Diversity of inner lives

There is a vast and rather radical diversity in the inner conscious lives of human beings. Start with the differences in dreams: some people know immediately whether they are dreaming and others do not; some are in control of their dreams and others are not; some dream in color and others do not. Now move on to the differences in thought. Some think in pictures, some in words with sounds, some in a combination of words with sounds and written words, and some without any visual or aural imagery. Some people are completely unable to imagine things in pictures, others can do so only in a shadowy and unstable way, and yet others can do so in detail. Even in the case of close friends, we often have no idea about how they differ in these respects, and to many people the diversity in inner conscious lives comes as a surprise, as they assume that almost everyone is like them.

But in their outer behavior, including linguistic behavior, people seem much more homogeneous. They say “I think that tomorrow is a good day for our bike trip” regardless of whether they thought it out in pictures, in sounds, or in some other way. They give arguments as a sequence of logically connected sentences. Their desires, while differing from person to person, are largely comprehensible and not very surprising. People are more homogeneous outside than inside.

This contrast between inner heterogeneity and outward homogeneity is something I realized yesterday while participating in a workshop on Linda Zagzebski’s manuscript on dreams. I am not quite sure what to make of this contrast philosophically, but it seems really interesting. We flatten our inner lives to present them to people in our behavior, but we also don’t feel like much is lost in this flattening. It doesn’t really matter much whether our thoughts come along with sights or sounds. It would not be surprising if there were differences in skill levels that correlated with the characteristics of inner life—it would not be surprising if people who thought more in pictures were better at low-dimensional topology—but these differences are not radical.

Many of us as children have wondered whether other people’s conscious experiences are the same as ours—does red look the same (bracketing colorblindness) and does a middle C sinewave sound the same (bracketing hearing deficiencies)? I have for a while thought it not unlikely that the answer is negative, because I am attracted to the idea that central to how things look to us are the relationships between different experiences, and different people have sets of experiences. (Compare the visual field reversal experiments, where people who wear visual field reversal glasses initially see things upside-down but then it turns right-side-up, which suggests to me that the directionality of the visual field is constituted by relationships between different experiences rather than being something intrinsic.) I think the vast diversity in conscious but non-sensory inner lives gives us some reason to think that sensory consciousness also differs quite a bit between people—and gets flattened and homogenized into words, much as thoughts are.

Bailey's Priority Principle

Andrew Bailey formulated and defended the Priority Principle (PP), that we think our thoughts in a primary rather than inherited way. His main argument for PP is a two-thinkers argument: if I think my thoughts in an inherited way, then something else—the thing I inherit the thoughts from—thinks them as well, but there aren’t two thinkers of my thoughts. While this argument is plausible, I think it skirts around the main intuition behind the PP. That intuition is that there is something implausible about us being thinkers in a derivative way. This intuition, however, is quite compatible with there being something that derives its thoughts from us, but not so Bailey’s argument, which (unless I am missing something) equally rules out the hypothesis that we inherit our thoughts and the hypothesis that our thoughts are inherited by something else.

Is there a way to argue for PP in concert with this intuition, namely to argue that whether or not there are two thinkers of my thoughts, I am their primary thinker? Such an argument would also escape the following apparent counterexample. Social organizations can have thoughts, derivative in a complex way from their members’ thoughts. But now suppose I join a club, and everyone else resigns membership. Then the club’s opinion on matters relavant to the club’s subject matter comes to be inherited from me. So now there are two thinkers, the club and me, though I am the primary one. This case (which to be fair I am not completely sure of) is a counterexample to Bailey’s argument but not to its conclusion.

My students came up with two closely related arguments, which we might put something like this. First, among our thoughts are intentions. If these are derivative, we are puppets of the primary intender, contrary to our freedom. Second, some of our thoughts are deliberate. It is a contradiction in terms that we think deliberately and yet our deliberate thought is inherited from a prior deliberate thinker—puppetry is incompatible with deliberativeness.

These arguments do not directly show that we are always primary thinkers, so they immediately imply only a weaker version of the PP (WPP), namely that sometimes we think non-derivatively. WPP is still interesting. For instance, it rules out standard perdurantist theories on which we inherit all our thoughts from our temporal parts. Furthermore, WPP makes PP moderately likely: for it is plausible that if there is any thought-inheritance it always goes in the same direction.

