Philosophy in a Postmodernist Culture.

I. "Philosophy is the smile on a cereal box."

I was doing some research on Paul Weiss, when I came accross a site that offers quotes from great philosophers and invites consumers to place them on t-shirts so as to "wear their philosophies" -- for a mere $15.95, plus tax.

This is a perfect illustration of what anyone who cares about philosophy today is struggling against. It isn't just neighborhood guys tucking philosophy books into their coats, as I once did (so that no one would see that I was reading Bertrand Russell's History of Philosophy), who are affected by this trivializing and commercializing of important personal intellectual experiences. This cultural mood affects everybody.

I want women out there to know that -- in addition to seeing my body, which is made to provide women with sexual bliss -- they should take the time to notice that I also have a mind. Wait, according to the Churchlands, I don't have a mind. I only have a "brain." No, I definitely have a mind and body. I know this because I dreamt of Carmen Electra last night. We were together in an alternate reality that resembled Manhattan's Upper West Side, where we had bagels at H.&H., right before renting some movies to take home to our cozy little apartment. When I woke up, I was starving -- among other things. (Yes, you can write "dreamt.")

Much the same intellectual deflation is happening to religion, by the way, which is trapped between militant scientism and an accompanying, all-American "non-threatening" atheism -- an atheism that is now instilled in young people at elite schools along with the need to be "neutral" about all things in order to sound smart. Religious worship is identified with ignorance or childhood matters to be discarded in adult life.

Anybody concerned with our incredibly difficult, demanding tradition of philosophical thought is baffled at the banalization and worship of stupidity and shallowness that is officially endorsed by so much of American culture. I understand and approve of stupidity where it belongs -- among lawyers and politicians -- but surely it is not necessary for the rest of us to be morons.

Has it ever really been attractive to be an idiot? Why is American culture so relentlessly anti-intellectual, even as more of the finest thinkers in the world are found in the U.S. (and in media) than anywhere else. I am far from parochial or nationalistic about this issue. "A philosophy that can be put in a nutshell," Hilary Putnam writes, "belongs in one." Yes, but what about wisdom on a t-shirt? Contradiction in terms?

People in philosophically cool places and artsy-fartsy corners of the world, like Paris, often look to American intellectual life and arts for guidance in creating trends, even as the majority of the population of the U.S. (understandably) is dismissed, by those same people, in highly insulting terms. Europeans say: "Americans are all idiots." At the same time, they ask -- "What is Richard Rorty's latest book about?" Also, they say: "Let's go see The Matrix IV: Revenge of the Machines."

Actually, that sounds like a pretty good title for a new Matrix movie! This time the machines have sent their best: "Agent 'Evil No. 1' is played by Melanie Griffith ... and she's out for REVENGE. Followed by an army of her subordinate agents -- made up entirely of females -- with starring roles for Drew Barrymore and Cameron Diaz, all in tight and skimpy outfits. It's a dark twist on 'Charlie's Angels.' The engineer of the 'System' is Kate Winslet, who mysteriously morphs into a man, then back into a woman. Her male persona is none other than Hugh Grant. Rachel Weisz is the 'One,' and she is madly in love with Woody Allen, who leaps in slow motion not between buildings but over very big puddles ... Whoa!" Mazeltov.

What's up with this duality in America's and the world's psyches? How do we understand our love/hate relationship with pop culture? I may be the perfect person to discuss this topic, since I have been known to do the "dual aspect" thing myself. I am wearing my "Armani" shades from the .99 cent place; a black fedora hat dating from the forties; a black "Strand Books" t-shirt, boot-cut denims from "Old Navy," and black socks that say "Whoa!" -- as does my underwear.

Pop culture can be so liberating and a wonderful instrument of education and renewal, so why is so much of it just plain awful? I am sure that people can be taught to appreciate the good stuff. Is it necessary to appeal, always, to the lowest common denominator? I can't believe that. True, it must be easier to make a buck that way. Aren't there other considerations besides money in American media industries? I guess not.

Maybe this explains the sense of emptiness so many young people describe -- the shallowness, boredom, dullness that leads them to oscillate between a "blob-like" existence before the t.v. screen ("I got a 57-inch plasma set!") and casual sex or other distractions. Women, don't say a word about "inches." Religion is outlawed by the politically correct thought police and anything with intellectual substance is anathematized as "elitism."

What's left? Sex and "The Colbert Report." I prefer the first of these items. I am "for" casual sex. I want to make that "crystal clear," as Richard Nixon used to say. "Who?" -- say the twenty-somethings.

II. ABC/Disney: American Idols and The Politics of Spectacle.

O.K., let's pause a second to be clear about the issue. We live in a televisual-media-saturated culture. I doubt that this culture is escapable. We cannot insulate ourselves from it and remain viable or engaged members of our communities. We live here and now. Here and now is about such things as Bugs Bunny cartoons and Shakespeare's picture on ... well, glow-in-the-dark underwear. Is it possible for genuine philosophical thought to survive and remain important to an entire culture under such circumstances? I think so.

I purchased the Spanish-language magazine "Buenhogar" (Good Housekeeping meets People) for my daughter because Kate Winslet is on the cover. Kate provides readers with an interview, in flawless Spanish, and we all "visit with Kate." This way both of us -- my daughter and I -- can practice our Spanish by reading so-called popular prose in that language. French movie magazines will help with slang in that beautiful language, which is being lost in Paris where everybody speaks English, except in Spanish-language magazines.

We do not hesitate to wonder why Kate is speaking Spanish because, at some level, we know that there has been a "translation" (which is always a transformation into something new) of a previously existing interview. Does Kate really serve "Tapas" at home? What happened to "bangers and mash"? My favorite British dessert and the name I will give to any other child (or dog) I may be responsible for in this world is "Rhubarb Crumble." A villain in my forthcoming spy novel will be called "Spotted Dick." "Treacle Pudding" is a fading transvestite Opera singer. As for "Toad in the Hole," that's between me and Carmen Electra.

We know that Bugs Bunny (distressingly) is not "real"; yet, we have no problem in accepting cartoon characters, like Bugs, interacting with real persons (Michael Jordan). We enjoy seeing cartoons "dancing" with Gene Kelly. "I'm not bad," Jessica Rabbit says, "I'm just drawn that way." When these words are spoken in the smoky, drawling, sensual tones of Kathleen Turner, we not only believe the screen character, we want to meet "her." Just call me Roger Rabbit.

Politics unfolds for us in this bizarre culture. "Weapons of mass destruction" alternate with "smart bombs" on the evening news. This has nothing to do with Iraq. It is only a report on "strategy" for the Oscars. Philosophy now must participate in a conversation where much will be discussed in a language of images and in an argot drawn from street culture and advertising. Do not be overly alarmed by this development. Ancient philosophers were convinced that Western thought would end with the loss of Greek terminology and the arrival of the "language of lawyers and soldiers" -- Latin. Somehow, Western philosophy survived that horror. I am sure philosophers today will adapt and survive. We need them. We want them to survive, so we can survive.

When political discourse in America at this crucial moment becomes something on the level of "The Colbert Report," for the vast majority of people, we are in trouble. The Sunday morning serious discussions and the New York Times will only concern policy wonks and your grandfather. Most people prefer to see who won on "American Idol." The result is that politicians steal everything, including the kitchen sink, and law courts prohibit romantic love as "outdated." And that's only New Jersey, where nobody's paying attention -- usually. "Let's steal!" say the boys in Trenton. And they do.

Philosophical ignorance and stupidity, literally, destroys lives and causes great avoidable suffering. Many of our difficulties in the Middle East and elsewhere result from a failure to understand or imagine the perspective of other, intelligent, very different people. People who do understand those different perspectives are ignored as proponents of "convoluted gibberish." In other words, such persons express complex thoughts in abstract language. We can't have that. Let's destroy their writings and web sites. I can really relate to that.

I have encountered representatives of the prevailing American middle-brow world view in debates who did not understand basic philosophical propositions and terms. As a result, they contradicted themselves and lapsed into incoherence -- and did not recognize or acknowledge this incoherence when it was pointed out to them. People like me, who are theoretically-minded in America, are ignored and sometimes destroyed. We are unwelcome reminders of the complexity of the world and of glaring injustices in U.S. society. We are usually most serious when we are joking, like performers. We often make use of media imagery to make serious points in a way that will be understood by young people today. Hence, we are to be eliminated from public discourse, even from social life. Worse, we are to be instructed or "helped" for "our own good" by skinny people dressed in black, who may have graduated last year from Brandeis and who no longer need to listen to anyone. Anybody seen "The Colbert Report" lately? If so, can you explain what the show stands for? Anything?

If the answer to that question is that the "Colbert Report" stands for nothing, except pointless ridicule and unfunny sniping, then my point is established. For the nihilism instilled in young people by such media fare will not help much later in their lives. The world view associated with that t.v. program -- and many like it -- is a celebration of a smug, know-nothing shallowness and self-induced stupidity that I find not only unattractive, but potentially harmful. I am against all forms of censorship. Your viewing choices are your business. I am just saddened at the level of public taste and discussions today. Do not assume that all young people are stupid or have a short attention span. I believe that, if we speak in a media-smart language, then we have a good chance of communicating with young voters -- even when discussing the most complex ideas.

What do elites from other cultures think when they encounter such attitudes of dismissal and disdain from people whose philosophical and humanistic education is non-existent? Wonder. They shake their heads. This astonishment explains the French attitudes at the outbreak of the Iraq war. French comments were the warnings of a FRIEND. Let us heed those warnings now, before it is too late. Maybe it is already too late.

