Category: Metaphysics

In 1985 Officer Julius Shulte responded to a missing child report placed by the then girlfriend of Vernon Madison. Madison snuck up on the officer and murdered him by shooting him in the back of the head. Madison was found guilty and sentenced to death.

As the wheels of justice slowly turned, Madison aged and developed dementia. He was scheduled to be executed in January 2018 but the execution was delayed and the Supreme Court heard his case. The defense’s argument was that Madison’s dementia prevents him from remembering the crime and his execution would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The prosecution seemed to agree that Madison could not recall the crime but argued he should be executed because he can understand that he will be put to death for being convicted of murder. In a 5-3 opinion, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment may permit executing a prisoner even they cannot remember committing their crime, but it may prohibit executing someone suffering from dementia or another disorder, rather than psychotic delusions. The Court also held that if a prisoner is unable to rationally understand the reasons for their sentence, the Eighth Amendment forbids their execution. While the legal issue has been settled (for now), there still remains philosophical questions.

While metaphysics might seem far removed from the courts, as John Locke noted, “in this personal identity is founded all the right and justice of reward and punishment…” The reason for this is obvious: it is only just to punish (or reward) the person who committed the misdeed (or laudable deed). Locke is talking about metaphysical personal identity: what it is to be a person and what it is to be the same person across time. As such, he is using the term technically and not in the casual sense in which terms like “person” and “man” or “woman” are used interchangeably.

In the normal pursuit of legal justice, the practical goal is to find the right person and there are no worries about the metaphysics of personal identity. But in unusual circumstances, the question can arise as to whether what seems to be the same person really is the same person. For example, one might wonder whether a person with severe dementia is the same metaphysical person who committed the long ago crime.  Appropriately enough, John Locke addressed this problem in considerable detail.

In discussing personal identity, Locke notes that being the same man (or woman) is not identical with being the same person. For him, being the same man is a matter of biological identity: it is the same life of the body through which flows a river of matter over the years. Being the same person is having the same consciousness. Locke seems to take consciousness to be awareness and memory. In any case, he hinges identity on memory such that if memory is irretrievably lost, then the identity is broken. For example, if I lose the memory of running a 5K back in 1985, then I would not be the same person as the person who ran that 5K. I am certainly a slower person, even if I am the same person. If a loss of memory does entail a loss of personal identity, then perhaps a “memory defense” could be used: a person who cannot remember a crime is not the person who committed the crime.

Locke does consider the use of the memory defense in court and addresses this challenge with practical epistemology. If the court can establish that the same man (biological identity) but the defendant cannot establish that they have permanently lost the memory of the misdeed, then the matter will be “proved against them” and they should be found guilty. Locke does remark that in the afterlife, God will know the fact of the matter and punish (or reward) appropriately. However, if it can be established that the person does not remember what the man (or woman) did, then they would not be the same person as that man (or woman). For Locke punishing a different person for what the same man did would be unjust.

While there is the practical matter of knowing whether a person has forgotten, this seemed to have been established in the Madison case. While people can lie about their memory, dementia seems impossible to fake, as there are objective medical tests for the condition. As such, concerns about deception can be set aside and the question remains as to whether the person who committed the crime is still present to be executed. On Locke’s theory he would not—the memories that would forge the chain of identity have been devoured by the demons of dementia.

There are, of course, many other theories of personal identity to choose from. For example, one could go with the view that the same soul makes the same person. One must simply find a way to identify souls to make this work. There are other options to pull from the long history of philosophy. It is also worth considering various justifications for punishment in this context.

Punishment is typically justified in terms of rehabilitation, retribution, and deterrence. While rehabilitation might be possible in the afterlife, execution cannot rehabilitate a person for the obvious reason that it kills them. While the deterrence value of execution has failed to deter the person to be executed, it could be argued that it will deter others—which is a matter of debate. It could be argued that executing a person with dementia will have deterrent value. In fact, it could be contended that showing that the state is willing to kill even people with dementia would make the state even more terrifying. For the deterrence justification, the metaphysical identity of the person does not seem to matter. What matters is that the punishment would deter others, which is essentially a utilitarian argument.

The retribution justification takes us back to personal identity: retribution is only just if it is retribution against the person who committed the crime. It could be argued that retribution only requires retribution against the same man (or woman) because matters of metaphysics are too fuzzy for such important matters. One could also use the retribution justification by advancing another theory of personal identity. For example, at one point David Hume argues that a person is a bundle of perceptions united by a causal chain (rather like how a nation has its identity). On his view, memory discovers identity but (unlike for Locke) it is not the basis of identity. Hume explicitly makes the point that a person can forget and still be the same person; so, Madison could still be the same person who committed the crime on Hume’s account. However, Hume closes his discussion on personal identity in frustration: he notes that the connections can become so tenuous and frayed that one cannot really say if it is the same person or not. This would seem to apply in cases of dementia and hence Madison might not be the same person, even in Hume’s view.

This view could be countered by arguing that it is the same person regardless of the deterioration of mental states. One approach, as noted above, is to go with the soul as the basis of personal identity or make an intuition argument by asking “who else could it be but him?” One could, of course, also take the pragmatic approach and set aside worries of identity and just embrace what the court decided. Vernon Madison was not executed but died on February 22, 2020.

 

As noted in the previous essay, it can be argued that the likeness of a dead celebrity is a commodity that and used as the new owner sees fit. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity would be analogous to their works (such as films or music) and its financial exploitation would be no more problematic than selling movies featuring actors who are now dead but were alive during the filming. This view can be countered by arguing that there is a morally relevant difference between putting a re-animation of a celebrity in a new movie and selling movies they starred in while alive.

As with any analogy, one way to counter this argument is to find a relevant difference that weakens the comparison. One relevant difference is that the celebrity (presumably) consented to participate in their past works, but they did not consent for the use of their re-animation. If the celebrity did not consent to the past works or did consent to being re-animated, then things would be different. Assuming the celebrity did not agree to being re-animated, then their re-animation is being “forced” to create new performances without the agreement of the person, which raises moral concerns.

Another, more interesting, relevant difference is that the re-animation can be seen as a very basic virtual person. While current re-animations lack the qualities required to be a person, this can  be used as the foundation for a moral argument against the creation and exploitation of re-animations. Before presenting that argument, I will consider arguments that focus on the actual person that was (or perhaps is) the celebrity.

