Category: Metaphysics

Way back in 2015 the internet exploded over Rachel Dolezal, the former leader of Spokane’s NAACP chapter. Ms. Dolezal had claimed to be African-American, Native American and white. She also claimed that her father is black. Reporters at KXLY-TV, however, looked up her birth certificate and determined that her legal parents are both white. Her parents asserted that she is white.

While the specifics of her case were certainly interesting to many, my concern is with more general issues about race and identity. While this situation was the best-known case of a white person trying to pass as black, passing as another “race” has long been a common practice in the United States, although this has usually been people trying to pass as white. Since being accepted as white enables a person to avoid many disadvantages, it is clear why people would attempt to pass as white. Since being accepted as black generally does not confer advantages in the United States, it is not surprising that Dolezal drew so much attention. These matters raise some interesting questions and issues about race.

Borrowing language from metaphysics, one approach to race could be called race realism. This is not being realistic about race in the common use of the term “realistic.” Rather, it is accepting that race is a real feature of reality. That is, the metaphysics of the world includes categories of race. As such, a person could be objectively black or white (or a mix). Naturally, even if there are real categories of race, people could be wrong about them.

One alternative is race nominalism. This is the idea that racial categories are social constructs and do not line up with an underlying metaphysical and physical reality. This is because there is no underlying metaphysical and physical reality that objectively grounds racial categories. In this case, a person might engage in self-identification in regard to race and this might or might not be accepted by others. A person might also have others place them into a race category, which they might or might not accept.

Throughout history, some people have struggled to find an objective basis for categories of race. Before genetics, people had to use appearance and ancestry. The ancestry was, obviously, needed because people did not always look like the race category that some people wanted them to be in. One example of this is the “one drop” rule once popular in some parts of the United States: one drop of black blood made a person black, regardless of their appearance.

The discovery of genes provided some people with a new foundation for race categories as they believed that there would be a genetic basis for their racism. The idea was that just as a human can be distinguished from a cat by genes, humans could be divided into races by their genetic make-up. While humans show genetic variations that are often linked to the geographical migration and origin of their many ancestors, race genes were not found. That is, humans (not surprisingly) are all humans with some minor genetic variations. The variations are not sufficient to objectively ground race categories.

In general, the people who quested for objective foundations for race categories were (or are) racists. These searches typically involved trying to find evidence of the alleged superiority of one’s race and the inferiority of other races. That said, a person could look for foundations for race without being a racist. They could be engaged in a scientific or philosophical inquiry rather than seeking to justify social practices and behaviors.

Given the failure to find a real foundation for race categories, it makes sense to embrace race nominalism. On this view, the categories of race exist only in the mind, they designate  how people think about the world rather than how reality is carved up. Even if it is accepted that race is a social construct, there is still the matter of the rules of construction: how the categories are created and how people are placed in them

One approach, which is similar to that sometimes taken for gender, is that people can self-identify. That is, a person can declare their race and this is sufficient to be in that category. If race categories are essentially made up, this does have a certain appeal. If race is a fiction, then anyone can be the author of her own fiction.

While there are some who do accept this view, the outrage over Ms. Dolezal showed that most people reject the idea of self-identification at least when a white person endeavors to self-identify as black. Interestingly, some of those who condemned her did defend the historical passing as white by some black people. The defense is appealing since blacks endeavoring to pass as white were doing so to escape oppression and this can be justified as a form of self-defense. In the case of Ms. Dolezal, the presumption seemed to be that the self-identification was both insincere and aimed at personal gain. Regardless of her true motivation, insincere self-identification aimed at personal gain seems to be wrong on the grounds that it is a malign deception. Some might, of course, regard all attempts at passing to gain an advantage as being immoral.

Another approach is that of the social consensus. The idea is that a person’s membership in a race category depends on the acceptance of others. This could be a matter of majority acceptance (one is, for example, black if most people accept one as black) or acceptance by a specific group or social authority. The obvious problem is working out what group or authority has the right to decide membership in race categories. On the one hand, this very notion seems linked to racism: one probably thinks of white supremacists and Nazis setting race categories. On the other hand, groups also seem to want to serve as the authority for their race category. Consistency might indicate that this would also be racist.

The group or authority that decides membership in race categories might make use of a race credential system to provide a basis for their decisions. That is, they might make use of appearance and ancestry. So, Ms. Dolezal would not be black because she looks white and has white parents. The concern with this sort of approach is that it was also used by racists, such as the KKK and Nazis, to divide people by race. A more philosophical concern is the basis for using appearance and ancestry as the foundation for race categories, for what justifies their use?

This discussion does show an obvious concern with policing race categories as it seems like doing so uses the tools of racism and would thus seem to be at least a bit racist. However, arguments could be advanced as to why the policing of race categories is morally acceptable and not racist.

 

After losing the battle over same-sex marriage, some on the right selected trans rights as their new battleground. A key front in this battle is that of sports, with the arguments centering around professed concerns about fairness. There is also a lot of implied metaphysics going on behind the scenes, so this essay will examine gender nominalism and competition. This will, however, require some metaphysical groundwork.

A classic philosophical problem is the problem of universals. Put roughly, the problem is determining in virtue of what (if anything) a particular a is of the type F. To use a concrete example, the question would be “in virtue of what is Morris a cat?” Philosophers often split into two camps when answering this question. The nominalists, shockingly enough, embrace nominalism. This is the view that what makes a particular a an F is that we name it an F. For example, what makes Morris a cat is that we call (or name) him a cat.

The other camp, the realists, take the view that there is a metaphysical reality underlying a being of the type F. Put another way, it is not just a matter of naming or calling something an F that makes it an F. In terms of what makes a of the type F, different realist philosophers give different answers. Plato famously claimed that it is the Form of F that makes individual F things F. For example, it is the Form of Beauty that makes all the beautiful things beautiful. And, presumably, the Form of ugly that makes the ugly things ugly. Others, such as myself, accept tropes (not to be confused with the tropes of film and literature) that serve a similar function.