That said, maybe there is some reason to accept WPP without PP. Here is one kind of case. Possessing a concept is, perhaps, a way of thinking. But given some moderate semantic externalism, sometimes we possess a concept—say, of a quark—by inheriting it from an expert. Or suppose that the extended mind thesis is true, so that we count as knowing some things because they recorded on our devices. Maybe electronic devices don’t have knowledge, so this isn’t exactly knowledge inheritance. But imagine that you train a parrot to remember all your credit card numbers (a foolish idea) and you carry the parrot with you always. Now you inherit the knowledge of the numbers (under some description common between you and the parrot, definitely not “credit card number”) from the parrot. I am dubious of the extended mind thesis, but there is no need to stick one’s neck out. WPP does justice to many of our intuitions.

Divine thought simplicity

One of the motivations for denying divine simplicity is the plausibility of the claim that:

1. There is a multiplicity of divine thoughts, which are a proper part of God.

But it turns out there are reasons to reject (1) independent of divine simplicity.

Here is one reductio of the distinctness of God and God’s thoughts.

2. God is distinct from his thoughts.

3. If x’s thoughts are distinct from x, then x causes x’s thoughts.

4. Everything caused by God is a creature.

5. So, God’s thoughts are creatures.

6. Every creature explanatorily depends on a divine rational decision to create it.

7. A rational decision explanatorily depends on thoughts.

8. So, we have an ungrounded infinite explanatory regress of thoughts.

9. Ungrounded infinite explanatory regresses are impossible.

10. Contradiction!

Here is another that also starts with 2–5 but now continues:

11. God’s omniscience is identical with or dependent on God’s thoughts.

12. None of God’s essential attributes are identical with or dependent on any creatures.

13. Omniscience is one of God’s essential attributes.

14. Contradiction!

Walking

Unfortunately, most of the forms of exercise I do are too intense for me to think hard while exercising, though perhaps my subconscious is doing something. The main exception is that when swimming, I can do some thinking, but I am also counting lengths, and I can’t do both at once very well. (I have a project that I keep on putting off where I’d interface a BLE beacon on my person with a phone out of the water and use that to count lengths, but I haven’t done it yet. I suppose I could also get a watch that counts lengths.) Occasionally, I can also do some less deep thinking—say, preparing for class—while biking on flat pavement. But I can’t do serious thinking while rock climbing (however, there is good down time for thinking and writing between climbs), or playing badminton, or kayaking.

Last week, Baylor had a step challenge, so I ended up taking some longer brisk walks, alone. (I walk a fair amount with family.) It reminded me of how it is possible to do a lot of thinking while walking. That’s really nice! Though there is the danger that my achievement-oriented personality will push me to keep on increasing my walking speed, to the point where I won't be able to do deep thinking any more.

The cogito and time-delay

I’ve been thinking about how well Descartes’ cogito argument works given the following plausisble thesis:

1. Every perception, including introspection, has a time delay.

Consider:

2. I am in pain.

3. If I am in pain, then I exist.

4. So, I exist.

Supposedly, (2) is clear and distinct. But wait (!). By (1), I only introspect premise (2) with a time delay. In other words, by the time I introspect premise (2), the pain is over. It is one thing to be in pain—obviously, when I am in pain, I am in pain—but it is another to be aware that I am in pain.

In other words, at the present moment, if I am to stick to the indubitable, all I get to say is:

5. I was in pain.

6. If I was in pain, then I existed.

7. So, I existed.

Now, if eternalism or growing block is true, I still get to conclude that I exist simpliciter, but not indubitably so (since I need to rely on the arguments for eternalism or growing block).

But there is an even more serious problem. Once we accept the time delay thesis (1), we no longer have indubitability in our introspection of pain. For suppose the time delay from being in pain to being aware that one is in pain is a microsecond. But now consider the half-microsecond hypothesis that the universe came into existence, fully formed, half a microsecond ago. If so, I would still have the introspective awareness of being in pain—without having had a pain! The half-microsecond hypothesis is crazy, but no crazier than the evil demon hypothesis that Descartes cares so much about. So now we don’t have indubitability about (2) or (5).

And what goes for pain goes for any other conscious state, i.e., for anything that Descartes calls “thought”.

We might now want to deny the time-delay thesis (1), and say that:

8. Whenever I have a conscious state Q, I am immediately thereby aware of having state Q.

But a bit of introspection shows that (8) is false. For being aware is itself a conscious state, and so if (8) were true, then whenever I have a conscious state, I have an infinite sequence of conscious states of meta-awareness. And I clearly do not.

Indeed, introspectively reflecting on the states of meta-awareness shows that sometimes the time-delay thesis is true. Let’s say that I am aware that I am in pain. It takes reflection, and hence time, to become aware that I am aware that I am in pain. So the time-delay thesis is at least sometimes true.

Now it might be that we are lucky and the time-delay thesis is false for introspection of first-order conscious states, like being in pain. I am a little sceptical of that, because I suspect a lot of non-human animals are in pain but don’t even have the first meta-step to perceiving that they are in pain.

