a different take on coherence in ethics

Posted on May 16, 2014 by Peter

There have traditionally been two families of answers to the question: How can a moral belief be justified? Foundationalists think that beliefs are justified if they follow from beliefs that are somehow “foundational.” As Geoffrey Sayre-McCord writes, “traditionally, foundational beliefs have been credited with all sorts of wonderful properties, with being, for instance, infallible, or indubitable, or incorrigible, or certain” (p. 154). Foundational beliefs are also frequently assumed to be big: very general in scope and application. So the belief that all humans are created equal may be considered a worthy candidate to be foundational. Skepticism about foundationalism usually takes the form of asking: How can you tell that such beliefs are true? What justifies them?

Sayre-McCord divides the turf a bit differently, so that a foundationalist is simply someone who holds that some moral beliefs have a special status. They are “privileged.” They may nevertheless be fallible and modest in scope. They may, for example, be concrete judgments that we draw from experience. But they are privileged because their justification is not the support that they receive from other moral reasons. A foundationalist thinks that a given moral belief is justified only if it is foundational or it follows from foundational beliefs.

Coherentists say, instead, that all moral beliefs are on par. There is no privileged class. Any moral belief is justified by the other beliefs that relate to it. The reasons we give for a belief take the form of connections to other beliefs. By the way, the fact that a moral worldview (such as utilitarianism, or Judaism) coheres is not a reason to hold each of its component beliefs. Rather, the reason for each belief just is the support it gets from other beliefs. The more such support exists, the more we say that the whole coheres (p. 170). But we shouldn’t believe something just because it belongs to some coherent system.

Sayre-McCord writes, “The relative coherence of a set of beliefs is a matter of whether, and to what extent, the set exhibits (what I will call) evidential consistency, connectedness, and comprehensiveness” (p. 166). Evidential consistency could be defined as logical consistency among all the beliefs in the set, but Sayre-McCord prefers the principle that the balance of evidence in the set as a whole should not tell against any of the individual beliefs–that would be an inconsistency. Beyond evidential consistency, but you get more coherence points for having “stronger and more extensive” support among your beliefs (connectedness) and having more beliefs in your set (comprehensiveness) (p. 167).

I am trying to develop a somewhat different model, based on understanding the relations among beliefs as networks rather than sets. A network model has these advantages:

It reveals much more complex and significant relationships among beliefs than simply whether each belief (A) supports another (B). It reveals characteristics–such as clustering, density, and centralization–that are important features of the whole.
It avoids privileging consistency. I think morally excellent thinkers often hold ideas that are in fruitful and challenging tension with each other. Better to have a dense and complex network of ideas in which some count against others than a simpler network that is all-too-neatly consistent. Yet we can call the former “coherent” if we define coherence in network terms. Relatedly, the standard methodology of moral improvement is weeding out inconsistencies. I think that method can easily make one’s moral worldview worse. A network model suggests other methodologies, such as identifying beliefs that are central and asking whether they deserve that weight.
It easily accommodates multiple levels. I have a network of personal beliefs pertinent to a particular topic that explicitly concerns me, such as my children’s school. They fit it a much larger network of other beliefs, some vague and unformed. Other people with whom I talk have their own networks. Our networks influence each other; in fact, mine came from other people and constantly changes as a result of interaction. The coherence of the community’s ideas may be more important than the coherence of my own, but both levels of analysis are worthwhile.
It makes the difference between foundationalism and coherentism a matter of degree. A belief is relatively foundational to the extent that it supports or even implies a lot of other beliefs but does not have much support from other beliefs. To the degree that a network clusters around such beliefs, it is a foundationalist network. A network in which every belief has roughly equal support from other beliefs is non-foundationalist. We can then ask empirically which kind of network works better for certain important purposes, such as deliberation.

Source: Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, “Coherentist Epistemology and Moral Theory,” in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Mark Timmons, eds., Moral Knowledge? New Readings in Moral Epistemology (New York: Oxford, 1996), pp. 137-189.

