Irrationality and the concept of mind

It is inherent to our very idea of mind that minds are restless. Minds are not mere algorithm-performing machines, and they do not merely follow out the logical consequences of an agent's beliefs and desires. Rather, it is part of the very idea of mind that a mind must be able to make leaps, to make associations, to bring things together and divide them up in all sorts of strange ways. Creativity isn't simply an empirical blessing - though it is that; it is a conceptual requirement: a mind must have at least the potentiality for creativity.

(Jonathan Lear, Open Minded, 84-5)

There is something intuitively right in what Lear says here. After all, when we think of the reasons why it seems like no computer, no matter how advanced, could ever constitute a mind, one of the reasons that first comes to mind is that no computer could ever display the sort of creativity that we associate with real mentality. This, it seems to me, is something very important that is often lost in the contemporary focus on consciousness as the unique factor that separates minds from mere computational devices. For in many ways the gap that exists between a mere computer and a creative mind can seem every bit as great as the gap between a zombie's brain and a truly conscious mind.

But, of course, it is far from obvious that a mere "algorithm-performing machine" couldn't display all of the creativity that we do. The tacit assumption here is that the sort of creative thought and imagination that we think any mind must possess could never be the product of the mere application of rules and algorithms to given data. And surely we do - at least in our more "artistic" moments - tend to think of creativity in this way. But is this anything more than cheap self-flattery? Or, in other words, even if this particular notion of creativity is part of our concept of mind, is it something than we ourselves display? For if it is not, then it will hardly matter much that other things cannot display it as well.

The difficulty here is that Lear seems to want to think of the sort of creative "restlessness" he has in mind here as involving something more than a mere mistake. But then the sorts of associations in question will have to be rooted in the architecture of the mind in question. And this might seem to imply that they will, after all, be the product of certain basic algorithms built into it's structure - even if these algorithms aren't anything like rules of deductive or inductive inference.

This, I think, points to any interesting tension in the very idea of creative thought. Such thought, it seems, can't be the product of the mechanical application of some set of already accepted rules or principles. For that would render it something other than creative. But, on the other hand, it cannot simply be a matter of a mere mistake or accident within the mind in question, and this makes it hard to see how it could be anything else...

Cheap shots

I am tempted to end on this conciliatory note, but I cannot imagine it placating her embattled spirit, and perhaps the incivility of righteousness is catching. She herself often preferred to end with a parting kick, like this: the index lists eleven pages for justice, and none at all for altruism, benevolence, charity, compassion, empathy, forgiveness, mercy, sympathy, or love.

(Simon Blackburn's review of G.E.M. Anscombe's Human Life, Action and Ethics)

Kieran Setiya has a nice post on

the reasons (or possible lack thereof) for procreation. He quite rightly points out that the most important reasons people have for having a child do not seem to be based in their own interests - for this, at least intuitively, is surely too self-intestered a reason for bringing a child into the world. But their reasons do not seem to be based any more in the consequences their action will have for the child - not least because heading down this road threatens to lead to Parfitian paradox. And while procreation may sometimes benefit the species or the world, this is surely also not the sort of reason most people are responding to when they decide to have a child. So, Setiya asks, what exactly are the reasons that sometimes make having a child the reasonable thing for two people to do?

This case seems to me to be of interest, in part, because it is an instance of a broader class of actions that raise some interesting practical/moral questions - namely, those actions whereby we create new special relationships, and thus new obligations between persons. For instance, let's consider a case of this kind which does not involve creating a new person: the case of entering into a friendship. Here again, while we do generally hope that our friendships will be beneficial to both parties, the benefits in question do not seem to provide us with our most basic reasons for becoming friends, at least under normal circumstances. After all, if one is asked: "Why do you want to become friends with A?", it hardly seems an acceptable response to answer: "Because I expect a friendship with A to benefit me as follows..." The reasons behind our friendships, one wants to say, just shouldn't be consequential in this way.

The same thing seems to me to be true of entering into other sorts of intimate relationships with others. And it also, albeit in a somewhat different way, seems to be true of procreation. In each of these cases, what makes the action in question reasonable is not anything about its expected consequences. Rather, the reasonableness of the action is best understood in terms of a correct or appropriate response to the current situation or state of affairs. So, for example, becoming friends with someone seems reasonable to us when it is a response to the fact that my interactions with someone have a certain character and provoke a certain sort of emotional response. And procreation seems reasonable, not because of the manner in which it will change the world, but rather as a response to the actual feelings and interactions of the two persons involved in the act of procreation.