What are some of the public reponsibilities of philosophy in the new cultural space created for it? What can we do to help philosophy in its new mission? I provide suggestions or possible answers to these questions in my next section. I think French attitudes to philosophical discussions will be instructive. In France philosophy is seen as part of a full life for ordinary people.

III. HBO: "Boy and Girl Gotta Meet Cute."

Narratives and narativity are the new medium for apprehending a surreal cultural and intellectual social space. Great! America has some of the world's very best masters of narrative form who speak and construct this visual language of everyday life in the developed world and (increasingly) everywhere. The people I am thinking of are not in Washington, D.C. -- they're mostly in L.A. and N.Y., even Richmond, Virginia or Dallas, Texas. They are not the people you may think of in planning a public conversation about ideas in our time. ("'Justified': A Review of the FX Television Series.")

We want to ask them -- artists and thinkers -- about structures and forms that impose order on experience. We need their contributions concerning all that is missing from our self-presentation to the world at this moment. Please include artists in the intellectual conversation over the direction that we should take -- as a nation -- in a post cold war climate, in a multipolar world where -- like it or not -- power is dispersed and decentered (as we are), so that "asymmetrical" influence describes both the impact of small nations and "primitive" weapons. As we say in America, "it don't take much to stir things up these days."

The challenge is whether that American contribution to our global dialogue on meaning will be as brilliant and powerful as it can be; or whether entertainment values will drive out (as opposed to complimenting) the artistic and ideational content of this new discourse, cinema-imagery, in which America must now speak to the world. It is our language, in a way, because it was invented here. It is still, in my judgment, best spoken here. So why aren't we using it to explain ourselves?

"Hollywood" is not just a joke or about money and glitz. This is not to deny all the stupidity coming out of that town. Hollywood right now, today, is one crucial university or think tank where America's -- and maybe the world's -- philosophical future is really being formulated by means of the creation and expansion of this new language of images and goods as well as the economy it both creates, makes possible, and keeps in place. A more inclusive and equittable version of this conversation is in everyone's interest. This language of images is increasingly global and synthezising. On my bookshelf is a small plastic statue of a meditating monk, with a cell phone, dark glasses, and an Elvis t-shirt. The power to create the subjectivity of people all over the world is a true and overwhelming power. I am sure that, as the t.v. show "Justified" goes global, it will be very popular in Pakistan and India, also China.

I love a happy ending. I am thinking of placing the following sentence on my philosophical t-shirt: "Pass me the popcorn."

U.S. Attorney Battles New Jersey's Culture of Corruption.

My computer is under attack, again, this morning -- February 26, 2007 at 10:45 A.M. -- when I am blocking: http://view.atdmt.com/dmm/iview/msnnkson001000069dmm/direct/01

I will continue to run scans all day. Please see the essays in the "General" section of my msn group. http://www.Critique@groups.msn.com/ As I write these words, I have experienced a pretty typical several hours of struggle against cyberstalkers and harassment, obstructions and denials of access, mostly to my MSN group. My primary emotion is sadness. I feel sad for people who delight in inflicting frustration and harm on others, even sadder for a culture that remains indifferent and impotent against the cruelties on display in destroying art and intellectual work. Something important about the United States of America may be dying before your eyes. Let us hope not.

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey was placed "under federal oversight in connection with allegations of widespread cronyism and financial fraud. ... The university was accused, among other crimes, of defrauding the federal and state governments of at least $4.9 million by deliberately overbilling Medicaid."

It turned out to be more like $100+ MILLION that was "misappropriated." See David W. Chen, "With a New Jersey University Under Federal Oversight, Corzine Removes Its President," in The New York Times, January 23, 2006, at p. B3.

I would not be surprised if there are MORE such revelations in the days and weeks ahead. Come to think of it, there are always more such revelations in New Jersey. I think that we can expect new convictions (very soon) for graft and corruption in the Garden State. These words seem even more timely and apt today. Given developments in the battle over compliance with a federal subpoena in February, 2007 -- it may be that these predictions are about to come true.

On February 1, 2006 The New York Times reported: "Trustees of New Jersey's financially troubled university voted on Wednesday to accept the resignation of its president Dr. John J. Petillo, but only after he agreed that his $600,000 severance package could be revoked if a federal investigation of the university finds evidence that he should have been fired."

Most working people in America do not have a $600,000 "severance package" to compensate them when they screw up and get fired for it. Additional information has, apparently, become available now: "... the institution had overbilled medicaid by $5 million or more, [add 95 million more!] spent hundreds of millions of dollars on no bid contracts, and lavished perks on board members, administrators and their political allies." The "overbilling" is now believed to exceed even these figures.

Finally, " ... in the United States Senate, leaders of the Finance Committee [have] demanded a briefing on how the university spent hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid, saying they were 'alarmed and deeply troubled' by the allegations."

And:

"Investigators have now added to their list of questions about $36.8 million in state funds that were sent to the university last year but are not accounted for. ... The United States Attorney Christopher J. Christie, has been investigating the allegations for nearly a year, and in December [2005] threatened to indict the university for Medicaid fraud unless administrators agreed to let a federal monitor oversee its finances."

David Kocieniewski, "Board Accepts Resignation of Medical University Leader," in The New York Times, February 1, 2006, at p. B4.

Two years later, nobody is going to jail because the people who stole this money are white and wear suits. They also, probably, pay off or happen to be New Jersey politicians. A much publicized letter by the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey [now Governor Chris Christie] alleges that "lawyers for the state Attorney General in New Jersey," under the previous [McGreevey] administration, "mishandled" politically sensitive investigations, "raising the possibility that state investigators were trying to shield political figures."

David Kocieniewski, "Ex-Prosecutors in Trenton Respond to U.S. Scolding," in The New York Times, January 27, 2006, p. B2.

New Jersey's Attorney General, in "previous" administrations, actually COVERED-UP for the big time political bosses and crooks. What's Stuart Rabner up to these days? Not much, I guess. Same old, same old. Are you a guilty bystander, Stuart? How about you, Anne Milgram? Who were you trying to protect, Anne?

John P. Martin and Jeff Whelan report in The Star Ledger, January 26, 2006, and at http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/news-4/1138258644245310.xml&coll=1

"U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie unleashed a blistering attack on the New Jersey Attorney General's Office" -- which, I believe, includes the Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE), which is widely believed to be a corrupt political entity -- " accusing State investigators of botching a 5 year corruption probe into South Jersey political boss George Norcross III so thoroughly that it could not be salvaged."

The U.S. Attorney was quoted as saying:

"In retrospect, our biggest mistake was to entrust a political corruption case of this magnitude to the New Jersey Attorney General's Office." Asking politicians in New Jersey to investigate political corruption (or judicial incompetence) is like asking the fox to guard the chicken coop. David Kocieniewski, "No Title and No Elective Office, But Influence Across New Jersey," in The New York Times, January 7, 2006, at p. B1 (referring to Camden County's "alleged" political boss GEORGE E. NORCROSS, III).

And also:

"New Jersey is an ethically challenged state. It is where far too many politicians have been indicted and where far too many people use their political connections to get jobs. That culture needs to change. Such change is slowly coming through aggressive prosecution by the U.S. Attorney's Office and legislation banning 'pay to play.' ... " Daily Record, February 3, 2006, http://www.dailyrecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=2006203&Category=OPINION01&ArtNo=60203

Governor John S. Corzine appointed three new members of the board of "the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which is under federal oversight in connection with allegations of financial fraud and rampant cronyism." Among those selected to serve on the board is "Robert Del Tufo, a former United States Attorney and [New Jersey] Attorney General." The New York Times, February 10, 2006, at p. B7.

New information and sources may have become available to federal agencies, very recently, yielding useful clues that will result, I hope, in arrests and indictments in the immediate future.

If you are aware of criminal wrongdoing by political or legal authorities anywhere in New Jersey, go to FEDERAL agencies to report it. It is widely believed that there are multiple and on-going federal investigations concerning "events" in New Jersey at the moment. Each of them will probably lead to new investigations. My reasonable estimate, based on history, is that there will be more such revelations in the IMMEDIATE future.

It is always best to remain optimistic. There must be some public officials in New Jersey who are not corrupt. Actual suggested state slogan: "No, It's Not True That All of Our Politicians Have Been Indicted." As the state's legal system and political power-structure continues to induce laughter and nausea, New Jersey's Supreme Court is pondering the need for statues of each "justice" to be placed in public buildings. If you are disgusted by all of this corruption and hypocrisy on the part of New Jersey's legal "elite," you're not alone. Let's do something about it.

Call the feds if you can help.

Medical Sadism and Experimentation in America.

This essay has already attracted the attention of hackers. I have made and will continue to make the same corrections, as many times as necessary, ensuring that these criticisms are read.

Ezekiel Emanuel, "Unequal Treatment," The New York Times, Book Review, February 18, 2007, at p. 18.
Harriet A. Washington, Medical Apartheid (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
Ronald Dworkin, A Matter of Principle (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985).


In what must be one of the most unfortunate issues of The New York Times ever to hit the stands, there were several prominent articles in Sunday's Book Review that were riddled with errors and nonsequiturs, uninformed about the subjects under discussion, poorly written and not very well argued. I am shocked and saddened to see the Book Review reach this level of incompetence. It should also be said that the Times is such a good newspaper that you will always find something worth reading, even on a bad day. This was a bad day. Where are the editors and fact-checkers at what used to be America's "premier" Sunday Book Review?