While realists believe in the reality of some categories, they usually think some categories are not grounded in features of objective reality. As such, most realists agree that nominalists are right about some categories. To use an easy example, being a Democrat (or Republican) is not grounded in metaphysics, but is a social construct. A political party is made up by people and membership is a matter of social convention rather than metaphysical reality. There is presumably no Form of Democrat or Republican.

When it comes to sorting out sex and gender, things are complicated and involves at least four factors.  One is anatomy, which might (or might not) correspond to the second, which is genetic makeup (XX, XY, XYY, etc.). The third factor is the person’s own claimed gender identity which might (or might not) correspond to the fourth, which is the gender identity assigned by other people.

While anatomy and physiology are adjustable (via chemicals or surgery), they are objective features of reality. While a person can choose to alter their anatomy, merely changing how one designates one’s sex does not change the physical features. While a complete genetic conversion (XX to XY or vice versa) is (probably) not yet possible, it is just a matter of time before that can be done. However, even if genetics could be changed, a person’s genetic makeup is still an objective feature of reality and a person cannot change their genes merely by claiming a change in designation. But if genes define a person’s sex, then a genetic change would objectively change their sex.

Gender is, perhaps, another matter. Like most people, I often use the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably when speaking informally. Obviously, if gender is taken as the same as sex, then gender would seem to be an objective feature of reality. But if  gender and sex are taken as the same, then we would need a new term to take the place of “gender.”

However, gender has been largely or even entirely split from anatomy or genetics, at least by experts in the relevant fields. One version of this view can be called “gender nominalism.” On this view, gender is not an objective feature of reality, like anatomy, but a matter of naming, like being a Republican or Democrat. While some politicians have decreed that there are two genders, the fact that they think they need to do this just proves that they understand gender is a social construct. After all, politicians do not feel the need to decree that water is hydrogen and oxygen or that that triangles have three sides.

Some thinkers have cast gender as being constructed by society, while others contend that individuals have lesser or greater power to construct their own gender identities. People can place whatever gender label they wish upon themselves, but there is still the question of the role of others in that gender identity. The question is, then, to what degree can individuals construct their own gender identities? There is also the moral question about whether others should (morally) accept such gender self-identification. These matters are part of the broader challenge of identity in terms of who defines one’s identity (and what aspects) and to what degree are people morally obligated to accept these assignments (or declarations of identity).

My own view is to go with the obvious: people are free to self-declare whatever gender they wish, just as they are free to make any other claim of identity that is a social construct (which is a polite term for “made up”). So, a person could declare that he is a straight, Republican, Rotarian, fundamentalist, Christian, and a man. Another person could declare that she is a lesbian, Republican, Jewish woman, who belongs to the Elks. And so on. But, of course, there is the matter of getting others to recognize that identity. For example, if a person identifies as a Republican, yet believes in climate change, argues for abortion rights, endorses same-sex marriage, supports trans rights, favors tax increases, supports education spending, endorse the minimum wage, and is pro-environment, then other Republicans could rightly question the person’s Republican identity and claim that that person is a RINO (Republican in Name Only). As another example, a biological male could declare identity as a woman, yet still dress like a man, act like a man, date women, and exhibit no behavior that is associated with being a woman. In this case, other women might accuse her of being a WINO (Woman in Name Only).

In cases in which self-identification has no meaningful consequences for other people, it makes sense for people to freely self-identify. In such cases, claiming to be F makes the person F, and what other people believe should have no impact on that person being F. That said, people might still dispute a person’s claim. For example, if someone self-identifies as a Trekkie, yet knows little about Star Trek, others might point out that this self-identification is in error. However, since this has no meaningful consequences, the person has every right to insist on being a Trekkie, though doing so might suggest that he is about as smart as a tribble.

In cases in which self-identification does have meaningful consequences for others, then there would seem to be moral grounds (based on the principle of harm) to allow restrictions on such self-identification. For example, if a relatively fast male runner wanted to self-identify as a woman simply by claiming this identity so “she” could qualify for the Olympics, then it would be reasonable to prevent that from happening. After all, “she” would bump a qualified woman off the team, which would be wrong. Because of the potential for such harm, it would be absurd to accept that everyone is obligated to automatically accept the self-identification of others.

The flip side of this is that others should not have an automatic right to deny the self-identification of others. As a general rule, the principle of harm would apply here as well: others  have the right to impose in cases in which there is actual harm, and the person would have the right to refuse the forced identity of others when doing so would inflict wrongful harm. The practical challenge is, clearly enough, working out the ethics of specific cases.

Most people know energy cannot be destroyed. Interestingly, there is also a rule in quantum mechanics that forbids the destruction of information. This principle, called unitarity, is often illustrated by the example of burning a book: though the book is burned, the information remains, though it would be hard to “read” a burned book. This principle ran into some trouble with black holes, which might be able to destroy information. My interest here is not with this dispute, but with the question of whether the indestructibility of information has any implications for immortality.

On the face of it, the indestructibility of information seems similar to the conservation of energy. Long ago, when I was an undergraduate, I first heard the argument that because of the conservation of energy, personal immortality must be real (or at least possible). The reasoning was that a person is energy, energy cannot be destroyed, so a person will exist forever. While this has some appeal, the problem is obvious: while energy is conserved, it need not be preserved in the same form. So even if a person is composed of energy, it does not follow that the energy remains the same person or even a person at all. David Hume argued that an indestructible or immortal substance (or energy) does not entail the immortality of a person. When discussing the possibility of immortality, he claims that nature uses substance like clay: shaping it into various forms, then reshaping the matter into new forms so that the same matter can successively make up the bodies of living creatures.  By analogy, an immaterial substance could successively make up the minds of living creatures. The substance would not be created or destroyed; it would merely change form. However, the person would cease to be.