One approach is to argue that a celebrity has rights after death and their re-animation cannot be used in this manner without their permission. Since they are dead, their permission cannot be given and hence the re-animation is morally wrong because they would exploit the celebrity without their consent.

But, if the celebrity does not exist after death, then they would seem to lack moral status (since nothing cannot have a moral status) and hence cannot be wronged. Since they no longer exist to have rights, the owner of the likeness is free to exploit it—even with a re-animation,

The obvious problem is that there is no definite proof for or against an afterlife, although people do often have faith in its existence (or non-existence). So, basing the rights of the dead on their continued existence would require metaphysical speculation. But denying the dead rights based on the metaphysical assumption they do not exist would also be problematic for it would also require confidence in an area where knowledge is lacking. As such, it would be preferable to avoid basing the ethics of the matter on metaphysical speculation.

One approach that does not require that the dead have any moral status of their own is to argue that people should show respect to the person that was by not exploiting them via re-animation. Re-animating a dead person and sending it out to perform without their consent is, as noted in the first essay, a bit like using Animate Dead to create a zombie from the remains of a dead person. This is not a good thing to do and, by analogy, animating a technological zombie would seem morally dubious at best. For those who like their analogies free of D&D, one could draw an analogy to desecrating a corpse or gravesite: even though a dead person can no longer be harmed, it is still something that should not be done.

A final approach is to build on the idea that while the re-animation is clearly not a person, it can be seen as a simplistic virtual person and perhaps this is enough to make this action wrong. I will address this argument in the final essay of the series.

 

While science fiction has intelligent trees and fantasy has its ents and dryads, the idea of trees thinking has often been used to mock philosophers. But scientists now seriously consider the question of whether trees have mental states, such as feelings. This scientific acceptance allows a non-mocking philosophical discussion of the issue.

From a philosophical standpoint, the issue is whether a tree can have a mind. Unfortunately, philosophers do not agree on the nature of the mind. I will consider whether some of the main theories of mind would allow for thinking trees. There are a variety of philosophic theories which attempt to explain the mind. Some of the better-known ones include identity theory, substance dualism, property dualism and functionalism. The implications of each will be considered in turn.

Identity theory is a materialist theory of mind; the view that the mind is composed of matter. Identity theorists assert each mental state is identical to a state of the central nervous system. So, the mind is the central nervous system and its states. Given identity theory, trees cannot think. This is because they lack a central nervous system of the sort humans possess. But this could be criticized as human-centric, and it could be argued that a tree can have mental states that are identical to the relevant physical states of its body.

Substance dualists claim reality contains two fundamental types of substances: material and immaterial. On this view, which was embraced by Descartes, the mind is an immaterial substance which has a causal relation with its body. This mysterious relation enables the mind to control and receive information from the body and allows the body to affect the mind. On this view, a tree could have a mind. A tree having an incorporeal mind connected to its material shell is no more mysterious that a human having an incorporeal mind. It is also no less mysterious. The popular version of substance dualism is that a person is their soul and this soul brings life to the body. A tree having a soul is also no more (or less) mysterious than a human having a soul.

A second type of dualism is property dualism: the mind and body are not distinct substances. Instead, the mind is made up of mental properties that are not identical with physical properties. For example, the property of being the feeling of sadness could not be reduced to a physical property of the brain, such as the firing of certain neurons. So, the mind and body are distinct, but not different substances.

This sort of dualism would allow for trees to think. This is because the theory does not require the physical properties of the body be the same properties that make up the human nervous system. All that would be needed is the right sort of mental and physical properties. Again, that trees could have this metaphysical makeup is no stranger than the belief that humans do.

The last view to be considered is functionalism. There are many varieties of functionalism, but they all have a common foundation: mental states are defined in functional terms. A functional definition of a mental state defines that mental state in terms of its role/function in a mental system of inputs and outputs. To illustrate, a mental state, such as being in pain, is defined in terms of the causal relations it has to external influences on the body, other mental states, and bodily behavior.

Functionalism is usually taken to be a materialist view of the mind because the functional systems are supposed to be physical systems. While identity theory and functionalism are both materialist theories, they differ in a critical way. For identity theorists, each mental state, such as being sad, is identical to a physical state, such as the state of neurons in a specific part of the brain. For two mental states to be the same, the physical states must be identical. So, if mental states are states of neurons in a certain part of the human nervous system, then anything that lacks this sort of biological nervous cannot have a mind.

The functionalist has a different view: a mental state, such as feeling sad, is not defined in terms of a physical state. Instead, while functionalists believe each mental state is some physical state, for two mental states to be the same they need only be functionally identical.  So, if mental states are defined functionally, then anything that can exhibit these functions can have a mind. While trees obviously lack the brain and nervous system of a human, they could have physical systems that function in analogous ways. To use an analogy, different computer hardware can run the same programs. For example, this essay can be read using on a wide variety of hardware platforms including an Android phone, an Xbox One and perhaps even an old Macintosh with a Motorola chip. 

While the issue of whether trees do think or not remains, this essay has addressed the issue of whether they could have minds within the context of modern philosophy of mind. If dualism, property dualism or functionalism is correct, then trees could have minds and think. However, if identity theory is correct, then trees cannot think. Unless, of course, a tree philosopher has an identity theory for trees.

 

Imagine a twenty-sided die (a d20 as it is known to gamers) being rolled. In the ideal the die has a 1 in 20 chance of rolling a 20 (or any number). It is natural to think of the die as being a locus of chance, a random number generator whose roll cannot be predicted. While this is an appealing view of dice, there is a question about what random chance amounts to.

One way to look at the matter is that if a d20 is rolled 20 times, then one of those rolls will be a 20. Obviously enough, this is not true. As any gamer will tell you, the number of 20s rolled while rolling 20 times varies. This can be explained by the fact that dice are imperfect and roll some numbers more than others. There are also the influences of the roller, the surface on which the die lands and so on. As such, a d20 is not a perfect random number generator. But imagine there could be a perfect d20 rolled under perfect conditions. What would occur?

