Monthly Archives: April 2019

Freedom and Judgment, Part 1, by Sean Agius

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Brain illustration from The Principles and Practice of Medicine…’ by W Osler, 1904, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

“Man being held by authorities after mass murder spree”

Imagine that the above was to be today’s primary news headline. Had this been the case, what would you assume your reaction to be? Presumably – shock, terror, sorrow and everything in between (or at least I hope so). Now if I were to ask you what your thoughts on the perpetrator would be, for the sake of the example let us call him Paul, how would you answer? This may seem like a stupid question (an adjective that I’ve become highly accustomed to over the years), the answer of which I suppose will be quite unitary. If you are in fact like most people you consider Paul to be an evil, malicious, repugnant, sinister, vile (insert other negative labels here) individual who should be locked away in prison for the rest of his life or worse.

Let us, however, merge this hypothetical with a few other hypotheticals, creating a nice little hypothetical soup. If I were to inform you that the attack was crime-related and that Paul is a gangster holding a series of affiliations with multiple criminal groups, would it alter your opinion? I assume not – you most likely still hold Paul in passionate detestment, wishing the law to cross the proverbial knockout blow upon his freedom or perhaps even life. Now imagine I informed you that Paul was a psychopath, the type who thirsts for blood in the same manner as the villain in a horror movie; does this in any manner alter your frame of mind? Perhaps for some, in a sense; if I were to imitate the role of the mind-reader however, I would presume that most people still hold little sympathy for our hypothetical man, irrespective of this new information.

Let me provide you with one final hypothetical though (this will be the last, I promise). Paul has recently just returned from a trip outside the continent in which he lived out his dream of trekking through a rainforest for an extended period of time. The journey was a fulfilling one, the peak moment arriving during the last week of the trip. As Paul was stumbling through the rainforest, searing in the potent sun and carefully navigating to avoid the snakes and tarantulas, he stumbled upon a cave, a cave so beautiful that Paul was left awe-struck.

It stood at something like twelve feet tall and a mile wide; its shapely limestone enough to render the most hard-bitten cynic into a nature lover’s blissfulness. The mass of the limestone dispersed in a unique yet symmetrical manner which could not be replicated by the most skilled of sculptors. Its color palate was mesmerizing, the traditionally withering effects of Time substituted with Mother Nature’s divine hand – gifting the stone with a rainbow-like pattern; some parts of it yellow, others red, others green, others a glorious mixture of the lot.

Paul was captivated! He had hoped to see something that would spark his interest but he did not expect this. He just had to take a closer look! With every step that he took the colors turned brighter, the pattern more pronounced, the stone more shapely; leaving him in a quasi-trance until he arrived at the cave’s entrance. His aesthetic palate still not satisfied, he entered the cave; instantly the darkness engulfed him leaving him as blind as a bat, yet still he wondered what image the unwrapped darkness would provide. Were the colors as radiant? The form as ideal?

A cave in the Lewis and Clark Caverns, Montana, USA, photo 2017 by Amy Cools

Defeated by his curiosity he reached into his pocket – pulling out his flashlight and aiming it at the ceiling. The picture the light uncurtained was not, however, a pleasant one. Clearly annoyed by the light, the bats hanging upon the rooftop begun to disperse in panic. Paul was not generally a fearful man but this would leave anybody shook. Out of pure instinct, he flailed his arms, unintentionally swatting a fleeing bat. It too acted on instinct, sinking its tiny, sharp teeth into Paul’s flesh before disappearing back into the darkness alongside the rest of the flurry of critters. Then as Paul’s adrenaline begun to dwindle he too fled the cave, having lost all interest in his exploratory quest. The bite burnt, but only minimally, it was barely even bleeding. He wiped away the blood and sighed.

“Maybe I’m better served admiring the cave from afar,” he thought to himself.

The final week passed as rapidly as the bats, the encounter nothing more than a distant memory. On his departure, Paul cursed himself for indulging in airport food as he felt tired, nauseated and dizzy during the plane ride. To his surprise, he woke up the next day feeling worse in spite of waking up in his bed for the first time in months.

“Still nothing to worry about,” he thought to himself, ascribing his illness to the jet-lag. Yet as the days passed, his condition worsened significantly. He should have gone to a hospital, a doctor, a nurse, anything! Yet he did nothing!

Finally, the day of the attack arrived. Paul was feeling violently ill that day, enough to finally recognize that he was in urgent need of medical care. His final mistake was to opt to walk towards the hospital rather than call an ambulance. The short walk strained him a hundred times harder than any of his multiple mile-long treks and gradually he began to lose control of his senses; his sanity slipping away like a leaf in a waterfall, until finally his conscious awareness fully disintegrated and his whole being was consumed with red.

You might be wondering a few things at the moment – what happened to Paul? What was the point of the story? Which continent did Paul go to? Is he Batman? Who is this wannabe Charles Dickens writer and why is he so keen on wasting my time? Unfortunately, however, I can only provide an answer to the first question.