So let’s grant that the time-delay thesis is false for introspection of first-order conscious states. Now it is no longer true that, as Descartes thought, his cogito could be run from any conscious states. It can only be run from the ones for which the time-delay thesis is false. But it’s worse than that. Even if the time-delay thesis is false for some introspective perceptions, it is not indubitable that it is false for them. The claim that these introspections lack time-delay is far from indubitable.

Yet all that said, isn’t it true that even in the half-microsecond world, I exist? Even if I didn’t have the pain that I think I had, surely to think that I had it requires that I am! Yes, but I only become aware that I think I had a pain with a time-delay from my thinking that I had a pain, because the time-delay thesis is empirically true at all the meta-levels.

This is all very strange. Maybe one can save something by supposing that awareness of a conscious state Q is always partly constituted by Q, and even with a time-delay we have indubitability. Maybe in the half-microsecond world, I couldn’t be aware of having had a pain when I didn’t have the pain, because the second-order awareness is partly constituted by the occurrence of the first-order awareness, be that occurrence past or present. Maybe, but the partial constitution thesis seems dubitable. And once we get to some meta-levels it seems implausible. Couldn’t I be mistaken in thinking that I aware that I am aware that I am aware that I am aware of Q, while in reality I only had two meta-levels?

I am feeling disoriented and confused now.

Determinism and thought

Occasionally, people have thought that one can refute determinism as follows:

1. If determinism is true, then all our thinking is determined.

2. If our thinking is determined, then it is irrational to trust its conclusions.

3. It is not irrational to trust the conclusions of our thinking.

4. So, determinism is not true.

But now notice that, plausibly, even if we have indeterministic free will, other animals don’t. And yet it seems at least as reasonable to trust a dog’s epistemic judgment—say, as to the presence of an intruder—as a human’s. Nor would learning that a dog’s thinking is determined or not determined make any difference to our trust in its reliability.

One might respond that things are different in a first-person case. But I don’t see why.

Ill-suited matter, form, and immortality

A question I haven’t seen explored much by contemporary neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is that of matter ill-suited to the form. Is it metaphysically possible for a bunch of molecules arranged like a normal oak tree to have the form of a pig? It would be, of course, a very unfortunate pig. Or is some minimal amount of match between the actual arrangement of the molecules and the form needed?

On light-weight neo-Aristotelianism, on which forms are simply structural properties, the answer has got to be negative.

But on heavy-weight neo-Aristotelianism, on which forms are irreducible entities, it seems like there should be no such restrictions. Why couldn’t God unite the form of a pig with a body as of an oak tree, or the form of an oak tree with a body as of a human?

However, supposing that we take such a liberal view on which there is no such thing as matter metaphysically incompatible with a form (presumably pace historical Aristotelians), we then have a puzzle. If it would be metaphysically possible for a pig form to be united to a bunch of organic gases, why is it that when pigs are vaporized, they (we assume) invariably die? Here is my story. Assume for simplicity time is discrete. At each time t, a pig—in virtue of its form—has a causal power to continue existing at the next time. But causal powers have activation conditions. The activation condition for the causal power to continue existing at the next time is an appropriate arrangement of the pig’s body. When the pig’s body becomes so distorted that this activation condition is no longer satisfies, the pig loses the power to go on living. And so it dies. However, of course, God could make it keep on living by a miracle: a miracle can supply what the causal powers of a thing are incapable of.

This account has one somewhat implausible prediction. Suppose that some powerful being instantaneously scatters the molecules of an ordinary pig across the galaxy, so that at t₁ we have an ordinary pig and at the next time, t₂, the pig molecules are scattered. Because at t₁ the pig has a causal power of continuing to exist conditionally on its molecules being appropriately arranged at t₁, and this condition is indeed satisfies at t₁, the pig will live one moment in scattered condition at t₂—and then perish at the next moment, t₃.

On this account, external causes do not directly destroy an object. Rather, they destroy the activation condition for the object’s power to continue existing. When that activation condition is destroyed, the object (barring a miracle) ceases to exist. But it has that one last existential hurrah before it falls into nonbeing.

Does it follow that on a heavy-weight Aristotelianism with my story about death, a pig metaphysically could survive the annihilation of its body? I am not sure, but I am inclined to think so. Indeed, I am inclined to think that if we had a normal pig at t₁, and then at t₂ the matter of the pig were annihilated, the pig would still exist—reduced to an abnormal immateriality—for that one instant of t₂, and then, barring a second miracle, it would slide into non-being at t₃.