Prior to Hume, John Locke also noted a similar problem: even if, for example, you had the same soul (or energy) as Nestor, you would not be the same person as Nestor any more than you would be the same person as Nestor if, in an amazing coincidence, your body now contained all the atoms that once composed Nestor at a specific moment.

Hume and Locke seem to be right and the indestructibility of the stuff that makes up a person (be it body or soul) does not entail the immortality of the person. If a person is eaten by a bear, their matter and energy will continue to exist, but the person did not survive being eaten by the bear. If there is a soul, the mere continuance of the soul would also not seem to suffice for the person to continue to exist as the same person (although this can be argued). What is needed is the persistence of what makes up the person. This is usually taken to be something other than just stuff, be that stuff matter, energy, or ectoplasm. So, the conservation of energy does not entail personal immortality, but the conservation of information might (or might not).

Put a bit crudely, Locke took this something other to be memory: personal identity extends backwards as far as the memory extends. Since people clearly forget things, Locke did accept the possibility of memory loss. Being consistent in this matter, he accepted that the permanent loss of memory would result in a corresponding failure of identity. Crudely put, if a person truly did not and could never remember doing something, then she was not the person who did it.

While there are many problems with the memory account of personal identity, it suggests a path to  immortality through the conservation of information. One approach would be to argue that since information is conserved, the person is conserved even after the death and dissolution of the body. Just like the burned book whose information still exists, the person’s information would still exist.

One obvious reply to this is that a person is an active being and not just a collection of information. To use a rather rough analogy, a person could be seen as being like a computer program and to be is to be running. Or, to use a more artistic analogy, like a play: while the script would persist after the final curtain, the play itself is over. As such, while the person’s information would be conserved, the person would cease to be. This sort of “information immortality” is similar to Spinoza’s view. While he denied personal immortality, he claimed that “the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal.” Spinoza, of course, seemed to believe that this should comfort people. Perhaps some comfort should be taken in the fact that one’s information will be conserved (barring an unfortunate encounter with a black hole).

However, people would probably be more comforted by a reason to believe in an afterlife. Fortunately, the conservation of information does provide at least a shot at an afterlife. If information is conserved and all there is to a person can be conserved as information, then a person could presumably be reconstructed after his death. For example, imagine a person, Laz, who died by an accident and was buried. The remains could, in theory, be dug up and the information about the body could be recovered. The body could, with suitably advanced technology, be reconstructed. The reconstructed brain could, in theory, have all the memories and such recovered and restored as well. This would be a technological resurrection in the flesh, and the person would seem to live again. Assuming that every piece of information was preserved, recovered and restored in the flesh it might be the same person, as if a moment had passed rather than, say, a thousand years. While sci-fi, the idea seems sound enough.

One potential problem is an old one for philosophers: if a person could be reconstructed from such information, she could also be duplicated from the same information. To use the obvious analogy, this would be like 3D printing from a data file, except what would be printed would be a person. Or, to use another analogy, it would be like reconstructing an old computer and reloading all the software. There would certainly not be any reason to wait until the person died, unless there was some sort of copyright or patent held by the person on herself that expired a certain time after her death. But since personal identity is supposed to be what distinguishes a person from all other things, it is not something that can be duplicated. There are, however, those who disagree with this.

In closing, I leave you with this: some day in the far future, you might find that you (or someone like you) have just been reprinted. In 3D, of course.

During the Modern era, philosophers such as Descartes and Locke developed the notions of material substance and immaterial substance. Material substance, or matter, was primarily defined as being extended and spatially located. Descartes, and other thinkers, also took the view that material substance could not think. Immaterial substance was taken to lack extension and to not possess a spatial location. Most importantly, immaterial substance was regarded as having thought as its defining attribute.  While these philosophers are long dead, the influence of their concepts lives on in philosophy and science.

In philosophy, people still draw the classic distinction between dualists and materialists. A dualist holds that a living person consists of a material body and an immaterial mind. The materialist denies the existence of the immaterial mind and accepts only matter. There are also phenomenologists who contend that all that exists is mental. Materialism of this sort is popular both in contemporary philosophy and science. Dualism is still popular with the general population in that many people believe in a non-material soul that is distinct from the body.

Because of the history of dualism, free will is often linked to the immaterial mind. As such, it is no surprise that people who reject the immaterial mind engage in the following reasoning: an immaterial mind is necessary for free will. There is no immaterial mind. So, there is no free will.

Looked at positively, materialists tend to regard their materialism as entailing a lack of free will. Thomas Hobbes, a materialist from the Modern era, accepted determinism as part of his materialism. Taking the materialist path, the argument against free will is that if the mind is material, then there is no free will. The mind is material, so there is no free will.

Interestingly enough, those who accepted the immaterial mind tended to believe that only an immaterial substance could think—so they inferred the existence of such a mind on the grounds that they thought. Materialists most often accept the mind but cast it in physical terms. That is, people do think and feel, they just do not do so via the mysterious quivering of immaterial ectoplasm. Some materialists go so far as to reject the mind—perhaps ending up in behaviorism or eliminative materialism.

Julien La Metrie was one rather forward looking materialist.  In 1747 he published his work Man the Machine. In this work he claims that philosophers should be like engineers who analyze the mind. Unlike many of the thinkers of his time, he seemed to understand the implications of mechanism, namely that it seemed to entail determinism and reductionism. A few centuries later, this sort of view is rather popular in the sciences and philosophy: since materialism is true and humans are biological mechanisms, there is no free will, and the mind can be reduced (explained entirely in terms of) its physical operations (or functions).

One interesting mistake that seems to drive this view is the often-uncritical assumption that materialism entails the impossibility of free will. As noted above, this rests on the notion that free will requires an immaterial mind. This is, perhaps, because such a mind is said to be exempt from the laws that run the material universe.

