Just as I started complaining that there hadn’t been any decent RPGs out in a while, Kingdoms of Amalur dropped. Now if only I could get a new WW2 FPS, I will be happy. That and a million pounds, and a mountain made of sherbet.
Anyway, Amalur. This is an action-RPG from 38 Studios with some decent pedigree behind it. It’s artist, Todd McFarlane has worked with both DC and Marvel comics in the past, and is particularly well known for his work on The Amazing Spider-Man. Amalur’s writer, New York Times best seller R.A. Salvatore, is of similar status, having created the insanely popular Forgotten Realms character Drizzt Do’Urden. With such creative talent on board you’d think that Amalur would be amalazing (I’m not sorry), when really it’s just ‘alright’.
Amalur’s story, as you could expect, is very well put together. It’s interesting and engaging, with a new enough take on the ‘chosen one’ schtick that it doesn’t seem too like every other RPG. That being said, most of the voice work is fucking terrible. Amalur sounds like it’s populated almost exclusively by white middle-class Americans, with a few characters having the token shit-British-accent. It’s quite terrible, and incredibly distracting. When you play an RPG, you want to get involved. You want to become immersed in the world that’s been created for you. That just isn’t going to happen if the mysterious Fae lady sounds like an extra from Friends.
The next worrying thing is the controls. From the get go everything you do is jerky and unsophisticated. It doesn’t actively hinder you, but combat can quickly devolve into ‘click the button till the bad man goes away’, it’s just easier that doing everything they want you to. Dodge? Block? Fire off a bolt, then charge in swinging? No thanks, I’ll just click a bunch. Now this isn’t in itself a bad thing. Whole games rely on button mashing, it’s just that it always feels disappointing when hitting one button repeatedly trumps playing the game the way you’re supposed to. It’s like when you used to play Tekken with your friend. You knew all the awesome combos, you’d practiced for days in secret, ready to unleash the power of the dreaded “Rainbow Drop”. But then you start fighting and your friend just punches you in the head until he wins. Bollocks.
This is made even worse by the skill based combat system actually being quite good. You can play a sneak-mage-hammer-into-face character and it will work. And it will even work without all the colors bluring into one another a la Skyrim, where even if you were a jack-of-all-trades you rarely used more than a few abilities. The trouble is, it’s incredibly easy to ‘win’ by disregarding the rules and simply bashing away to completion (Still not sorry). I quickly found that the easiest way to do this was to craft impervious plate armor and swing around a big fuck off hammer.
On a positive note though, the crafting system is very good. In fact, it’s absolutely fucking wonderful. I always get a nice little warm feeling in my tummy when a game actually rewards you for taking the take to craft your own gear. There’s nothing worse than being forced to spend hours grinding out fucking Iron Daggers to get your skill up.
In Amalur, almost all the smithing components are gained from taking apart naff old armor you wouldn’t give to your gran. Then you hammer together the various bits and give it an appropriate fantasy name. My favorites were my first crafted shield and mace: The Cock Blocker and Dick Destroyer respectively. Drizzt would be proud. These crafted items can be tailored to your needs with custom picked bonuses by using different components. Like swords? Plus sword damage it is. Want to be an unkillable meat man? More health for you! The resulting weapons and armor are usually more powerful than what you’d find on a corpse, and are even more powerful than quest rewards.
Alchemy is a different story however. As with smithing, the crafting process itself is relatively easy, with the required reagents seemingly found every five foot along the road side. However, as is often the case, potions have received none of the love that your other equipment has. Health potions and mana potions are always useful, but all the others tend to gather dust in the bottom of your pack. The slight edge they give you just isn’t worth the bother, and you may as well just chug health potions. Potions which are so common that you won’t ever need to craft them anyway. My warrior has never, ever crafted a health potion, and downs them quicker than a “slappa of Ayia Napa” downs cocktails.
This is in part due to the lock picking mechanics, which are laughably simple. Even if, like me, you put absolutely no points into the skill, you will always triumph through common sense. This renders the skill almost worthless, and makes me feel sorry for the rogue types who where tricked into thinking that it was necessary. Dispelling wards is also a relatively easy task, so long as you are quick enough to memorize the correct order of runes to click. And though this is easy, it’s not quite as moronic as Mass Effect 2’s lock mini-games where you could just feel the devs patting you on the head every time you ‘managed’ to match some fucking shapes. Oh, clever boy, at this rate you’ll graduate playschool in no time at all.