If this is correct, then the reasonableness of these sorts of actions is not forward-looking, as the consequentialist analysis suggest, but backward looking. It is best understood, not as an attempt to achieve a certain sort of result, but as a natural and appropriate response to the current state of affairs. Of course, this just raises the question of when and why a given response is appropriate. And to understand this, I think, we need to first better understand the role that passions and emotions play in the practical reasoning of a rational (or better reasonable) agent.

A telling psychological fact about me

is that whenever I feel irritated with someone else, my natural reaction is to write them an email apologizing for how I have acted and how I feel. In part this is a reaction to my desperately felt need to repair whatever rift with the person in question my irritation might have created or simply might represent. But this reaction is also plainly an expression of the manner in which I tend to transfer irritation at individuals around me onto myself. In this way, for me, feeling irritated or angry at someone else is never a stable state of mind. Rather, with time, I will inevitably turn such anger around on myself. For I simply find it easier to bear being angry at myself than at someone else.

The question, then, is why I find it easier to focus my negative emotions inward than to leave them attached to their original targets outside of me. Surely, part of the phenomenon here involves the difficulty I have in acting on anger or other negative emotions when they are directed at others. For instance, when I'm angry at someone else, the natural thing for me to do is to respond to them in ways that express this anger. But to do this - to criticize them or even attack them - is almost impossible for me. So whenever I feel other-directed anger, I feel myself drawn to actions that I simultaneously find impossible to perform. And this seems to explain much of the instability of this state of mind.

On the other hand, I find it quite easy and natural to attack, undermine, and criticize myself. And so when my anger is directed at myself, the actions that my anger brings to mind seem entirely natural to me. Thus, self-directed anger is a much more stable state of mind for me than anger which is direct at others. And this, I think, explains a good deal of my tendency to shift from a state of other-direct anger to a state in which I'm angry at myself. But...

(To Be Continued)

A Hero of our time?

An apologia for Larry David would go something like the following.

This week B has been watching all of Curb Your Enthusiasm front to back again. And, naturally enough, I've been watching a good deal of it with him. Over dinner last night, I mentioned that with this kind of intensive exposure to the show, I can feel myself taking on some of Larry David's mannerisms and (perhaps more disturbingly) viewpoint on the world.

Of course this is more a product of my tendency to sympathetically over-identify with whatever strong personalities I am exposed to than anything else. But it provoked a discussion of the merits of the show and, in particular, of Larry David's "character". The center of the discussion, from my point of view at least, was whether or not the viewer should find David's character (i.e. David) at all sympathetic.

The case against this claim is simple enough. David is dominated by his own petty egocentric concerns to the degree that he regularly causes real pain to those around him - or, at the very least, causes whatever passes for pain among the rich and pampered Hollywood elite and their hangers-on. He is, in effect, someone who lives within a set of barriers constructed out of his own, only partially intelligible, rules and principles for life - a set of barriers which prevents him from having much in the way of satisfying or genuine interaction with others.

But just this, I think, is the basis of what - in the end - makes David so sympathetic, at least to me. After all, one thing he plainly is is a man of principle - even if these principles are idiosyncratic and irrational. And this - his principled nature - is the basis for nearly all of the action that takes within the series. For nearly every plot-point within the series is based on one or another objection David makes to the normal or conventional pattern of behavior - and these objections are always based on some obscure principle or another of his own.

Thus, one way to think of David's character is as a sort of parody of the rule-governed Kantian moral agent - albeit one whose selection of principles is surely not guided by anything like the Categorical Imperative. Still, whatever David's failings, one of them is not that his principles are draw from the prevailing social conventions and norms. Rather, David is both deeply principled and deeply unconventional. Thus, his difficulties may be understood as the product of the struggle of a man of principle to interact with a world whose conventions do not fit with his principles. And this struggle, at least, is something that anyone who sometimes feels disgust at the petty and irrational conventions which govern social interaction should be sympathetic to.

In fact, as David makes clear, to be principled today in an unconventional manner is no small achievement. For, in today's climate of conformity disguised as deviance, achieving a truly principled non-conformity may require the sort of absurd behavior that David displays. After all, the principles that guide an agent will either be intelligible in terms of our accepted conventions and norms for action or else they will possess at least some of the absurdity that David's principles possess. Perhaps this is something of a reductio of the very idea of a principled non-conformity, but - so long as we find this ideal attractive, as I still do - we should find something in Larry David to like, and even to admire.