One part of the mistake is a failure to realize that being incorporeal is not a sufficient condition for free will. One of Hume’s many interesting insights was that if immaterial substance exists, then it would be like material substance. When discussing the possibility of immortality, he claims that nature uses substance like clay: shaping it into various forms, then reshaping the matter into new forms so that the same matter can successively make up the bodies of living creatures.  By analogy, an immaterial substance could successively make up the minds of living creatures—the substance would not be created or destroyed, it would merely change form. If his reasoning holds, it would seem that if material substance is not free, then immaterial substance would also no be free. Leibniz, who believed that reality was entirely mental (composed of monads) accepted a form of determinism. This determinism, though it has some problems, seems entirely consistent with his immaterialism (that everything is mental). This should hardly be surprising, since being immaterial does not entail that something has free will—the two are rather distinct attributes.

Another part of the mistake is the uncritical assumption that materialism entails a lack of freedom. Naturally, if matter is defined as being deterministic and lacking in freedom, then materialism would (by begging the question) entail a lack of freedom. Likewise, if matter is defined (as many thinkers did) as being incapable of thought, then it would follow (by begging the question) that no material being could think. Just as it should not be assumed that matter cannot think, it should also not be assumed that a material being must lack free will. Looked at another way, it should not be assumed that being incorporeal is a necessary condition for free will.

What, obviously enough, seems to have driven the error is the conflation of the incorporeal with freedom and the material with determinism (or lack of freedom). Behind this is, also obviously enough, the assumption that the incorporeal is exempt from the laws that impose harsh determinism on matter. But if it is accepted that a purely material being can think (thus denying the assumption that only the immaterial can think) it would seem to be acceptable to consider that such a being could also be free (thus denying the assumption that only the immaterial can be free).  

Philosophers have long speculated about autonomy and agency, but the development of autonomous systems has made such speculation even more important.  Keeping things simple, an autonomous system is capable of operating independent of direct human control. Autonomy comes in degrees of independence and complexity. It is the capacity for independent operation that distinguishes autonomous systems from those controlled externally.

Toys provide useful examples of this distinction. A wind-up mouse toy has some autonomy: once wound up and released, it can operate on its own until it runs down. A puppet, in contrast, has no autonomy as a puppeteer must control it.

Robots provide examples of more complex autonomous systems. Google’s driverless car is an example of an advanced autonomous machine. Once programmed and deployed, it might be able to drive itself to its destination. A normal car isa non-autonomous system as the driver controls it directly. Some machines allow both autonomous and non-autonomous operation. For example, there are drones that follow a program guiding them to a target and then an operator can take direct control.

Autonomy, at least in this context, is distinct from agency. Autonomy is the capacity to operate (in some degree) independently of direct control. Agency, at least in this context, is the capacity to be morally responsible for one’s actions. There is a connection between autonomy and moral agency as moral agency requires autonomy. After all, an entity whose actions are completely controlled externally would not be responsible for what it was made to do. For example, a puppet is not accountable for what the puppeteer makes it do. Likewise for remote controlled drones used to assassinate people.

While autonomy is necessary for agency, it is not sufficient. While all agents have some autonomy, not all autonomous entities are moral agents. A wind-up toy has a degree of autonomy but has no agency. A modern robot drone following a pre-programed flight-plan has a degree of autonomy but lacks agency. If it collided with a plane, it would not be morally responsible. The usual reason why such a machine would not be an agent is that it lacks the capacity to decide. Or put another way, it lacks freedom.  Since it cannot do otherwise, it is no more morally accountable than an earthquake or a super nova.

One obvious problem with basing agency on freedom (especially metaphysical free will) is that there is endless debate over this subject. There is also the epistemic problem of how one would know if an entity had such freedom and free will seems epistemically indistinguishable from a lack of free will.

As a practical matter, it is often just assumed people have the freedom needed to be agents. Kant famously took this approach. What he saw as the best science of his day indicated a deterministic universe devoid of metaphysical freedom. However, he contended that such freedom was needed for morality, so it should be accepted for this reason.

While humans are willing (generally) to attribute freedom and agency to other humans, there are good reasons to not attribute freedom and agency to autonomous machines even those that might be as complex as (or even more complex than) a human. The usual line of reasoning is that since such machines would be built and programmed by humans, they would do what they do because they are what they were made to be. This is in contrast to the agency of humans: humans, it is alleged, do what they do because they choose to do what they do.

This distinction between humans and suitably complex machines seems a mere prejudice favoring organic machines over mechanical machines. If a human was in a convincing robot costume and credibly presented as a robot while acting like a normal human, people would be inclined to deny that “it” had freedom and agency. If a robot was made to look and act just like a human, people would be inclined to grant it agency, at least until they learned it was “just” a machine. Then there would probably be an inclination to regard it as a very clever but unfree machine. An excellent fictional example of this is Harlan Ellison’s Demon With a Glass Hand.

 But it would not be known whether the human or the machine had the freedom alleged needed for agency. Fortunately, it is possible to have agency even without free will (but with a form of freedom).  The German philosopher Leibniz held the view that what each person will do is pre-established by their inner nature. On the face of it, this seems to entail there is no freedom: each person does what they do because of what they are—and they cannot do otherwise. Interestingly, Leibniz takes the view that people are free. However, he does not accept  a commonly held view that freedom requires actions that are unpredictable and spontaneous. Leibniz rejects this view in favor of the position that freedom is unimpeded self-development.

For Leibniz, being metaphysically without freedom would involve being controlled from the outside, like a puppet controlled by a puppeteer or a vehicle operated by remote control.  In contrast, freedom is acting from one’s values and character. This is what Leibniz and Taoists call “inner nature.” If a person is acting from this inner nature and not external coercion so that the action is the result of character, then that is all that can be meant by freedom. This view, which attempts to blend determinism and freedom, is known as compatibilism. On this view, humans have agency because they have the required degree of freedom and autonomy.

If this model works for humans, it could apply to autonomous machines. To the degree that a machine is operating in accord to its “inner nature” and is not operating under the control of outside factors, it would have agency.