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introducing the Capabilities Approach

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Peter

(DeLand, Florida) In Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach, Martha Nussbaum proposes that human beings have ten “Central Capabilities.” The first one is: “Life. Being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length …” The remaining nine all have a similar grammar: an abstract noun or noun phrase followed by a verb in the form “being able to …” The rest of the Capabilities are: bodily health; bodily integrity; senses, imagination, and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; other species; play; and control over one’s environment.

I have criticized Nussbaum for making the state ultimately (and sometimes solely) responsible for the Capabilities. She is explicit about this on p. 64, and throughout the book, she writes sentences in which the government is the subject and people are the object. For instance, immediately before she offers the list of Capabilities on p. 33, she writes, “government has the job of making people able to pursue a dignified and minimally flourishing life.”

She does, of course, support human freedom: the government must enable people to pursue their own Capabilities as they wish. Yet I would assign the government a very different role than she does in her overall theory. I would say that we the people have the obligation to ensure one another’s Capabilities. We may decide to use the government as a tool for that; it has strengths and limitations. In any case, we make the government—not in some imaginary moment of signing a social contract, but every day, in how we vote, advocate, pay taxes, educate future leaders, and generate information. In similar ways, we also make churches, neighborhoods, and families. The government is us: a subgroup of us chosen or tolerated to influence the rest of the population by the means of laws and law-enforcement. I would put the state clearly in a subsidiary position and ask pointed questions about how we are supposed to get good governments in the first place. Those questions vanish in Nussbaum’s account.

That said, there is much to recommend in the Capabilities approach. For my colleagues concerned about youth development and civic education, it provides an impressive normative framework.

Why propose a list? Nussbaum does not imagine that she can dictate policies or that her moral assumptions are necessarily right. But her list starts a conversation that we must have if we are to assess policies and communities. If you disagree with her list, you should be able to respond with objections to the components, or add extra items, and give reasons for those changes. Not making a list just ducks the central moral questions.

Why many Capabilities instead of one ultimate good, such as happiness or freedom? Because there are many dimensions of human life and they cannot be measured on a single scale.

Why Capabilities instead of goods, rights, processes, or outcomes? The argument is complex and multifaceted, but in short, Capabilities recognize individual freedom and diversity while also acknowledging the human need for tangible support. If you have a Capability of imagination, you are not obliged to use it in any particular way–or at all. But you will not develop that Capability just by being left alone: you need education, access to public art and nature, leisure time, and other supports that cost money. And nothing (such as cash or pleasure) will substitute for your using your own imagination. Thus imagination is a Capability rather than a right, a good, or a choice. (A strong argument against the Capabilities Approach would take the form of a defense of one of these other keywords.)

Why one list for every nation and culture? I’d answer just as I did the question “Why a list?” Like individuals, members of whole cultures may dispute the contents of Nussbaum’s list. If they do, they should speak on behalf of alternatives. The deliberation about what Capabilities humans should have is a global one, and there will be disagreements. But they are disagreements about the human good. It makes no sense to say, “Bodily integrity is a Capability for you, but not for us.” That means it is not a human Capability.

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Dewey and the current toward democracy

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Peter

Nevertheless, the current has set steadily in one direction: toward democratic forms. That government exists to serve its community, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless the community itself shares in selecting its governors and determining their policies, are a deposit of fact left, as far as we can see, permanently in the wake of doctrines and forms, however transitory the latter. They are not the whole of the democratic idea, but they express it in its political phase. Belief in this political aspect … marks a well-attested conclusion from historic facts.

– John Dewey, The Public and its Problems, chapter v

This passage connects at least three ideas: 1) a principle: government exists to serve its community; 2) a mechanism: public selection of office-holders; and 3) a factual generalization about history: it is moving toward democracy.

The usual way to connect these would be to say that people have discovered or created the moral principle of equal political power. To make this principle influential in the world, they have invented and advocated certain “doctrines and forms,” such as regular elections. As a result of their efforts, some communities are now governed by means of these mechanisms. We can use the democratic principle to the assess the actual governments of the world and will conclude that some regimes serve their communities, while others do not.