One possibility is that each number would come up within the 20 rolls, albeit at random. As such, every 20 rolls would guarantee a 20 (and only one 20), thus accounting for the 1 in 20 chances of rolling a 20. This seems problematic. There is the obvious question of what would ensure that each of the twenty numbers were rolled once (and only once). Then again, that this would occur is only a little weirder than the idea of chance itself.

But a small number of random events (such as rolling a d20 only twenty times) will deviate from what probability dictates. It is also well-established that as the number of rolls increases, the closer the outcomes will match the expected results. This principle is known as the law of large numbers. As such, getting three 20s or no 20s in a series of 20 rolls would not be surprising. But as the number of rolls increases, the closer the results will be to the expected 1 in 20 outcomes for each number. So, the 1 in 20 odds of getting a 20 with a d20 does not seem to mean that 20 rolls will guarantee one and only one 20, it means that with enough rolls about 1 in 20 of all the rolls will be 20s. This does not say much about how chance works beyond noting that chance seems to play out “correctly” over large numbers.

One way to look at this is that if there were an infinite number of d20 rolls, then 5% of the infinite number of rolls would be 20s. One might wonder what 5% of infinity would be; would it not be infinite as well? Since infinity is such a mess, a more manageable approach would be to use the largest finite number (which presumably has its own problems) and note that 5% of that number of d20 rolls would be 20s.

Another approach would be that the 1 in 20 chance means that if all 1 in 20 chance events were formed into sets of 20, sets could be made from all the events that would have one occurrence each of the 1 in 20 events. Using dice as an example, if all the d20 rolls in the universe were known (perhaps by God) and collected into sets of numbers, they could be dived up into sets of twenty with each number in each set. So, while my 20 rolls would not guarantee a 20, there would be one 20 out of every 20 rolls in the universe. There is still the question of how this would work. One possibility is that random events are not random and this ensures the proper distribution of events such as dice rolls.

It could be claimed that chance is a bare fact, that a perfect d20 rolled in perfect conditions would have a 1 in 20 chance of producing a specific number. On this view, the law of large numbers might fail. If chance were real, it would not be impossible for results to be radically different than predicted. That is, there could be an infinite number of rolls of a perfect d20 with no 20 ever being rolled. One could even imagine that since a 1 can be rolled on any roll, someone could roll an infinite number of consecutive 1s. Intuitively this seems impossible. It is natural to think that in an infinity every possibility must occur (and perhaps do so perfectly in accord with the probability). But this would only be a necessity if chance worked a certain way, perhaps that for every 20 rolls in the universe there must be one of each result. Then again, infinity is a magical number, so perhaps this guarantee is part of the magic.

While true love is the subject of many tales, its metaphysical foundation is rarely addressed. A way to explore its metaphysics is by using possible worlds. Imagine, if you will, a bereaved lover seeking to replace their lost love by finding an exact counterpart in another world. This raises the issue of whether it is rational to love the metaphysical counterpart of someone you love. I will argue that This is as rational as loving the original person by using appeals to intuitions and analogies. In the interest of fairness, I will also consider and refute the transcendent argument for true love.

The metaphysics of the show Rick & Morty includes the existence of an infinite number of alternative worlds, each of which with its own Rick and Morty. The Rick and the Morty that are, one assumes, the actual stars of the show have been forced to abandon their original reality and various replacement realities. However, they always end up living with “their” family (Beth, Summer and sometimes Jerry). While Rick claims not to care, he loves “his” daughter Beth and granddaughter Summer. However, as he and Morty t know, the Beth and Summer of their adopted world are not their Beth and Summer. They are the daughter and granddaughter of the Rick of that world. A Rick who is (usually) dead.

CW’s The Flash show also makes use of the multiple world plot device as well, one that dates to the early days of comics. The DC comic universe features a multitude of different earths, most notably Earth 1 and Earth 2. Earth 2 was the home of the original Batman, Superman and other, it was used to maintain the timeline in which, for example, Superman was on earth in the 1930s. In a series of episodes of the TV show The Flash, Barry Allen (the Flash) travelled to Earth 2 and met counterparts of people he knew and loved on his world, such as his beloved Iris. On Earth 2, the non-Flash Barry Allen 2 was married to Iris and Barry Allen 1 (from Earth 1) pretended to be Barry Allen 2 and was obsessed with her and her father, despite being told the people of Earth 2 were not the same people as those of Earth 1.

While people tend to feel for no rational reason, there is an interesting question as to whether it makes sense to love someone because they are the counterpart of someone you love. While this would be an interesting matter for psychology, the metaphysical aspect of this case is a question of whether the counterparts are such that it is rational to love or care about them because they are metaphysical counterparts of someone you love or care about.

For the sake of the discussion that follows, consider the following sci-fi scenario: Sam and Kelly met in graduate school, fell madly in love and were married shortly after their graduation. They were both hired by Kalikrates Dimensional, a startup dedicated to developing portals to other dimensions.

During an experiment, Sam was pulled into the death blender dimension and ejected as a human smoothie. Unfortunately, he had neglected to keep up his premiums with Life Ensurance and had no personality backup to be loaded into a clone body. Distraught, Kelly considered cloning him anyway, but decided that without his memories and personality, it would not be Sam.

Driven by her loss, she developed a much safer portal system and then developed an Indexer that would scan and index the possible worlds. She programmed the Indexer to find a world just like her own, but where “she” rather than “Sam” would die in the portal accident. The Indexer labeled this world Earth 35765. Timing it perfectly, she popped through her portal just as the Kelly of 35765 would have returned, had she not been blended. The Kelly 35765 smoothie ended up in Kelly 1’s world, while Kelly 1 took over her life. Kelly 1 might have been happy with Sam 35765, but she was murdered and replaced a year later by the bereaved and insane Kelly 45765. Given this scenario, would it be rational for Kelly 1 to love Sam 35765?

One way to look at this matter is to use an analogy to counterparts in this world. To be specific, there are unrelated people who look exactly like other people in this world. And there are also identical twins. While a person might be fooled by a twin or look-alike, they would probably not love them simply because they looked like someone they loved. The same can be applied to counterparts in other worlds: they look like someone you love, but they are not the one you love.

I agree that it would be irrational to love someone simply because they looked like someone one already loves. After all, the look-alike could be utterly horrible or at least utterly incompatible. As such, it would be foolish to love such a twin solely based on appearance. That sort of shallow love would be irrational even in this world. But certainly possible.