An obvious objection is that an autonomous machine, however complex, would have been built and programmed (in the broad sense of the term) by humans. As such, it would be controlled and not free. The easy and obvious reply is that humans are “built” by other humans (by mating) and are “programmed” by humans via education and socialization. As such, if humans can be moral agents, then a machine could also be a moral agent.

From a moral standpoint, I would suggest a Moral Descartes’ Test (or a Moral Turing Test). Descartes argued that the sure proof of having a mind is a capacity to use true language. Turing later proposed a similar test involving the ability of a computer to pass as human via text communication. In the moral test, the test would be a judgment of moral agency: can the machine be as convincing as a human in its possession of agency? Naturally, a suitable means of concealing the fact that the being is a machine would be needed to prevent prejudice from affecting the judgment. The movie Blade Runner featured something similar, the Voight-Kampff test aimed at determining if the subject was a replicant or human. This test was based on the differences between humans and replicants in regard to emotions. In the case of moral agency, the test would have to be crafted to determine agency rather than to distinguish a human from machine, since the issue is not whether a machine is human but whether it has agency. A non-human moral agent might differ greatly from a human, and it should not be assumed that an agent must be human, and non-humans cannot be moral agents. The challenge is developing a test for moral agency. It would be interesting if humans could not pass it.

 

Back when ISIS was a major threat, President Obama refused to label its members as “Islamic extremists” and stressed that the United States was not at war with Islam. Not surprisingly, some of his critics and political opponents took issue with this and often insisted on labeling the members of ISIS as Islamic extremists or Islamic terrorists.  Graeme Wood rather famously, argued that ISIS is an Islamic group and was adhering very closely to its interpretations of the sacred text.

Laying aside the political machinations, there is an interesting philosophical and theological question here: who decides who is a Muslim? Since I am not a Muslim or a scholar of Islam, I will not be examining this question from a theological or religious perspective. I will certainly not be making any assertions about which specific religious authorities have the right to say who is and who is not a true Muslim. Rather, I am looking at the philosophical matter of the foundation of legitimate group identity. This is, of course, a variation on one aspect of the classic problem of universals: in virtue of what (if anything) is a particular (such as a person) of a type (such as being a Muslim)?

Since I am a metaphysician, I will begin with the rather obvious metaphysical starting point. As Pascal noted in his famous wager, God exists, or God does not.

If God does not exist, then Islam (like all religions that are based on a belief in this God) would have an incorrect metaphysics. In this case, being or not being a Muslim would be a matter of social identity. It would be comparable to being or not being a member of Rotary, being a Republican, a member of Gulf Winds Track Club or a citizen of Canada. That is, it would be a matter of the conventions, traditions, rules and such that are made up by people. People do, of course, often take this made-up stuff very seriously and sometimes are willing to kill over these social fictions.

If God does exist, then there is yet another dilemma: God is either the God claimed (in general) in Islamic metaphysics or God is not. One interesting problem with sorting out this dilemma is that to know if God is as Islam claims, one would need to know the true definition of Islam and thus what it would be to be a true Muslim. Fortunately, the challenge here is metaphysical rather than epistemic. If God does exist and is not the God of Islam (whatever it is), then there would be no “true” Muslims, since Islam would have things wrong. In this case, being a Muslim would also be a matter of social convention in that one would belong to a religion that was right about God existing, but wrong about all the rest. There is, obviously, the epistemic challenge of knowing this and everyone thinks they are right about their religion (or lack of religion).

Now, if God exists and is the God of Islam (whatever it is), then being a “true” member of a faith that accepts God, but has God wrong (that is, all the non-Islam monotheistic faiths), would be a matter of social convention. For example, being a Christian would thus be a matter of the social traditions, rules and such. There would, of course, be the consolation prize of getting one thing right (that God exists).

In this scenario, Islam (whatever it is) would be the true religion (that is, the one that got it right). From this it would follow that the Muslim who has it right (believes in the true Islam) is a true Muslim. There is, however, the obvious epistemic challenge: which version and interpretation of Islam is the right one? After all, there are many versions and even more interpretations. And even assuming that Islam is the one true religion, only the one true version of Islam can be right. Unless, of course, God is very flexible about this sort of thing. In this case, there could be many varieties of true Muslims, much like there can be many versions of “true” gamers.

 If God is not flexible, then most Muslims would be wrong: they are not true Muslims. This leads to the obvious epistemic problem: even if it is assumed that Islam is the true religion, then how does one know which version has it right? Naturally, each person thinks they have it right. Obviously enough, intensity of belief and sincerity will not do. After all, the ancients had intense belief in and sincerity about what are now believed to be made up gods (like Thor and Athena). Going through books and writings will also not help. After all, the ancients had plenty of books and writings about what we regard as their make-believe deities.

What is needed, then, is a sure sign, clear and indisputable proof of the one true view. Naturally, each person thinks they have that and everyone cannot be right. God, sadly, has not provided any means of sorting this out. There are no glowing divine auras around those who have it right. Because of this, it seems best to leave this to God.

A Philosopher’s Blog 2025 brings together a year of sharp, accessible, and often provocative reflections on the moral, political, cultural, and technological challenges of contemporary life. Written by philosopher Michael LaBossiere, these essays move fluidly from the ethics of AI to the culture wars, from conspiracy theories to Dungeons & Dragons, from public policy to personal agency — always with clarity, humor, and a commitment to critical thinking.

Across hundreds of entries, LaBossiere examines the issues shaping our world:

  • AI, technology, and the future of humanity — from mind‑uploading to exoskeletons, deepfakes, and the fate of higher education
  • Politics, power, and public life — including voting rights, inequality, propaganda, and the shifting landscape of American democracy
  • Ethics in everyday life — guns, healthcare, charity, masculinity, inheritance, and the moral puzzles hidden in ordinary choices
  • Culture, identity, and conflict — racism, gender, religion, free speech, and the strange logic of modern outrage
  • Philosophy in unexpected places — video games, D&D, superheroes, time travel, and the metaphysics of fictional worlds

Whether he is dissecting the rhetoric of conspiracy theories, exploring the ethics of space mining, or reflecting on the death of a beloved dog, LaBossiere invites readers into a conversation that is rigorous without being rigid, principled without being preachy, and always grounded in the belief that philosophy is for everyone.