Dewey puts the elements together in a different way. He detects an underlying current, a tide in the affairs of humankind, that throws up both concrete procedures (such as regular elections) and ideals consistent with those procedures. The importance of the procedures and ideals is a fact that we can observe in the world around us. The deeper explanation is some kind of natural process of human development. I think it has a basically Hegelian form: We homo sapiens naturally associate. Because we have language, we can reflect on the forms that our association takes. Because we have huge potential, we strive to reform our associations so that they give us more scope for creativity and flourishing. Our striving makes the current flow steadily toward democratic forms.

Dewey does not want to separate ideals ["mystic faith"] from facts; and, above all, he does not want to attribute causal power to ideas.

[We] must protest against the assumption that the [democratic] idea itself has produced the the governmental practices which obtain in democratic states: General suffrage, elected representatives, majority rule, and so on. … The forms to which we are accustomed in democratic governments represent the cumulative effect of a multitude of events, unpremeditated as far as political effects were concerned and having unpredictable consequences.

Problems with this method:

1. The current is hardly steady. Indeed, when Dewey wrote these passages, most of the world was under colonial domination; and soon thereafter, most of the colonial powers fell under evil tyrannies. Why should we be confident that the current will generally or ultimately flow in a democratic direction?

2. Many ideals are facts, in the sense that they motivate and inspire human beings. That is true not only of democracy and freedom but also of nationalism, greed, and religious fanaticism. We could substitute nationalism for democracy in Dewey’s argument (above) and conclude: “That government exists to lift its own people over all the other peoples of the world, and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless a government builds a powerful and aggressive military, are a deposit of fact. …” We must be able to use independent reason or judgment to conclude that democratic ideals are desirable, or else they are just some of the ideals that exist in the world.

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W.H. Auden’s long journey

Posted on March 10, 2014 by Peter

Articles entitled “The Secret X,” are usually exposés of X’s secret crimes and shames. But Edward Mendelson’s article “The Secret Auden” (New York Review, March 20) catalogs the many discreet acts of kindness, sensitivity, and self-sacrifice of W.H Auden. Auden sounds like one of the nicest famous people who ever lived–sleeping outside the door of an old woman’s apartment to help her with night terrors, befriending awkward teenagers at literary parties, helping convicts with their poetry.

What does this have to do with the man’s writing? Auden went on a long inward moral journey. After his early celebrity as a left-wing poet, he was suspicious of his own motives and the causes they had attached him to. His relentless self-criticism was not barren, self-destructive, or cynical; it gave him material for his best writing.

Mendelson offers an example. Isaiah Berlin was “Auden’s lifelong friend,” and on the surface it would appear that the two men held similar views: resistant to ideology and tolerant of human beings in all their crooked particularity. In his essay on Turgenev, Berlin wrote: “The dilemma of morally sensitive, honest, and intellectually responsible men at a time of acute polarization of opinion has, since [Turgenev’s] time, grown acute and world-wide.” Mendelson summarizes Auden’s response:

Whatever Berlin intended, a sentence like this encourages readers to count themselves among the sensitive, honest, and responsible, with the inevitable effect of blinding themselves to their own insensitivities, dishonesties, and irresponsibilities, and to the evils committed by a group, party, or nation that they support. Their “dilemma” is softened by the comforting thought of their merits.

This is an example of how far Auden’s journey had taken him: from ideology to the anti-ideological liberalism of Isaiah Berlin, and then beyond that to a stance of deep self-criticism in which even anti-ideology is an ideology. As Mendelson notes, Auden dedicated “The Lakes” (1952) to Berlin. This poem is about preferring homely lakes to the great ocean, and enjoying their diversity and particularity. Berlin might agree, but Auden inserts a warning (not quoted here by Mendelson): “Liking one’s Nature, as lake-lovers do, benign / Goes with a wish for savage dogs and man-traps.”

