Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy (17 page)

If that's the truth, we might think, surely it is as useless trying to influence the future as it would be to try to influence the past. If God
has this view, he must be looking at our efforts, and laughing. This
is the implication of the Sufi story. Death has already written his
list. And this is why my friend's soldiers used the metaphor of a
bullet `having a number on it, which implies `already having a
number on it'-regardless, that is, of what we do.

But why is God or Death laughing? Suppose God has the timeless view. He still does not see omelettes at one date, without people breaking eggs at a slightly earlier date. He knows whether we
will have an omelette in one frame of the film. But then he also
knows whether we will set about preparing the omelette in a
slightly earlier frame. There is no reason for him to know that the
future will be what it is whatever we do, any more than he knows
that the tree will blow down whatever the wind does. From the timeless vantage-point, all that is seen is the wind, and the destruction. God is not, as far as this goes, like a medical practitioner who
knows that a cancer will kill us whatever we do.That would mean
that there would he frames in which people behave in a whole variety of ways, but die from the cancer anyhow. The `view from
nowhen', from outside time, sees our doings, and their upshots, but
it doesn't see upshots without doings. God sees us eating omelettes, because our choosing modules set us to break eggs. And he
only sees us eating omelettes when he sees, in the previous time
frame, us breaking eggs.

The implication of the Sufi story is that Death had the disciple
on the Iist before the disciple decided to flee. So, it seems, it would
have come for him wherever he had been-in Baghdad, or in
Samarkand. This is why his flight was futile. But perhaps Death
only had him on his list because of his flight-if he ran under a bus,
having arrived in Samarkand, for example. Running then brought
him to his fate, but this does not tell us whether the disciple behaved reasonably. If Death was having a field day in Baghdad, for
instance because there was a plague there, then the flight might
have been quite rational, although unlucky in the event. It could
have been that Death did not have him on his list, just because of
his flight.

What about the asymmetry between past and future? If they are
symmetrical in God's eyes, why is it rational to try to change the future? How can it be any more rational than trying to change the
past? Well, as I have said, even God does not see us setting about
making omelettes, with a slightly previous event of eating one (unless he sees us greedily preparing and devouring second om elettes). So in fact, it is useless to try to influence the past. That
however leaves open a huge and intractable philosophical problem. For is it just a matter of fact, a contingency that might have
been otherwise, or might be otherwise in different regions of space
and time, that we cannot influence the past? If it is only a matter of
the patterns seen from the timeless point of view, it seems that it
should be. Might the patterns be different elsewhere?

For the moment I leave this is an exercise (an extremely difficult
one). But returning to fatalism, the truth, then, is that there is no
general philosophical or rational justification for it. It corresponds
to a mood, a state of mind in which we feel out of control, and feel
that we are indeed just of our own lives. This is not always unjustified. People are sometimes largely powerless, politically, or even psychologically (because we are not flexible, but are
indeed brainwashed, or in the grip of strange obsessions that we
cannot shake). When we are powerless, fatalism may he a natural
frame of mind into which to relapse. If our best efforts come to
nothing often enough, we need consolation, and thoughts of unfolding, infinite destiny, or karma, are sometimes consoling.

But not appropriate when we are acting. We cannot safely think,
while driving a car, that it makes no difference whether we turn the
wheel, or hit the brake. Our best efforts do not come to nothing.

FLEXIBILITY AND DIGNITY

The ideology of mind-body dualism runs very deep. By an ideology, I mean not a specific argument or set of arguments, but rather a framework of thought: a reference point or a guiding idea. Dualism is often supposed to make possible freedom, dignity, human
experience itself. It underwrites the big words: the kinds of words
that get on banners. In the last two chapters 1 have tried to disconnect these things from dualism. But people fear the alternative. Are
we reducing people, in all their living colourful complexity, to drab
monochrome machines, conditioned into being this way or that,
or worse, passive vehicles for our selfish genes?

Absolutely not.

The problem here is that the alternatives are posed as if they exhaust the field: either a free spirit, blissfully floating apart from the
natural order, or a determined machine like a bus, or even a tram.

We shall meet this fallacy of misrepresenting the alternatives
again in subsequent chapters. It is not the philosophy of compatibilism that denigrates human nature, but this way of putting the al-
ternatives.'I'his way of putting the matter supposes that nature is
so awful that it takes a magical moment, a divine spark struck from
the ghost in the machine, to make it sing. It is either clockwork
(Zombies) or Ghosts. But that is the view that denigrates nature,
including human nature. We must learn to think with Wittgenstein when he wrote:

It is humiliating to have to appear like an empty tube, which
is simply inflated bya mind.