Needless to say that in the aftermath of the tragedy the general public was in shock. Though mass murder sprees are not unfortunately unheard of, the events of this one truly were – Paul committing the attack not with weapons but his bare hands and teeth instead, his behavior comparable only to that of a wild beast – the foaming of the mouth, the ear-piercing roars, the mindless aggression. It was only after the investigation that the confused public finally attained some much-needed clarity to the situation. As it turns out the bat bite which Paul shrugged off as a small meaningless sting turned out to be anything but. The gradual deterioration of Paul’s health was the result of the rabies virus, contracted through the bat’s bite, gradually invading his nervous system until it finally attained full control of his body, hijacking even his brain – on the day of the attack, causing him to strike with the ferocity that only a rabid beast could muster, tragically causing the deaths of multiple innocents.

In light of this new information, has your opinion of Paul changed? Venturing a guess, I would say that it has. The prevailing opinion regarding Paul has shifted from that of an aggressor deserving of our spite to that of a victim deserving of our pity. This perspective shift is an interesting one as it highlights that even an action as radical as killing others may be morally excused within certain circumstances. Yet what is it that truly distinguishes the latter circumstance from the former two?

French scholar Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749-1827), public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The key element to keep in mind here is the concept of determinism (as coined by the philosopher Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace) referring to the lack of ability to freely perform an action. In essence, many people morally excuse Paul for the mass murder spree as he is perceived not free to act otherwise. In this specific case, the physical illness caused by the rabies stripped him of any free will thus relieving him of any form of moral agency or responsibility for his actions that he may have previously possessed. But is it exclusively physical illness that may render one’s actions to be determined and thus morally excusable or may similar non-physical factors also play a role? This question strikes at the heart of one of the most pertinent philosophical debates within the entire history of philosophy – the free will/determinism debate.

The philosophical context of this debate is unsurprisingly significantly further wide-ranging than simply the physical health aspect. It involves a series of determining factors such as mental health, culture, family, knowledge and more. Factors which, according to the advocates of determinism, in unison determine each individual to act in the manner they do, thus rendering the first two versions of Paul no less determined than the third rabid one. These factors each merit a significant portion of attention in themselves – attention which would indubitably render this article too lengthy. I shall, therefore, be concluding this article with a philosophical cliff-hanger of sorts – promising to further expand upon such concepts within a succeeding article.

To be continued….

– Sean Agius

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

*All views and opinions expressed by guest writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ordinary Philosophy’s editors and publishers

Following in Mary Wollstonecraft’s Footsteps in London

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Portraits of Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018

In honor of the great philosopher and founding mother of modern feminism Mary Wollstonecraft‘s birthday April 27, 1759, let me share the story of two 2018 visits to London in which I visited places associated with her life and legacy.

On January 11, 2018, I visited my friend Steven in London, who was studying history at King’s College after retiring from a successful law career. He kindly toured the city with me, showing me many of his favorite spots and accompanying me to others of my choosing, the latter mostly having to do with great thinkers and doers I admire and write about. It was great fun to run around London with a fellow energetic and restlessly curious traveler!

Among the sites I chose, the first stop was at the National Portrait Gallery to see the original 1797 portrait of Wollstonecraft by John Opie. It was painted when Wollstonecraft was pregnant with her daughter Mary, who would become Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

Wollstonecraft’s portrait is hung among those of other British radicals, including that of her husband, eventual biographer, and father of her daughter Mary, the anarchist philosopher William Godwin. Below Wollstonecraft’s, I find a 1791 portrait by Laurent Dabos of her friend and ideological ally Thomas Paine. Both Wollstonecraft and Paine wrote in favor of using reason to design more just social structures and, contrary to Edmund Burke, in favor of the French Revolution. However, over time, Wollstonecraft and Paine found many reasons to become disillusioned with it. From an understandable and perhaps even laudable revolt against a massively unequal and unjust social system, the French Revolution developed into a wholesale bloodbath of the aristocracy and of real and perceived intellectual and political foes. For more connections between Paine and Wollstonecraft’s lives and ideas, please see my series ‘To Paris, France I Go, In Search of Revolution-Era Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Jefferson.’)