At a high-theoretical level, Auden explored the many ways in which we are tempted to adopt self-aggrandizing ideas. In his poems, Auden depicted those clashing ideas with irony and humor. And in his private life, he tried to act kindly and lovingly toward all. It seems he actually lived the life he (over-generously) attributed to Sigmund Freud:

Of course they called on God, but he went his way
down among the lost people like Dante, down
to the stinking fosse where the injured
lead the ugly life of the rejected,

and showed us what evil is, not, as we thought,
deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
our dishonest mood of denial,
the concupiscence of the oppressor.

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toward a technique for moral reflection

Posted on March 6, 2014 by Peter

My undergraduate students have identified their own most significant moral ideas and commitments and the important connections among them. The image above shows the networks that have resulted so far–with each student colored differently, and each idea shown as shared if two or more students held it. Today, students are pairing up to explain their moral networks and will adjust their own maps if their partners propose persuasive ideas (or remind them of any ideas they forgot). I anticipate that the class map will become a tighter network as a result.

As I briefly explained in class, a network is a model that can be used to describe anyone’s moral thought. The nodes are ideas; the links are various kinds of connections. That people have moral networks is not a theory that could be found true or false. Rather, a network is a tool for visualizing how anyone thinks.

Often, when we try to improve our moral thought, we seek a systematic philosophy or theology. At any rate, systems (such as Kantianism, utilitarianism, or the classical Hinduism of the Bhagavad Gita) are what we most often teach in courses on philosophy and religion.

Any system organizes the whole network in some way. For instance, the system may assert that there is one highest good (very general and abstract) that should imply all the other ideas on our map. Or the system may offer an algorithm for determining which ideas belong and which ones trump other ones.

If a moral system is valid, then an individual can relate directly to it. You can adopt it as your network. You don’t need other people to help apply the system to your own life.

If you can make a moral system work, that’s fine. But I find that almost all reflective people are not systematic; they have lots of related ideas without a coherent structure. (The same has also been found by some psychologists and sociologists.) This is even true of very religious people. They may assert that God knows one organized structure or even the God holds just one idea. But we can’t know it. We humans must hold lots of different beliefs, values, stories, heroes, etc.–closely connected but not reducible to a system.

If we can’t adopt a system, the other way to improve is constantly to reflect on and revise our own networks. This is more like gardening than architecture. You start with what’s already growing, and you trim, weed, and plant one idea at a time. That process requires other people because we need their perspectives and experiences to provide ideas and to check our own biases. We can expect that our moral network will be dynamic and somewhat situational. (We’ll have different ideas in different contexts.)

At times in the history of thought, systematic moral theories have been dominant. But those moments have alternated with times when many of the leading thinkers just can’t assent to the available systems. They instead offer techniques for moral reflection and self-improvement (a.k.a. moral therapy, or moral hygiene). For instance, the systematic moment of Plato and Aristotle gave way to Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism, which are all about techniques of self-improvement. The high point of medieval Catholic systematic theology gave way to Renaissance essayists like Montaigne. The era of Kant and Hegel gave way to Emerson and Nietzsche. I think the same alternation has occurred in Eastern thought as well.

The thinkers who teach methods of continuous moral improvement vary a great deal, but I find a very frequent return to three fundamental criteria, each in tension with the other two: 1) truth, or at least the avoidance of error; 2) community or justice; and 3) happiness or inner peace. For instance, those are the three criteria in Greco-Roman thought after Aristotle. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, a rabbi of about the same time, is supposed to have said: “On three things the world stands: justice, truth, and peace.” In Buddhism, the Three Jewels are Buddha (freedom from suffering), dharma (law—but in Buddhism, it often means truth), and sangha (community).

And that is why I am interested in putting people into dialogue with each other about their moral networks and asking them to reflect on whether their networks are compatible with truth, community, and happiness.