The key word to catch hold of is `flexibility' (remember those inflexible, programmed, Zombies again). And you cannot tell a
priori how flexible human behaviour is. Our biology, let us say,
gives us the modules. But then, how the modules turn out-how they are programmed if we like, differently in different environments-is another thing. By comparison, biology gives us the
structures, whatever they may be, we need to learn language. We
have them; no other animal has them to any remotely similar degree. But which language we then learn is not determined by biology, but by environment, as infants imitate the language of their
mothers and their kin.

Similarly our awarenesses, our capacities to think of alternatives, our evaluations of them, and our eventual behavioural routines might have been highly inflexible. But the evidence suggests
that they are the reverse. People can quite naturally grow up caring
about a whole variety of things. It is quite difficult to detect any
universal pattern at all: flexibility rules. Human beings can grow to
make killing fields, and they can grow to make gardens.

Theorists and gurus like to make a pattern: people are all selfish;
people are only influenced by class interests; people hate their parents; people can be conditioned; men are aggressive; women are
gentle; people cannot help themselves, and so on. But this is not so
much a matter of following the evidence, as of imposing an interpretation on it. Like all stereotypes, such interpretations can be
dangerous, for people can be caused to conform to them, and often
become worse as a result than they might have been otherwise. The
job of conceptual engineering, here, is to supply a clearer outline of
alternative structures of thought, and there are many.

WE HAVE LOOKED AT consciousness of the contents of our own
minds. And we have looked at agency and freedom-our activities
in the world. But what about the self itself: the`I'that I am? We saw
that Descartes salvaged this alone out of the wreckage of universal
doubt. Lichtenberg, we also saw, queried his right even to do that.
Who was right and how are we to think about the self?

AN IMMORTAL SOUP?

Here are some actual things we think about ourselves:

■ LIST I

I was once very small.

Barring accident or bad luck, I will become old.

When I get old, I will probably lose quite a lot of my mem ories. I will also change, for instance in wanting to do different things. My body will change too.

The organic material of my body (except my brain)
changes roughly every seven years.

If my body suffered as a result of an accident, for example
by losing some parts, I would have to cope with the result.

Now here are some possible things to think about ourselves. When
I say that they are possible, I only mean that we seem to understand
them, not necessarily that we believe them. The possibilities may
strike us as quite outlandish, but that is not at present to the point:

• LIST 2

I might have been born at another time and place.

I might survive my bodily death, and live another kind of
life as a spirit.

I might have been blessed or cursed with a different body.

I might have been blessed or cursed with different mental
capacities-a different mind.

I might have been blessed or cursed with both a different
body and a different mind.

I might be the reincarnation of some historical personage.

I might have to live life again, e.g. as a dog, unless I behave
well.

In fact, there are people who believe, or say that they believe, such
things, and indeed whole religions may hold some. Christianity
holds the second on this list to be actually true, and Hinduism holds the last. And even if we don't accept any, still, we seem to
know what is meant.

The difference between these two lists is this. The first list is
compatible with a straightforward view of what I am. I am a large,
human animal. My biography is like that of other animals, beginning with a natural birth, including natural changes, and ending
with a natural death. I am firmly located and bounded in space and
time. I survive various natural changes, such as ageing. But that
is all.

The second list suggests that I am something much more
mysterious, something that is only contingently `fastened to a
dyinganimal'. According to the possibilities on the second list, I am
something that can change shape and form, body and mind, and
that could exist even without a body at all. The biography of the'l'
could span centuries, and it could span endless changes of character, rather like an actor.

As we saw in the first two chapters, Descartes thought we had a
clear and distinct' perception that the self was distinct from the
body. And the possibilities we contemplate, from the second list,
may seem to support him. It is as if there is something-my soul,
or self, or essence-that does endure through quite a lot of changes
(list I) and could endure through even more remarkable events (list
2). But what then is this self? Here is David Hume again:

Formypart, when I entermost intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other,
of heat or cold, light orshade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
I nevercan catch myself at any time without a perception, and
never can observe any thing but the perception. When my per ceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep, so long
ant I insensible of myself and may truly be said not to exist.
And were all my perceptions removed by death, and could I
neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I
conceive what is further requisite to stake me a perfect nonentity.