What about us? Well, Aquinas argues for our soul’s natural immortality on the grounds that the human soul has a proper operation that does not depend on the matter, namely pure thought. I have never before been impressed by the move from a proper operation independent of matter to natural immortality, but in my above (neo-Aristotelian but not very Thomistic) setting I see it having significant force. First, we have this question: What are the activation conditions for the human’s power-to-continue-existing? It makes sense that for a being whose only non-existential operations are material, the activation conditions should be purely material. But if a being has a proper operation not dependent on the matter, then it makes perfect sense for the activation conditions of its power-to-continue-existing not to include material conditions. In fact, something stronger can be said. It seems absurd for a thing to have a power to continue thinking whose activation conditions outstrip its power to continue existing. It would be like a power to play soccer without a power to move. So, it seems, if Aquinas is right that we have an immaterial operation, then we have the power to continue existing even absent a body. Of course, God can stop cooperating with any power we have, and if he stopped cooperating with our power-to-continue-existing, then we would stop existing (unless God miraculously sustained us in existence independently of that power!), but naturally we would continue to exist. Assuming, of course, Thomas is right about us having a proper operation that does not depend on matter, which is a different question.

(And unlike Thomas, I think we have immortality, not just our souls.)

A causal finitist definition of the finite

Causal finitism says that nothing can have infinitely many causes. Interestingly, we can turn causal finitism around into a definition of the finite.

Say that a plurality of objects, the xs, is finite if and only if it possible for there to be a plurality of beings, the ys, such that (a) it is possible for the ys to have a common effect, and (b) it is possible for there to be a relation R such that whenever x₀ one of the xs, then there is exactly one of a y₀ among the xs such that Rx₀y₀.

Here's a way to make it plausible that the definition is extensionally correct if causal finitism is true. First, if the definition holds, then clearly there are no more of the xs than of the ys, and causal finitism together with (a) ensures that there are finitely many of the ys, so anything that the definition rules to be finite is indeed finite. Conversely, suppose the xs are a finite plurality. Then it should be possible for there to be a finite plurality of persons each of which thinks about a different one of the xs in such a way that each of the xs is thought about by one of the ys. Taking being thought about as the relation R makes the definition be satisfied.

Of course, on this account of finitude, causal finitism is trivial, for if a plurality of objects has an effect, then they satisfy the above definition if we take R to be identity. But what then becomes non-trivial is that our usual platitudes about the finite are correct.

Minds don't think

1. Only things with minds think.

2. Minds don’t have minds.

3. So, minds don’t think.

Corollary: We think with minds, hence we are not minds.

There might be an exception to (2) in the case of God. By divine simplicity, God is his own mind. So God's mind has a mind, namely itself.

The unconscious: A tool for studying consciousness

There is an old joke: to find out if a computer is conscious, you program it to tell the truth, and you ask it if it is. The point behind the joke is deep, I think. If we made a computer, we would know how we could make it correctly report sensor data like the current temperature whether outside or inside the computer. But how would we make it sense whether or not it is conscious?

If had a consciousness sensor, we could do some nice experiments on the nature of consciousness. We could, for instance, test naturalistic hypotheses that consciousness is the product of the appropriate kinds of complexity of data processing.

But it turns out that we do have a tool here. We are blessed with having unconscious thought in addition to conscious thought, and we can tell the two apart. Of course, we can only indirectly discern the presence of unconscious thought—but once we’ve learned that a thought process occurred, then we can use introspective memory to check (fallibly) whether it was conscious or not.

Does this tool provide any useful data? I think so. For instance, it empirically verifies the premise of this one-premise argument:

1. Some of our unconscious thinking is just as sophisticated as some of our conscious thinking.

2. So, consciousness is not the product of the sophistication of our thinking.

Of course, only a very incautious naturalist would hold that consciousness is the product of the sophistication as such of our thinking. But, still, it’s pretty nice to have an empirical argument here.

Similarly, we can rule out the hypothesis that consciousness is a function of sophisticated irreducibly first-person thought, since it is clear that our unconscious thought is deeply concerned with first-person issues, and in sophisticated ways. Likewise, I suspect, we can rule out the hypothesis that consciousness is a function of sophisticated second-order thought or even sophisticated second-order irreducibly first-person thought. A primary way in which we detect unconscious thinking is when we suddenly come to a conclusion “out of nowhere”. The difficulty of reaching that conclusion is evidence of the sophistication of the thought process that led to it. And I think that such eureka moments can happen in all subject matter, including that of second-order irreducibly first-person thoughts.

This makes the challenge for naturalist theorist of mind tough: they need to identify as the basis of consciousness a type of mental processing that cannot ever occur as part of the rich tapestry of our unconscious mental lives.