This collection is for readers who want more than hot takes — who want to understand how arguments work, why beliefs matter, and how to think more clearly in a world that rewards confusion.

Thoughtful, wide‑ranging, and often darkly funny, A Philosopher’s Blog 2025 is a companion for anyone trying to make sense of the twenty‑first century.

 

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The bookshelves of the world abound with self-help tomes. Many profess to help with emotional woes, such as sadness, and make vague promises about happiness.  Philosophers have long been in the business of offering advice on how to be happy. Or at least how not  to be too sad.

Each spring semester I teach Modern Philosophy and cover our good dead friend Spinoza. In addition to an exciting career as a lens grinder, he also managed to avoid being killed by an assassin. However, breathing in all that glass dust contributed to his untimely death. But enough about his life and death, it is time to get to the point of this essay.

As Spinoza saw it, people are slaves to their emotions and chained to what they love, such as fame, fortune and other people. This inevitably leads to sadness: the people we love betray us or die. That fancy Tesla that once brought joy might become associated with a fascist. That million-dollar beach house can be swept away by the rising tide. A great job can be lost as a company seeks to boost its stock prices by downsizing the job fillers. And so on, through all the ways things can go badly.

While Spinoza was a pantheist and believed that everything is God and God is everything, his view of human beings is like that of the philosophical mechanist: humans are not magically exempt from the laws of nature. He was also a strict determinist: each event occurs from necessity and cannot be otherwise. There is no chance or choice. So, for example, Trump could not have lost the 2024 election As another example, I could not have written this essay in any other manner, so I had to make that remark about Trump winning in 2024 rather than mentioning his 2020 defeat.   

Buying into determinism, Spinoza took the view that human behavior and motivations can be examined as one might examine “lines, planes or bodies.” More precisely, he took the view that emotions follow the same necessity as all other things, thus making the effects of the emotions predictable provided one has enough knowledge.  Spinoza then used this idea as the basis for his “self-help” advice.

According to Spinoza all emotions are responses to the past, present or future. For example, a person might feel regret because she believes she could have made her last relationship work if she had only put more effort into it. As another example, a person might worry because he thinks that he might lose his job in the next round of downsizing at his company. These negative feelings rest, as Spinoza sees it, on the false belief that the past could have been otherwise and that the future is undetermined. Once a person realizes nothing could have been any different and the future cannot be anything other than what it will be, then that person will suffer less from emotions. Thus, for Spinoza, freedom from the enslaving chains is the recognition and acceptance that what was could not have been otherwise and what will be cannot be otherwise.

This view does have a certain appeal, and it does make sense that it can have some value. In regard to the past, people do often beat themselves up emotionally over past mistakes and wonder about how things might have been different.  These regrets can bind a person and thus trap them in the past as they spend hours wondering “what if?” This is not to say that feeling regret or guilt is wrong. Far from it. But lamenting about the past to the detriment of the now is a problem.  It is also a problem to believe that things could have been different when they, in fact, could not have been different.

This is also not to say that a person should not reflect on the past. After all, a person who does not learn from her mistakes is doomed to repeat them. People can, of course, also be trapped by the past because of what they see as good things. They are chained to what they (think) they once had or once were (such as being the big woman on campus back in college).

In regard to the future, it is easy to be trapped by anxiety, fear and even hope. It can be reassuring to embrace the view that what will be will be and to not worry and be happy. This is not to say that one should be foolish about the future, of course.

There is, unfortunately, one fatal and obvious problem with Spinoza’s advice. If everything is necessary and determined, his advice makes no sense: what is, must be and cannot be otherwise. To use an analogy, it would be like shouting advice at someone watching a cut scene in a video game. This is pointless, since the person cannot do anything to change what is occurring. What occurs must occur and cannot be otherwise. For Spinoza, while we might think life is like a game, it is like a cut scene: we are spectators and not players controlling the game.

The obvious counter is to say “but I feel free! I feel like I am making choices!” Spinoza was aware of this objection. In response, he claims that if a stone were conscious and hurled through the air, it would think it was free to choose to move and land where it does. People think they are free because they are “conscious of their own actions, and ignorant of the causes by which those actions are determined.” In other words, we think we are free because we do not know better. Going back to the video game analogy, we think we are in control as we push the buttons, but this is because we do not know how the game works. We are just along for the ride and not in control.

Since everything is determined, whether a person heeds Spinoza’s advice is also determined. If you do, then you do and you could not do otherwise. If you do not, you could not do otherwise. As such, his advice seems beyond useless. This is a stock paradox faced by determinists who give advice: their theory says that people cannot choose to follow their advice as they will just do what they are determined to do. That said, it is possible to salvage some useful advice from Spinoza.

The first step is to reject his view that I lack free will.  I have a stock argument for this that goes as follows. Obviously, I have free will or I do not. It is equally obvious that there is no way to tell whether I do or not. From an empirical standpoint, a universe with free will looks and feels just like a universe without free will: you just observe people doing stuff and apparently making decisions while thinking and feeling that you are doing the same.  Suppose someone rejects free will and they are wrong. In this case they are not only mistaken but also consciously rejecting real freedom. 

Suppose someone rejects free will and they are correct. In that case, they are right. But not in the sense that they made the correct choice. They are determined to have that view and it would just so happen that it matches reality.

If I can choose, then I should obviously choose free will. If I cannot choose, then I will think I chose whatever it is I am determined to believe. If I can choose and choose to think I cannot, I am in error. Since I cannot know which option is correct, it seems best to accept free will. If I am free, I am right. If I am not free, then I am mistaken but have no choice.