However, it can be rational to love a counterpart that exactly resembles the original. Such a counterpart could have the qualities that would provide a rational foundation for love. For example, if Kelly 1 loved Sam 1 because of his personality, values, laughter, and such, then if Sam 35765 had the same qualities, then it would make sense for Kelly 1 to love him. After all, he has the same qualities. To use an analogy, if Kelly loves Cherry Breeze pie because of its qualities, then she is obviously not limited to loving the first Cherry Breeze pie she had and any adequately similar Cherry Breeze pie would suffice.

Now imagine that there was one Cherry Breeze pie that Kelly loved above all others and that this pie could be duplicated to such a degree that every aspect of the pie would be indistinguishable from her most beloved pie. In this case, Kelly would love that exactly resembling pie as much as the original.

There is the concern that there would be a fundamental difference between any counterpart and the original; namely that there would be no history or relationship with the counterpart. So, while Kelly 1 might love the qualities of Sam 35765, she has never done anything with him and thus has no history or relationship with him. She could develop a history and relationship over time, but that would be falling in love with a new person. While it is true that Kelly 1 has no past relationship with Sam 35765, she selected the world in which Kelly 35765 and Sam 35765 did everything that Kelly 1 and Sam 1 did and there would be no distinguishable difference. Kelly 1 knows everything that happened between the other Kelly and Sam and will act exactly as Kelly 1 would have.

Going back to the pie analogy, while Kelly would have no established relationship with the new pie, the fact that it is (by hypothesis) exactly like the original pie in every way (other than being new) would intuitively entail that Kelly would love the new pie as much as the original. Everything discernable about the relationships with the pies would be the same other than their bare difference. If Kelly declared that she loved the original but did not care for the new pie, her claim would seem to be utterly unfounded for she could point to no qualitative difference that would warrant her assertion.

It could even be contended that, in a way, Kelly does have a relationship with the pie. Since it is exactly like the original pie, it would fit seamlessly into the relationship she had with the original pie. As such, it would be rational to love the exact counterpart of someone one loves.

Since I made the error of referencing true love, I opened the portal to an obvious objection to my position. One basic element of true love is that one person (Kelly 1) loves another (Sam 1) and not that person’s qualities. This is because qualities change and can be possessed by others. Intuitively, true love will not fade and cannot be transferred to another person that simply has the same qualities.

For example, if Kelly loves Sam because of his brilliance and humor, then she would love someone else who had the same brilliance and humor. This sort of interchangeable love is not true love. If what is loved is not the qualities of a person, there is the question of what this might be.  What is wanted is something “beneath” all the qualities that makes the person the person they are and distinguished them from all other things. Fortunately, philosophy has just the thing: the metaphysical self. This, as should come as no surprise, takes the discussion into the realm of Kantian philosophy.

Kant split the world into noumena and phenomena. The phenomena are the things as they appear to us. This is what we experience-such how good a person looks in a swimsuit. We can have empirical knowledge of such things. The noumena are the things in themselves. Kant claimed the noumena cannot be known because they are beyond our experience.

On Kant’s view, it would be sensible to stick with the phenomena and not speculate about the noumena. But Kant claims that cannot resist the lure of the transcendent illusions of metaphysics.

The metaphysical self is the illusion that is needed here. Like David Hume, Kant thinks we have no impression of the metaphysical self. What we do have are impressions, via introspection, of the empirical self. The inner eye never sees that metaphysical self; it just encounters things like feelings and thoughts.

Unlike Hume, Kant argues that we must think of our experiences as if they occur within a unified self. This provides a frame of reference for thought and it is thus useful to accept a metaphysical self. Since it is useful and we need the metaphysical self to make sense of things, Kant concludes that we should accept it. While Kant did not take the step of arguing for true love, I will do this now.

Applying his method to true love, true love would be impossible without the metaphysical self. This makes it a necessary condition for true love. The metaphysical self is beyond the realm of scientific proof. However, true love is irresistible because it seems critical for our happiness and our conception of ourselves. As such, while Kelly 1 might feel that she loves Sam 35756, this would be irrational: Sam 35756 is not her true love. As would be imagined, in a tragically poignant Twilight Zone style sci-fi story, she would come to realize this. While true love is appealing, the objection can be countered. This should not be surprising, since the argument itself acknowledges that it is appealing to an illusion. But, of course, what is needed is a substantive reply.

While the idea of a metaphysical self behind all the qualities sounds fancy, it is merely a repainted bare particular. It is bare because it does not have any qualities of its own beneath all the qualities that it possesses. It is a particular because there is only one of each (and each one can only be in one location at a time). In the ideal love of the objection, one loves the bare particularity of another as opposed to qualities that can change or be duplicated.

Fortunately for my position, there is a serious problem with this notion of love. When we interact with the world we interact with various qualities. For example, Kelly can see Sam’s quirky smile and experience his keen intelligence. But it seems impossible for her to be aware of his bare particularity. Since it has no qualities there would be nothing to experience. It would  be impossible for Kelly to be aware of Sam’s bare particularity to love him. As such, love must be about detectable qualities.

While this is less romantic than the idea of metaphysical true love, it is more realistic and intuitively appealing. When one person talks about why they love another, they talk about the qualities of the person. Many dating app make claim to assess people for various qualities to us them to find compatibility and love. Scientists also talk about the emotion of love as being driven by genes in search of suitable genes to combine with. Given this evidence, it seems reasonable to conclude that when Kelly loves Sam, she loves his qualities. As such, if it was rational for Kelly 1 to love Sam 1, then it is just as rational for Kelly 1 to love Same 35756. There is, after all, no discernible difference between the Sams. Thus, love is not only possible, but also possible across worlds.

 

Cherry Breeze Pie Recipe

Ingredients

 

Crust

1/4 cup sugar

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1/3 cup butter or margarine — melted

or 1 pre-made graham cracker crust

 

Filling

1 package cream cheese — (8 ounces)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup lemon juice

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 can cherry pie filling — (1 pound, 5 ounces)

 

Directions

  1. Cook butter and sugar in saucepan over medium heat until mixture boils. Remove from heat and mix in graham cracker crumbs. Press mixture evenly and firmly into 9-inch pie plate to form a crust. Chill. (Or just buy a pre-made crust).