There is, though, an interesting sceptical response. Perhaps what we call our “unconscious thinking” is in fact conscious. There are two ways this could happen. First, perhaps, there is another thinker in me, one who thinks my unconscious thoughts. Second, maybe I have two centers of consciousness. It’s hard to rule out these hypotheses empirically. But they are rather crazy, and all empirical confirmation requires the rejection of crazy hypotheses.

Thinking derivatively

In a lovely recent paper, Andrew Bailey has argued for the priority principle, that we think our thoughts not derivatively from another entity's thinking them--for instance, we don't think our thoughts derivatively from a brain's thinking them, or from a soul's thinking them, or a temporal part's thinking them, etc. I think this is all correct, but it seems to me that arguments of this sort don't go as far as they at first sight seem (this isn't a disagreement with anything Bailey writes).

For it has long appeared to me that the philosopher who is inclined to say that our thinking is derivative from the activity of a proper part of us should deny that the relevant activity of the proper part is thinking. Instead, there is some activity of the proper part which we might call "thinking*", and our thinking is derivative from the part's thinking*. For instance, a materialist might say that our brains think* (and analogously believe*, choose*, etc.), and that to think is to be a maximal organic whole that has a part that thinks*. This seems exactly right. For even if materialism is true, our brains don't think, but we think with our brains. And what our brains do when we think with them isn't thinking, and the materialist shouldn't say it is. (Likewise, when I nail something with a hammer, it is I who nail and not the hammer that nails. Nonetheless, the hammer does something which we can call nailing*, and I nail with a hammer if and only if I stand in the right kind of complex relationship to a hammer's nailing*.)

Once we see things this way, it unfortunately undercuts various arguments that otherwise I would be quite fond of. For instance, Trenton Merricks has a wonderfully clever argument against temporal parts on the grounds that if I have many temporal parts, then I don't know my age, since most of my present temporal parts are younger than me, and yet they think the same thoughts about age as I do. But wonderful as this argument is, and correct as its conclusion is (I don't have any proper temporal parts), the temporal part theorist should (though generally doesn't) say that my proper temporal parts have no opinions as to age, but only opinions*.

Could one strengthen Bailey's priority principle and say that my mental properties are fundamental? That's too strong. Plausibly some mental properties are not fundamental but are grounded in others. Maybe, though, we can say that some mental property is fundamental? That sounds right to me, but it's hard to argue for.

A quick argument for tropes

1. Every thought is a trope of a thinker.
2. There are thoughts.
3. So, there are tropes.

We are fundamental entities

"I think therefore I am." It's hard to dispute either the argument or the conclusion. But while I undoubtedly exist, do I have to be one of the fundamental objects in the ontology?

Here is a line of thought to that conclusion, somewhat similar to some things I've heard Rob Koons say. Non-fundamental objects are entia rationis, at least in part creatures of our cognitive organization of the world. But we cannot be, even in part, mere creatures of our cognitive organization of the world on pain of circularity. So whatever non-fundamental objects there may be, we are not among them.

I think the controversial claim in the argument may be that non-fundamental entities are entia rationis, but I am not sure. This whole line of argument is difficult for me to think about.

The unthinkable

Typically when we say that some course of action is unthinkable, we have already thought it.  Perhaps there is an equivocation, though.  Maybe what we mean is that the course of action is one that we can think about with theoretical reason, but cannot deliberate about with practical reason.  But isn't the revulsion from the course of action in fact a matter of the will?  Maybe it is a matter of the will, but not of the will in respect of deliberation?

I've seen a classic moral theology textbook say that if you've deliberated whether to commit a mortal sin, you've already committed a mortal sin.  Of course, it is presupposed here that you're aware that the action you're deliberating about is a mortal sin.  Maybe the idea is this.  Deliberation involves weighing the pros and cons of an action.  But as soon as you've realized that a course of action involves you in mortal sin, it is illegitimate to weigh the pros of the course of action.  If you do so, you're implicitly conditionally attaching your will to the mortal sin, conditionally on the pros being great enough.  It would be a mortal sin to explicitly conditionally attach your will to a mortal sin--for instance, to resolve to commit adultery if you win the lottery.  Whether the implicit conditional attachment in deliberation yields mortal sin is something I am not so sure about.  But it is surely sinful.

Of course this needs to be distinguished from a non-deliberative consideration of the benefits of a gravely wrong action.  There can be good reason to engage in such consideration.  For instance, one might try to think through the benefits of a sinful action in order to come up with a rhetorically powerful exhortation against the action, by contrasting the induced decay of soul with the temporariness of the benefits.