Given the above argument, I accept that I have agency. This makes it possible for me to meaningfully give and accept (or reject) advice. Turning back to Spinoza, I obviously cannot accept his advice that I am enslaved by determinism. However, I can accept some of his claims, namely that I am acted upon by my attachments and emotions. As he sees it, the emotions are things that act upon us. On my view, they would  be things that impinge upon our agency. As I love to do, I will use an analogy to running.

I thought about this  essay on a run and also focused on the fact that feelings of pain and tiredness were impacting me like the way cold or rain might. In the case of pain and tiredness, the attack is from inside. In the case of the cold or rain, the attack is from the outside. Whether the attack is from inside or out, the attack is trying to make the choice for me, to rob me of my agency as a runner and make me give up. If the pain, cold or rain makes me stop, then I am not acting. I am being acted upon. If I choose to stop, then I am acting. If I choose to go on, I am also acting. And acting rightly.  As a runner I know the difference between choosing to stop and being forced to stop.

Being aware of this is useful for running. Thanks to decades of experience I understand, in a way Spinoza might approve, the workings of pain, fatigue and so on. To use a specific example, I know that I am acted upon by pain and I understand how it works. As such, the pain is not in control, I am. If I wish, I can run myself to ruin (and I have done just this). Or I can be wiser and avoid damaging myself.

Turning back to emotions, feelings impinge upon me in ways analogous to pain and fatigue. I do not have full control over how I feel as the emotions simply occur, perhaps in response to events or perhaps simply as the result of an electrochemical imbalance. To use a specific example, like most people I will sometimes feel depressed and know I have no reason to feel this. It is like the cold or fatigue in that it is just impinging on me. As Spinoza argued, my knowledge of how this works is critical to dealing with it. While I cannot fully control the feeling, I understand why I feel that way. It is like the cold I felt running in the Maine winters. It is a natural phenomenon that is, from my perspective, trying to destroy me. In the case of the cold, I can wear warmer clothing and stay moving. Knowing how it works enables me to choose how to combat it. Likewise, knowing how negative feelings work enables me to choose how to combat them. If I am depressed for no reason, I know it is just my brain trying to kill me. It is not pleasant, but it does not get to make the decisions for me. Fortunately, our good dead friend Aristotle has some excellent advice for training oneself to handle emotions.

That said, the analogy to cold is particularly apt. The ice of the winter can kill even those who understand it and know how to resist it. Sometimes the cold is just too much. Likewise, the emotions can be like the howling icy wind and be too much for the mind. We are, after all, only human and have our limits. Knowing this is a part of wisdom. Sometimes you just need to come in from the cold or it will kill you. Have some hot chocolate. With marshmallows.

It is July 16, 2214. I am at Popham Beach in what I still think of as Maine. I am standing in the sand, watching the waves strike the shore. Sand pipers run in the surf, looking for lunch. I have a two-hundred-year-old memory of another visit to this beach. In that memory, the water is cold on the skin and there is a mild ache in the left knee, a relic of a quadriceps tendon repair. Today there is no ache. What serves as my knee is a biomechanical system free of all aches and pains. I can, if I wish, feel the cold by adjusting my sensors. I do so, and what was once data about temperature becomes a feeling in what I still call my mind. I downgrade my vision to that of a human, then tweak it so it perfectly matches the imperfect eyesight of the memory. I do the same for my hearing and turn off my other sensors until I am, as far as I can tell, merely human. I walk into the water, enjoying the feeling of the cold. My companion asks me if I have ever been here before. I pause and consider this question. I have a memory from a man who was here in 2014. But I do not know if I am him or if I am but a child of his memories. But it is a lovely day…too lovely for metaphysics. I say “yes, long ago”, and wait patiently for the setting of the sun.

 

In science fiction one form of immortality is downloading memories from an old body to a new one. This, of course, rests on the assumption that a person is their memories. Philosophers have long considered whether a person is her memories. John Locke claimed a person is their consciousness and, in a science fiction move, considered the possibility that memories could be transferred from one soul to another. While Locke’s view can be a bit confusing (he distinguishes between person, body, soul and consciousness while not being entirely clear about how memory relates to consciousness), he seems to think a person is their memory. As far back as a person’s memory goes, they go and this brings along moral accountability. Being a Christian, Locke was concerned about judgment day and needed a mechanism of personal identity that did not depend on the sameness of body. Being an empiricist, he also needed an empirical basis. Memory contained within a soul seemed to take care of both concerns.

As noted earlier, Locke anticipates the science fiction idea of memory transfer and considers the problem that arises if memory makes personal identity and if memory could be transferred or copied. His solution can be seen as a divine cheat: he claims God, in His goodness, would not allow this to happen. However, he does discuss cases in which one (specifically Nestor) loses all memory and thus ceases to be the same person, though the same soul might be present.

So, if Locke is right about memory being the basis of personal identity and wrong about God not allowing the copying of memory, then if my memories were transferred to another consciousness, then it would be me. So, in my opening story, if the being standing on the beach in 2214 had my memory from 2014, then we would be the same person, and I would be 248 years old.

David Hume, another dead British empiricist, presented a problem for Locke’s account: intuitively, people believe they can extend their identity beyond their memory. That is, I do not suppose that it was not me just because I forgot something. Rather, I suppose it was me and that I merely forgot. Hume took the view that memory is used to discover personal identity and then he went off the rails and declared it was all about grammar rather than philosophy.

Another stock problem with the memory account is that if memory can be copied, it can be copied many times. The problem is that what serves as the basis of personal identity is supposed to be what makes me who I am and distinct from everyone else. If what is supposed to provide my distinct identity can be duplicated, then it cannot be the basis of my distinct identity. Locke, as noted above, “solves” this problem by divine intervention. However, without this intervention there seems to be no reason why my memory of Popham Beach from 2014 could not be copied many times if it could be copied once. As such, the entity on the beach in 2214 might just have a copy of my memory, just as it might have a copy of the files stored on the phone I was carrying then. The companion mentioned in the short tale might also have those same memories, but they both cannot be me.

