supposed to be omniscient, to know everything. But then

He ought to know what you will do in the future, even if you act

freely. But how exactly could God know, right now, what you

are going to do freely (say) tomorrow?

Well, there are three ways to acquire knowledge: one may

reason about what necessarily must be, one may generalize

from past patterns about what will probably be, or one may

make observations about what now is.

So suppose God knows the future by the first method: perhaps

He knows all the laws of nature, so He calculates what the

laws will bring about next and thus knows what you will do

tomorrow. That would accommodate His omniscience, to be

sure—-but only at the cost of your freedom! For if your actions

were generated by the laws of nature in this necessary and

predictable way then we would hardly say that you acted

freely.

So suppose God knows what you’ll do tomorrow by the

second method: He knows your tastes, preferences, habits,

etc., and so combining this information with His own famously

accurate weather forecast He predicts what you’ll wear

tomorrow. This method preserves your freedom: although you

may tend to act in patterns it’s always open to you not to. The

problem rather is that this method is not perfectly reliable: precisely

because you’re free not to wear the predicted clothing,

sometimes you won’t. And surely an omniscient God’s predictions

cannot be less than perfectly reliable!

What about the third way, then, namely observation?

There’s just one problem: how can God “observe,” right now, a

future event? You can only observe what exists, and the future

doesn’t.

So we have a big problem. God may know what you will do

tomorrow, by method one. Or you may act freely while God

uses method two. But we can’t have both: that God knows what

you will do and you do it freely.

44. I’LL TAKE MY CHANCES

If you’re a human being (as you probably are), you probably

reason about probabilities, at least subconsciously, every second

of every day. Whenever you get in your car, light a cigarette,

take a step, or hold up a liquor store, you are taking

probabilities into account concerning crashes, cancer, sinkholes,

or death in a hail of bullets.

But now what exactly do we mean when we say things are

“probable” to various degrees? When we say (for example) that

“the probability of this coin’s landing on heads is 50%”?

Do we mean that if we toss it twice it will land once on

heads and once on tails? Clearly not. Perfectly “fair” coins—-

with a probability of 50% heads—-may happen to land heads

twice in a row.

Do we mean that if we toss it 100 times it will land precisely

50 times on heads? No again, for a fair coin might perfectly well

come out 51–49, or 55–45, or worse, in any 100 particular

tosses.

Do we mean that it will probably land 50 times (out of 100)

on heads? Perhaps, but that wouldn’t answer our original question—-

for if we don’t know what it means to say something is

50% probable, we wouldn’t know what it means to say it will

“probably” land 50 times on heads.

Do we mean that if we were to toss the coin an infinite number

of times the number of heads will equal the number of tails?

One problem here is that at any point where the number of

heads equaled the number of tails, the next toss would disturb

that ratio—-so there will be lots of points at which they are not

equal. But that wouldn’t take away our claim that there’s a 50%

probability.

We may think about probabilities all the time. But when we

really think about them we don’t even know what we mean by

them. And that is not a good thing.

Probably.

45. SANTA AND SCROOGE

Some people, looking for an inspiring role model, turn to religion

and ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” But it seems

to me that Jesus himself probably wouldn’t ask that. So what

about the next best person: Santa?

Well, generosity is a good thing; I’m not questioning that.

But we never learn just why Santa gives, and we cannot morally

evaluate him without knowing his motivations. According to

some, the actual historical source of the Santa legend originally

gave only to the poor. That’s admirable, but there’s a long way

between that and rewarding every little brat on the planet,

including the rich ones. And with respect to today’s Santa—-

who rewards those who behave and punishes those who

don’t—-well, if children behave well only to get the latest video

game then we’re hardly teaching them genuine morality. And if

Santa is the key enabler there, so much the worse for Santa.

OK, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt. Suppose we

simply grant that Santa gives out of his pure and natural generosity.

Would that make him an ideal role model?

Maybe. But there’s another possibility. Consider Dickens’

famous character Scrooge. Scrooge is not exactly a generous

person. He is, well, a real scrooge. But let’s alter the details of

the story a bit. By the end of his experience he remains the

same basic character he is: grouchy, unpleasant, and decidedly

ungenerous. But now the philosopher within him has reached

the conclusion that being generous is a good and admirable

virtue. Unlike Santa he doesn’t feel like being generous, and he

has to overcome something within him in order to be generous.