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel is identified as an "oncologist" and expert on "bioethics," whose knowledge of ethical theory is, actually, somewhat lacking. If this review is reflective of Dr. Emanuel's learning in this area of philosophy, I suggest a refresher course.

Ms. Washington's book, which I will read and review myself (because Ms. Washington deserves better than this comment on her work) is a brave critique of the U.S. medical establishment's arrogance and disdain for the dignity of persons, racism, unethical and (often) criminal disregard for human rights in the "use" -- there is no other word for it -- of human beings for research. Persons are not things to be "used." Human beings are not objects to be destroyed by social scientists interested in perfecting psychological torture methods.

Dr. Emanuel begins by noting a physician's testing of an African and Turkish innoculation technique against Smallpox back in June of 1721. Physician Zabdiel Boylston's "use" of slaves and others was "successful," we are told, since out of 244 people, "only" six died -- " a death rate of 2.4 percent, compared with 14 percent for the nearly 6,000 Bostonians who acquired the smallpox naturally." This reviewer's conclusion is: "As Boylston's use of slaves highlights, African-Americans have participated in biomedical research from the outset." (emphasis added!)

The problem with this so-called "participation" by African-Americans, Dr. Emanuel, is that there was not a whole lot of choice involved for men and women who were slaves, chattel, "things" to be "used" in eighteenth century America. Human agency in "causing" illness to persons is ethically different from persons getting a disease "naturally." The results of this test, whatever they might have been and regardless of whether physicians "learned" from their victims, is ethically tainted by the Mengele-like disregard for the autonomy and dignity of persons involved in any "use" of a human being without his or her "freely given, unimpaired, well-informed and knowing, highly specific and limited consent." This is true with regard to ANY medical treatment or procedure -- even more so when medical "experimentation" is involved.

American physicians -- disregarding their own ethical standards -- not only continue to involve persons in "research without telling them about it," but arrogate to themselves the authority to involve others "for their own good" in such research, then lie or fail to disclose what they have done. This lying is especially likely when their efforts are unsuccessful, even harmful or lethal. This is to deny victims the truth concerning their own lives. Often this failure and the resulting harm is intentional on the part of scientists "interested" in observing the suffering and collapse of their fellow human beings. The death of all affect in torturers makes the agonies of "subjects" a source of amusement and entertainment for these persons whose achievements are on display at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

These actions are taken in violation of a physician's most solemn obligation and oath, which is to "do no harm." Worse, as I emphasize, often the harm is done deliberately for reasons that have nothing to do with the victim's desires or expectations, or even knowledge and welfare. A physician whose agenda is political or investigative has stopped being a physician in order to become a torturer. New Jersey's Terry Tuchin and Diana Riccioli are two active torturers today. This governmental-medical paternalism is only possible for one who considers him- or herself the superior of the person for whom such "choices" must be made. Justice Brandeis, wisely, counseled citizens to be most on guard when government claims to act for paternalistic reasons.

Ms. Washington is right to conclude that African-Americans have too often been unwilling victims of quack theories (and theorists), that they are "abused and exploited by a racist medical establishment." This history "goes far beyond the infamous Tuskegee syphillis study" -- where African-Americans were denied penicillin treatment -- "despite the fact that determining the course of the disease, the putative goal of the study, had already been accomplished." 2008-2009, Mr. Rabner. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

The suffering and pain -- even death -- of these human beings was deemed "incidental" to the study's goals by persons who regarded themselves as physicians sworn to alleviate human suffering and cure disease. Physicians abandoned their primary obligation in the Tuskegee study -- and many others since -- an obligation to provide for the "care and welfare" of these afflicted individuals, whose human rights were ignored, as they became objects or be "used" so as to further physicians' studies, interests and career goals. Ms. Washington writes:

"Researchers who exploit African-Americans were the norm for much of our nation's history, [they often still are,] when black patients were commonly regarded as fit subjects for nonconsensual, nontherapeutic research."

Ms. Washington concludes, as I do:

"... blacks [and others falling under a similar "sub-human" category] are still at greater risk than whites of being conscripted into research without giving their consent."

I will focus on the flawed utilitarian rationale offered by this reviewer in defense of such medical research, arguing -- internally to his consequentialist position -- that his argument is incoherent on its own terms; I will then raise an external critique, based on a deontological ethical theory, relying on Kantian-Rawlsian-Dworkinian rights thinking. I also borrow from Charles Fried.

I suggest that much medical research taking place in America is unconstitutional, immoral, even evil. I conclude that continuing secrecy about this shameful chapter in America's medical history, together with some honesty about the ongoing horrors covered-up (sometimes with the assistance of courts sworn to uphold legal and human rights) is a prerequisite to any progress.

Professor Washington argues that some people have been exploited by medical researchers. Furthermore, in a racist society, she suggests that it "should not shock" us that many victims are members of despised minority groups, especially African-Americans. It doesn't shock me at all. Dr. Emanuel does a little backtracking at this point: "Risky research -- whether beneficial or not -- has often relied on various vulnerable populations, including the elderly, soldiers, prisoners, the mentally disabled and orphans of all races and creeds."

Notice what is being said here by this expert on ethics: "Risky research" is tacitly admired, even when it is not necessarily "beneficial" to unconsenting subjects. My conjecture is that, if Dr. Emanuel and his loved-ones are secretly and without their consent made subjects of "risky" research that has no immediate benefit to them, with disastrous consequences for all concerned, that Dr. Emanuel may then have a reservation or two about the ethics of such research. However, since victims are members of "vulnerable groups" ("inferior persons," Mengele called them), such research is hunky-dory as far as many American physicians are concerned. Time to paraphrase Justice Holmes: "Three generations of physician torturers is enough!"

"Yes, African-Americans have been exploited, but they have not been singled out exclusively or even predominantly." Exploitation and the violation of human autonomy is O.K., Dr. Emanuel says, so long as it is not exclusively visited on one group; rather, such evil should be imposed on persons in many vulnerable groups. This is indeed impressive reasoning. It is permissible to wrong some people -- provided that you are willing to wrong others, who are similarly disadvantaged. Doctors can say that, while they are cruel, they do not discriminate and are willing to victimize anyone, reagardless of race or creed.

This flawed premise leads to grave difficulties with Dr. Emanuel's brand of utilitarianism. "Enrolling vulnerable people in research was justified as providing a way they could contribute to society." The problem is that they were selected to suffer and sacrifice, without their consent, in order to "contribute" to a society that really included other people -- like researchers, perhaps and not themselves. Society means researchers; victims means so-called "vulnerable persons" or "inferior" persons, allegedly -- like "African-Americans."

Isn't that nice? Not nice for the "vulnerable persons," of course, but what the hell. This way they can "contribute to society." Utilitarianism speaks of "the greatest good of the greatest number" (Bentham, Mill) in a setting where subjects are postulated as equals. "Each counts for one and none for more than one." However, in a racist society, each counts for a different sum. If you are a white researcher (which is a cultural designation and a political one), then you count for one. An African-American or Jew, or "others" -- made the unwilling victims of your "theory" or research -- may be less than fully equal. Therefore, victims will count for, say, three-fifths of one. "All are equal, but some are more equal than others." (George Orwell) Dr. Emanuel quotes Dr. Walsh McDermott's assertion of 1967:

"We have large social payoffs from certain experiments in humans. ... We could no longer maintain, in strict honesty, that in the study of disease the interests of the individual are paramount."

Who's "we"? The interests of the "individual" are certainly crucial to that individual. Good old Walsh is confident that he is not someone whose interest can be ignored. Walsh is probably white and went to medical school. Nobody is going to pick him for secret experiments that may destroy his life and psyche. That's the sort of thing only done to inferior or "vulnerable" people, who don't really matter anyway, because physicians can "learn from them." There's always more where they came from. This way Dr. and Mrs. Walsh (who likes to shop), or their children, can benefit from these studies five or ten years down the road.

Racism is absurd and evil, but it has its own logic of suffering and death. Like all evil, racism has a tendency to spread. Being a black person (African-Americans may wish to use the "N" word) is a socially constructed category. It has to do with being seen as "other, inferior, vulnerable, expendible." In Nazi Germany or slave societies, persons called "Jews" or "Negros" are really being described as the same kind of things. " Things" (or objects) are what you use for your purposes because "they" have no purposes or intentions that one needs to worry about. In America, you can be (now use the "N" word!) an African-American even if your skin is white. I can attest to that. The label means that you are deemed sub-human. I know what that's like. I also know what it's like for those who have themselves committed crimes -- or allowed offenses to be committed by others against me -- to judge my "ethics." (New "errors" inserted -- oh, boy.)

Dr. Emanuel's utilitarianism (regardless of his race) involves sacrifices by others, for the benefit of people, like him, who are mistaken for society as a whole. Based on Emanuel's own utilitarian premises, this stance is unethical because of the unequal distribution of burdens in relation to the disproportionate receipt of benefits. Also, this "ethicist" reviewer fails to recall the important lesson learned in seventh grade: "Two wrongs don't make a right."

It is not o.k., Ms. Poritz, to torture African-Americans if you can happily point to Jews or Latinos who have also been tortured in other societies. This is the sort of argument that philosophers describe as "flawed moral reasoning."

A brief word about what is missing from much ethical thinking in American social science and medicine or law these days is any appreciation of deontological traditions in ethics or rights-thinking, which is essential to the American Constitutional tradition.