While we’re on the topic of things-not-quite-as-bad-as-Mass-Effect-2, the shops of Amalur are crap. It’s as though they looked at the state of the economy and thought, “Well, something about this game has to be grounded in reality.” Almost everything is expensive, and the things that aren’t are shit. Oh, and don’t try selling any of your hard earned loot, because the trade in price is worse than Game’s.
All this aside, Amalur is quite fun. Really. The combat needs a little work, and the voice acting is patchy at best. But if you wear ear buds, and forget about any meaningful skill progression, you can quite happily click your way through to the nice story bits and enjoy yourself.
What are the main objections to Anselm’s ontological argument? Can they be overcome?
The ontological argument for the existence of God was first proposed by St Anselm of Canterbury in the second and third chapters of his Proslogion[1], though it remains a point of contention exactly where the most important points lie.
In his argument, Anselm makes use of ‘the Fool’, taken from Psalm 14:1, “the fool hath said in his heart: there is no God.”[2] to reinforce the simple and brute nature of the logic he is using. To Anselm, to deny the ontological argument, would be like denying 2+2=4 or that all bachelors are unmarried men - they are all logical truths. It is important to note that with the ontological argument, Anselm is not trying to posit belief, but rather rationality.
Anselm starts with the basic premise that God is “something than which nothing greater can be thought”[3]. This definition has sometimes been challenged, and other philosophers have changed the wording or come up with new variants, including Descartes. For now however, I will focus on Anselm.
The key statement of his argument doesn’t seem very controversial. Were we to imagine God, we could quite easily identify him as “something than which nothing greater can be thought”. God is perfection, and perfection is the greatest of all possible outcomes. Anselm claims that even the Fool can understand this idea, and have it within his understanding, even if he does not understand it to exist. This ability to conceive of things which do not exist is a key point, and Anselm uses the idea of the painter to give us better understanding of his intent. The painter, when he decides to paint something, has within his mind an image of what he will paint. This image exists within his understanding, though it does not yet exist in the real world. The same with authors, when an author has a new idea for a novel, it exists in her understanding, yet not in reality. When the painter paints his picture, and the author writes her novel, these things then exist both in understanding and also in reality. And so with the Fool. Even he must admit that what he understands, “something than which nothing greater can be thought”, exists within his mind - in his understanding. Once this is granted, we may ask that if something were to exist in reality, would it not be greater than something which exists purely in understanding? Surely a diamond I hold in my hand is greater than one that exists only in my imagination? It appears to be so, and since God is defined as “something than which nothing greater can be thought”, it would follow that a thing that nothing greater can be thought existing in understanding would be less than one that existing in reality. Therefore, something than which a greater cannot be thought must exist in both understanding and in reality. This is the main move of the argument, the bringing into existence of God (or the confirming of the existence of God) through logic alone. Making it a certainty which cannot be denied. [4]
This argument has been the focus of a lot of attention since its original conception in the 11th century, and though Anselm was undeniably a very clever man, his theory has faced a lot of criticism. Certainly the ontological argument feels wrong, though it is very difficult to say exactly why. Indeed, Bertrand Russell was of the opinion that it is much easier to be persuaded that ontological arguments are no good than it is to say exactly what is wrong with them. This has infuriated philosophers for years, though several have kept enough composure to come up with serious questions about the logic and conclusions of Anselm’s theory.[5]
Is it possible to prove other things this way? Is this even a valid method of proving a personal thing like God?
One of the more famous critics of to go down this line of questioning is Anselm’s contemporary, the monk Gaunilo. He believed that one could use Anselm’s argument to show the existence of all kinds of non-existing things, and lays out his criticism in his treatise On Behalf of the Fool[6]
.
The argument follows almost exactly the same line as Anselm’s. It starts with a lost island. An island than which no greater island can be thought. It “is superior everywhere in abundance of riches to all those other lands that men inhabit”[7], and is uninhabited and unclaimed, making it more desirable and more excellent than any other land on the earth. This perfect island exists in understanding, we can all imagine a perfect island, an island greater than all other islands, richer in all ways than any other island we can think of. Like Anselm’s God, an island that exists in reality as well as in understanding, would be greater than an island which exists in understanding alone. Thus if the island exists in understanding alone, then we could imagine a greater - one that also existed in reality. Since the perfect island is the greatest island, then it must exist in reality as well as understanding. Therefore the perfect island exists.