Oakshott Court, London, at the site of 29 The Polyglon, where Mary Wollstonecraft died. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018

Portrait of William Godwin by James Northcote, 1802, at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018

A few months later, on May 5th, my sweetheart Laurence accompanied me as I sought out two more sites, the day after we went on a fascinating tour of the Tower of London. Both are within easy walking distance of King’s Cross and St. Pancras stations. Our first destination was Oakshott Court, which stands at what used to be 29 The Polyglon, or Polyglon Square. Here, Wollstonecraft and her husband William Godwin settled in April of 1797 to enjoy a happy, if sometimes tumultuous, love. Wollstonecraft and Godwin had met many years before at a 1791 dinner held in honor of Paine, but had disliked each other at first. Both were passionate, opinionated people prone to speaking their minds, and they spent much of that first meeting arguing about religion. Godwin was also described by people who knew him as awkward with women. But the two had mutual friends and met again occasionally over the years, slowly warming to one another. In January of 1796, Godwin read Wollstonecraft’s travel book A Short Residence in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. As Godwin wrote in his biography of Wollstonecraft, the book increased his respect and admiration of her, and after she called on him in the spring of that year, they became real friends, then lovers.

At first, they lived apart. But when it became clear that Mary was pregnant, they decided to marry, though they both considered marriage an outmoded, superstitious, and even ridiculous institution. Wollstonecraft and Godwin decided that they didn’t want to subject their child to the social difficulties of growing up with unmarried parents. Godwin was also acutely aware of the struggles Wollstonecraft had faced raising her first daughter Fanny as a single mother, and wanted to spare her a repeat of that experience. Besides, Wollstonecraft gloried in the domestic lifestyle she and Godwin had settled into, so marriage didn’t feel like much of a sacrifice on her part. According to Godwin, they ‘declared’ their marriage in April 1797 though they had already married a short while before. They moved to the Polyglon house on April 6th, but their newfound joy was not to last long. The delivery of little Mary went well at first, but Wollstonecraft died 11 days later, on September 10, 1797, of an infection following the surgical removal of her undelivered placenta.

Old St. Pancras and churchyard, London, England. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018

Mary Wollstonecraft’s original sarcophagus at St. Pancras Old Church burial ground, London, England. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018

Laurence and I then headed a few blocks northeast to St. Pancras Old Church, just past the north end of St. Pancras International station and on the west side of the tracks. We were in search of the gravesite where Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and Godwin’s second wife Mary Jane (Clairmont) Godwin were buried. I had read a description of the site but when we arrived, we found there was no map of the graveyard. It took some searching to identify it from the weathered inscriptions. Laurence spotted it first: a simple, tall, rectangular sarcophagus with a flared lid. Wollstonecraft and Godwin are no longer buried here: after Mary Shelley died in 1851, her parents’ remains were moved to join hers at the Shelley family burial ground at St. Peter’s in Bournemouth.

St. Pancras was a lovely place to be on such a lovely day; the leaves and grass were lush and green and lavishly sprinkled with flowers. I was happy to see that Wollstonecraft’s memory was still being honored, with flowers and other little tributes placed on the top. I suspect that it was Godwin who chose this elegant coffin and specially for Wollstonecraft, since she lived so independently of her family and was the first to be buried here. Its clean lines emphasize the carved text on the front: ‘Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, Author of Vindication of the rights of Woman, Born 27th April 1759, Died 10th September 1797.’ This inscription also reflects Godwin’s intellectual love of Wollstonecraft. In the title of her biography, Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, he repeated this emphasis on her immortal ideas contained in her most memorable work.

The churchyard at Old St. Pancras, London, with Wollstonecraft’s sarcophagus second from the right. Photo by Amy Cools, 2018.

Wollstonecraft’s life was short, only 38 years, but oh, how fully she lived it! For my take on her fascinating life, please see my essay ‘Mary Wollstonecraft, Champion of Reason, Passionate in Love.‘

For more about the indefatigable Wollstonecraft, please see:

Articles and essays:

Mary Wollstonecraft ~ by Sylvana Tomaselli for The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Mary Wollstonecraft: English Author ~ by the editors for Encyclopaedia Britannica

Wollstonecraft, Mary (1759–1797) ~ by Barbara Taylor for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

…and various excellent essays about Mary Wollstonecraft~ by Maria Popova for Brain Pickings

Books:

The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft ~ by Claire Tomalin

Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman ~ by William Godwin

Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft ~ by Lyndall Gordon

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

Into the Last Remaining Unexplored Region on Earth: The Human Mind, by Charles M. Saunders

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Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), ca. 1665, by an unknown artist

Why Spinoza, Why Now?

A Series of Six Essays for Ordinary Philosophy – A Condensed Version of the Ethics – Examined in Detail

Part 1: Into the Last Remaining Unexplored Region on Earth: The Human Mind

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a respected scholar of Jewish ancestry who eventually became known for his philosophy and political writings. For his philosophy, he selected what he hoped would be a straightforward system: the geometrical method. Rather than lengthy and technically oriented arguments and rhetorical mechanisms, he wrote in somewhat simple Latin and in short, clear, concise statements. He assigns unique connotations to his lexicon which present additional challenges to those who attempt to study his writings. But these are not insurmountable.