"Deontological ethics is ethics based on the notion of duty, or what is right, or rights, as opposed to ethical systems based on the idea of achieving some good state of affairs ... or the qualities of character necessary to live well ... "

Dictionary of Philosophy, p. 100.

There are things that may not be done to persons simply by virtue of their ontological status as persons, even if you honestly believe that it will benefit them to do such things. Others may not alter you, without your consent, "for your own good" for this same reason. A person is a locus of rights and responsibilities whose AUTONOMY as a self-legislating being -- choosing, intending, willing -- is equal to your own. Thus, others are entitled to respect. This is subject to a person's compliance with criminal laws -- and even criminals have rights which society may not violate. Convenience or social "benefit" does not enter into this calculus, that is, if a society wishes to remain a moral one, committed to democracy and the rule of law.

To violate a person's rights is not only to injure that person, it is also to denigrate and diminish yourself, as the violator. This explains what is meant by New Jersey's "feces-covered" Supreme Court. By violating or allowing for the violation of the rights of another human being -- by dehumanizing him or her -- you also become something less than human, morally speaking. A physician is demeaned by such a betrayal of trust leading to infliction of injuries upon a human being for purposes of exloitation. For a court to be stained by such evil is to lose all legitimacy. New Jersey's Supreme Court has done exactly that -- it has become something less than a tribunal of law.

All use of persons as unwilling and nonconsenting subjects of experiments is a reduction of persons to the status of slaves, without rights to autonomy and privacy, dignity or respect. Such a thing is not simply a mistake or a breach of ethics. It is a great and loathsome evil. This is true even when such a horror is sanctioned by a so-called "Supreme Court" in its stupidity and ignorance -- as in New Jersey. Ronald Dworkin explains why rights matter and suggests why, I believe, this sort of experimentation must be prohibited. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")

"We need rights as a distinct element in political theory, ... when [a] decision that injured some people nevertheless finds some prima facie support as the claim that it will make the community as a whole better off on some plausible account of where the community's general welfare lies. But the most natural source of any objection we might have to such a decision is that, in its concern with the welfare or prosperity ... of people on the whole, ... the decision pays insufficient respect to its impact on the minority; and some appeal to equality seems a natural expression of an objection from that source. We want to say the decision is wrong ... because it does not treat people as equals entitled to the same concern as others."

A Matter of Principle, pp. 370-371.

All victims of medical sadism and experimentation should be seen as our natural moral equals, brothers and sisters. Victims' rights to self-determination and respect for their dignity require that reparation -- or acknowledgment at least -- be made by those contaminated by approval or participation in their dehumanization. This insistence will never end and the struggle for that justice, which is often racial, will not be halted until such suffering victims are finally seen and welcomed into the dialogue of justice in their community, AS FREE AND EQUAL PERSONS.

Incoherence in the New York Times.

Jim Holt, "Self Centered," The New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2007 at p. 14.

I am under a massive computer attack at the moment. I don't know whether I'll be able to continue writing. I hope that I can keep posting essays because some things I find in the press simply call out for comment. In today's New York Times, for example, I encountered a self-contradictory and incoherent review of a new book by Michael Frayn, a review which takes my breath away. ("Book Chats and "Chits.")

It is uncharacteristic for Mr. Holt to produce something like this. I can only hope that this was an editorial error or that there were "additions" to his text. I am embarrassed for him. I believe that Mr. Holt must be better than this. I am not able to devote the time and attention necessary for a detailed exposition of all the flaws in reasoning and philosophical mistakes in this piece. I will simply comment, briefly, on a few of the most glaring errors.

Mr. Holt begins by telling us that: "In philosophy, you can be a 'realist' or you can be an 'idealist.'" Actually, Jim, you can be lots of things: "internal realist, phenomenologist, idealist, materialist, "mixed" realist, monist, dualist, pragmatist, pluralist." Michael Frayn suggests that "nominalism" may be more helpful in understanding his views than idealism. This makes Neo-Thomism and philosophers of process -- such as Alfred North Whitehead -- useful to interpreting The Human Touch.

There is an area of overlap between Hegel's dialectical absolute idealism and Kantian critical realism/idealism: Compare Friedrich Beiser, "Solipsism and Intersubjectivity," in Hegel (New York & London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 177-178 ( '' ... connection ... between realism and intersubjectivity ...") with Jacquelin Ann K. Kegley, "The Contextual Human Person: Reflections on the Philosophy of Marjorie Grene," in Randall E. Auxier & Edwin Lewis Hahn, eds., The Philosophy of Marjorie Grene (Illinois: Open Court, 2002), pp. 69-72 ("Grene's reinterpretation of Kant" as Critical realism should be compared with Roy Bashkar's "dialectical critical realism").

There is a long list of positions available in epistemology, metaphysics and ontology. Mr. Holt writes: "You are a realist if you believe that the universe exists [as distinct from being knowable?] independently of our minds, and that it would be more or less the same if we weren't around to observe it. [How would you know that?] You are an idealist if you believe that reality is somehow mentally generated, that we make the world."

The point, Jim, is not that some aspects of the world "are projected on to it by our mental faculties," but that there is no knowable world without a knower. Reality is mentally-generated by each one of us for ourselves, since if it were not, there would be no knowledge or world for each of us. Notice that this refers to KNOWABLE reality and says nothing about what is real that may be UNKNOWN, to us, or UNKNOWABLE to our minds at any time.

This is not a claim concerning what exists, in other words, but a statement concerning knowledge. To do this mental-generation of a world is to participate in such SOCIAL realities as languages (hence, objectivity is "real"), but it is still for the knower to do so as a subject. This is a point which is, unintentionally, established by Jim Holt during the course of his review -- a review in which Mr. Holt does his best to dismiss idealism in a high-handed manner. I am pretty sure that this reviewer did not read the book that he attempts to review. Please remember that there is a difference between absolute application of doctrine or truth and the Absolute (F.H. Bradley).

We seem to know two mutually contradictory things to be true, Michael Frayn writes. This paradox is something I have been puzzling over for most of my adult life. So have many other people, in many generations before me. It's the world's oldest mystery, and it has taken many different forms. Are the qualities that distinguish one thing from another objective realities, are they subjective imposition upon things? ... Succeeding schools of philosophers have reached for one horn of the dilemma or the other, but it is impossible to seize both horns equally at the same time. ...

The Human Touch, pp. 7-8.

Mr. Frayn develops a position indebted to Kant, but also -- as I shall argue in a forthcoming essay -- relying on Aristotelean and Thomistic insights, drawn from the thinking of Catholic philosopher Elizabeth Amscome. I venture to suggest that Philipa Foot ("the doctrine of double effect") may also come in handy in interpreting Frayn's philosophical work. Mrs. Anscome is thinly disguised in Frayn's novel, A Landing on the Sun. Frayn's meditations on time in this work should be compared with his screenplay for "Clockwise" -- which was made into a film starring that great philosopher, John Cleese. Yes, Frayn also wrote "Copenhagen." Compare these two crucial statements:

The thoughts that one thinks in the privacy of one's own head tend to be elusive -- and often prove nugatory or false when one attempts to bring them into the light of day. The possibility that someone might be listening ... makes us all more coherent.

The Human Touch, p. 8.

Guess who might be listening, Jim? Here is Frayn's alter ego in The Trick of It:

Writing on the back of things again! I suppose that's what my entire life consists in. If it's not cheques or discarded typescripts it's other people's books, other people's imaginations, other people's lives. Actually you may find the stuff on the other side of these particular pages more interesting than my hopeless adventures in Hell-on-Thames. (p. 54.)

"Writing on the back of things or other people's imaginations" is a way of describing not only literary effort, but any entry into the philosophical conversation of our civilization or thinking -- and it's that bit about "other people" that explains where the "objectivity" enters into this novelist-philosopher's or "subject's" efforts to understand the world in which he finds himself, then to tell others about it.

Every philosopher -- especially Michael Frayn! -- is Gulliver reporting on his or her adventures.

Idealism was neither created nor "brought to respectability" by Immanuel Kant, as Jim Holt suggests, since the position may be traced at least to Plato (who is still a pretty respectable philosopher). In fact, idealism was probably around even earlier. Kant's position is not that behind the mentally knowable world there is something hidden or other, another world; rather, Kant argues that the same world that we can know only in very specific ways, on the basis of our perceptual faculties, may be very different apart from what is -- or can be -- revealed to those perceptual faculties (something increasingly borne out by contemporary science).

We know the world as rational agents must (objectively), even as I see the world from one rational agent's perspective (subjectively), from my perspective. Each of us brings a pebble to add to the pile of knowledge. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

Mr. Holt's history of philosophy is skewed and inaccurate, since it neglects the Continental tradition, which has kept both idealism and rationalism alive. He neglects the Aristoteleans and neo-Thomists (who are relevant to Mr. Frayn's approach) ; and is, seemingly, unaware of the work of American philosophers such as Brand Blanshard, Paul Weiss, John Rawls and of British philosophers such as T.L.S. Sprigge and Bryan Magee, or British thinker John Finnis. I suggest that Mr. Holt read the introduction to Frayn's book again, this time with a highlighter. ("Hilary Putnam is Keeping it Real.")

It is not simply Jacques Derrida, but the entire phenomenological tradition from Edmund Husserl to Paul Ricoeur -- and even the elusive Michel Foucault with his talk of "epistemes" -- that is indebted to this great strand of Western thought called "idealism, representationalism, conceptualism or constructivism" and allied movements, such as rationalism and "mathematical realism," which is also a kind of idealism. See Roger Penrose, Abner Shimony, Nancy Cartright, Stephen Hawking, The Large, the Small and the Human Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 1-49. ("Spacetime and Cosmology.")