This is an absurd statement to make of course, but it neatly brings out one of the key flaws in Anselm’s thinking. That we can essentially ‘bring into existence’ a series of absurd objects, simply by referring to them in similar terms as Anselm refers to God. However, Anselm may reply that his example works differently because only God can be thought of in these terms. God is “something than which nothing greater can be thought”; this makes a great deal of sense. God is the greatest, containing all perfections, or the sum of all perfections as others would have it. Applying this to an island is slightly trickier. What exactly is the perfect island? My idea of a perfect island may be different to yours; would yours have the same number of waterfalls or palm trees? Perhaps you don’t like palm trees. Can an island be perfect? Possibly not. God is the ‘greatest’ because, as is commonly understood, he is infinite. Adding to his perfections would not only be useless, but also quite impossible. A perfect island however, can always be added to. Another fruit tree or other such thing will always improve it, it can never be at the point of absolute perfection, there is no intrinsic maximum to an island.
Either way, it appears that Gaunilo’s objection to Anselm’s argument is flawed, if only in its terms - an island is different to God.[8]
Descartes argued, much like Anselm, for an a priori explanation of God’s existence. Descartes’ formulation[9] focuses on the concept of God, or a supremely perfect being, being indivisible from the ‘perfection’ or property of existence. Descartes starts much like Anselm, from the concept of God. We have in our minds an idea of God, a supremely perfect being containing all perfections. This is the commonly held concept of God, having the properties of omnipotence, omniscience, etc. Descartes then claims that necessary existence is a perfection, and that since God contains all perfections, he must necessarily exist. For Descartes, this is no great logical leap. He claims that we cannot think of God except as existing, to do otherwise would be like thinking “of a mountain without a valley”[10]. Attempting to separate existence from God would be alike to trying to separate the idea of three-sidedness from a triangle - or the idea of roundness from our ball. It is simply logically impossible.
Descartes ontological argument has been criticized by several philosophers, though the most influential criticism comes from Kant. He claims that Descartes argument takes existence to be a real predicate. This criticism works well against Anselm’s formulation of the ontological argument as well.
Kant argues in his Critique of Pure Reason[11] that when Descartes formulated his argument, he confused the idea of existence with the other properties which make up the concept of an object.
Take Descartes’ example of the triangle. Its existence taken as given for the moment, it will have three angles necessarily found in it. To posit the existence of the triangle, and yet reject its three angles, is ludicrous. However, to reject the triangle along with its three angles is perfectly acceptable. Though there is a link between the existence of the properties of an object, and the existence of the object itself, it seems there must also be a strong difference between properties and existence.
This can be seen clearly in Anselm’s argument. When he states that a thing which exists in reality is greater than anything which exists only in the understanding, he is attempting to assign the property of existence to God. According to Kant, existence is not a property that a thing can either posses or lack - a thing either exists, or does not. It is, or it isn’t. To explain, we take the example of a ball. We say ‘the ball is round’. That is, the ball is, and has the property of roundness. If we were to say ‘the ball is not round’, we are saying: the ball is, and does not have the property of roundness. Now we take ‘God is existent’, meaning God is, and that he has the property of existence. Clearly, this does not make sense. We are asserting that God exists, and then ascribing him the property of existence, which he already has. Existence must be different to roundness.
When we say ‘God exists’, we are not saying that there is a God and he has the property of existing. Likewise, when we say that ‘God does not exist’, we are not saying that there is a God and that he lacks the property of existence. This would be both claiming and denying God’s existence at once, which is an obvious paradox. Kant argues that rather than there being a thing, and it having the property of existence, when we claim ‘A exists’ we are saying that A is exemplified in the world. To Kant, existence is not a property to be possessed, but a correspondence of a concept with something that appears in reality.
Take for instance, an object - the ball again. We compose a complete description of the ball, complete with measurements of its size, weight, colour, density, texture, even the pressure of the air inside. If we then add that the ball exists, we are adding nothing to the concept of the ball. It is the same size, weight, colour etc. in concept as it is in reality; the fact that the object exists has no bearing on its properties or anything about the ball itself. To say something exists is not to say that it has the property of existence, but simply to say that it is present in the world.
So then, if Kant is correct, then existence is not a real predicate. It is not a property of objects or beings, and therefore it is impossible to compare a being that exists with a being which does not. To Kant, a God which exists and has the properties of omnipotence, omnipresence etc. is no different from a God which does not exist and has the properties of omnipotence, omnipresence etc. They are both qualitatively the same, there is absolutely no difference between them. That one exists and the other doesn’t has no bearing on them as objects, and so to compare them would be fruitless. Therefore a God which exists is no greater than a God which does not exist. If Kant is right, then existence is merely an affirmation of what is, and the assumption that existence is a characteristic of perfection is false. This would mean that the entirety of Anselm’s argument would come crashing down and fail.