Content externalist solutions to sceptical problems

A standard solution to general sceptical problems is to move to an externalist account of content. Grossly oversimplifying, if what makes a thought be about horses is that it has a causal connection with horses, then thoughts about horses can't be completely mistaken. This sort of move might be thought to be anti-realist, though I think that's a poor characterization. If this sort of move works, then we couldn't have thoughts and yet have our whole system of thoughts be completely mistaken. And hence, it seems, scepticism is dead.
But it just occurred to me that there is a hole in this argument. Why couldn't the sceptic who accepts the externalist story about content still say: "So, if I am thinking at all, then global scepticism is false. But am I thinking at all?" This may seem to be a completely absurd position—how could one doubt whether one is thinking? Wouldn't the doubt be a thought? Yes, the doubt would be a thought. Hence, the person who doubts whether she thinks would not be able to believe that she doubts. And, of course, the person who thinks she's not thinking has a contradiction between the content of her thought and the fact of her thought, but it's not so obvious that that's a contradiction in her thought (just as a contradiction between the content of an astronomical belief and an astronomical fact need not be a contradiction in the thinker's thought). Besides, the Churchlands think that they have no thoughts, and have given arguments for this.
If I am right in the above, then the content externalist move does not solve the problem of scepticism—it simply radicalizes it. But it raises the cost of scepticism—it forces the sceptic to stop thinking of herself as thinking. And as such it may be practically useful for curing scepticism if the sceptic isn't a full Pyrrhonian, in the way a rose or some other creature that has no thoughts is. However, if the motivation for the content externalism is to solve the problem of scepticism, rather than cure the sceptic, then the motivation seems to fail. (One difference between solving and curing is this. If a theory T solves a problem, then we have some reason to think T is true by inference to best explanation. But if believing a theory T would cure someone of a problem, inference to best explanation to the truth of T is not available. Though, still, I think the fact that believing T is beneficial would be some evidence for the truth of T in a world created by the good God.)

Deontology

A colleague asked me what I would say about a choice between a really minor wrongdoing and an action that has really bad consequences. I had a hard time thinking up an interesting case, because most of the minor wrongdoings I could think of are violations of ceteris paribus (c.p.) moral laws. (Lying is an exception—some cases of lying are only minor wrongdoings, but lying is not merely c.p. wrong. But I didn't want to talk about the case of lying because my colleague and I disagree on the morality of lying.) For instance, promise-keeping (which my colleague suggested as an example) is sometimes only a minor obligation, but either we will say that keeping the promise is only a c.p. duty, or we will say that a promise becomes null and void when fulfilling it would lead to great evils (this is perhaps related to the fact that promises to do something immoral are invalid). And so in neither case could one have a choice between the obligation to keep a minor promise and tolerating or producing some great evil, because given the choice, the promise would not generate an ultima facie obligation (or maybe even a prima facie one, if one takes the null and void view). So I was hard-pressed for a case.

However, there is a quite interesting family of minor moral evils which have no ceterisparibusness to them. If E is morally wrong, then to morosely delectate in E is likewise wrong, and to a degree proportional to the wrongfulness of E. It is clearly vicious to delight in an immorality, and what is vicious is also wrong. Moreover, interestingly, even if E is only c.p. wrong, delectating in a wrongful case of E is not merely c.p. wrong, but wrong simpliciter and ultima facie. For instance, it is typically a minor evil to deliberately cause a minor embarrassment to a friend, and the prohibition against causing such embarrassment only holds c.p. (there are even times when it is one's duty to embarrass a friend). However, to freely mentally delight in an actual or hypothetical unjustified causing of a minor embarrassment (i.e., one in which the c.p. clause is not triggered) to a friend is vicious, and this viciousness is not merely c.p. wrong, even though the causing of embarrassment to one's friend is merely c.p. wrong. But if the embarrassment is minor, and the delectation is not of great intensity or extended over a great amount of time, the amount of wickedness in the delectation will be merely small.

So, this gives us a nice tool for generating examples of small (as small as we like, in fact) wrongdoings that are not merely c.p. wrong. And so we get the slightly paradoxical conclusion that while it would be acceptable to embarrass a friend in a minor way to save a life, it would not be acceptable to delight in unjustifiedly causing an embarrassment to a friend, howsoever minor, even to save a life. (Imagine a mind-reading villain who will kill someone—your friend, if you want to make the case harder—unless you morosely delectate in embarrassing a friend.) I think some of the paradox is only apparent, because it is trivially also wrong to unjustifiedly cause an embarrassment to a friend even to save a life (if it were not wrong to cause it, it would not be an unjustified causing), and so, too, it is wrong to delight in such an unjustified action.