In order to make his views on metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, ethics, and psychology clear and to present them as logically and as unadorned as possible, he selected a method which mimics that used by Euclid in his geometry. He was not seeking any type of mathematical certainty to support his hypotheses. But what he did hope would come through was the logical interconnection in descending inductive order within the axioms, definitions, propositions, explanations, demonstrations, and scholia (explanatory notes added to the margins) which make up the body of the text.

Unfortunately, what Spinoza thought would come across as a self-evidently true and accurately phrased demonstration has been and continues to be viewed as one of the most difficult documents to comprehend in the history of ideas. In order to begin the process of unraveling his Gordian knot of text, this essay presents a type of abstract from Letters to No One in Particular: a Discussion and Illustration of Spinoza’s Fragment or On the Improvement of the Understanding. That means, that to understand clearly and to grasp Spinoza’s intended meaning the study must begin outside the bounds of the Ethics itself.

For this first installment in the six essays which will comprise this ‘condensed’ study of the Ethics, it is critically important to begin with the brief treatise written prior to the it, On the Improvement of the Understanding (or, as it is also called, the Fragment), because it is the only place where Spinoza explicitly details his completely unique concept of ‘idea.’

The intended meaning of his ‘idea’ has effectively eluded and flummoxed even the finest minds that have commented on the Ethics. That is for two reasons: 1- Without an adequate grasp of the details in the Fragment which efficiently serves as the linchpin for the Ethics, Spinoza’s revolutionary grasp of human epistemology and the existence and operating functions of the active mind, will remain out of reach. And 2- Most if not all of the commentators on the subject, pre-supposed that by ‘idea’ Spinoza intended either: a judgment, a mental image, a propositional statement, or an abstraction formed from impressions from the sensible world. But he meant none of these things, and that is precisely why we are here today. An important reminder – In the Fragment [TIE] Spinoza emphasized that the ‘idea’ does not, in any way, involve words. With this firmly in mind, let us continue.

In this essay, an outline and explanation of the main message of the Fragment will be presented which will be accompanied by quotations from one of the true scholars of Spinozan explication, Professor Errol E Harris. The quotes are taken from his Salvation from Despair, A Reappraisal of Spinoza’s Philosophy (The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), pp 87-88.

In the Proemium to the Fragment, Spinoza announces his intention to make known and accessible to the reader the nature of the human character which comprises the innate and organic operation and functioning of the mind. He describes it thusly: ‘What that character is we shall show in due time, namely, that it is the knowledge of the union existing between the mind and the whole of nature.’ (TIE). What we need to ferret out is exactly what constitutes this ‘union’.

From that axiomatic starting point, he sets out to discover if there is any possibility that the human mind has any built-in capacity or potential to obtain to any type of knowledge which can be affirmed to be absolutely certain, that is, true. To do this, Spinoza begins by detailing the four kinds of knowledge (perception) which taken together, constitute the spectrum of inputs which every person absorbs from the extended world.

The first three, he discovers, each serves its own limited purpose and can, up to a point, prove useful in everyday living (imagination), in gathering unverifiable information (sensation), and in solving problems and thinking rationally (reasoning). None of these three involves certainty because they are involved with ‘images’, and ultimately Spinoza realized that only with the fourth kind, intuitive understanding, could certainty be achieved. By ‘intuitive,’ he means a type of knowing which includes encapsulating the efficient or proximate cause of the object being considered.

Spinoza discovered that this certainty was only made possible due to the activity and presence in every human mind of the adequate idea. This idea is innate, within the mind, and serves as a tool or agency-in-act, which organically connects and effectively anchors the mind in its union existing between it and the whole of nature. This means that the extended world and the mind are virtually inter-operationally connected. A most startling and revolutionary claim, to say the least.

Let us pause here for a moment to dwell on the enormity of what has just been stated. What Spinoza discovered in the idea runs counter to virtually every depiction of any possibility for human knowledge ever discussed or imagined possible. Every philosopher before or after him and virtually all of contemporary science posit humans as passive receptors of impressions from the sensible world. These impressions then formulate, by various descriptions, mental images which serve as unverifiable judgments or mental entities, usually depicted as some distillation of the empirical paradigm or materialism.

Now along comes Spinoza and says, no way, my friends, you’ve got it all wrong.

Since the time and space available makes demands on us to be brief, elaboration on this revolutionary discovery by Spinoza will not be possible, for now. It is incumbent on us, to move along and to offer a bit more of detail on this process before signing off. At this point, Harris will assist us to flesh out Spinoza’s revolutionary assertion.

In order to expand on this organic aspect of the mind, its role as agency-in-act along with its element of the ‘idea,’ and its role of potency-in-act, we will lay a bit of groundwork for Harris’ compressed and succinct demonstration of the idea. The role of the idea, both in its role as conduit for the absorption of data cum knowledge, as well as performing as the active ingredient, so to speak, in its function of melding with the world of extension, represents Spinoza’s breakthrough in his discovery of the primary functioning operations in the assimilation and accumulation of an individual human’s knowledge base. One currently ascribed to misapprehension about human experience, which caused Leibniz to posit windowless monads, must be addressed.