Does it matter if existence is a predicate though? Could we simply use another line of justification? The most obvious substitute for ‘existence’ is ‘necessary existence’.
Necessary existence could possibly fit with the logic of Anselm’s argument, since necessary things are greater than contingent things, which may or may not exist. For example, take the ball again. Ball A exists necessarily, and Ball B exists contingently. In all other aspects we discussed earlier they are the same - size, weight, colour, etc. Is the first not greater than the second? Necessary things are undoubtedly greater than contingent things as they cannot not exist. If God exists, then he must exist necessarily. Does this avoid Kant’s assertion that existence is not a predicate? A predicate, or perfection, must tell us something about the object. Existence says nothing new about something, other than that it is exemplified in reality. Necessary existence does this too, but it also tells us that the thing cannot not exist. This is extra information - necessary existence seems to conform to our definition of predicates. This is a point of contention. Some philosophers allow for necessary existence, and many don’t. It doesn’t seem that there is any general consensus on the subject, and it is very possible that we cannot understand what it is for a thing like God to exist necessarily.
It seems that both Anselm and Descartes have failed to compile a convincing ontological argument for the existence of God. Though Gaunilo’s criticism of Anselm is undeniably flawed, it does strike some good points. Perhaps a modified version of Gaunilo’s argument could well show Anselm’s original argument to be false, in that it may prove any number of things to exist. It is Kant’s criticism of Descartes’ argument however, which is most damning for Anselm. Though not directly aimed at Anselm’s formulation of the ontological argument, Kant’s writing shows existence as something other than a predicate - which it is assumed to be in Anselm’s argument. There are of course counters which attempt to overcome this, but the ontological argument has confounded philosophers for several hundred years, and it seems unlikely that any agreement will be reached soon.
[1] St Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion [1077-8], chs 2-5. Translation from the Latin by John Cottingham. Collected in Western Philosophy: An Anthology, Cottingham, Blackwell, 2nd Ed, 2008, p345.
[2] Cottingham, p347
[3] Cottingham, p346
[4] Anselm moves on to posit God as necessary, though he does not exactly use these words. He claims that “it is possible to think of a being which cannot be thought of as not existing; and this is greater than that something which can be thought of as not existing.” Therefore God must exist, and cannot be thought not to exist by the rational, logical person.
[5] A key thing to remember when debating the success of Anselm’s argument is: does it make you believe? From a personal point of view, certainly not, and from what I gather of my classmates, none of them has suddenly been overcome with a belief in God since reading the Proslogian. It is interesting to note how such a well formed argument has so little effect, even to those who believe they fully understand it. The main point of contention, seems to be how worrying it is that Anselm’s argument moves from the existence of an idea to the existence of a thing that corresponds to that idea.
[6] On Behalf of the Fool, Gaunilo, Collected in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Davies, Oxford, 1st Ed, 2000, p313
[7] Davies, p316
[8] We may however, ask if it is possible to prove more than one God by using a similar logic. After all, if this argument only applies to God then perhaps we can prove multiple Gods. If we have God A and God B, both “something than which nothing greater can be thought”, can we prove both their existence? When taken individually there seems little problem, both meet the same description as Anselm’s God, and so both can be proved via the same method. The problem comes when attempting to reconcile one God with the other. Since “something than which nothing greater can be thought” is surely a singular, it is difficult to imagine more than one. Meaning if there is something that is the ‘greatest’, it must be greater than all other things. To have something that is equal to it would be that it was not greater than all other things, and therefore not “something than which nothing greater can be thought”. But does this necessarily contradict itself? Are we able to think of two beings, both of which nothing greater can be thought? If they are equal in every way, then can they both be considered “something than which nothing greater can be thought”? If so it appears that we may use Anselm’s argument to prove any number of Gods, which would be a rather large problem in the logic. However, if we look closely at the idea of a ‘greater’ being, we find that there must only be one, if indeed there is one. A single God, which is “something than which nothing greater can be thought” is much ‘greater’ than a God which has one or many equals.
[9] Davies, p327
[10] Davies, p327
[11] Immauel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (St Martin’s Press, 1965). Collected in Davies, p337
Can language be used successfully to speak about God?