I do not find this counterintuitive. But of course some deontologists may say that it's not wrong to morosely delectate on evils, or that it's only c.p. wrong. However, I do not think the Christian emphasis on purity of heart would allow that.

Introspection of judging

Consider the concept of a judging. A judging is a believing operating occurrently and consciously (this is stipulative). Sometimes, a judging comes at the beginning of believing: after weighing the evidence, I judge that p, and my judging that p is the beginning of my believing that p, a believing that soon slides from occurrence into dispositionality. Sometimes, perhaps, I have a belief dispositionally which I never acquired by means of a judging, but which belief comes to the mental foreground, and becomes a judging.

Let us suppose that for every believing there is a belief, namely a proposition that is believed. Then, since a judging is a kind of believing, every judging is associated with a proposition that is adjudged, a proposition that one might call the judgment. (Actually, "belief" and "judgment" are ambiguous in English between the proposition and the mental act; so I am here stipulating that I will use an "-ing" form for the mental act—e.g., "believing" or "making a judgment"—and "belief" and "judgment" for the propositional object of the mental act.) I shall also assume that a proposition, perhaps unlike a declarative sentence, is always either true or false.

Here is an anti-Cartesian thesis that I am going to offer an argument for, and then discuss whether one can get out of the argument:

1. It need not be possible to introspect whether a mental act is a judgment, and whether a mental act is a judgment is not an internal property of the mental act.

The argument is fairly simple. It is possible for me to judge that

2. Fred right now is not making a judgment that is true.

In judging (2), I might even be judging correctly—for instance, if Fred is asleep, or if Fred is judging that I do not exist. By exactly the same token, it is possible for Fred to judge that

3. Alex right now is making a judgment that is true.

Now imagine three possible worlds w₁, w₂ and w₃. These worlds are exact duplicates up to but not including t₀. In particular, prior to t₀, the distinctions between the three worlds are is not introspectible either to me or to Fred. Assume also that neither of us is within sensory range of the other at t₀. Now suppose that in w₁ at t₀, I make the judgment (2), and I am right, because Fred has just fallen asleep at t₀. In w₂ at t₀, I have just fallen asleep, and Fred makes the judgment (3), which judgment is thus wrong. Now, in w₃ at t₀, I have exactly the internal properties that I do in w₁, while Fred has exactly the internal properties that he does in w₂. But now observe that there is a very good argument that it is not the case that both I and Fred make a judgment at t₀ in w₃. For if I make a judgment at t₀ in w₃, it is surely the judgment (2). And if Fred makes a judgment at t₀ in w₃, it is surely the judgment (3). Let p₁ and p₂ be the respective judgments—the propositions adjudged. Then, plainly, p₁ is true if and only if p₂ is false, and p₂ is true if and only if p₁ is true. But that is a contradiction.

But introspectively, surely, w₃ at t₀ is just like w₁ for me, and just like w₂ for Fred. In w₁, I do make a judgment, and in w₂, Fred makes a judgment. Therefore, if I fail to make a judgment at t₀ in w₃, then whether I make a judgment is not introspectible, nor is it a matter of my internal properties, as I have the same internal properties at t₀ in w₁ and w₃, and hence (1) is true. Likewise, if Fred fails to make a judgment at t₀ in w₃, (1) is true. Since at least one of us fails to make a judgment at t₀ in w₃, it follows that (1) is true.

Can a Cartesian get out of the argument? I think the following are the main controversial premises (all of them purporting to be a necessary truth): (a) all judgments are propositional, (b) all propositions are true or false, (c) introspection depends on one's internal states, (d) one's internal states do not depend on what is simultaneously happening far away, and (e) if I or Fred make a judgment in w₃ at t₀, the judgment is (2) or (3), respectively.

If we're not Cartesians, perhaps we will happily embrace (1). But I think (1) has an unfortunate result, namely that it opens up the possibility of a sceptical hypothesis far more radical than any Descartes considers: the hypothesis that perhaps I am not actually making any judgments, and that this is true all the way down (I do not actually judge myself to be thinking, nor do I actually judge myself to be judging to be thinking, etc.)

The easiest way out for the Cartesian might be to deny (a). But then the Cartesian still has the unfortunate result that one cannot introspect whether there is a proposition that one is judging. That will, probably, be rather uncomfortable for the Cartesian, and the resulting sceptical hypothesis will still be nasty.

I myself am attracted to really crazy solutions, and in particular I think that each of (c), (d) and (e) is such that one can non-absurdly deny it.