To "do" mathematics is to enter a mental realm of forms and shapes, an icy and beautiful realm of abstractions described in symbols, which reminds me of religion for some reason. Sure enough, Mr. Holt, unknowingly, outlines a defense of belief in God and a version of the "ontological argument":

"Just as a ghostly mixture of quantum possibilities snaps into actuality only when an observer makes a measurement, so too a human action takes on a determinate meaning only when a narrator molds a plausible explanation for it. Thus are the storyteller and the scientific observer held up as exemplary world-makers." ("'Inception': A Movie Review.")

In the absence of humans or any other knowing agents, Holt's adoptive logic (allegedly, borrowed from Frayn) suggests that the only way an independent and knowable external world can make sense, is if there is a "story-teller" or "scientific observer" of some kind -- guess who that might be? Ever heard of God, Jim, as both story-teller (transcendent) and story (imminent)? Ninian Smart, "On Understanding the Meaning of Life," in The Philosophy of Religion (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 75-99. (I believe that I have now corrected the spelling of the word "transcendent" at least three times in the foregoing paragraph.)

The universe, by this reasoning, may be said to "snap into actuality" when the great scientist in the sky begins to describe or measure it by "speaking languages." Mathematics has been called "the language of nature." For our purposes of description of empirical reality, math seems to do the job "truthfully." In the Catholic "Angelus," the faithful say these words: "... et verbum caro fatum est." (The word was made flesh.) Mr. Holt comments:

"If the known world is our handiwork, just what are the constraints on our creative freedom? Surely, common sense tells us, there is a hard core of stubborn facts that we are powerless to alter."

If we are dead, then there are no more stubborn facts FOR US, as far as we know. We don't have to worry about "altering" anything. The limits for each of us on what can be "the known world," Jim, are the limits of our intellects and imaginations. This is fortunate -- since there is a whole lot of stuff that we don't yet know, which collective human intelligence may yet reveal to us. It is also unfortunate, if the limits of one's imagination and intellect (as in Jim's case, perhaps) are somewhat constraining. ("David Stove's Critique of Idealism" and "David Stove and the Mental Capacity of Women.")

Several reviewers have noticed the influence of David Hume, few have detected the guidance of Bishop Berkeley on Frayn's theorizing. The best defense of idealism that I have read for some time is offered to readers of The New York Times by Jim Holt, who is under the impression that he is refuting idealism.

"There may be something godlike in the way we 'bring into their various forms of existence all the receding ontological planes of the world we inhabit,' but we are also at the mercy of that world's whims. A brick to the head and the whole show comes to an end."

I thought the world was independent of the knower? How can it come to an end with a brick to the head of the knower? Oh, you mean for the person who gets hit on the head it comes to an end. Right. Now suppose everyone gets hit on the head with that brick and there is no one left to know or observe anything, then does the universe continue to exist? Jim says it does. Then Jim says it doesn't. For whom would it exist, Jim? Everybody's dead. In the absence of conscious bricks as knowing subjects, guess who might be around to keep the stars in place and the music of the spheres sounding in eternity? A short word will do. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Do you hear someone laughing? I do.

The Mind/Body Problem and Freedom.

August 19, 2010 at 2:54 P.M. "Errors" inserted since my previous review of this work have been restored to the text. I will do my best to make the necessary corrections. I cannot say how many other writings have been vandalized overnight in the continuing frustration inducement effort.

This must be the tenth time that I make corrections -- including corrections of errors that are not found in earlier printouts of this same text -- and that I repost this essay. 11 intrusion attempts were listed today by Norton Security, along with two security spyware risks that were removed from my computer. May 5, 2007 at 4:29 P.M. Larissa, this is not how you engage in academic debate. Fictious name? Anne Milgram, Esq.? Input from "Hon." Sybil R. Moses? Ms. Naomi Wolf? Jennifer Velez?

In seeking out a debate with me -- if you are seeking such a confrontation -- should you not use your real name? Are you a lawyer or public official in New Jersey concerned that you will lose a fair debate with me on these matters? I think you have lost such a debate. Will defacing this essay make you feel better, Larissa? Do you not have the courage of your convictions? Will you not step out from behind my back to face me and acknowledge your actions? Jaynee? Sybil? Debbie? Anne? Don't be shy, ladies. I mean, "women." Is Liesl Schillinger, New York Times reporter, the real Larissa McFarquhar? Do you know Manohla Dargis, Liesl? If subpoaened to testify, will Liesl Schillinger identify "Manohla Dargis"? Would a New York Times journalist accept money (cash?) or favors from politicians to ghost write items appearing under a fictious name in "America's newspaper of record"? Is America's news media "independent and free"? Or corrupt? A little of both. Are the persons whose names appear as "authors" of newspaper articles the best writers in the nation? ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.")

Larissa McFarquhar, "Two Heads: A Marriage Devoted to the Mind/Body Problem," The New Yorker, February 12, 2007, at p. 58.
John P. Briggs & F. David Peat, "Karl Pribram and the Looking Glass Mind," in Looking Glass Universe: The Emerging Science of Wholeness (London: Fontana, 1984), pp. 257-290. (" ... mind is implicated in that whole process and is not localizable in the brain.") (pp. 288-289.)

I.

The mind/body problem has fascinated philosophers for centuries. The problem is experienced as urgent by many nonphilosophical persons well as theorists in the humanities and sciences. This alone is significant, since the persistence of this issue may be telling us something important about what persons are and always will be.

Some improvement has indeed been detectable in our understanding of this problem, but there has been no great progress towards finding a compelling answer. We seem to be no closer to a valid or universally acceptable answer (or answers) to the questions: "What is mind or consciousness? Are mind and brain identical? Is there really a mind/body problem, or is this difficulty only a philosophical illusion? What is the connection or relation between mind and body?"

I will discuss a recent New Yorker profile of philosophy's "Nick and Nora Charles in lab coats" -- Paul and Patricia Churchland -- who have devoted their professional lives to studying this conundrum and who are proponents of one popular answer, which (I think) is mistaken. The works of these thinkers are highly recommended, especially to those -- including religious persons -- who believe, as I do, that the Churchlands are way off the mark not only in their proposed solution, but in what they understand to be at issue in this controversy.

Arrogance and dismissiveness based on ignorance and underlying philosophical illiteracy will not help the reductivist cause. Certainly, no public official or judge should be affiliated with a news magazine or other publication while discharging responsibilities requiring neutrality on issues that may involve the media. Ms. Milgram, have you been involved in publishing articles in the news media under the name of others while serving as Attorney General of New Jersey? Jennifer Velez? ("Anne Milgram Does it Again!")

I would not, of course, censor or seek to destroy what the Churchlands -- or any philosopher -- writes. Would it not be nice if, for once, I were to receive the same consideration and tolerance from my adversaries? How about a little respect? So far, respect and tolerance have not been very plentiful in my life as a writer or lawyer (when I was a lawyer). Will I be "restored"? Is such a thing possible? I doubt it. Do you think you can "restore" me, Mr. Rabner? Do you believe that I will accept vague promises, Mr. Rabner? ("No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

Many other persons in all kinds of places -- including some in other parts of the United States -- can say the same: censorship is real in America. Philosophizing and writing is an act of resistance and an affirmation of humanity. Writing is a form of opposition to oppression in which, I believe and hope, the Churchlands join me. My efforts to print items from my MSN group today leaves me with a blank piece of paper with the following address at the bottom of the page: http://view.atdmt.com/MSN/iview/msnnkhac001728x90xWBCBRB00110msn/direct/01 (NJ's OAE?)

The "Churchland's solution" to this philosophical chestnut says that the mind is "nothing but the brain thinking." This is called the mind/brain "identity theory." Eventually, we may do away with mentalistic language entirely -- according to the Churchlands -- describing the phenomenology of human experience exclusively in externalistic and objective scientific terminology, a position known as "eliminative materialism."

"How wonderful you look in that see-through black lace undergarment, my dear. I can feel neuron NC-5 firing and several synaptic explosions, not to mention a neurochemical 'rocket lift off,' as it were (forgive my apt metaphorical terminology!), as I contemplate a possible forthcoming exchange of bodily fluids."

"Thank you, darling. May I have a urine sample and a bit of your blood to test in order to determine whether these garments have produced the desired hormonal and chemical reactions in your male body?"

David Lodge's characters discuss this problem in similar terms:

"There is an old joke that crops up in nearly every book on consciousness, about two behaviorist psychologists who have sex and afterwards one says to the other, 'It was good for you, how was it for me?' ..."

Thinks (London: Penguin, 200), p. 42.

And they say romance is dead -- not in philosophy. The ostensible scientific "answer" is popular, then, with the affluent, educated middle class persons in First World countries who are, mostly, the available consumers of philosophy's "work-product." In other words, these are the people who read philosophy books. Furthermore, these are the people who presume to define and embody "normality" for the rest of us, enriching all of us with their "intellectually respectable" opinions and perspectives on all matters, even as the rest of us find few opportunities to be heard or published. Many brain-mind identity theorists also call themselves behaviorists. ("Behaviorism is Evil.")

I have been insulted and dismissed by these people, who often have read much less than I have, even as they cannot wait to instruct me concerning the "right view" of consciousness and other philosophical matters. I wonder whether Larissa visited The Philosophy Cafe at MSN? New Jersey? My writings are regularly altered and defaced, despite the protection afforded to them by the United States Constitution and copyright laws that we ask the world to respect, but which New Jersey regards as toilet paper. Is it possible that lawyers violate such laws, publicly, with impunity in America?