Day to day, humans express their thoughts verbally, and though sometimes we fail to communicate coherently, we are on the whole successful. Humans trust in the ability of language to express their thoughts on any number of things: other people, items in the world, logical concepts etc. It is harder to speak of the abstract though, especially when personal concepts of the thing differ so much. How would we define love for instance? Or good? Surely there are differing levels of each, and the ‘type’ of love or good would depend on the context. Asserting that you love someone is very different from asserting that you love ginger beer (or so one would hope).
However, even when speaking of simple things instead of abstract and hard to pin down concepts like love, we come into difficulties. For example: John has a bat, and Mark has a bat. In John’s case, he has a stout wooden stick, which he uses to play cricket. Mark on the other hand, has a winged mammal, which eats crickets. The differences are clear when explained, but unclear from the words alone. In the same way, it is difficult to determine in what sense it is meant that God is ‘good’.
Even if the sense of a sentence can be determined, and we finally say that ‘God is good’, fully understanding what we mean - is the sentence meaningful? It is all very well to talk of bats. But can there truly be meaning in any kind of ‘god-talk’ when the object of our speech is so beyond us?
There are those who believe that we cannot use language to talk meaningfully about God at all. A J Ayer, covered this topic in his famous Language, Truth and Logic[1]. Ayers work on the conditions for meaning stems from his time spent as a guest of the Vienna Circle, with debates on logical positivism at the heart of discussion.
Ayer is perhaps most well known for his popularisation of verification principle. There are two main variants on the principle - weak and strong. The strong version of the principle requires that a statement have conclusive support in order for it to be meaningful. The weak version of the principle on the other hand, only requires that the statement have evidence to support it, and render it probable. The latter is the preferred of the arguments, as it side steps some obvious counter examples faced by strong verificationism.
The version of the principle which Ayer seems to favour in Language, Truth and Logic may be written as: a statement is meaningful if it is logically possible to gain evidence for or against its truth. It is important to note that one must obtain evidence for or against, meaning that the verification principle contains a falsification principle. A statement is therefore meaningful if it is possible to provide either evidence to support the claim that it is true, or that it is false.
Ayer starts by positing that it improbable that there is a way to know whether or not God (such as the ‘God of Christianity’[2]) exists, and in fact, we have yet to find any reason to believe he does. Ayer claims that the proposition ‘God exists’ is an empirical hypothesis, and that if he did exist, then the world would be different in some way for it. There would be certain actual or possible observations which could be made, from which we could deduce God’s existence. Ayer is of the opinion that there are none.[3]
Certain religious individuals may claim, and have claimed, that the existence of a regularity of phenomenon within nature suggests the existence of God. However, Ayer argues that if to assert the existence of God entails no more than this regularity of events, then to say ‘God exists’ is simply to posit that there is regularity within the natural world. Surely no religious individual would say that this was what he was trying to assert when he made the claim ‘God exists.’
One common line of response for the religious man would be that God is a transcendent being, something beyond us, and that although we may know of his presence through certain empirical manifestations, we cannot define him purely in terms of those manifestations.
Of course, if God is a transcendent being, then ‘god’ must surely be a metaphysical term. And if so, then surely to say ‘God exists’ must be nonsense, for it is making a claim which cannot be determined as either true or false. The same with attempting to describe the attributes of such a metaphysical being, such concepts are seen as having no literal meaning, as they cannot be verified or falsified.[4]
An interesting thing to note is that ‘the unknowable god’ is in perfect accordance with this theory. If, as many believe, God is transcendent by nature and unintelligible to human minds, then of course God is not an object of reason, but rather of faith. For whatever is unintelligible, cannot be proved or disproved by reason. This does however mean that the mystic must admit that he is “bound to talk nonsense when he describes it.”[5]
The mystic may argue that he perceives truths through this intuition, and that since we do not share his intuition; we cannot share his insight, and can have no grounds to dismiss it. However, the mystic is still unable to produce empirically verifiable propositions. It is absolutely no use to claim that you have found truth if you cannot express it to others. His intuition has revealed no facts, for if he truly had acquired information, then he would have a way to express it. According to Ayer, that the mystic cannot empirically test what he believes that he knows, shows that his mystical intuition is not a genuine cognitive state, and as such, cannot give us any knowledge.
Ayer moves on to address religious experience, which he claims is dismissed by the principle of verification.