As an integral part of the whole of nature, people are not segregated off from the world. We are as interconnected as any other integrated element in nature which comprises the universal system.

We have no problem dealing with animals being able to sense objects outside their visual range and to sense immanent unforeseen dangers in the form of severe storms and wildfire. Why should we believe that humans are walled off inside their bodies like kingdoms within a kingdom?

Once the significance of this comes clear, it becomes possible to begin to accept our active participation in the gathering of knowledge which has effectively allowed for civilization to grow and for science to advance. Now we must ask; How does this work? Enter Harris. Under the sub-title ‘Idea Ideae,’ in Salvation from Despair (p. 87). we find:

‘As the idea of the body is the mind, so the idea of that idea is the idea of the mind. In “de Intellectus Emendatione” [in TIE], Spinoza explains that every idea is the “objective essence” of its ideatum, of which the actuality is the “formal essence.” But the idea is a different entity (or mode) from its object (although they are identical in substance), if only because they exist in different attributes. The idea of a circle has no center or circumference [no properties]. So, he says, the idea has a formal essence of its own, of which the objective essence is the idea of the idea (idea ideae). This is further explained in the Ethics (II, xxi, S) as “nothing else than the form of the idea so far as it is considered as a mode of thought and apart from its relation to its object.” Its relation to its object, we already know, is substantial identity (or, as Spinoza says in some context of adequate ideas, exact correspondence).’

Simply stated, an idea has a real-time life of its own. For example: someone sees a movie, really enjoys it, and relates the entire experience to a friend. When that friend later views the same film, they report back that the experience of seeing the film was exactly the same as the ‘picture’ that formed in their mind when it had been described. That idea of the film was contained within the memory of one mind and conveyed, in its entirety, to the friend.

Thus the formal essence and the objective reality made a perfect match. The ‘idea’ is real. We use them every day; we just remain unaware of their presence and potency. That is, until now!

One final thought from Harris and we will sign off. When Spinoza titled his Fragment [TIE] On the Improvement of the Understanding, what follows is what he had in mind. Harris continues:

‘The inherent self-reflectiveness of consciousness is what enables us to purify the intellect and progress from confused and inadequate ideas [the first three kinds of knowledge mentioned above] to clear and true knowledge [the fourth kind of knowledge, intuitive understanding]. It is because we can reflect upon what we think, and know that we know, that we can criticize and improve our thinking. Idea Ideatum, therefore, is nothing but the consciousness of one’s own thinking, or the idea of one’s own mind. Spinoza speaks of a series of ideae idearum (ideas of ideas) ad infinitum, strictly no regress is involved, only an unlimited capacity for reflection or self-knowledge. The object of an idea and the idea of the object are substantially identical. Both are the same essence, one formal and the other objective. Thus the idea of an idea is strictly the same object or entity merely conscious (or more fully conscious) of itself.’ (Salvation from Despair)

Because it is so vital to see Spinoza’s idea at work in our own minds, let’s consider one more example:

Each morning when a person gets into the driver seat of their car and starts the engine or motor, they have no need to ask themselves if they know how to drive. They know that they know how to drive. Beyond that, if called upon to do so, anyone who drives could teach someone else to do so. This would involve dictating to the learner, from memory, the steps involved, such as: open the door, seat yourself, and attach your seatbelt. Before starting the car, check the mirrors, make sure your field of vision is unobstructed, etc, etc. In fact, many people could prepare a written outline of the entire process which would then serve as a training manual. Once the trainee obtains their operator’s license, it can be said that the instructor captured the idea encapsulated in their mind and transferred that adequate idea of how to drive to another person who successfully absorbed the contents of the idea, made it their own, and re-converted it into the reality of driving an automobile. This transfer of the idea from one mind to another demonstrates that the idea is a quantifiable, measurable entity and fulfills any empirical stricture placed upon it.

This idea exists as a real entity. It is measurable; remember the training manual. The idea (in mind) and the object (driving) are the same things expressed as micro-sets in modality of the two infinite attributes of thought and extension. Finally, the driver’s manual serves as the idea, of the idea (in the mind) of the idea (driving lesson). The manual, which could be used by virtually anyone to teach themselves how to drive, demonstrates the existence of an idea independent of the mind!

Exhausted yet? Have no fear, this is extraordinarily difficult to track and to take in whole.

Take all the time necessary to reflect on this information, it is admittedly difficult to absorb and perhaps even challenging to accept. Find ways to see it operating in your own life. Once you have successfully accomplished this task you will stand ready to join those of us who understand that a human being is much more than a passive receptor. We are full-fledged and engaged participants in one of the universe’s most unique and ever-evolving possibilities, the creata!

Semper Sapere Aude! (Always dare to know!)