Part of the trouble with contemporary philosophy in America is insularity and a "club-like" atmosphere. This is unhealthy and a constraint on the possible achievement of new insights that are desperately needed. It behooves the rest of us to get a firm grip, in a manner of speaking, on what privileged people have to say and whether it makes sense. Often, these highly "normal" people do not make sense. However, they dress well and serve nice snacks when you visit them on the weekends. Mysteriously, they also write for mainstream publications -- like The New Yorker and The New York Times. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

No wonder these publications continue to suffer a decline in respect, prestige and readership. ("Incoherence in 'The New York Times'" and "Incoherence in 'The New Yorker.'") I guess if you know a politician, then your writing gets into these publications no matter how awful it may be. I wonder whether politicians in America insert articles in publications through "others" or by using fictitious names? No, it could not happen here. We have an "independent press" in America which is, strangely, silent about New Jersey criminality and my experiences of censorship. I wonder why? No Attorney General can write articles for the media under an assumed name since this is a "conflict of interest." Right, Ms. Milgram? Even less may a judge write for the media under pseudonyms. Would you agree, Judge Moses? ("Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Mafia Out of Control in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")

The Churchlands are important intellectuals and thinkers whose arguments certainly do make sense. This is true whether we accept or reject their arguments. It is best to examine philosophical ideas and arguments with great care, especially when they are presented by their ablest exponents. If there are serious difficulties in these articulations of science's alleged "answer" to the philosophical mind/body issue, then we may be sure that, in lesser hands, the "scientistic" answer will be even less compelling, or even incoherent. Notice that scientifically informed -- or truly "scientific" -- answers are always welcome.

The slanted presentation in this profile suffers from an inadequate appreciation of the currently available alternatives or the compelling theories and arguments opposed to this Churchland position. I find this inadequacy -- and some serious mistakes (Larissa, are you sure that David Chalmers is a "dualist"?) -- surprising in one of my favorite magazines. What happened to the famous fact-checkers and editors at The New Yorker? Chalmers' theory "would be a kind of dualism, Chalmers had to admit, but not a mystical sort; it would be compatible with the physical sciences because it would not alter them -- it would be an addition." (p. 66.)

Where and when did Chalmers "admit" to this alleged radical "dualism"? Why is dualism "mystical"? No reference is provided. "Dual-aspect theories" are not mentioned. The term "introspectionism" is not mentioned. "Social connectionism" is not mentioned. I think Larissa's confusion is due to her apparent assumption that "dualism" is the same as "property dualism." This is not the case, however, since "property dualism" is a term of art meaning roughly the same thing as "dual aspect theory." ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness" and "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

A property dualist -- unlike a classical or radical dualist -- does NOT believe that there are two entities "body" and "mind"; rather, a property dualist contends that there is one entity, a person, with two properties -- body and mind. Property dualism "allows for the compatibility of mental and physical causation, since the cause of [a person's] action might under one aspect be describable as a physical event in the brain and under another aspect as a desire, emotion or thought ..." The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, p. 207. (The same occurrence may be described as an event or action depending on the purposes of the person doing the describing.)

Thus, "property dualism" or "dual aspect theory," I believe, is a kind of monism. "Panpsychism" is inadequately understood and described by Larissa as "a little crazy" (says who?), even though Chalmers "found it appealing anyway." (p. 67.) This is panpsychism and it is not "a little crazy":

"Either the view that all parts of matter involve consciousness, or the more holistic view that the whole world 'is but the veil of an infinite realm of mental life.' (Lotze)."

Simon Blackburn, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 275-276.

This is a view derived from ancient Greece, by way of Neoplatonism, shared by Leibnitz, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Bradley along with many religious persons today. It is also a common view in Asian philosophies and quantum physics. Why are they all "foolish" and/or "crazy"? One billion or more people in the world did not attend Rutgers, so they must be stupid? (See my essay "Where are thoughts located?")

I am grateful for a discussion of these issues in a popular magazine. I sure enjoyed reading the article. Suggestions for those who wish to read more about the philosophy of mind and a list of sources will be provided at the conclusion of my essay. Nevertheless, this is not a persuasive articulation of what is at issue in the mind/body controversy. We are not offered any kind of plausible solution by the New Yorker's dutiful journalist (nor by the Churchlands) of this philosophical puzzle. The mind/body problem is still out there.

What follows is a journey that will make demands of the reader. I say this because some readers will not be able to devote the time, effort, and attention that I must request from anyone who wishes to make this journey with me. I will do my best to make the experience interesting and pleasant. I must not underestimate or deny the difficulties to be encountered along the way. Also, it should be clear that, if I succeed, I will only have pointed out some serious difficulties and suggested materials to be consulted. It is always easier to say why a solution does not work than to come up with a better one.

This philosophical issue may grip you, leading to a life-long engagement with the problem and many years of reading books dealing with it. Good legal minds should tackle this issue. Although it may be necessary for lawyers to abandon, temporarily, familiar styles of analytical thinking. For some lawyers this renewal of thought may no longer be possible, which is very sad. Many of them are judges, who are rather set in their ways. There are relevant texts, but no controlling authorities in philosophy. What is crucial is less advocacy skills than a clear understanding and articulation of a complex set of issues.

It is only after clarity is achieved that we should argue about our respective solutions to a philosophical puzzle. You cannot prevail in a philosophical discussion by pounding a gavel or your fist on the table. Deleting a letter from my essay will not help the befuddled Ms. McFarquhar. Is this a real name or an insult? Anne Milgram? You are not proven right if you beat up a philosophical adversary or prevent him or her from speaking. You are not proven right by defacing the writings of others or by preventing them from publishing their books. Do you agree Mr. Coviello?

You will not prevail in debate against me by torturing me or stealing from me (again) because you disapprove of my "ethics." Raping an adversary will have little bearing on the validity of his philosophical views. Efforts to run a scan of my system are obstructed as I write these words. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")

A further point to bear in mind at the outset is that any proposed solution to this issue should be scientifically respectable. We should philosophize on the basis of the best available scientific information. When we write about ideas, science is important. I agree with the Churchlands on that point. Real science can only help in thinking about philosophical issues. However, even scientifically informed thinkers have developed rival positions to the identity theory, such as Hilary Putnam's "functionalism," which says the brain is like hardware and the mind is akin to software, each is "descriptively distinct."

I am certain that science cannot solve our most important philosophical perplexities because these puzzles are concerned with issues that go beyond the scope of scientific methods and objectives. Some of these philosophical concerns include the validity of science's knowledge claims and possible ethical limitations upon the scientific enterprise. Such concerns are and will always be philosophical, political, legal or sociological, not exclusively scientific. Often we will need religious sensibility and imagination even to approach the deepest mysteries of human life. Any psychological theory that denies this "subjective" aspect of human beings will be inadequate.
Science has been so successful in providing knowledge of empirical realities and factual information that it has become an "imperial discipline," too often falsely assumed to be the only means of knowing things. Imperialism is not attractive to me in international relations. It is also not very smart in coping with sets of issues like these mind/body "problems." Scientific clarity can be so beguiling, in fact, that it misleads investigators into confusing the sort of answers scientists can provide about nature for the kind of answers needed by people in their spiritual and philosophical lives. All of us will need to contribute to this discussion, in other words, which is related to our religious aspirations and wonderings. Mary Midgley says:

"[Scientism] is essentially the approach well described of late by the story of the man who is found looking for keys under a street-lamp and is asked whether that is where he dropped them. 'No,' he says, 'but it is much the easiest place to look.' ..."

Science and Poetry (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 2.

Science is properly concerned with "how" questions. Neuroscience tells us, for example, what specific cerebral operations are involved in the human action of lifting my right arm. Science cannot answer the ultimate why questions concerning my choice to lift my arm. Science is helpless when it is necessary to "interpret" my gesture, so as to decide what lifting my arm means. Suppose I lift my right arm in a salute in Nazi Germany in 1936: Is it the "same" gesture as lifting my right arm today to salute a friend riding the local bus? Biologically, these may be "identical" gestures. Still, their meaning is not the same.

Why are we led into paradoxes at this point? What are all of the possible "meanings" of a smile? Can they be known? Actors say: "What do you want the smile to mean?" What are the possible conscious and subconscious meanings or realities in any human situation, including the scientists' own quest for meaning and knowledge? Can science which seeks merely to describe and report events and processes "objectively" -- without distortions produced by human values or wishes and desires -- best address these subtle questions of meaning? I doubt it. I wonder whether Larissa knows S.L. Hurley? Sybil R. Moses? ("Metaphor is Mystery.")

Before delving further into this philosophical quicksand, let us be clear in stating the philosophical issues and concerns. It will be important to note that there is a centuries-old history of inquiry in this area. A major weakness in the Churchlands' approach is an excessively abrupt treatment of the relevant historical and narrowly textual philosophical authorities. Even a student will benefit from a good history of philosophy and of this controversy. A novel may do the trick -- try Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind/Body Problem.

I have said that philosophy is not law. There are no "controlling cases." Yet really smart people have thought about this problem for centuries. Ignoring their past solutions -- and possible interpretations of those solutions in light of what we know today -- may not be wise. Also, the conversation concerning these issues, and the concepts which have emerged, have been shaped by its history. Any entry into this conversation involves, among other things, an historical excavation. Michel Foucault's archeological method has its attractions. Few people have thought of Foucault in this context because he did not play with rats in a laboratory. This neglect of Foucault on mind/body questions is unfortunate.