Many theists and some philosophers claim that it is logically possible for men to be immediately acquainted with God. This meaning that they can be aware of a sense-content, and believe it to be God. Furthermore, defenders of religious experience claim that there is no reason why one should to discriminate between a man who says he sees a yellow patch, and a man who says he sees God. To Ayer, if the man who claims he is seeing God is simply asserting that he is witness to a very peculiar kind of sense-content, then we cannot deny that what he is saying may be true. However, as is often the case, those who believe they have seen God are not only asserting that they are experiencing a religious emotion, but also that a real transcendent God exists, and that this being is the object of this religious emotion. If we accept the man’s claim that he sees a yellow patch, it would be irrational for us deny that there was a yellow-coloured material thing present. However, even if we are prepared to believe the man when he asserts a yellow object, it would not be irrational for us to dismiss his claim when he asserts a transcendent god. While the sentence ‘There is a yellow-coloured material thing’ expresses a claim which can be proven true or false by empirical investigation, the claim ‘There is a transcendent god’ has no literal significance, and cannot be proved one way or another. It is simply not meaningful.[6]
There are those who have challenged the verification principle - both in its strong and weak forms. Richard Swinburne discusses these challenges in a direct response to Ayer entitled God-Talk is evidently not nonsense.[7]
The strong version of the principle - that a statement is factual if it is possible to conclusively verify it via an observation (or experience) - didn’t stand very long against its critics, as it contains a couple of fairly severe flaws. The most influential argument against it was that the strong verification principle would show all universal statements to have no factual meaning, while of course, some of them do. Universals are generally expressed as ‘All ‘A’s’ are ‘B’’, where ‘A’ is an open class which can always be added to, meaning that there can always be more of ‘A’. Take for instance the universal ‘All ravens are black.’ The ‘A’ in this case being ‘ravens’, no matter how many ravens you observe, there may always be one more. This means that you can never observe all ravens in order to conclusively verify that they are indeed black. Thus the strong verification principle fails.
In reply to this, the logical positivists tried a strong falsification principle, under which a statement is factual if it can be conclusively falsified[8] by an observation. Taking the example of the ravens again, ‘All ravens are black’. This statement would be falsified by observing a white raven. In the case of strong falsification, a universal statement of ‘All ‘A’s’ are ‘B’’ would be falsified by finding an ‘A’ that is not ‘B’, if this ‘A’ that is not ‘B’ can be observed, then the statement ‘All ‘A’s’ are ‘B’’ can be falsified by an observation. This means that the strong falsification principle allows for universal statements to be factually meaningful, unlike the strong verification principle.
However, although universal statements may be factually meaningful under the strong falsification principle, existential statements asserting the existence of a member of an open class are not. Under this principle, the existence of an object of a certain type at one time or another, for example a centaur, cannot be falsified, for however many observations you make, there will always be a time and a place you are not present in, in which the event may occur. You may never witness a centaur existing, but it is certainly possible that one may be somewhere else in the universe, or may be at some other time.[9]
In reply to this, we may suggest that for a statement to be meaningful it has to be logically possible to either conclusively verify or conclusively falsify it. However, Swinburne points out that even then we may easily find counter-examples. The example he gives is ‘all badgers are mortal (they all die at some point or another)’[10]. Such a statement cannot be conclusively falsified, for however many observations of old badgers we make, they may die one day. Likewise, we cannot conclusively verify this statement as no matter how many badgers we confirm eventually die, there may be one or more ‘eternal badgers’ which do not.
This led to acceptance of the weak verification principle, as explained by Ayer. A proponent of weak verificationism believes that a statement is factual if it describes a logically possible, observable state of affairs, or otherwise would be confirmed or disconfirmed by some other logically possible, observable state.
However, Swinburne claims that even if this version of the principle were true, it wouldn’t actually be of any great utility in sorting factual statements from others. According to Swinburne, the problem here lies with what we determine to be ‘observable logically possible states’. Do we agree on what these are? Some men claim to have seen aliens, or God, or vampires, or werewolves, heaven or hell. Some have held that these things are observable in principle, while others have held the opposite - that these are not logically possible observable states. It appears we cannot agree.