 

  1. Beat cream cheese until smooth. Gradually mix in sweetened condensed milk, stir in lemon juice and vanilla. Spread in crust. Refrigerate 3-4 hours or until firm.

 

  1. Top with chilled cherry pie filling. To remove pie pieces easily, place hot wet towel around sides and bottom of pan before cutting.

As discussed in the previous essays, Trump and some of his followers claimed that God intervened to save Trump from being killed. If this is true, then it would follow that God decided to let one person die and two others get critically injured when He could have intervened. This raises the classic problem of evil, a stock Atheism 101 argument.

The simple version of the argument is that if God is all good, all powerful and all knowing, then there should be no evil. But there is evil, so God does not exist. A slightly more sophisticated version concludes that either God does not exist, or He is lacking in at least one of those three attributes. Much more sophisticated versions consider, in depth, how to reconcile God’s qualities with the existence of evil. I will look at each of these three attributes and how they might be reconciled with evil.

Philosophers usually present God as being omnipotent, but there is debate about what it means to be all powerful. The famous question of whether God can create a rock He cannot lift is part of this discussion. Some philosophers, the Intellectualists, claim that God’s intellect is his primary quality and that He either will not or cannot do the impossible. On this view, God can do anything that is possible, but His omnipotence is thus limited.  For example, God cannot make a triangle that has 4 sides. Those accepting this view often try to use this logical limit to solve the problem of evil. For example, God cannot create a perfect world and hence the world must be imperfect. One version of this reasoning points out that if God created a second perfect being, that being would also be God. But there cannot be two perfect beings (because each being would lack what the other has and for various other reasons) and this is why there can only be one God and why the world must be imperfect. On this view, evil (imperfection) is a necessary part of the world and that is why God saved Trump but lets other people die. The usual response to this is to point out that the world is worse than imperfect, and God could make things better while the world remained imperfect.

People also try to explain evil by limiting God’s powers in other ways. A classic move is to embrace a form of polytheism and attribute evil to the Devil. But this requires accepting that God and the Devil are comparable in power or coming up with some explanation as to why God lets the Devil cause evil. Another classic gambit is to invoke free will and use that to explain human caused evil. Free will limits God’s power and that is how evil can occur. The challenge is explaining how free will works and then explaining why God could not allow free will but mitigate the evil it is alleged to cause. Others also speak of God’s plan; that the evil that occurs is necessary for His plan. This also postulates a limit on God’s power, since He cannot reach His goal without allowing evil.

 Reducing God’s power in various ways to explain evil is an option that can solve the problem of evil, but it comes with the obvious cost of diminishing God. On this view, God could save Trump, but because of whatever limits His omnipotence, He could not have prevented the other people from being shot.

There are other philosophers, the Voluntarists, who claim that God’s will is supreme and He can will anything, even the impossible. This means the logically impossible and not just things that are very difficult. For example, God could will that triangles have 4 sides while still being triangle. It is not that we would call squares triangles, it is that the necessarily three-sided figure would be four-sided but still a triangle. He could also make all contradictions true and all tautologies false. He could make it so that if A is bigger than B and B is bigger than C, then A is smaller than C. None of this makes any sense to our mortal minds, but a God that can do the impossible can do all that and infinitely more impossible things. It might initially seem that being a Voluntarist would make it more difficult to solve the problem of evil. After all, the Voluntarist would have to accept that God could create a perfect world. But one consequence of God being all powerful in this sense is that He also defines morality, so He can make anything good or evil, even if it made no sense to us. This moral view is called divine command theory, on this view what God commands is good and what He forbids is evil. People who like divine command theory tend to think that God commands what they themselves want and forbids what they dislike, but that is not how the theory works. God could, at any moment, chose anything to be good or bad and He can obviously lie about it. So, for all we know, God just decided that being a woke transgender vegan advocate of renewable energy is the very best thing to be. Or maybe it was that way all along. Given that God can change logic and truth at will, our reason is useless in sorting any of this out. Or anything at all, since God’s will also applies to physics, chemistry and so on.  On the plus side, the problem of evil is solved: whatever God wills is good, so everything that happens is good. On the minus side, reason is useless. On this view, God saved Trump, killed one person and let two people be critically injured. But maybe this is all good? We do not and cannot know. While most thinkers focus on God’s power, His knowledge can also be relevant to the problem.

As with God being all powerful, philosophers debate what it means for God to be all knowing. Does this mean that God has all possible knowledge or that He even has impossible knowledge? In terms of the problem of evil, it could be argued that evil occurs because God does not know that it is occurring. On this view, perhaps God suddenly knew that Trump was in danger and acted just in time to save him. As might be guessed, free will could also figure in here: because humans have free will, God does not know what we might do. So, God did not know that the shooter was going to shoot until he started shooting. God will also need to require time to gain knowledge and act on it, otherwise He could just intervene instantly, which would raise the question of why He did not act. While claiming that God has epistemic limitation would explain evil, it does create its own problems in terms of diminishing God and making prophecy more difficult to explain.

The easiest solution to the problem of evil is to abandon the idea that God is all good. The two usual options are to simply reject that God is all good or to argue that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong. Rejecting that God is all good, that evil also comes from God, solves the problem. Evil exists because God is not all good. For Trump’s followers, God did a good thing in saving Trump but letting the other people get shot is not a problem because God does or allows evil as well.

If it is argued that our conceptions of good and evil are wrong, then the problem is solved because we are wrong about there being any evil. On this view, everything that happens is good, but we might not realize this. This is sometimes explained in terms of God’s plan (which ties back to limiting God’s power) or the big picture argument. The big picture argument often uses an analogy to looking at a beautiful painting by pressing it against your face. It will look awful. But if you move back from the painting, you will see its beauty. So, while the person dying at Trump’s event seems bad, it would be seen as good once one sees the big picture. This view might also involve accepting that God has a limit on His power since His big picture must apparently be made with a lot of events that seem evil up close. This approach is appealing to many since it explains away any evil that occurs, which is the solution most look for.

 

Trump and some of his followers are claiming that he survived the shooting because of divine intervention. Some even claim that this proves he is chosen by God. In the previous essay I looked at the metaphysics of God’s causal relation with the world in general terms. In this essay, I will focus on the metaphysics of God protecting chosen people.