In addition to scientific and philosophical materials, I will look (briefly) at art and religion. I believe that the scriptures of all the great world religions provide fascinating clues concerning where solutions may be found to the problem of consciousness. It is almost as if we were "invited" to search, think, and find these answers for ourselves. I wonder whether this "invitation" is itself significant? Lorenzo Albacete, S.J., comments:

"All I see is what is in this world. It is a way of experiencing this world as a sign [emphasis added] of a reality that is always beyond its limits. The cell mutation researched by a scientist, the social inequities confronted by an activist, the ladybug pondered by a child -- all of these point to this Mystery at the heart of all that exists."

Notice the conclusion drawn by this Catholic priest and scientist:

"Religious experience, therefore, is not an escape from this world; it is an affirmation of it. It is a way of standing before reality -- the reality that each of us encounters in our lives, our work, and our relationships each day -- and regarding it with a passionate curiosity. It is a contemplative posture before all that exists."

The works of Rene Dubos are enthusiastically recommended. And this is the crucial point:

"Scientists and the authentically religious, whatever their different conclusions, are on the same side of the battle against the suppression of reason."

God at the Ritz (New York: Crossroad, 2002), p. 27, p. 58.

After stating the philosophical issue with some care, I will suggest that there are difficulties resulting from the history of theoretical reflection on minds and bodies, also some gems to be extracted from that history. First, I read through this New Yorker profile, pointing out problems along the way. Second, I offer suggestions for alternative areas of inquiry leading towards a possible solution -- a solution that "works" (pragmatists are happy when solutions are said to "work"), if only for us, now.

I will only hint at a possible solution that may lead to something better -- that is, better for those who will study this controversy after we are gone. Yes, the controversy will always exist because persons will always be paradoxical. The philosophical solutions for which we strive, if we are fortunate, will work better tomorrow than they do today. (See my essay on "Magic.")

I wonder whether a philosophical solution that doesn't "work" -- in a "practical" sense, that is -- is still a solution? Besides, what does it mean to say that a philosophical solution "works"? I will leave those problems for another day. Karl Marx echoed Stendhal in claiming that he was "writing for the future." I think every real philosopher can say the same. To engage in philosophical thinking is to ask readers and posterity to correct our efforts. This may be a good time to insert another "error."

II.

Larissa gets off to a shaky start:

"It is not enough to imagine that the brain houses the mind (in some obscure cavity, perhaps tiny intracellular pockets), or gives rise to the mind (the way a television produces an image), or generates the mind (a generator producing current): to imagine any of those things is to retain the idea that the mind and the brain are distinct from each other. The trick is to remove the verb that separates them. The problem is not one of knowledge; the problem is our obdurate, antidiluvian minds [sic.] that cannot grasp what we believe to be true." (p. 60.)

What do you mean by "we," Larissa? Who says "we" assume it to be true that minds and brains are identical? How do you know this remarkable claim to be true? If this universal acceptance exists, then there would be no philosophical mind/body problem. We experience a difficulty in relating body and mind precisely because we discover a tension in different realms of discourse, empirical or causative (body) and interpretive and ideational (mind). Clearly, these different realms of discourse refer to a unitary entity, a person. However, neither realm can be reduced to the other. ("Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")

Imagine that you are a young intellectual in Latin America or the Middle East, Africa or Asia. You read that your counterparts in America offer this spiritual diet: a rejection of spirituality, a limiting of the intellectually respectable to secularism and the language of the laboratory, with a rejection of both the "reality" of subjectivity and the mentalistic language of yearning and hope as "illusory."

Now consider that this same intellectual -- in Cuba, perhaps -- is a witness to the daily harassments of a tortured, impoverished, raped victim of American power who is denied, publicly, the very same Constitutional rights which America claims to defend and for which young Americans are dying, every day, in the Middle East. Fourteen Americans of all ethnicities and races died today in a helicopter crash, more deaths are expected in Iraq from separate incidents. Cuban-Americans seriously discuss "nuclear bombs" to be used against Cuba while endorsing the events at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Does this contradictory and repellent picture of abuse of power and hypocrisy as well as censorship seem attractive to you? ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

Does such a philosophy sound beguiling to you? It doesn't tempt me. I do not wish to see the American philosophical message reduced to this desiccated perspective on life. For one thing, as we will see later, it may lead to a dismal view of human rights as dispensable luxuries and to a "sanitized totalitarianism" envisioned by Aldous Huxley. More on this issue is coming up. If you do not know American philosophy, believe me -- "this ain't it." Huxley's Brave New World Revisited is more timely today than when it was written. Abu Ghraib and the Soviet asylums as well as Gulags are predicted in that book. Amazing. (Contrast "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" with "Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")

One of the things that pisses me off about this attitude in academia and among ostensibly educated people ("everything is reducible to evolution or sex") is the disdain for humanistic learning and the contributions of intellects of the caliber of, say, Kant or Sartre. Huxley? Orwell? People see a science program on the Discovery channel and, suddenly, they are beyond learning from Spinoza. Darwin is understood in simplistic and mid-twentieth century terms by the Larissas of this world.

The U.S. is and should be about freedom with equality for all men and women in the struggle to limit the power not only of government, but of all "factions" (Madison) in society in favor of the dignity of the individual. The American revolution is YOUR revolution if you are poor, powerless, yet demand the right to think and speak freely. If you insist on respect for your struggle to earn and share your daily bread with dignity, then the American idea is for you. (See the campaign speech of Senator Barack Obama on "hope" and Senator Clinton's remarks on "equality and community," as well as Senator McCain's advocacy of humane treatment of U.S. prisoners and President Bush's Second Inaugural Address.)

"Nowadays, few people doubt," Larissa writes, "that the mind somehow is the brain ..." (p. 60.) Oh, really? You could have fooled me. I think most people do not believe that their inner lives and minds are only illusions. Larissa is assuming the validity of one controversial solution to this issue -- which is at the heart of the cluster of philosophical problems involved -- while alternatives are dismissed as "garbage" (p. 61), usually by attribution to Ms. Churchland. This approach is not very persuasive. Neither is a description of rival philosophical views as "just plain stupid" (p. 66) or "a waste of time." (p. 68.)

Much more attractive for science worshippers is a form of "non-eliminative materialism" (which, I suspect, turns into something other than materialism), a position which acknowledges that our brains are essential to minds that "somehow" arise from cerebral processes. This certainly sounds like a "dual-aspect theory" to me. Look up "epiphenominalism." Besides, matter is not so material anymore, according to physicists. Who knew? ("John Searle and David Chalmers on Consciousness.")

I have no doubt that the brain is essential to produce the mind. We need a brain to have a mind or mental life. I also have no doubt that mental life or mind is different from, or non-reducible to, the brain. The experience of eating ice cream, loving a woman, thinking about consciousness and the cerebral activity that makes these "qualia" possible are certainly different. Take another look at my example of behaviorists in sexual situations. You'll see what I mean.

If I say that I am "wistful," then I am not saying "a particular neuron is firing in my prefrontal lobe," even if that neuron firing is essential for me to have the experience of wistfulness. For one thing, the word "wistful" is not located in my brain. It is shared with other people using the English language. Language-use is a social activity, so that David Braine and John MacMurray become relevant at this point. My reasons for "feeling" wistful will probably also depend on other people. The emotion may only be possible within a highly developed civilization. Larissa's error is the same as the Churchlands' flawed assumption -- it is an unacceptable and brutal REDUCTIVISM based on outdated physics and biology. A.O. Scott?

If some poor lawyers are trying to argue the opposite view for people like Sybil Moses or Debbie Poritz, I suggest that you study the literature on this topic first, then offer your two cents' worth. ("The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Those millions of people in churches, mosques, synagogues who believe in a soul and their private wishes, longings, loves and other subjective phenomena are simply deluded or pre-scientific, right Larissa? They are not graduates of, say, Brown University or some other comparable institution, who are permitted to write for elite publications. Hence, their views -- and those of theologians and philosophers who disagree on this matter -- are irrelevant or unworthy of serious consideration. This is because Larissa or the Churchlands -- and nice, clever people like them, in Westchester perhaps -- have placed all other opinions beyond consideration as "non-scientific verbiage"? Does this sound a tiny bit like an ideology? "Scientism," maybe? It does to me. Mark Leyner?

There goes Kant, Hegel, MacMurray, Finnis, Chalmers, McGinn, Fodor, Nagel, Braine and my grandmother, right out the window. Wait, it gets better. The Churchlands' view that brains are the "reality" in human life, whereas mental experience, subjectivity, the ordinary phenomenology of every day life, is only an illusion or merely a matter of some denigrated "folk" psychology -- the way it looks or feels to us "simple folks" -- is undermined by several considerations not adequately explored or just plain ignored in this article.

Larissa seemingly assumes that there is only one kind of dualism, which is the only alternative to materialism, and that materialism is the only kind of monism there is. David Chalmers is not a "dualist," by the way, but more like a "dual-aspect theorist." Donald Davidson's "Anomalous Monism" is inadequately or incompetently discussed in this essay. Larissa fails to appreciate her own descriptions of the Churchlands' lives together and why they are significant:

"But as time went on they taught each other what they knew, and the things they didn't share fell away. Their family unity was such that their two children -- now in their thirties -- grew up, professionally speaking, almost identical [sic.]: both obtained Ph.D.s in neuroscience and now study monkeys." (p. 60.)