In reply, we may say that we simply have to reduce down to a descriptive vocabulary, and posit that we are seeing a blue, round object, or heading a loud noise etc. However, as Swinburne points out, if working with this basic language, we would then be unable to observe certain things. His example of ‘quarrelsome men’[11] is particularly striking, how does one observe the property of ‘quarrelsomeness’? It seems a large part of this debate is tied up in the meaning of ‘observe’. We can observe many things, and if one person observes some of the things mentioned earlier, then how can we prove that they didn’t? Perhaps there are certain things that we may rule out as being observable. It is for example, logically impossible to observe the future. Even if we could find more examples like this however, we would still be a long way off from agreeing what counts as an observable-statement. This is a key problem with the weak-verification principle.
The problems facing the weak verification principle in sorting factual statements from others becomes much clearer when attempting to determine what statements are not verifiable as factual. If we don’t have a complete catalogue of all valid observation-statements, then how can we prove that a statement is not confirmable or disconfirmable by any observation statement - we don’t have a complete set, so we may believe that a certain statement p is not confirmable or disconfirmable, when in fact, if we knew of an observation-statement, q, which we were previously unaware of due to our lack of knowledge of what counts as an observation-statement, then we would see that p was in fact confirmable (or disconfirmable). Again it appears that there are faults with the weak verification principle.
Swinburne moves on to discuss the arguments for the weak verification principle. He claims that there are two. The first is the argument from examples: that when considering statements which we judge to be factual, we will find that they are all confirmable or disconfirmable from experience. Swinburne claims however, that this is not the case, and that there are many counter-examples which may be considered. Statements which some people identify as factual, but which are neither confirmable nor disconfirmable from experience. He gives the example of a being much like a man, similar to man in all respects, but this being has no thoughts, feelings or sensations.[12] This being seems like a man in all ways - he talks like one, reacts like one, and there is no observational test that could be performed to prove otherwise. If you stick him with something sharp, he cries out, and reacts just as a man would in all situations. The claim then, that somewhere in the universe, such a being exists, can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed by observation, and so cannot be verified or falsified by the principle.[13]
The other argument Swinburne picks out in favour of the weak verification principle, is the claim that a man could not understand a factual claim unless “he knew what it would be like to observe it to hold or knew which observations would count for or against it”.[14] It is argued by Swinburne that this is clearly false. A man can quite easily understand a factual claim without knowing of observational evidence which could count for or against it. Swinburne gives the example of a man trying to understand the idea that before rational life on earth, the entire surface was covered in water, but there are many more possible examples. Consider the last full-scale eruption of the super-volcano of Yellowstone Caldera, 640,000 years ago. A man can understand the statement ‘a long time ago, there was a massive volcanic eruption at what is now Yellowstone Park’, without his having any idea of what evidence would count for or against this proposition, or what possible evidence could count for or against this proposition. If we understand the individual words within a claim, and understand their specific linguistic meaning at that point, and in relation to the other words and grammar contained within the claim, then surely we must understand the claim itself without need for observational evidence to either support, or deny the claim.
Despite the common sense logic of the verification principle, it seems that there may well be factual statements which no evidence-observation can count for or against. Indeed, it may be possible that we do not know what counts as an evidence-observation in the first place, if not, then the weak verification principle wouldn’t actually be of much use in sorting the factual from the not. Even if we can discover all observation-statements, it is still possible that there are examples where none may be of use. Perhaps then, we will have to settle for understanding language without being able to verify the truth and meaningfulness of it, at least when using ‘god-talk’.
Word Count: 2733
Bibliography: Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Brian Davies, Oxford, 1st Ed, 2000
[1] Extract of Language, Truth and Logic, AJ Ayer, Dover Publication Inc, 1946, Collected in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Davies, Oxford, 1st Ed, 2000, p143
[2] Davies, p143
[3] According to Ayer, simply the existence of the noun ‘God’ is enough to “foster the illusion that there is a real, or at any rate a possible entity corresponding to it.” (Davies, p144) For Ayer, we are bound to talk nonsense when the object of our speech is not empirically verifiable.
[4] At this point, it is important to note that Ayer is not specifically arguing against religion or the religious - but rather against what he calls ‘God-talk’. For Ayer, it is not possible to talk of God at all, for it is all non-sense. An atheist, for all his disbelief in God, is still talking about God, and still talks in a way as to posit his beliefs as concrete. Saying ‘There is no transcendent God’ is equivalent to saying ‘There is a transcendent God’ in terms of meaning, as both are meaningless. Neither actually expresses a proposition which is may be verified as true or false. Ayer even regards the agnostic as at fault. Much in the same way as the religious man or the atheist, he is using god-talk to express his belief about an unverifiable thing, and again we find he is talking nonsense.