But he does so because he is now guided by what is right

rather than by how he feels.

So now who is more admirable: the generous person who

gives easily, naturally, or the person who has to overcome even

his own natural antipathy in order to act generously?

I wonder what Santa and Scrooge would say.

46. COOPERATING IN NOT COOPERATING

Consider the following scenario. You have arranged to make

some secret purchase. You will leave some money in a small bag

at a designated place, while the other person will leave the

goods in a bag at another designated place. Obviously both of

you face some risk: the other might leave an empty bag. And

while both of you would be perfectly satisfied if the other

cooperated, you’d each be even better off if the other cooperated

while you defected—-for then you would get the goods for

no money while he would get the money for no goods. If you

are trying to maximize your own gain, then the question is this:

should you cooperate, or should you defect?

Well, the rational person (it seems) might reason as follows.

There are only two options: either the other person, the

dealer, will leave the goods or not. If the dealer leaves the goods

then you would be better off not leaving the money, for then

you get something for nothing. But if the dealer does not leave

the goods then you’d also be better off not leaving the money,

for you avoid getting nothing for something. So either way

you’re better off defecting.

But meanwhile, of course, the dealer is also thinking things

through. From his perspective, there are only two options:

you, the buyer, will either leave the money or not. If you leave

the money then he is better off not leaving the goods, for that

yields him money for nothing. But if you don’t leave the money

then he is also better off not leaving the goods, for then he

avoids getting nothing for something. So either way he’s better

off defecting.

So two rational people have just decided they’re each better

off defecting, resulting in each leaving (and thus finding) empty

bags at the designated places, thus getting nothing for nothing—-

when clearly each would have been better off had they

both cooperated and thus gotten something for something,

which was their original goal.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so rational all the time.

47. COOL METAPHORS

Our language is filled to the brim with metaphors. We regularly

speak (for example) of the mouth of a river, a rich dessert,

or of being filled to the brim. It’s hard enough, as we’ve seen,

to make sense of the literal meanings of words such as proper

names; but the problems only become bigger when we turn to

the meanings of metaphors.

What meanings, exactly, do metaphors express?

One plausible idea might be this: a metaphor is an abbreviated

comparison, so that the metaphorical meaning of an

expression would itself be captured by a sentence literally

asserting the explicit comparison. So, for example, to say “My

ex is a block of ice” is to say something whose metaphorical

meaning might be expressed by “My ex is like a block of ice.”

The original sentence then has two meanings: a literal one

which is false (“My ex is a block of ice”) and the metaphorical

one (expressed by “My ex is like a block of a ice”) which may

well be true.

And yet this theory doesn’t quite work.

For we haven’t actually made sense of the metaphor, ultimately.

Someone says “My ex is a block of ice,”meaning, via our

theory, that her ex is like a block of ice. But in what ways?

Perhaps by being hard and cold—-but of course her ex is not literally

hard and cold (assuming he’s alive!).We still have some

metaphors there to make sense of, so again we must translate

those metaphors into something like this: “My ex is like hard

and cold things.” But again, in what ways? Perhaps by being

stubborn, and unemotional. But now there’s no sense in which

the block of ice is literally “stubborn” and “unemotional,” at

least not any more or less than any other inanimate object

would be. But then, if so, we have no real explanation for why

the speaker said “My ex is a block of ice” instead of saying, for

example, “My ex is Barack Obama’s left nostril”—-for his ex is

no more or less literally like, or unlike, either the ice or the

nostril. Which means we haven’t really made sense of the

original metaphor.

Metaphors, it seems, are rather impenetrable.

Sort of like blocks of ice.

48. “IN ONE EAR AND OUT THE OTHER”

…… my exasperated wife says when once again I’ve forgotten

some glorious detail about her day. Her admittedly commonsense

assumption here is that mental activities—-such as memories,

or more generally thoughts—-occur “in the head.” So if it

doesn’t stay in the head it doesn’t stay in the mind.

So much for commonsense.

What is a thought? It’s a mental activity that is always “about”

something: politics, or atoms, or in my case about mollifying my

wife. If you and I are thinking about the same thing then we have

the same thought; if about different things, then different

thoughts. And if thoughts are in the head, then—-since brains are

all that’s really in the head—-two people with their brains in

identical states would be thinking the same thought.

