The compatibilist has stated his case. I hope you’ll agree that it is a thoroughly respectable one, certainly better than anything the indeterminist had on offer. But it leaves many feeling uncomfortable, not because of the way it elucidates the notion of control, but because of the consequences of accepting determinism.
What, for instance, is happening when I talk with my wife? Are my words just modifying her causal state, much as if I were typing into a computer? Do I want to think of my interactions with others in this way? Could I, even if I wanted to, or felt that my intellectual acceptance of determinism required me to? It sounds like something pathological that takes all the warmth, and much of the point, out of human relations. Even where these are quite superficial and practical, it remains that dealing with a shopkeeper is very different from using a vending machine. It isn’t only that a shopkeeper speaks; nowadays a vending machine might speak, but that would just be rather creepy.
And another thing. Someone has done something hideously villainous. We react with outrage. That he would do it, however, was a causal consequence of the state of things just before the act. Well, he should have been in a different state of mind—it should have struck him that to do what he was about to do would be appallingly wrong. But it didn’t, and that it wouldn’t was itself a consequence of earlier states of affairs. Go back a bit then: he should have realized that he was becoming the sort of person who may do horrendous things, and taken steps to change himself. But he didn’t, and that he wouldn’t was a consequence . . . but I needn’t go on. We are being carried back to a time at which it cannot possibly be thought that our future villain was in a position to influence anything. So was he just unlucky, unlucky to be caught up in a causal sequence with so ugly an outcome? Should we commiserate with him instead of blaming him? ‘What tough luck to end up doing a thing like that. And to add to his misfortunes, poor fellow, he’s not even remorseful.’ Few of us are going to react along those lines, whatever our theory may tell us.
It seems that we are pulled by persuasive arguments that we cannot clearly see how to resist to a place that we cannot, in the practice of life, comfortably occupy, and are stuck with conflicting perspectives. Perhaps, though it seems a bit feeble, ‘carelessness and inattention alone can afford us any remedy’—as Hume once said, running into a similar problem in a different context. It can happen, philosophy can sometimes be like that.
Chapter 9 What’s in it for whom?
Thinking about philosophy is hard work—you may have noticed, though if you’ve got this far at least it hasn’t put you off. Writing the stuff is even harder. (Take it from me.) So why have people done either? Well, for one or more of a whole catalogue of reasons. In the hope of learning to control nature, or of learning to control themselves, to get to heaven, to avoid going to hell; to enable us to bear life as it is, to make life bearable by changing it; to shore up institutions political, moral, or intellectual, or to tear them down; to promote the writer’s interests, to promote other people’s interests (yes, that happens too), even to promote everybody’s interests; because they can’t stand certain other philosophers; because their job demands it. Perhaps just occasionally out of pure curiosity. There is a widespread idea that philosophers are unworldly people, remote from reality. If that refers to their lifestyle, it may frequently have been true, though not always. If it refers to their work, then (I am speaking now of philosophy that endures) it is usually false—at least in the sense that they are almost always addressing some real concern and claiming to offer some real improvement.
Right back at the beginning I spoke of three big questions: what should I do? what is there? (i.e. what is reality like?) and how do we know? It might sound as if any philosophy offering human beings some real improvement must be concerned primarily with the first of those. But that wouldn’t be right. Beliefs about how things are can serve to give a meaning to life or bolster our feelings of self-worth, as for example the belief that we are made in the image of God; they can give a rationale to (or serve as an excuse for) certain types of behaviour, like the belief that humans have rational souls and animals don’t. Answers to the question ‘how do we know?’ can strengthen, or loosen, the hold that various answers to the first two types of question have on us; and very importantly, they can imply beliefs about who has knowledge, with obvious consequences for the prestige and power of members of that group.
Most philosophy attempts, then, to do something for somebody. To finish, let’s look at some philosophy from this perspective. If it is to endure, a philosophy needs a constituency, a group of interested parties. Its chances are best if the constituency is a large one. First, a couple of philosophies devoted to the individual. That’s a big constituency—we’re all individuals.The individual
The philosophy of Epicurus is addressed to the individual; it offers a recipe, backed by argument, for living a happy life. Social and political arrangements are unjust if they interfere with individuals’ attempts to apply the recipe; otherwise, his only political recommendation is not to engage in politics. You can to some degree help others to live the right sort of life, but only those close to you (Epicureanism strongly advocates friendship); everyone must follow the recipe for themselves. For success depends not on material conditions, the sort of thing one person