Charles M. Saunders

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

*All views and opinions expressed by guest writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ordinary Philosophy’s editors and publishers

Happy Birthday, James McCune Smith!

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James McCune Smith, closeup of engraving by Patrick H. Reason

On this anniversary of Dr. James McCune Smith’s birth, I’d like to share the story of this great thinker and activist’s life and why I’ve chosen him as the subject of my Ph.D. studies. Rather, in a way, I think he chose me. While researching the life of his colleague, friend, and frequent star at Ordinary Philosophy Frederick Douglass, I came across McCune Smith and was drawn in by his intelligence, passion, writing styles, and fascinating life story. I’m now working on writing the first full-length biography of this great and far-too-little known pioneering African American physician, intellectual, activist, and community benefactor who also made important contributions to history, literature, anthropology, physiology, medicine, constitutional theory, and the emerging field of statistics.

McCune Smith was born in New York on April 18th, 1813, the son of self-emancipated slave Lavinia Smith and, likely, her former master, a merchant named Samuel Smith. From an early age, little James excelled in his studies at New York City’s African Free School No. 2 on Mulberry St. There, he was a classmate of, and over the years, a lifelong friend, colleague, and in some cases biographer of such luminaries as minister and activist Henry Highland Garnet, mathematician and educator Charles L. Reason, engraver Patrick H. Reason, and Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge. All of these, as well as others among their classmates, went on to become leaders in the fight for abolition and equal rights.

Drawing of Napoleon Francois, Charles Joseph, by James McCune Smith, 1825. Published at O.P. with the kind permission of the New-York Historical Society

Upon finishing his studies at the Free School, McCune Smith continued his studies independently and with tutors, focusing on Greek, Latin, and the classics; over the years, he would come to be fluent in Greek and Latin, and to gain a working knowledge of French, German, and Hebrew. When his applications for admission were rejected from the medical schools at Columbia and Geneva in New York on account of his African ancestry, McCune Smith applied to the University of Glasgow in Scotland, which had no racial restrictions. He completed his bachelor’s degree there in 1835, his master’s degree in 1836, and his medical degree in 1837, receiving several honors along the way. Upon his return to his native New York City in 1837, he was said to be the most educated African American of his time.

Though he had enjoyed great freedom and opportunity in Scotland, McCune Smith decided to make New York City his permanent home. There, he continued the freedom struggle he had engaged in as a founding member of the Glasgow Abolition Society, this time in his native United States where he felt his efforts were most needed. While he was establishing his pharmacy and medical practice at 93 West Broadway St, McCune Smith also jumped right into political activism, fighting to remove the discriminatory $250 property qualification that applied only to black voters. He is most well known today for his activism in abolitionist societies such as the American Anti-Slavery Society, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and the Radical Abolitionists, as well as his leading role in the Colored Convention movement. Yet much, if not most, of McCune Smith’s freedom struggle took place on a personal, community, and grassroots level. He fought for greater economic and educational freedom and opportunity for his fellow New Yorkers of color, regularly gave lectures to raise money for black charities, was a founding member of the Committee of Thirteen dedicated to helping those escaping from slavery, and was the attending physician to the Colored Orphan Asylum for over twenty years.

McCune Smith Cafe & Shop, Glasgow, Scotland, photo January 2019 by Amy Cools

McCune Smith married Malvena Barnet in the early 1840s and together they had (about) 11 children, five of whom survived to adulthood. McCune Smith and Malvena loved raising children and grieved hard over the loss of so many. It must also have been uniquely hard for McCune Smith in his role as a physician administering to children, not being able to save so many of his own from their ultimately fatal illnesses. Yet he managed to keep his hope alive and his energies up, leading an incredibly productive professional, intellectual, and creative life. In addition to his groundbreaking work as the first African American to have a case report presented to a mainstream medical association and to have an article published in a medical journal, McCune Smith wrote prolifically and brilliantly in statistics, several sciences, history, travel, and literature. His writing ranged from concise and clinical to lyrical; from erudite to plain and direct; from sharply critical to experimental; from sarcastic to witty; from righteously angry to tender; from wry to comical.

It was not only suffering the loss of so many children that could have kept McCune Smith down. The Colored Orphan Asylum that he had loved and labored for so long was burned down in New York City’s draft riots of 1863, leading McCune Smith to move his family to the safety of Williamsburg in Brooklyn. He felt frustration, anger, sorrow, and even despair at the intractability of racism and oppression directed at his fellow African Americans despite their abilities, potential, and invaluable contributions to American prosperity and culture. McCune Smith also suffered from bouts of heart disease, lung ailments, and edema for about twenty years, and though he had many health scares over that time, he always seemed to rally and push on. Yet as he wrote occasionally throughout the middle and later years of his life, McCune Smith suspected he would not live a long life. He was right. McCune Smith died of congestive heart failure on November 17th, 1865, at only 52 years old. He had lived to see the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the Civil War, and the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, but died just before that Amendment was fully ratified.