But now imagine that there is another planet exactly like

Earth. Same size, same shape, indeed exact molecular

duplicates of everything on Earth. Even you have a duplicate, a

Twin You! There is only one difference: what’s in their lakes and

falls from their clouds is not H2O, what we call “water,” but

some other chemical (XYZ) that merely resembles H2O. No

one could tell the difference: XYZ looks, smells, and tastes like

water, and they even call it “water”! But it wouldn’t be water:

water is H2O, and this is XYZ.

Now you are eyeing a glass of water on Earth. Your Twin is

eyeing a glass of XYZ on Twin Earth. You think: “Mmm, water.”

Your Twin thinks: “Mmm, water.”You are having a thought

about water. But although your Twin used the word “water,” his

thought is not about water. It’s about the stuff in his glass, which

is XYZ—-and XYZ is not water.

But then you and your Twin are thinking about different

things. So you are having different thoughts, as we noted above,

despite the same words. But as molecular duplicates your

brains are in the very same state. If thoughts were in the head,

the same brain activity (which is all that’s in the head) would

yield the same thoughts. You two have the same brain activity

but yet are thinking different thoughts.

So thoughts are not, after all, in the head—-strange as that

may sound.

My wife’s day does not actually go in one ear and out the

other, it turns out. It never gets in at all.

49. THE LUCK OF THE DRAW

“Life’s not fair,” many people complain—-though usually only

when the unfairness disadvantages them. A brief glance around

does quickly reveal major disparities in all sorts of “goods”:

health, wealth, power, status, and so on. And there are indeed

many cases where individuals may legitimately complain of

unfairness.

But there is perhaps less overall unfairness than you might

think.

For many disparities may be traced to a more fundamental

one: the disparity of birth. Some people are born with greater

intelligence than others. Some are born healthier than others.

Some are born into developed countries, into financially

secure families and prospering communities, while others

are not. You (for example) were born with brains and money

and good looks, and me, I got to bathe twice a month, together

with all five of my siblings, at least when the water bill was

paid. How unfair!

Or is it?

Imagine you are in some desperate situation: eleven of you

on a lifeboat which can only support ten. One of you must be

sacrificed so that the rest may survive. Everyone wants to survive.

Everyone is as deserving as anyone else to survive. So how

would you choose in the fairest way possible the person to be

sacrificed?

You would no doubt set up some form of random lottery.

Maybe a series of coin flips; a rock-paper-scissors tournament;

or whoever pulls the shortest stick. If your twig came up

short it would definitely be terrible, a disaster, and a catastrophe.

But what it wouldn’t be is unfair. Because randomness, by

definition, cannot be unfair. Randomness has no bias and no

prejudice; everyone has an equal opportunity, or faces an equal

threat, before a genuinely random process.

So the random lottery of birth, which generates so much

disparity, really may be terrible, a disaster, a catastrophe. To

make for a better world we have plenty of reasons to fight

against it and try to correct for it.

But not, necessarily, because it’s unfair.

50. SOMETIMES YOU’RE JUST NOT

YOURSELF

Imagine scientists have perfected teletransportation. You step

into a machine which quickly scans all the molecules in your

body and brain then disassembles them, since they’re no longer

necessary. The machine then sends the scanned information by

radio to your destination. There the receiving machine reconstitutes

your body/brain from its own store of molecules. And

there you are, at your destination.

From your perspective you step into a machine in one place

then instantly find yourself somewhere else: let’s say Mars.

True your body is now composed of different molecules, but

even today, as we’ve seen, your body’s molecules are constantly

changing. What matters is not which molecules they are but

how they are arranged, and these are arranged into you. In fact

you telecommute daily to your job on Mars and are none the

worse for it.

But now suppose one morning, after you’ve departed

Earth, Ted the technician forgets to delete the information just

scanned from you. When he next activates the machine it reads

your scan and reconstitutes your body/brain from its molecule

bin. From your perspective, of course, you find yourself an

eyeblink after entering the machine. You see Ted’s surprised

face, and you say: “How about pressing the button already,

buddy?”

But wait—-who is saying all this? It’s not you: you’re already

on Mars. But then again maybe he is you. We might even imagine

he’s just been constituted from the very same molecules

deconstituted from you a moment before. So maybe the guy on

Mars is the imposter? But wait—-if the teletransported guy is

not you after all then we have to say you are long gone, since

you’ve been teletransporting daily since you got the Martian

job. So he better be you. So whoever is now demanding an

explanation from Ted isn’t you. Unless he is?