For some, divine protection is described in terms of the armor of God. While this is not literal magical armor (like +3 plate), it is an appealing way to describe divine protection. While there are various theological views on this matter, my concern is with the metaphysics of how God’s armor might protect those chosen to wear it, such as Trump (according to some of his followers). In more general terms, this is an exploration of divine protection.

Throughout human history people have told stories of gods offering supernatural protection to mortals. A well-known example is when the goddess Thetis magically protected her son Achilles. This protection was imperfect, and Achilles was slain at the battle of Troy. Prior to the concept of a perfect monotheistic God, the gods of the polytheistic faiths were usually limited in their powers and subject to opposition from other supernatural beings (and even mortals). They were not omniscient or omnipotent and they tended to be portrayed as very powerful human-like beings, complete with human flaws. So, if a god protected a mortal (such as a child, spouse or favored one) this protection could be overcome or defeated, and it would make sense for a protected mortal to still be cautious. But things are rather different with God.

On the usual philosophical conception of God, God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent. He is sometimes presented as having character defects, such as being jealous or wrathful (although some people see these as virtues and not vices). But being all knowing, God would be aware of any threat to those He has chosen to protect. Being all powerful, there is no threat that God could not neutralize. Being all good, God would want to protect His chosen from evil. As such, if Trump is wearing God’s armor, then he would seem to be immune to all harm. After all, God knows of every threat to Trump and can prevent them all. He presumably also wants to prevent them, given that it is claimed that He intervened to save Trump because Trump is chosen, and God has a purpose for him. Conveniently, this provides the basis for an empirical test for whether Trump is chosen or whether God has a purpose for him that will ensure divine protection. If Trump has God’s protection, then Trump should be unkillable until he fulfils God’s purpose. Since God is all powerful, Trump could open the door of his jet at 10,000 feet and leap out or crash it into a mountain and be fine. He could go into the lion exhibit at a zoo and hug the lions and they would be like kittens. He could drink a gallon of bleach and it would be like drinking Diet Coke and so on. After all, keeping Trump alive through all this would not even be inconvenient for an omnipotent being. But, of course, Trump will do none of these things and his followers would probably be angry at my proposed test.

As criticisms, some might say that to put divine protection to the test would be arrogant and disrespectful to God. It would be like Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane doing something intentionally dangerous to prove that Superman is protecting them. While this does have some appeal, it does seem to be a way of avoiding testing the claim of God’s protection under the pretense of it being disrespectful. After all, God presumably would not get pissed off and just decide to let Trump die if Trump has a purpose to God and is Chosen. But maybe God would do just that, so those protected by God must take care to remain protected. That is, God could decide to withdraw His protection if He is disrespected. But if God could pick a new chosen one and replace Trump, then Trump is not very special. Fortunately, there are tests that do not require that Trump try to harm himself.

If Trump is protected by God’s armor and God will, for example, deflect bullets away from him, then Trump does not need mortal protectors. If Superman is guarding Lois Lane, she does not need a cop with a gun to protect her. If Trump and his followers truly believe that God is protecting Trump, then he should forgo the protection of the Secret Service and law enforcement. These mortals are not all knowing or all powerful, so they provide infinitely inferior protection. And adding them to God’s armor would do nothing and they cannot make Trump any safer. So, he could save a lot of taxpayer money and forgo the protection.

Trump’s followers could argue that this would, once again, be arrogant and disrespectful to God. But that is absurd, since insisting on the protection of mortals when one has divine protection would be what would insult God. Trump’s followers might try to argue that God’s protection is fallible, which would require accepting a limited and fallible God. They could also argue that someone trying to harm Trump might be aided by the devil and hence Trump needs the mortal protection. There are two obvious problems with the devil gambit. One is that the devil cannot do anything that God does not allow, unless God is not omniscient (so the devil can be sneaky) or not omnipotent (so the devil can overpower God). The other is that if the devil can beat God, he can easily beat any mortal guardians of Trump. So, he and his followers face the dilemma of rejecting protection or admitting that God’s protection is not adequate.

Trump and his followers do have one good argument they could use, and this is to argue that the protection needs to be present not for Trump but for all the unfortunate souls who God does not care about. Those people can, as we have seen, be wounded or killed and God will not do anything to save them. While this does have some appeal, this would entail that the approach at Trump events would need to change; they should ignore any threats aimed directly at Trump and focus entirely on protecting everyone else. In fact, it would be best for Trump to be on stage alone, with clear paths in front of and behind him. As God will save Trump, this will make it less likely that divinely deflected bullets will kill or injure bystanders.

One might be wondering what his followers would think if Trump was killed. I suspect that it would be claimed that this was God’s plan and purpose, perhaps to allow J.D. Vance to become president. From a practical standpoint, there is probably nothing that would disprove beliefs about God’s plans, who He has chosen or what His purpose might be. Since Trump survived the attack (by someone believed to have really bad aim), this was attributed to divine intervention. If Trump gets killed or dies, this would presumably also be attributed to God’s plan.

 

Trump and some of his followers are claiming that he survived the shooting because of divine intervention. Some of his followers are also taking this as evidence that God has chosen him. In the previous essay in this series about the epistemic issue, I argued that there is no evidence of divine intervention. The gist of this argument is that explaining Trump’s survival does not require a divine element because the fact that shooters can miss their target suffices. I now turn to the metaphysics of divine intervention.

Many philosophers have attempted to discern the nature of God and how He interacts with the world. Some, like Spinoza, claim that there is no chance and no choice in the world. Each event that occurs must occur and could not be otherwise. God does what He does because He is what He is and He cannot do otherwise. On this sort of view the world is deterministic.

While Leibniz rejects Spinoza’s pantheism (that everything is God and God is everything), he also embraces a metaphysics devoid of chance. On his view, God chooses to create the best of all possible worlds because He is good. He knows which world is best and has the power to make it so. God also decides what people will exist in this best of all possible worlds. Interestingly, everything a person will think, feel, do and experience is already part of them—their existence will unfold in accord with this. After all, this must unfold as the best of all possible worlds.