Please stay tuned for more about McCune Smith as I continue my research into his life, ideas, and legacy…

Sources and inspiration (not exhaustive by any means, but these are some readily available to share with you online):

‘AFS Bios: James McCune Smith’. Examination Days: The New York African Free School Collection

Associated Press. ‘White Descendants Gather to Honor 1st Black US Doctor, Put Tombstone on His Unmarked NYC Grave’. FoxNews.com, 26 September 2010

Lujan, Heidi L. and Stephen E. DiCarlo. ‘First African-American to Hold a Medical Degree: Brief History of James McCune Smith, Abolitionist, Educator, and Physician.‘ Advances in Physiology Education 43, no. 2 (April 2019): 134-39

Morgan, Thomas M. ‘The Education and Medical Practice of Dr. James McCune Smith (1813-1865), First Black American to Hold a Medical Degree.’ Journal of the National Medical Association 95, no. 7 (July 2003): 603–14

‘Obituary of James McCune Smith’. The Medical Register of the City of New York for the Year Commencing June 1, 1866, 1866, 201–4

Smith, James McCune, and John Stauffer. The Works of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

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Happy Birthday, Averroes (Ibn Rushd)! By Eric Gerlach

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Averroes by Giorgione893 years ago today, on April 14th, 1126, the great Islamic philosopher, theologian, political theorist, and scientist Ibn Rushd, or as he is known by the Latinate version of his name in Europe, Averroes, was born.

Among his many achievements, Averroes is credited with popularizing the study of Aristotle in Europe, inspiring the work of Thomas Aquinas and the Christian Scholastics.  Averroes was known as “The Commentator” and Aristotle “The Philosopher” to Aquinas and the Scholastics, as Averroes wrote multiple commentaries to help others understand Aristotle’s thought. To the left is an image of Averroes standing between and above an ancient Greek sage, likely Aristotle, and an Italian scholar of the Renaissance, sitting at their feet, painted by Giorgione of Venice. Averroes was also a major influence on Maimonides, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, and Baruch Spinoza, and was one of the great souls that Dante wrote was dwelling in limbo with the Greek sages who lived before Jesus.

Aquinas Averroes and Scholastics

Thomas Aquinas

Averroes’ grandfather and father both served as chief judge of Cordoba, the place where Averroes was born, which later became part of Spain. Averroes wrote prolifically, twenty-eight works of philosophy as well as important treatises on law and medicine.  As a rationalist, Averroes argued that philosophy and religion teach the same truth and thus are not in conflict, such that intellectuals pursue the same matters that common people comprehend through religion and rhetoric.  He also argued that analytic thinking was important for the proper interpretation of the Quran, as Christian Scholastics would argue later about the Bible in Europe.  Averroes’ works were banned and burned in Islamic and Christian lands at different times, but they were revered enough to survive in both places.

Averroes was opposed to the work of Al-Ghazali, the Sufi mystic and author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers.  Ghazali argued that philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi and Avicenna contradict each other, and are thus incoherent as a set, and also contradict the teachings of Islam.  Ghazali also argued that Aristotle and those who follow him are wrong to assert that nature proceeds according to established laws, as all things proceed directly through the will of God.  Averroes wrote his most famous work, The Incoherence of the Incoherence, in response to Ghazali. Averroes defended Aristotle and argued that philosophy does lead to coherent truth, which is not in conflict with Islam, and that nature proceeds indirectly from God via the laws of nature, which God established during creation.

Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), ca. 1665, by an unknown artist

Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), ca. 1665, by an unknown artist

Averroes is also famous for his idea of monopsychism, that we all share the same divine soul, mind, and awareness, with each taking a part such that the lower soul is individual and mortal but the higher soul is universal and immortal, the source of true inspiration and reason.  Spinoza, who said that each of us is like a wave on the great sea of being, was a pantheist, inspired in part by Averroes.  Much later, when Albert Einstein was asked if he believed in God, he said, in the spirit of Averroes, “I believe in Spinoza’s god”.

In these and countless other instances, we can discern the influence of Averroes throughout both Eastern and Western thought. Thank you for your wisdom and insight, Averroes!

*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy

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*All views and opinions expressed by guest writers are their own and do not necessarily express those of Ordinary Philosophy’s editors and publishers

Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson!

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Thomas Jefferson by Charles Bird King, 1836, after Gilbert Stuart, at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Photo 2016 by Amy Cools

In remembrance of Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826) on his birthday, let me share anew my tributes to his memory, his life, and his ideas from over the years:

To Washington DC, Virginia, and Philadelphia I Go, In Search of Thomas Jefferson

To Paris, France I Go, In Search of Revolution-Era Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Thomas Jefferson

and my thrilling interview with Clay Jenkinson, Jefferson scholar

Interview with Clay Jenkinson as Thomas Jefferson

I hope you enjoy following me as I followed in the footsteps of Jefferson!