Then the monitor flips on with an incoming video call

from Mars.

Your face is on the screen. “Ted, I left my ……”

Your eyes lock. (I mean with his. I mean with yours.)

“Who are you” you both say simultaneously.

51. SOME ADO ABOUT NOTHING

Astronomers recently announced that they have discovered

absolutely nothing. Apparently, you see, there’s an enormous

void a billion light-years across somewhere out there in space.

That is indeed a whole lot of nothing. And that is the problem.

For how can there be a “whole lot” of something unless it

were something?

To be sure, nothing does seem like something. We have that

word for it, after all, which is a noun to boot—-and don’t nouns

have meanings by standing for things? So if “nothing” is to mean

something then nothing better be something.

But what kind of thing?

It’s not like us, or any physical objects, which are made up

of smaller things like atoms. In fact pure empty space is not

composed of anything at all. It is, somehow, a thing composed

of nothing.

Things also have various properties. Eyes may be blue; salt

dissolves in water; water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade.

Every ordinary physical thing has weight; chairs support

weight. But space doesn’t have a color, it doesn’t dissolve or

boil, it has no weight, and it supports nothing. It is, somehow, a

thing that lacks those sorts of properties.

And yet it doesn’t lack properties altogether. We can say

how much nothing there is, as did those astronomers. We can

say how long it lasts: that painful silence following your proposal

of marriage lasted seven seconds (not an eternity).We

can be moved emotionally by nothing: when the doctor

reports that there’s nothing in our abdomen after all, we are

relieved. Nothing even has causal powers. The passerby who

did nothing (instead of alerting you to the oncoming bicycle)

caused the collision. If nothing can have all these properties—-

a size, a duration, even causal powers—-it must be something.

A something which is nothing.

Admittedly, this is quite a bit of ado. But thinking about

nothing is much harder than you might think. And that is not

nothing. It is the absence of nothing, which is really something.

Or is that everything?

52. THE EYEBALL OF THE BEHOLDER

A friend recently looked askance at my supper. “What?” I said.

“It’s delicious.” “No it isn’t,” he replied. I didn’t continue this

argument since yielding meant more supper for me. But I also

didn’t continue because there’s nothing to argue about here.

Why not? Because how things taste, like other things we’ve

seen, is relative. Whether two objects match in color; whether

a room feels warm or cool; or whether someone is beautiful,

all of these vary between perceivers and we can’t say any one

perception is correct while the others are not. The features

perceived here are subjective: not in the object but in the

mind of the perceiver. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the

beholder.

But now consider even the shape and size of an object. The

coin in your hand looks round from straight on but looks oval

from even a slight angle. From far away it looks small while

from nearby it looks large. In all of these cases, a certain perceived

quality varies between acts of perceiving while the

object itself does not: it’s the same coin whether it looks round

or oval, or small or large. But if the perceived quality varies

while the object itself does not, then the perceived quality

must not be in the object. So what you perceive with respect to

shape and size, too, is subjective, i.e. a sensation within your

mind. But it doesn’t stop here.

For what we perceive, in perceiving objects, are colors,

tastes, sizes, shapes. And objects are nothing more than collections

of colors, tastes, sizes, and shapes. If these latter are all

just sensations in perceivers, then so are the objects themselves. Or

to put it bluntly: It’s not merely that what we perceive are

sensations in minds.

It’s that mental sensations are all there is.

So there are no genuinely physical objects. There are only

minds and their sensations. It’s not just beauty that’s in the eye

of the beholder, then: even the eyeball of the beholder is in the

eye of the beholder.

53. YOU EITHER WILL, OR WILL NOT,

BUY THIS ARGUMENT

Well, duh. You don’t need a philosopher to tell you that that

statement is true. After all there are only two options here: you

either will or you will not. So you either will, or will not.

And that’s all you need to know in order to know that you

don’t have free will.

Take any possible action of yours, such as wearing your

striped blue vest tomorrow. As above you either will, or will

not, wear that vest. Neither of us may know right now which

will occur—-perhaps we must wait to see how you feel tomorrow

morning. But we do know that one of the options will

occur.