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is science republican (with a little r)?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Peter

First, a puzzle about Sir Francis Bacon, one of the founders of science as we know it. He begins his Advancement of Learning (1605):

To the King. … Wherefore, representing your Majesty many times unto my mind, and beholding you … with the observant eye of duty and admiration, leaving aside the other parts of your virtue and fortune, I have been touched – yea, and possessed – with an extreme wonder at those your virtues and faculties, which the philosophers call intellectual; the largeness of your capacity, the faithfulness of your memory, the swiftness of your apprehension, the penetration of your judgment, and the facility and order of your elocution. …

Yet, just a few pages later, Bacon writes:

Neither is the modern dedication of books and writings, as to patrons, to be commended, for that books (such as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons but truth and reason. And the ancient custom was to dedicate them only to private and equal friends, or to entitle the books with their names; or if to kings and great persons, it was to some such as the argument of the book was fit and proper for; but these and the like courses may deserve rather reprehension than defence.

Dedicating to the King a book in which you denounce dedications would appear to be a contradiction. Perhaps Bacon thought that the argument of his book was “fit and proper” for James I because it was the monarch’s job to support science; perhaps Bacon thought James uniquely deserving of praise (he certainly said so at great length); perhaps the future Lord Chancellor was just being an oily politician; or–most interestingly–perhaps he was deliberately subverting his monarch’s authority.

In any case, the second quotation raises an important issue. Bacon sees that the institution of science must not acknowledge or incorporate arbitrary power. A scientist must not be told: “Believe this because I tell you to.” A scientist must be asked to believe in a purported truth for reasons that she or he can freely accept.

Freedom from arbitrary power is not democracy. Although I see the appeal of writers like John Dewey who would expand “democracy” far beyond voting and majority rule, I prefer to reserve the word for institutions in which people make binding decisions on the basis of equality. Political equality is different from freedom, and it is not applicable in science. Bacon famously opposes democracy (“The Idols of the Marketplace”) as a guide to truth. In The New Organon, XCI, he writes that scientific progress “has not even the advantage of popular applause. For it is a greater matter than the generality of men can take in, and is apt to be overwhelmed and extinguished by the gales of popular opinions.”

Yet freedom from arbitrary power is essential to republicanism, as Phillip Pettit and others understand that tradition. A republic is a political order in which no one can simply say, “This is how it will be,” without giving reasons. Even a democratic and liberal society like Canada or Australia is not perfectly republican because the Queen, although almost completely stripped of power, holds her office and takes ceremonial actions without giving reasons–because of who she is. In a republic, no one may do that.

Bacon is republican about science in that way. It should have “no patrons but truth and reason”; relationships among scientists should be like those of “equal friends.” He is also republican in a second sense. A republic is a res publica, a “public thing,” better translated as the common good or the commonwealth. Republican virtue means devotion to the res publica. Knowledge is a public good if we give it away. This, of course, is a deeply Baconian theme, for scientists must “give a true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use of men.”

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Francis Bacon on confirmation bias

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Peter

Nowadays, we call it “confirmation bias:” our deep-seated tendency to prefer information that confirms our existing positions. A political controversy erupted in 2010 when the libertarian blogger Julian Sanchez accused conservatives of falling prey to “epistemic closure,” which was his preferred term for the same problem:

Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted.

Edward Glaesser and Cass Sunstein call this phenomenon “asymmetric Bayesianism” and give examples from the left as well as the right. I argued earlier this week that Amy Chua’s and Jed Rubenfeld’s book The Triple Package suffers from the same problem.

But–as is often the case–Francis Bacon got there first. In his remarkable compendium of human cognitive frailties (published in 1620), he included this problem:

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate. And therefore it was a good answer that was made by one who, when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods — “Aye,” asked he again, “but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?” And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happen much oftener, neglect and pass them by. But with far more subtlety does this mischief insinuate itself into philosophy and the sciences; in which the first conclusion colors and brings into conformity with itself all that come after, though far sounder and better. Besides, independently of that delight and vanity which I have described, it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human intellect to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives; whereas it ought properly to hold itself indifferently disposed toward both alike. Indeed, in the establishment of any true axiom, the negative instance is the more forcible of the two.