While a somewhat crude analogy, all things and people are running their pre-written scripts, and they operate without chance or choice. On these sorts of deterministic (or pre-determined) views, then no divine intervention was needed to save Trump. There was no more chance of him dying than there is for a triangle to have twelve sides. It can, of course, be argued that God did save Trump. On this view, that would be true, but there would be nothing special about Trump in this regard since God is the cause of everything that occurs. So, he “saved” Trump, but also killed Corey Comperatore. Leibniz would not say that Trump living and Corey Comperatore dying were the best individual outcomes, since he argues that the best of all possible worlds is different from a world in which everything is the best. As such, Trump living is part of the best of all possible worlds, but it must be noted that Hitler, Stalin, earthquakes, tuberculosis, cancer and mosquitoes are also part of the best of all possible worlds. The point is that just because something occurred or exists in the best of all possible worlds it does not follow that it is therefore the best. This causal model of the world does entail that whatever occurs is caused by God. While this entails that God is the cause of all that is good, it also seems to entail He is on the hook for all the evil, which I’ll discuss in that essay.

George Berkeley, in addition to owning slaves, tried to defeat the atheists and deists with his metaphysics. One of his concerns about deism is that it does not give God much of a role in the world. On one form of deism, God is seen as creating a clockwork world and then walking away. On this sort of view, while God created the world in which Trump survived, God did not intervene to save Trump; it was just the machinery of reality operating like clockwork. Berkeley worried that this conception of God was a threat to piety and morality, so he had a different notion of God.

Berkeley’s conception of God is that He must be constantly active in the world. Rather than having a clockwork world that takes care of itself, Berkeley’s world is “manually operated” by God. For him, God “watches over our conduct and takes care of our minutest actions and designs” and “directs incessantly in a most evident and sensible manner.” Berkely also holds that this conception of God allows for miracles to be easily explained: all natural events are directly caused by God so He can deviate from the usual order as He wills, which is something Spinoza and Leibniz reject.

On Berkeley’s conception of God, then God did save Trump. But this conception of God entails that God has also saved everyone in every situation in which they did not die, which would make Trump just one among billions and nothing special. But one could argue, Trump not dying was a miracle because it deviated “from the usual order.” The challenge would be to prove this deviation, since people surviving being shot at because the shooter fails to score a fatal hit happens relatively often. One the downside, while this view does allow one to argue that God saved Trump, this view also entails that God killed everyone who has died or at least let them die. So, to claim that God saved Trump is to claim that God killed Corey Comperatore. While Berkeley believed that his “hands on” God solved various problems for his theory, this conception of God leads into the problem of evil. After all, God could have saved everyone at the Trump event but did not.

Berkeley’s conception of God seems to be close to how those who claim God saved Trump might think of God. After all, their claim is that God had to intervene to save Trump and that it was a miracle because, one must infer, God had to “deviate from the usual order.” This seems to entail that God chose to leave the “usual order” in place for everyone else and hence chose to allow one person to die and others to be badly injured. This entails that God could always intervene, but usually choses to not do so. This leads to the moral aspect of the issue, which I will examine in the  essay on the problem of evil

 

While philosophers and religious thinkers have taken past lives seriously, it is usually assumed that serious scientists are happy to leave them to it. But the University of Virginia School of Medicine has applied the scientific method to this matter and has found interesting evidence that cannot be dismissed out of hand. Recently, the Washington Post did a thoughtful piece on this subject, looking at the evidence in a critical but balanced manner.

The method of testing the possibility of a past life, or at least the possession of memories from before a person was born goes back at least to Socrates. In the Meno, Socrates endeavors to argue for his doctrine of recollection. He claims that knowledge of such things as geometry and the Forms are acquired by the soul before it is embodied. People forget that they have this knowledge, but it can be restored by philosophical discussion. This, as I tell my students, can be seen as like losing files on your PC due to some corruption and then restoring them with a utility.

In the dialogue, Socrates walks Meno’s slave through a geometric exercise Because, according to Socrates, the slave did not learn geometry in this life, he must have learned it before he was born—while his soul was communing with the forms.

This, then, is the test for past lives: if a person has knowledge of a past life that they could not have acquired in this life, then that counts as evidence for a past life. Other factors, such as behavioral changes, can also serve as evidence. The Washington Post article does provide examples of cases that seem to provide evidence of such knowledge and behavior. Perhaps the best-known case is that of James Leininger. Dr. Jim Tucker provides a detailed analysis of the evidence and considers alternative explanations.

Going back to Socrates, critics respond to his argument by claiming he guided the slave through the exercise and is thus supplying the knowledge in a way that does not require any prior existence. The same concern applies to evidence of past lives: a person could be asked leading or guiding questions that make it appear that they have such knowledge. This is not to accuse people of deceit; this could happen without any such intention. But, of course, fraud is also a matter of concern. The credible investigations consider both these possibilities, and they should be given due consideration. As Hume said about miracles, we know that people lie and that can often be the most plausible explanation. Less harshly, we also know that people can unintentionally ask leading and guiding questions while we don’t know if people have past lives. So that explanation is, by default, the favored explanation until it is overturned.

Another obvious concern is that with the internet, a child could learn information that they present in a way that might seem like they are recalling a past life. Children also often pretend they are other people, be it a type of person or a specific person. The challenge is determining whether the child could have plausibly found the information and whether the behavior that seems to indicate a different personality is a matter of play or something else. By Occam’s Razor, the explanations that do not require metaphysical commitments have an initial advantage. But there are certainly metaphysical matters to consider.

Socrates presents what could be considered the standard version of reincarnation: a person is a soul, and the soul has a means of storing memories across lives. When a soul is reborn, it (might) recall some of these memories. While Socrates focused on things like the Forms, these could be mundane memories from a past life. As there are many competing accounts of the metaphysics of personhood, memory, and identity, these would all need to be considered and assessed. For example, Hume dispenses with the soul in favor of the idea that the self is a bundle of perceptions (before he concludes this matter is just a dispute over grammar). Memories are just stored perceptions, and these presumably could end up being part of a new person (or a continuation of the old).

John Locke explicitly talks about consciousness persisting or not doing so, so his theory would allow for the possibility of reincarnation. Buddhism also has a metaphysics that allows for reincarnation, albeit in a way that involves no self.