So suppose it’s the first one: it’s true that you will wear that

vest tomorrow. If it’s true right now that you will wear it, then

there’s nothing you can do not to wear it. For if you could

manage not to wear it then it would not be true that you will

wear it, contrary to our supposition. So if the first option is

correct then there’s nothing you can do about it: you will wear

that vest.

So suppose it’s the second option: it’s true that you will not

wear the vest. But if it’s true right now that you will not wear

the vest then there’s nothing you can do to wear it. For if you

could manage to wear it then it would not be true now that you

will not wear it, contrary to our supposition. So if the second

option is correct there’s also nothing you can do about it: you

will not wear the vest.

So, no, we may not know right now which option will

obtain. But we do know that one of them will, and that

whichever one that is, there was nothing you could do about it.

So whichever you do, you will not have done freely.

And of course the same applies to any possible action of

yours. For either you will or will not marry that person; either

you will or will not eat that dessert; and either you will or will

not make a fashion faux-pas tomorrow.

It’s true right now, in short, that you have no real options

about anything that you do.

54. TO PLUG, OR NOT TO PLUG

Little matters more, to many people, than figuring out what

really matters.

And as we’ve seen, a nice case can be made that nothing

matters more, that we value nothing more fundamentally, than

happiness. We want various things for the sake of the happiness

they bring us, but happiness we want for its own sake. The genuinely

moral life, correspondingly, would be one which aims to

bring about the most happiness for the most people.

Except for one problem.

Imagine there were a machine which could give you any

experience you desired. When you plug into it your brain is

stimulated so that you enjoy whatever experiences make you

happy: the feeling of basking on a warm beach, the sensations

of a nice massage, or, for the heartier crowd, the experience of

going for a vigorous long bicycle ride. Or perhaps you have

loftier tastes, so what would make you happy would be the

experiences of having a good talk with a friend, or understanding

the latest advances in physics, maybe even winning the

Nobel Prize. Or maybe you’re, well, a little different, and

would be made most happy by experiencing some suffering.

Whatever experiences you want, you merely need to plug in and

the experience machine would provide them.

Would you plug into the machine—-not merely for a few

minutes, but, say, for the rest of your life?

Most people, when asked, are inclined to say no. What matters

to us, it seems, is not merely having certain experiences

but actually doing various things. We want actually to do that

long bicycle ride, not merely have the sensory experience of

doing it. We want actually to win the Nobel Prize, not just have

the experience of winning it—-even if, while in the machine,

we would never know otherwise. It’s not merely experiences

that matter: it’s something more.

But then happiness must not be what we fundamentally

value after all. For if it were we would all plug into the

machine, which could give us whatever form of happiness we

seek.

But we wouldn’t.

So there’s something more.

55. IT’S ALL ENGLISH TO ME

I recently learned that the expression “It’s all Greek to me”

derives from medieval philosophers bemoaning their inability

to read ancient texts. That made me wonder what the Greeks

say; which, it turns out, is “It’s all Chinese me.” Before investigating

what the Chinese say, however, I realized I’d have a

deeper problem with whatever resource I might consult: it

would be all English to me. And I don’t understand what

understanding English amounts to.

To see why, imagine a man locked in a room. Pieces of paper

with strange marks come through a slot in the door; the man

consults a rule book he has (in English), and then from some

boxes assembles some new marks to return out the slot. The

process repeats. He doesn’t understand these marks; he’s

just mechanically following rules matching input marks with

outputs. But unbeknownst to him the marks are Chinese

characters. The people on the outside are native Chinese speakers

who believe they are conversing with another native

speaker within.

Interestingly, now, computers are quite like the man in the

room: they’re purely mechanical devices which operate on

electrical inputs to produce electrical outputs, all according to

a program they follow mechanically. Just as the man with his

rule book perfectly simulates an ordinary conversation, so too

would a properly programmed computer. But just as the man

does not actually understand any Chinese, neither does the

computer understand what it is doing. Thus computers at best

simulate mentality and cannot literally possess it.

This argument now raises a difficult question. It assumes

that there is more to genuinely “understanding” a language than

simply being able to produce appropriate outputs given various

inputs. After all, the man and computer both can do the latter

but fail to display the former. But what else is there? When

you hear certain English sounds you know what other sounds

are appropriate to produce in reply. You “genuinely understand”

English. So what exactly is there to “understanding”

beyond the ability to utter the appropriate responses?

That’s what is all Urdu to me.

