How the World Thinks by Julian Baggini

Author:Julian Baggini
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783782291
Publisher: Granta Publications
Published: 2018-10-04T06:00:00+00:00

Notes

1 Talk at Google European Zeitgeist conference, www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4TO1iLZmcw.

2 Karl Popper, ‘Replies to My Critics’, in Paul Arthur Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy of Rudolf Carnap (Open Court, 1963), p. 980.

3 Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 4:367, trans. Gary Hatfield (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 118.

PART THREE

Who in the World Are We?

The opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is one of the most famous in Western musical history. You can almost certainly imagine it in your head or hum it right now: ‘da-da-da-daaaaaa’. You’ll have no problem identifying the fourth note, which is an E. What is it, however, that makes it that particular E?

There are at least three ways to answer that question. One is that it is that E rather than another E because of where it stands in relation to the opening three Gs and the rest of the symphony that follows. In a different sequence of notes, it would be a different E. This defines the nature of E relationally.

Another is that it is the E it is simply because it is a particular instance of E and that’s all there is to be said about it, just as a particular pound coin is simply one minting of the general type. This defines the nature of the E atomistically.

A third, more radical answer is that the question is misguided. Nothing makes it the particular E that it is because it has no essential nature at all. We can call it E and refer to it on a score but that creates the illusion that there is something really there. In reality, the note is an ephemeral event that comes and goes, and is slightly different every time it is played. The belief that there is an E, the nature of which can be defined, is an illusion.

Which of these answers is correct? Perhaps all and none. Each describes a way of thinking about the note which captures a truth, but none is the only right way of thinking about it. However, which description we choose will affect the way we think about the note: as part of a wider whole, as it is in itself, and as it manifests itself in the impermanent flux of perception.

This is a useful analogy for how we can think about ourselves. There is a sense in which we all exist atomistically. Each of us is a biological unity and when we die there is one less such individual in the world. But we also exist relationally: we are someone’s son or daughter, neighbour, colleague, compatriot, comrade. At the same time it is arguable that there is no essence that makes us who we are. We come into existence as a bundle of cells which grows, ever-changing, the locus of a stream of experiences, until the bundle falls apart at physical death.

The first two of these ways of thinking about ourselves are universal. No culture has existed that hasn’t both recognised the individuality of every member and the extent to which their identity is connected to others.

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