(Novum Organon, XLVI)

Of course, Bacon’s goal was not lament our tendency to err but to help us fix it. Evidence has accumulated to reinforce his concerns about our blinkers and biases. Yet, as the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom recently wrote in The Atlantic, even the accumulated evidence does not show that we are fundamentally irrational. We very often make wise and deliberate choices. It all depends on the context of choice and the methods we use to deliberate:

So, yes, if you want to see people at their worst, press them on the details of those complex political issues that correspond to political identity and that cleave the country almost perfectly in half. But if this sort of irrational dogmatism reflected how our minds generally work, we wouldn’t even make it out of bed each morning.

As the heirs of Bacon’s scientific revolution, we should relentlessly investigate all systematic forms of human error–not to shake our faith in reason but to help us to reason better.

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what is privilege?

Posted on February 4, 2014 by Peter

What do we mean when we say “privilege,” in a political or social context?

Here are some valid everyday uses of the word: “It is a real privilege to be here tonight.” “Playing football is a privilege, not a right.” “I feel privileged and grateful to be enrolled at this college.”

A privilege seems to be some kind of benefit or desirable standing that not everyone has. Some privileges are perfectly appropriate. They create meaningful and worthy categories, such as membership in a given organization or the right to practice a particular profession. According to Elinor Ostrom’s hugely valuable research on how people manage common pool resources (such as fisheries and forests), one of the general principles is the need for clear boundaries between insiders and outsiders. The insiders have the privilege to, for example, fish in a common pond. If everyone has that right, all the fish will be taken.

The problem is unjust privilege. Teaching Tolerance says, for example:

white skin privilege is a transparent preference for whiteness that saturates our society. White skin privilege serves several functions. First, it provides white people with “perks” that we do not earn and that people of color do not enjoy. Second, it creates real advantages for us. White people are immune to a lot of challenges. Finally, white privilege shapes the world in which we live — the way that we navigate and interact with one another and with the world.

Several empirical claims are implicit here: (1) certain advantages accompany whiteness in the US; (2) these advantages persist even when no one deliberately endorses them; and (3) whites tend not to acknowledge their privileges.

Built into those claims are moral premises: (1) It is OK to make distinctions, but not on the basis of race; (2) earned advantages are justifiable but unearned ones are not; (3) it is better to be conscious of privilege.

I happen to share these six propositions–on the whole–but they are controversial. From the left, Bill Mullen writes in Socialist Worker that the concept of white skin privilege divides working-class coalitions, makes racial identity look fixed and inevitable, conceals the underlying cause of racism, and blocks the only path that he believes in, which is economic revolution. A left critic might also reject the assumption that earned privileges are acceptable because they come from talent or hard work. Although there’s a big debate about what this statement implies, John Rawls insists that “no one deserves his place in the distribution of natural endowments” (Theory of Justice, 17).

From the opposite end of the spectrum, David Horowitz asserts that white skin privilege is a radical leftist myth, and “black skin privilege” is the real problem today because official policies that acknowledge race favor people of color.

Meanwhile, people who endorse the use of the phrase tend to talk about other forms of privilege as well. Race is said to “intersect” with gender, sexual orientation, citizenship status, and social class to create webs of privilege.

We will not soon conclude these debates; but some conceptual clarity may help. I think “privilege” is being used to mean unjust advantage, and that raises the question of what constitutes justice. Distributive justice is a whole topic unto itself. Allowing skin color to predict social outcomes is unjust, but preventing that does not fully satisfy justice. Getting what you earn (and only that) would be one definition of justice–not mine. Getting all that you need to meet your potential would be another definition–but I don’t think it’s possible, since human potential is unlimited. Having an equal share of the society’s rights and goods would also not be my definition, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that I don’t mind if other people have much more than I do (for I have plenty). Assuring everyone a reasonable minimum sounds good, but that it is compatible with profound and invidious inequality above the line.

Despite the difficulty, I’d argue that one must first develop a theory of justice before one can identify “privilege” in the negative sense of that word.

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horizon as a metaphor for culture

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Peter

(Chicago) The philosophers Edmund Husserl, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jürgen Habermas use the metaphor of a horizon to describe the background or framework of experience. Without addressing thorny questions of interpretation involving these three disparate and difficult authors, I’d like to defend the metaphor in general terms:

Any person at any given moment has a unique visible horizon–the line that divides the objects on the earth from the sky. Yet if I stand right next to you, or stand where you were a minute ago, my horizon will closely resemble yours. Thus the metaphor captures the uniqueness of individual experience while making difference a matter of degree that is somewhat within our control.