56. THERE’S …… SOMETHING ……

OUT …… THERE

You know those ambiguous drawings—-for example the one

which looks like a young woman one way but like an old

woman another way? It’s tempting to wonder what that picture

is of in itself so to speak. But of course the answer is neither, or

both: it depends on how you, the perceiver, sees it.

But so does everything else.

Compare the difference between hearing a language you

understand and one you don’t. When you hear English you hear

words or maybe even meanings; when you hear Urdu you hear

only sounds. But the difference is not in your ears. Rather it’s in

your mind, which can interpret the former sounds and not the

latter.

Similarly my cat will look at my computer and not see a

computer. When he spreads out on my desk he sees neither the

important papers he is pushing over the edge nor my annoyance

as I push him over the edge. The problem isn’t that he is

blind. The problem is that he lacks the relevant concepts: computer,

papers, etc. At most what he sees is something like a pattern

of lights and colors. His limited mind cannot interpret

those patterns as we who have these concepts do.

Indeed we fail to appreciate how much work our own

minds do in constructing our experience of the world. The

“objective”world supposedly consists of stable physical objects

which have their properties “in themselves,” independent of

anyone’s perceiving them. But your sensory experience actually

gives you no such thing! What your eyes “see” strictly

speaking is that vast fluctuating array of lights and colors. It’s

your mind, applying its concepts, which interprets those patterns—-

which sees them as a breakfast table, a banana on the

floor, and the kids’ dirty sneakers.

I’m not saying that there is no world outside our minds.

There is; but what that world is, the precise objects it contains,

is in some sense “up to us,” up to how we, with whatever concepts

we may have, interpret our sensations. Just as “what” you

see when you look at an ambiguous image depends on how you

look at it, so too, in other words, does what you see anywhere

else. There is indeed something out there—-but what it is,

exactly, depends on just who’s perceiving it.

57. WHAT EXPERIENCE CANNOT TEACH

To be sure, much of what we know about the world we learn

through sensory experience. That may tempt you to think

that our minds, at birth, are like blank slates: empty of

content, waiting to be filled up via experiences. But while

our bodies may indeed be naked at birth, our minds in fact

are not: we arrive in this world with a healthy stock of innate

ideas.

The proof is the fact that we are, as adults, possessed of

ideas which sensory experience itself simply could not have

given us.

There are moral concepts, for example, such as “right” and

“wrong.” As we’ve seen, our senses are just not equipped to

detect these sorts of things: our eyes see only light and color,

not “rightness” and “wrongness.”

There are mathematical concepts. Never mind the

advanced ones, for even the more accessible ones, such as those

of numbers, must be innate. For while we may see three

oranges, or three trees, we never literally see the number three

itself. In fact, as we’ve noted, numbers seem to be concepts in

our mind which we apply to what we see, not concepts we

derive from what we see.

We similarly have the concept of a “self,” of our selves, but

our senses cannot give us anything like it. We surely don’t perceive

it with our eyes, ears, or nose. At best we “reflect,” mentally,

and “look within” to discover it. But even this reflection

doesn’t yield it: all we’re ever aware of, in fact, is an incessantly

changing flux of thoughts, perceptions, memories, and so on.

We’re never aware of the person or self who has those thoughts

and perceptions, who in fact is reflecting on them.

And finally there is the idea of God. You may not believe in

God’s existence but you still have the concept, namely that of

an infinite being. But the concept of infinity surely does not

derive from sensory experience, for everything we experience

is finite.

Experience, then, may give us many things. But it doesn’t

give us what we already have within—-including the infinite.

58. INTOLERANCE IS A VIRTUE

Tolerance is a virtue, or so many think. Sure such people have

noble motives: different societies have different morals, they

say, and we shouldn’t arrogantly assume that our own morals

are the only correct ones. So “let’s be tolerant of differences.”

But this sort of universal tolerance really makes no sense. If you

believe a given practice is morally wrong then you shouldn’t tolerate

it, for that would be to condone it. And if you believe that

practice is morally acceptable then you’re not “tolerating” it,

you’re agreeing with it! So if you really think a practice is

wrong, you should think of it as wrong for everyone.

Suppose you were a teacher and you awarded different

grades to two identical exams. The students would be outraged.

Why? Because you awarded a difference in “value”—-a

different grade—-where there was no underlying difference in

“facts”—-here, answers—-to justify it. That is clearly wrong.

But those noble tolerators are doing the same thing.