People, unlike monkeys perhaps (this may even be true of monkeys!), have identities that are socially constituted. As persons, they live socially. Their "minds" -- which, again, are made possible by working brains and other organs -- are formed through languages and linguistic communites, by societies and systems of shared behaviors and meanings into which they are acculturated, by their familial or loving relationships -- all of these are kinds of languages or entanglements -- conferring identities. Professors Fodor and Chomsky are the obvious sources on this issue. (Compare the film "Nell" with "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Minds are not "housed" exclusively in individual brains. You learn to be a person from others. This learning is essential to the acquisition and constitution of a mind. Mind is an abstract concept found in a system of concepts and pointing at a complex reality of interaction and movement by an organism living materially and spiritually, physically and culturally in an environment where both are changing all the time. A self -- like consciousness -- is a moving target. In a sense, Shakespeare's mind may be encountered in his poetry. This is to suggest that we share in that mind. ("Is it rational to believe in God?" and "Is this atheism's moment?")

Atheists will be upset and wonder whether I am suggesting that "God writes poetry." Yes, I am. You are that poetry. In less metaphorical terms, I am saying that you encounter what may be described, symbolically, as the "Mind of God" when you experience the universe. All of the laws of physics, biology, chemistry and knowing any truth or beauty point to what we may call God, if we are religious, or to the elegance and genius of nature, if we are not religious. These are interpretations consistent with what science teaches us about how empirical reality "works." You decide. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

An atomistic approach that isolates a brain, examines its functions, measures its neurochemical reactions will be insufficient and inadequate in understanding these complex subjective realities in mental life and human identity. The fact that Ms. Churchland was raised on a farm is not "in" her brain. Yet this "fact" is significant to the shaping of her mind, as much as her brain chemistry. Consciousness is a holistic phenomenon which can only be understood as time-dependent.

Consciousness and identity are a journey which must be measured in its totality, not something frozen at one moment and placed on a slide under a microscope. Interpretive rationality in discerning the "story-logic" of a biography may be more effective than atomistic analysis. The journey that is a mind or life-narrative is only partly geographical because it also MUST be cultural. This means both aesthetic and spiritual (not necessarily religious) aspects of human being-in-the-world are essential to what we mean by a person. Death will help people understand this observation. If you are a person, then you must have a cultural life of some kind. (Again: "David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

Artists are highly suggestive and instructive on these issues. They teach us to see life and identity as a "story-arch," a kind of narrative. They instruct us to notice alteration and growth, as in the great Shakespearean roles and in the finest painted portraits -- which seem to escape time -- but especially in our religious stories, whose ambiguities and mysteries are deliberate invitations to "interpret." (See Robert Downey's performance in Restoration and Chaplin.) Paul Churchland mentions a sci-fi story by Heinlein that he read as a young man which haunted his imagination for years:

"Its moral is not very useful for day-to-day work, in philosophy or anything else -- what are you supposed to do with it? -- but it has retained a hold on Paul's imagination." (p. 62.)

"What you're supposed to do with it," Paul, is to allow art to open your imagination to new ideas. The lingering aspects of this story suggest that it is important to Mr. Churchland. He should simply reflect and "play" with the ideas in the work, which may lead him to new insights. "The symbol," Paul Ricoeur says, "gives rise to thought." You may begin to see the importance of religion at this point. Unfortunately, neither Larissa nor the Churchlands see that importance.

The symbol of the cross, Star of David, or other symbols hint at a unity of spiritual and material, mind and body, that is the Mystery of humanity as well as the hoped-for unity with God. Such a "hope" is not irrelevant -- not even in a secular society and intellectual discipline -- to our continuing efforts at understanding and integration. Such understanding and integration, with love, is what it means to "be."

A philosopher not mentioned at all in this article, whose work is much better (in my opinion) than what the Churchlands have to say is David Braine. Colin McGinn's work is also not discussed, though there is a vague allusion to philosophers who conclude that consciousness is an irresolvable "mystery" without an adequate explanation of why they believe this. Thomas Nagel gets casual treatment, then a dismissal. Larissa seems to be skating over the difficulties or missing them entirely. I might go on pointing out "difficulties" in this essay. Instead, I will focus on some disturbing political undertones in this piece which merit careful examination.

III.

Despite their interest in science, literary and other figurative language continually turns up at the most interesting points in the Churchlands' conversations. I wonder why that is? Paul Churchland comments on Heinlein's story:

"The story concerned how you treated people who were convicted [thank goodness conviction of crime is still deemed a good idea 'before' alteration!] by criminal trials. Either you could undergo a psychological readjustment that would fix you or, because you can't force that on people, [except in New Jersey, where no crime is necessary to do this secret forcing,] you could go and live in a community that was something like the size of Arizona, behind walls that were thirty feet high, filled with people like you who had refused the operation. The story was about somebody who chose to go in. What annoyed me about it -- and it would annoy you too, I think -- was that Heinlein was plainly on the side of the guy who had refused to have his brain returned to normal. He tells this glorious story about how this guy managed to triumph over all sorts of adverse conditions in this perfectly awful state of nature.'" (p. 68.)

America's Founding Fathers and Mothers would have agreed with that guy -- and so do I. So do several women I love. I don't want my brain to be "normal," whatever that means. I certainly like my mind, also, to be unique. Luckily, Paul and Patricia Churchland are thinking about these issues for the rest us. Someday we may not need to think for ourselves at all:

"You and I have a confidence that most people lack,' he says to Pat. 'We think we can continue to be liberals and still move forward.' [Forwards towards what, Paul?]

"'I'm not so sure,' Pat says." (p. 68.)

Neither am I, Pat. This pleasant and attractive, "well-meaning" couple are providing readers with a prescription for the Gulags and concentration camps of the twentieth century in a sanitized and scientific-sounding language of -- as Mark Green used to say and probably still does -- "noblesse oblige benevolence." The last time I heard Mr. Green use that phrase on a t.v. show, he added: "No thanks." Me too, Mark. Perhaps Mark Green's brain should, forcibly, be returned to "normal." (See the movie "Harrison Bergeron.")

I do not accept and I will not condone interference with my life, violations of my privacy or autonomy rights, suppressions or censorship of my expressions. This will not change no matter how many times you insert "errors" in my writings or prevent the publication of my work. ("How Censorship Works in America.")

The ambition on the part of lawyers and philosophers to "correct" persons and make them "fit" into philosophically perfect utopias is best approached -- by those who love liberty -- with garlic and a crucifix or any religious symbol, along with a copy of the U.S. Constitution. ALL totalitarian schemes, whether Marxist, Freudian, or fundamentalist (religion and fundamentalism are distinct) will fail in the United States of America. They should fail everywhere. By the way, this is something about which Mr. Green and Mr. William F. Buckley, Jr. agreed. None of this precludes people from adopting democratic socialist forms of government, whether derived from humanistic Marxism or other sources. ("Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes" and "Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

This fact about the U.S. and the civilization inherited by Americans must not be forgotten, especially by us, no matter what criticisms may be expressed against governmental actions. Americans are a people who will not be ruled by any dictator -- not even by one wearing a lab coat -- and we are confident that others around the world are like us in this yearning for liberty. We are free. We hope that all others can be free, however this concept is defined by them. Americans believe that all of humanity will be free someday. Freedom means daily struggle for that freedom. Our freedom is part of what we are. We do not receive freedom as a result of a government program or concession. This is what persons everywhere in the world using the word "freedom" all-too-easily must ask themselves: "How much do you want freedom?"

Kant and the Framers of the U.S. Constitution, Jefferson and Thurgood Marshall, John Rawls and William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal, as well as Norman Mailer and Cornel West, Angela Davis and Judith Butler, not to mention our almost Mayor of New York, Mark Green -- all agree on this much: Human liberty, the inviolability of conscience, rights to personal autonomy and spiritual life are not gifts of the State. These things are not provided to us because it is convenient or deemed to be "for our own good." They are part of our endowment as human beings, anywhere and everywhere. These are our rights. They are not negotiable. All of us must stand with those asking for recognition of that freedom in Iran, China, Cuba, New Jersey today or anywhere where people ask to speak and worship FREELY.

Millions of men and women fought great wars to preserve these rights for all Americans. They will not be given away in any faculty lounge or in a courtroom that deserves to be called a "Court of Law." No one has the legitimate authority to "correct" others "spiritually" or to decide which persons, who have committed no crimes, deserve or need secret "values-correction" by some self-defined "elite." 1988-today, Terry Tuchin? Discussion, debate, scholarship are welcome; enslavement and torture or censorship are not desired by victims. This ambition to control others is "incorrect" and totalitarian. Such a yearning to correct others is unethical and criminal, as are all forms of secret censorship, and alterations or suppressions of speech. How does any Jew become Dr. Mengele? ("The Torture of Persons" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

Perhaps it is this yearning and need for freedom that explains or defines the mystery of consciousness, as revealed by so much of our art and religious wisdom. A solution to this puzzle for the future may be found, possibly, by returning to those rich symbols at the center of our civilization, both religious and secular symbols, as an inspiration to think again about what they mean for us and what they may mean for our children. As Eve once said to Adam: "Care for an apple?"

If you want to read more:

I recommend a work which seems to be neglected by scholars in this area:

David Braine, The Human Person: Animal & Spirit (Indiana: Notre Dame, 1992), especially pp. 345-397.
Daniel N. Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), entirety.

Compare opposing views:

Paul M. Churchland, Matter and Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).
Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy (Mass.: MIT Press, 1986).