The entity on the beach might even have an actual memory from me, a literal piece of my brain. However, this might not make it the same person as me. To use an analogy, it might also have my watch or my finger bone from 2014, but this would not make it me.

Interestingly (or boringly) enough, the science fiction scenario really does not change the basic problems of identity over time. We must determine what makes me the person I am and what makes me distinct from all other things, be that a scenario involving the Mike from 2014 or the entity on the beach in 2214. For that entity on the beach to be me, it would need to possess whatever it is that made me the person I was in 2014 (and, hopefully, am now) and what distinguished that Mike from all other things, that is, my personness and my distinctness.

Since we do not know what these things are (or if they even are at all), there is no way to say whether that entity in 2214 could be me. It is safe, I think, to claim that if it is just a copy of something from my memories, then it is not me. At best, it would be a child of my memory. It would, as philosophers have long argued, have the same sort of connection to Mike 2014 that Mike 2014 had to Mike 2013. It is also worth considering that as Hume and Buddha have claimed, that there really is no self, so that entity on the beach in 2214 is not me, but neither am I.

When I was young, I had my first out of body experience (OBE for short). While I did not know about them at the time, I later learned that my experience matched the usual description: I felt as if the center of my awareness and perception had left my body. It seemed as if I could perceive from this out-of-body location, albeit with greater vividness (retrospectively, it seemed like high definition). After that, I had OBEs from time to time, especially when I was under great stress, such as in graduate school.

When I was a kid, I only had two explanations for the experiences. One was supernatural: my soul was leaving my body. The other was paranormal: somehow, I had some special sensory ability. As I learned philosophy and science, I came up with other explanations. As a bit of fun philosophy, I’ll go through some.

When I learned about metaphysical dualism and Descartes, I had a theory that would explain my experience. For dualists, there are two types of stuff: the mental and the physical. The mind is made of mental stuff which thinks but is not extended in space. The body is made of physical stuff that does not think but is extended in space. On the dualist view, a person is their mind, and this mind somehow interacts (or syncs) with the body. Since the mind is distinct from the body, it could presumably leave and still interact (or sync) with the physical world. Roughly put, an OBE would be having the ghost leaving the shell but then returning to the l living body.

This account of the OBE does face all the challenges of metaphysical dualism and some of its own. In terms of the usual problems, there is the difficulty in proving the existence of such a mind and the classic mind-body problem of accounting for how the mind and body interact. In terms of a specific problem with dualist OBE, there is the obvious problem of how a disembodied mind would perceive the physical world without its body. If it could do this, then there would be no need for sense organs and people would not lose their senses due to damage or disease.

Another approach to the OBE experience is to make use of Occam’s Razor, which can be taken as the metaphysical principle that entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. That is, if there are competing explanations for a phenomenon, then the one with the fewest posited metaphysical entities has an advantage. The principle is also applied to the number of assumptions required by explanations, and it is sometimes crudely put as the notion that the simplest explanation is best.

In the case of my OBE experiences, an application of Occam’s Razor would cut away the metaphysical account in favor of one with fewer entities or assumptions. In this case, the more economical explanation would be that my experiences were the result of unusual activity in my nervous system that created the impression that my awareness was outside my body. Since such “malfunctions” do occur without the need to postulate a wandering soul, this explanation has the most scientific appeal. It is also disappointing; like learning a magic trick is not magic, but misdirection and deceit. Fortunately, it can be fun to briefly pretend to ignore the most plausible explanation and consider some other philosophical options. After the fun is over, the most plausible explanation should, of course, be reseated on its throne.

One interesting possibility is that the mind has the capacity to receive sensory data in non-standard ways. That is, our epistemic capabilities extend beyond our sense organs, or we are someone able to acquire sensory data from an unusual perspective. OBE experiences involve, at least in my case, only sight and hearing and these involve energy. It could be imagined that the nervous system is able to shift its perception point by manipulating this energy. The easy and obvious counter to this is that studies of the nervous system would have presumably found evidence of such a strange system. Since there seems to be no biological mechanism for this, this explanation is defective.

It also fun to consider the philosophical view known as phenomenology or idealism. This view was most famously held by Berkeley.  His view made it into the popular consciousness with the question: “if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, does it make a sound?” The answer, for Berkeley, was that there is always someone there to hear it. This someone is, of course, God and He perceives everything all the time. This might explain why when you shower, you might feel like someone is watching. 

Getting back on track, Berkeley’s philosophical view is a rejection of dualism. Unlike the metaphysical materialist who rejects the mind and accepts matter, Berkeley accepted the mind and rejected matter. For him, what we regard as physical objects are collections of ideas in minds. For example, the device that you are using to read this is not a physical machine and it is “made” of ideas. On this view, all experiences are OBE as there are no bodies in which to have experiences. However, one could have experiences as if one was outside one’s body.

Another way to look at phenomenology is to think of virtual reality. On this view reality is all virtual with no physical entities. This provides a way to explain OBEs, they could be glitches in perception. To use a video game first person shooter analogy, the game is supposed to set the camera so that it is as if you are seeing the world from the eyes of your character. This camera can glitch due to a software error, causing you to see the game world from a point “outside” your character’s head. This would be a game OBE. If phenomenology is correct, then perhaps OBEs are these sorts of glitches as the point of perception is briefly in the wrong place. Since the world is clearly imperfect, such glitches are not inconceivable. Alternatively, it need not be glitch, perhaps this sort of perceptual capability is a feature and not a bug.

While I would like to regard my OBEs as supporting metaphysical dualism (and thus the possibility of existence after death), the best explanation is the least fun, that it is a malfunction of the brain and a strange hallucination.