Westerners condemn (for example) “female genital mutilation”

while various others consider it a moral obligation. A tolerator—-

who believes it’s wrong but “tolerates” it for

others—-is effectively granting a difference in “value”: that

practice is wrong “for us” but acceptable “for them.” But now

what is the relevant difference in facts between the two cases to

justify awarding these different values? There is none.

True, different societies have different beliefs about morality.

But suppose someone believes that sex between an adult

and a child is morally acceptable. No matter how nobly tolerant

we might be, we wouldn’t tolerate this person. Why?

Because his simply believing that sex with children is acceptable

does not make it so. Nor would it be so if this man had a dozen

friends who shared his beliefs, or even a few hundred or thousand,

or a whole society. Moral legitimacy is not to be found in

numbers.

If you believe a practice is wrong, then, have the courage of

your convictions: it is wrong for everyone.

You ought not to tolerate the tolerators.

59. THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS

There’s a philosophical joke: The optimist says, This is the best

of all possible worlds.”And the pessimist agrees.

Of course by this standard most people are neither optimist

nor pessimist, since it seems just obvious that this world is not

the best possible one. Just take some little bad thing—-like that

joke—-and imagine replacing it with a better joke. Wouldn’t

that be a better overall world, even if only a little? And if a better

world were possible then our actual world wouldn’t be the

best possible one.

But now many think that a God who is all powerful, all

knowing, and all good would create the best of all possible

worlds. And so if our actual world is not the best possible world

then God must not exist. That bad joke thus proves that God

doesn’t exist!

Or does it?

This reasoning assumes that we’re in a position to judge the

overall value of the world. For example, we imagine we can

think of “better” worlds by eliminating unpleasant facts about

our actual world. But it’s not so simple. Replace that bad joke

with a better one; you would then laugh for a few seconds

instead of groaning for one. Okay, but then you’d leave the

house later too and perhaps get into the fatal accident you

wouldn’t even know you missed by leaving when you did. And

then the cure for cancer you were going to produce in ten years

never comes into being. We don’t know; we can’t know.

But we don’t have to. For all we know, this world is overall

as good as any world could be. For all we know, any other world

would actually be a worse world. So no we can’t know that this

is the best of all possible worlds—-but then we can’t know

either that it isn’t. And if we can’t know that it isn’t then the

existence of this world—-evils, bad jokes and all—-cannot disprove

the existence of God.

It may be cold comfort to recognize that God might exist

despite all the evils. But even cold comfort is comfort.

60. THIS IS NOT THE END

Lots of things never end. Space. Time. Numbers. The questions

little kids ask.

And philosophy.

You try to convince somebody of something—-even yourself—-

by offering reasons to believe the thing. But then your

belief is only as valid as your reasons are, so you offer reasons to

accept your reasons. But then those reasons need further reasons

and you’re off. As a result it often seems that there aren’t any

answers to philosophical questions: there are just more arguments,

more objections, more replies. And so it may easily seem

that it’s not worth even getting started. Why bother? You’ll

never finish. You may as well try to count all the numbers.

But there is another way of thinking about it.

I went snorkeling for the first time a few years ago. It was an

amazing experience. There was a whole world under that

water to which I’d been oblivious my entire life. This world was

populated with countless amazing creatures with all sorts of

complex relationships to each other in that tangled ecosystemic

way. Indeed every single thing was connected to every

other thing: this one is food for that one, which excretes chemicals

used by another one, which excretes waste products used

by others, and so on. Stunning, fascinating, and absolutely,

deeply, beautiful. It had been there all along, just waiting for

me to dive in.

If you were now to tell me that that ocean goes on forever,

filled with ever more amazing creatures in more amazing relationships—-

I wouldn’t say, “Well then why bother entering?”

Rather, I’d say, “Where can a guy get a wetsuit around here?”

But that is philosophy. It’s filled with countless amazing

ideas, concepts, beings, which exist in all sorts of complex logical

relationships with each other. And unlike the actual ocean

this one is infinitely deep: Wherever you enter you can keep

going, and going, and going. What you should be thinking, then,

is not:“Why enter?” It is, rather, this: thank you—-very much.

But of course, that world just is this world, the world that

you’re in. This great ocean you may be looking for, you’re

already in it. You just have to start thinking about it. The very

first drop in that bucket is a splash into the infinite.

This is the beginning.