As for (c), it might be trivially true. If it's trivially true, then (1) is less interesting. What is interesting is not whether we can always know by "introspection" whether we are judging, but whether we can always tell directly whether we are judging. The view under consideration would be one on which one has a non-natural way of recognizing what is going on far away, but perhaps one is unable to express it. This is weird, but not absurd.

The radical externalist will deny (d). The theist who believes in divine simplicity will have reason to deny (d) in the case of God. And one might have a weird non-naturalist view on which (d) is denied in our case. Again, not absurd.

As for (e), I think its denial is perhaps the most interesting option for the Cartesian. Spinoza thought all our judgments were true. A consequence of his view was that sometimes we can be unwittingly behaving as if we were judging that p, while in fact we are not judging that q. We behave as if we believed the stick in the water is broken. But in fact, what we are judging, according to Spinoza, is that our bodies are broken-stickly affected. It is only in the case, Spinoza insists, where we have conclusive and infallible evidence of the stick's being broken that we are judging that the stick is broken. This is weird indeed. But it may well indeed be where certain Cartesian thoughts taken to their natural conclusion lead. I do not want to go all the way with Spinoza to say that all our judgments are true, though I think his view can be defended more effectively than one might at first suppose. Rather, I want to focus on Spinoza's insight that the content of one's judgments may be belied by the words with which one expresses them, even in the case of someone who has mastered the language.

Morality and the mind

There is a popular misconception that morality does not apply to the life of the mind. The misconception comes with an argument:

1. Morality applies only to actions.[note 1]
2. No thought is an action.
3. Therefore, morality does not apply to thoughts.

The conclusion manifestly follows from the premises, but premise (2) is false. Voluntary thoughts are actions, and it is only to voluntary thoughts that morality directly applies, just as it is only to voluntary bodily movements that morality directly applies (the person who "shoplifts" while sleepwalking has not done anything wrong because she has not performed any action strictly speaking).

Let me argue that voluntary thoughts are actions. First of all, they figure in deliberation in the same way bodily movements do. Thus, we may press buttons in order to attain some effect we are aiming at, but we might also think a thought in order to attain some planned effect. In both cases, the effect may be mental or physical—all four combinations of cause and effect types are possible. Thus, I may press a sequence of buttons on my computer in order to learn whether zebras can interbreed with horses: a physical action, ultimately leading to a mental effect. Or I may press a button to launch a rocket, a physical action leading to a physical effect. Or I can choose to meditate on an embarrassing episode in order to redden my cheeks (e.g., if I am on stage), a mental action leading to a physical effect. Or I can think about an aspect of one philosophical problem in order to shed light on another, a mental action leading to a mental effect. Thus, our actions can include thinkings as means, just as much as they can include physical movements as means.

This is particularly clear in the case of others. If I am the boss, I may solve one problem by asking a subordinate to think about it, and solve another problem by asking a different subordinate to make a prototype. The employees' thinking and physical movement can equally be a part of the boss's plans, and the employees can be paid for thinking and for moving. Typical jobs include both components.

In fact, we can turn the initial argument around to show that some thoughts are genuine actions:

4. Some thoughts fall in the scope of morality.
5. Only actions fall in the scope of morality.
6. Therefore, some thoughts are actions.

To see that (4) is true, consider the case of someone who promised to spend some time each day thinking about a particular person or issue. Clearly, thinking then can be the fulfilling of a promise, and hence something morally required.

Perhaps a part of the intuition behind thinking that thoughts are not subject to morality is an idea that thoughts are involuntary. But that is plainly false. The life of the mind is full of choices: Do I think about this aspect of the problem or that? In what way should I approach this difficulty? Should I first try to prove or to disprove this mathematical statement? Should I think about his faults or his merits or both when reflecting on what I should do in regard to him?

Or maybe the issue is simply that there are not a lot of clear rules about how one ought to think. But even if that were true, it would not follow that morality is inapplicable to thought. Morality is not always tied to clear rules—sometimes it is tied to the judgments of the prudent person. And anyway, there are a lot of clear rules about how one ought to think: the rules of logic, a deliberate failure to follow which is a wicked self-deception.

It's worth noting that just about all major ethical systems will make some thoughts fall under the scope of morality. Consequentialism: Thoughts have consequences. Some thoughts are more likely to make one help others, and other thoughts are less likely to do that. So some thoughts are wrong on a consequentialist system and others are right. Kantianism and Natural Law: Thoughts aimed at self-deception are wrong, since they are contrary to the nature of rationality (Kantianism) or the truth-directedness of our minds (Natural Law). Virtue Ethics: Clearly, spending all one's time thinking only about the wickedness of others is going to make one cynical, and is not what a virtuous person would do, so that such a habit of thought is immoral.