It’s possible for two people to have entirely different horizons–they cannot see any of the same objects. Yet those two people could move until their horizons overlapped. A person could stand between two individuals whose horizons did not overlap and be seen by each. Or a whole chain of people could connect two remote individuals, allowing them to share vicarious experiences.

Your horizon is a function of the way the world is and how you see things. To a degree, you can change how you look and where you stand, but you must start from somewhere that you did not choose.

You have the capacity to see anything within your horizon. But you cannot see it all at once. You can describe and communicate anything within your horizon, but you cannot ever describe it all. You are aware of the horizon as a whole, but your attention focuses on objects within it.

I think if you replace “horizon” with “culture,” most of these sentences will ring true. At any rate, ever since my first book, I have been criticizing theories of culture that presume that everyone who belongs to Culture A shares the same structure of beliefs, which must be different from the structure that defines Culture B. That kind of model promotes unwarranted relativism and skepticism.

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when east and west were one

Posted on January 22, 2014 by Peter

(Washington, DC) I am highly skeptical of distinctions between “eastern” and “western” thought, considering the enormous diversity within both domains, the thousands of years of interaction between the two, and the arbitrariness of any border. (Why, for example, should a body of water less than 2,000 feet across be considered to divide two continents, Europe from Asia?)

But if you are committed to the distinction, it’s worth taking a look at the Milinda Pandha. This is a dialogue written originally in Sanskrit or Pali before the year 200 CE. It describes a dialogue between a Greek king of India named Milinda (who is probably Menander I) and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena.

Menander I is well attested in Greek and Indian texts and archaeological evidence as a Greek king who converted to, and patronized, Buddhism. Here he is on a silver coin that reads “King Menander the Just” in Greek on one side and “Great King Menander, follower of the Dharma” in the Kharosthi script of South Asia on the other.

Nagasena is not known outside of this dialogue, wherein he is described as the son of a Brahmin who, having quickly exhausted the Vedic scriptures, studied Buddhism under a Greek monk named Dhammarakkhita (“Protected by the Dharma”).

Compared to a Platonic dialogue, the Milinda Pandha includes more fantastical details. The gods, for example, are directly involved. But it paints appealing portraits of the human characters. Menander goes around stumping sages with metaphysical paradoxes until he meets Nagasena, who bests him on a couple of those exchanges. Then the King simply asks questions about Buddhist doctrine and Nagasena answers with illustrative similes. The King replies after each one, “Very good, Nagasena!”

I can read the text only through the 19th century English translation of T. W. Rhys Davids. As far as I can tell, the perspective of the original document is orthodox Theravada Buddhism. Thus I am glimpsing Menander I through layers of interpretation, Asian and English; and it is hard to imagine how this European-born king of ancient India might actually have thought. But he and Nagasena seem to share the same social and cultural horizon, and the differences between them stem only from their respective roles as monarch and sage:

The king said: ‘Reverend Sir, will you discuss with me again?’

‘If your Majesty will discuss as a scholar (pandit), well; but if you will discuss as a king, no.’

‘How is it then that scholars discuss?’

‘When scholars talk a matter over one with another then is there a winding up, an unravelling; one or other is convicted of error, and he then acknowledges his mistake; distinctions are drawn, and contra-distinctions; and yet thereby they are not angered. Thus do scholars, O king, discuss.’

‘And how do kings discuss?’

‘When a king, your Majesty, discusses a matter, and he advances a point, if any one differ from him on that point, he is apt to fine him, saying: “Inflict such and such a punishment upon that fellow!” Thus, your Majesty, do kings discuss.

‘Very well. It is as a scholar, not as a king, that I will discuss. Let your reverence talk unrestrainedly, as you would with a brother, or a novice, or a lay disciple, or even with a servant. Be not afraid!’

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