Interestingly, Dr. Tucker’s paper presents “thought bundles” or “thought pools” as possible explanations of these past life memories. The idea is that a living person connects to these bundles or pools and somehow taps the information in them. In terms of a metaphysical foundation, these could be Hume’s bundles or perhaps the remnants of a Lockean consciousness. These bundles or pools do raise many questions, such as what they are, how they would persist and how a person would access them. That said, the human brain is a known storage system for such information, and we routinely transfer information—you are experiencing this right now as you read this. But due skepticism is wise here and the idea of thought bundles existing like lost smartphones and being accessed by a mental 5G is one that should only be accepted based on adequate evidence. After all, this would seem to require that people have a form of psionics that allows them to access such information. While not impossible, since we know information can be transmitted, there does not seem to be much credible evidence for this.

In closing, as there is some credible evidence of this sort of special knowledge and metaphysical theories advanced by philosophers that would allow past lives, then this matter is worthy of due consideration.

 

While lab-grown meat is a staple chow in science fiction, researchers are working hard to make it a commercially viable product. While there are many controversial aspects to lab grown meat, one matter of dispute is whether it is meat.

As lab-grown meat startups arose, the beef industry rushed to argue that lab-grown meat should not be labeled as meat. Interestingly, legal definitions of food types do not need to correspond to ways chemists or nutritionists would define them. For example, since high fructose corn syrup has a bad reputation among consumers, the industry tried to get the name changed to “corn sugar.” To the chemist and nutritionist, high fructose corn syrup is a sugar; but the sugar industry rejects this definition—they presumably see a financial advantage in fighting this legal label. While the legal wrangling over how foods should be categorized can be interesting, it does not solve the problem of, metaphysically, what it is to be meat. This is because the legal answer is easy and obvious: it is whatever the law says, and this need have no rational foundation at all. My concern, as a philosopher, is with the issue of whether lab-grown meat is real meat.

While philosophers are often accused of lacking common sense, some philosophers think this is where philosophy should begin. That is, when trying to define what something is, a good starting point is where we already are in terms of common sense. J.S. Mill took this approach in his discussion of poetry, electing to start with the generally accepted view of poetry and working from there. This seems to be a sensible approach and will be applied to the matter of meat.

The common-sense definition of “meat” is that it is the edible flesh of an animal, most commonly the muscle tissue. While people do refer to the kernel of a nut as “nut meat”, common sense divides this sort of meat from animal meats. To illustrate, a vegan will not say, “I do not eat coconut because that is meat.” But a vegan would refuse to eat a turkey leg—because that is the meat they do not eat. As such, I will stick with animal-based meats and ignore the other uses of the term “meat.” This does mean that I am rejecting all plant-based meats. They are not, on the face of it, real meat.

On the face of it, synthetic meat would not seem to meet the common-sense definition. It is not cut from an animal since it is grown in a vat (or whatever). Thus, it would fail to be meat. On this view, it is the origin of the meat that defines it as meat. At this point, one could raise a weird sci-fi scenario: what if scientists created an animal whose body also included vegetable matter, such as potatoes growing as part of a genetically modified cow? The potatoes would be part of the animal, but they would not seem to be meat. As such, the composition of the material also matters and to be meat something must have the right composition (typically muscle tissue). On this view, composition would be a necessary condition for being meat (so cow-potatoes would not be meat). But composition would not be a sufficient condition. On this view, synthetic meat that was not cut from an animal would not be meat. While this quick and easy solution is appealing, it does not seem to be the final word.

Suppose that a cut of muscles cells is taken from a cow. This would obviously be a steak. Now suppose these meat cells were cultivated in a lab and grown into a massive slab. These cells originated from steak and are the same. As such, it would seem to be hard to claim the slab is not meat. To us an analogy, if someone took a plant cutting and grew a slab of the plant cells in the lab, it would seem undeniable that the slab would be plant. The same should also apply to meat.

There are two replies to this analogy. One is to argue that plants lack the individuality of animals and hence plant material works differently from meat. If potato was grown as a slab in the lab, it would still be potato. But meat must come from an individual animal, or it is not meat. The second reply is that the “plant” slab is not plant (to use “plant” like “meat”) since it is not coming from a plant. A slab grown from potato cells is not a potato plant and hence is not plant.

The counter to these replies is to focus on the question of what the discernible difference would be between the slabs and the plants and animals. Obviously enough, looking at them in the lab would be a dead giveaway, but that would be an unfair comparison. After all, a living cow does not look like a steak. A fair comparison would be to put a steak cut from a cow against a synthetic steak in a series of tests. Some would relate to food, such as taste testing. Some would be chemical and genetic, to see what the material is. Naturally, the tests would have to avoid being rigged. So, a test that was aimed only at telling if the meat was grown in an animal would be an example of a rigged test. If synthetic meat passed these test (it tastes like meat, has the texture of meat, looks like meat, has the amino acids of meat and so on), then it would be hard to deny that it is meat.

So far, I have only been discussing synthetic meat that can trace its origin back to non-controversial meat. But there is also the problem of completely synthetic meat. This is meat that is completely synthetic and has no causal chain linking it back to an actual animal. In the ideal, it would be chemically engineered protein that duplicates the qualities of meat. To use a science fiction example, think of the replicator from Star Trek. This fictional machine could create a perfect steak by assembling it from raw materials, no cow involved. Unless someone insists that an animal must die (or at least be cut) for meat to be meat, it would be difficult to argue that replicator meat or properly engineered protein would not be meat. After all, unless one knew that it did not come from an animal, it would pass all the empirical tests for being meat.

This does point to the obvious counter—someone could draw a line and insist that meat must, by definition, come directly from an animal to be meat. Anything else could be meat-like but would need to be distinguished from meat. This, of course, nicely mirrors what Locke said in the context of personal identity regarding the use of words, “And indeed every one will always have a liberty to speak as he pleases, and to apply what articulate sounds to what ideas he thinks fit, and change them as often as he pleases.” As such, the problem of meat could be solved by having multiple terms for various meat and meat-like things. Or we could follow the lead of Hume and conclude that “…all the nice and subtle questions concerning personal identity can never possibly be decided, and are to be regarded rather as grammatical than as philosophical difficulties.” In this case, “meat” is merely a matter of language, which is to say that the problem remains unsolved