*A version of this piece was previously published at Ordinary Philosophy

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Damasio, Spinoza and our Current Confusion about Cause and Effect, by Charles M. Saunders

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Portrait of Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), ca. 1665, by an unknown artist

In this article, Charles M. Saunders considers Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain by Antonio Damasio
(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, N.Y., 2003)

In 2003, one of our most capable and respected neuroscientists went searching for Spinoza. What Antonio Damasio found is both enlightening and alarming. It is laudable that an empirical scientist had the interest, care, and capability to analyze the sequencing and behaviors associated with what Spinoza terms ‘the Emotions.’ This is clearly a positive development. When our neuroscientist friend recognized that something about emotional response is measurable, he made strides for the entire scientific community. But by focusing his analysis only on chapters 3 and 4 of “The Ethics”, Damasio sidetracks Spinoza’s metaphysics, chapters 1 and 2 while presenting Spinoza as some sort of intuitive materialist. The alarming part in all of this is that chapters 3 and 4 are linked inexorably to 1 and 2 wherein Spinoza insists that our thoughts are as real as our experience. As notable as Damasio’s respect for Spinoza’s psychology may be there is a tremendous distance from his awakening to the import and physical reality of the emotions to an adequate understanding of the full impact of Spinoza’s discovery, that the human mind has the ability to form replications of objects so accurate that these ideas are essentially the same thing as the objects they represent.

This is an astounding claim that Spinoza makes and to this day, it has been overlooked or dismissed in light of the advances in contemporary science and its ability to “reduce” everything in its purview through observation and measurement. But cause and effect are not observable within the same time and space.

Brain illustration from The Principles and Practice of Medicine...' by W Osler, 1904, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Brain illustration from The Principles and Practice of Medicine…’ by W Osler, 1904, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

When the neuroscientist-researcher connects electrodes to a patient to monitor brainwaves there is no question that the observable patterns that emerge are exciting and are indicators of some brain activity related to behaviors that correspond to the patient’s emotional state and mood changes But to conclude from this that the patterns and their location in the brain somehow indicates the cause of the thinking process is a leap that indicates faulty reasoning and bad science. To draw a conclusion about the source of the thinking process from an electroencephalogram is akin to a person who while standing atop the tallest building in a large city before dawn observes the pattern of traffic lights below and concludes that the pattern of lights is the cause of the flow of traffic. No matter how many thousands of lights make up the discernable pattern of the flow of traffic, the actual cause of the traffic is not observable. The cause of the traffic resides elsewhere. It originates in the reasons that each individual driver leaves home and enters the flow: going to work, driving a friend to the hospital, making deliveries, police responding to emergencies and countless other actions are the actual cause of the traffic and they are entirely disconnected from one another. There is no common cause to be observed and reported on here.
This analogy demonstrates the confusion inherent in the empirical process. There is no argument about what the scientist sees during the study. But there is a strong argument against what he claims to have observed. If this mistaken insistence that causality must be observable resided solely in speculative neurobiology the harm might not be that negligible. Unfortunately for us, this curious misunderstanding of cause and effect permeates most of our scientific theory and practice, including applications in healthcare diagnosis and treatment.

Perhaps one of the most debilitating misapplications of the empirical process lies within the field of genetics and the supposed causal link observable in DNA. Crick and Watson never assigned any causal agency to their brilliant discovery. They clearly understood DNA for what it is; a marker not a cause. Assigning cause to DNA strands came later after arrogance and the same faulty reasoning process employed by Damasio came into play. Whether a person suffers from cancer or obesity or a predilection towards baldness, DNA is not the cause of the affliction it merely marks the presence of the condition. To carry the traffic lights/scientific research analogy a bit further, just as we can clearly understand that no matter how complicated or advanced the light pattern and system flow technology might be it cannot be said to be the cause of the traffic. That flow can only be understood by seeing the individual actions and behaviors that are the actual cause. So with DNA, it is a marker that notes the presence not the cause of disease.

The upshot of all this is that our current empirical/materialist science system that has brought about some of the most significant advances for humans in medicine and other sophisticated technologies contains a seriously flawed view of cause and effect. But by insisting on a research focus only on the world of external experience it ignores the rich world of experience’s counterpart and co-equivalent, the Human Mind. This now outmoded way of explaining our planet and our relationship to it must give way to a more sophisticated view. This view will credit the mind as the source and wellspring of any scientific achievement that we’ve ever accomplished and that it is the mind which provides us with the most magnificent tool at our disposal for unraveling Nature’s mysteries.

Charles M. Saunders

~ Ordinary Philosophy is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Any support you can offer will be deeply appreciated!

*All views and opinions expressed by guest writers are their own and do not necessarily express those of Ordinary Philosophy’s editors and publishers