[5] Davies, p145
[6] Ayer argues that both the theist and the moralist are at fault much in the same way, both claim that their experiences constitute knowledge, but neither can formulate their beliefs into propositions which are empirically verifiable. Instead of giving us knowledge of truths, Ayer claims that philosophers and others who assert such things are simply giving us insight into the workings of their minds; they are ‘merely providing material for the psychoanalyst.’ Such curt dismissal of such a large quantity of thought and philosophy is certainly brave, though it is still to be determined how correct Ayer is.
[7] R.G. Swinburne extract from The Coherence of Theism (Revised edition, OUP, 1997), copyright Oxford University Press 1997, collected in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Davies, Oxford, 1st Ed, 2000, p147
[8] In principle, i.e. it is logically possible that it could be found to be false
[9] Swinburne claims that such statements are factual - and perhaps they are. Over a long enough period of time, anything can happen (though I am not a mathematician, and could not calculate whether or not such an event is likely to happen before the heat death of the universe).
[10] Davies, p148
[11] Davies, p149
[12] Davies, p150
[13] It is perhaps worth noting that whether or not this criticism works lies in whether or not you believe such a statement is factual. If the statement stands as factual, then the weak verification principle must be false. If the statement is not factual, then perhaps the example counts in favour of the principle. The trouble is that it is hard to determine, and to agree on whether or not such statements are indeed factual.
[14] Davies, p151
Does historical materialism give plausible explanations of historical change? Are the explanations it gives ‘functional’ explanations?
The aim of historical materialism is to provide an account of the mechanisms which produce the flow of historical change. I will be using extracts of Marx’s writing from Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy[1].
Marx attempts to provide a theory which explains the causal structure of history, an explanation of the advance through social states of development - broadly categorised as the “Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois[2]”[3], socialist[4], and finally communist.
It is advance in the states of society, this historical materialism, which Marx believes to be the true mark of historical development. For Marx, changes in political structures, social classes and ideologies are a direct result of the economic growth of a society through the development of the forces of production. By ‘forces of production’, we mean the combination of the means of production (including tools, machinery, land, infrastructure, etc.) and the labour power of the human.
These forces of production inform the current stage of development, from Asiatic to communist, and also the relations of production. These are relations of economic power; that is, the power or lack of power people have over labour power and means of production. These relations are independent of the individuals will, and are “relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production”[5]. These economic relations of power are relations in terms of power over the productive forces. For example, under a modern bourgeois capitalist society, everybody owns their own labour power; capitalists own both tools and materials; and capitalists purchase the labour power of workers.
Thus the stage of development determines the relations of production, and it is these relations of production which form the structural foundation of society. The productive forces are not part of this economic foundation, but rather these forces of production are the ground on which the foundation rests.
The superstructure of society arises on this economic foundation, and is formed by the legal and political institutions which are appropriate to the continuation and maximum efficiency of production in the current state of society. This superstructure does not include all non-economic phenomenon, though the legal and political inform the ideology of the society. This being made up of all beliefs concerning religion, morality, aesthetics, and philosophy. Since this ideology is determined by the structure, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.”[6]
G.A. Cohen, in his 1978 book Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence [7](henceforth KMTH), explained the relation between the economic base, and superstructure by giving the example of four struts driven into the ground, each protruding the same distance. In the wind, these struts sway, they are not stable. However, if a roof is attached, the four struts support the roof, and the roof makes the struts stable.
The forces of production develop with the development of the means of production, for example, the introduction of simple tools. This development or change in the forces of production brings about a conflict in the relations of production, and by virtue of this, a conflict of property relations. This conflict occurs as the lowest class realises the constricting nature of the current relations of production, this conflict Marx calls a ‘social revolution’.
Marx asserts that in a social revolution the economic foundation of the relations of production switches to a new type (e.g. from feudal to capitalist, or capitalist to communist) and as these relations form the basis of social consciousness, the ideology of the society changes rapidly; the legal, political, and religious systems undergo drastic change[8].
In this way, historical materialism gives what seems a plausible description of the process of historical change, in terms of the development of production.
However, there appears to be some inconsistency in this theory. If we take the example of struts of Cohen as explanatory of the structure and superstructure, the ‘roof’ or superstructure of the legal and political helps maintain the integrity of the economic foundation on which it rests, and the economic structure ‘struts’ support the superstructure.
However, it seems inconsistent to assert that the base determines the superstructure, if the superstructure is required for the foundation to exist in a stable state. Perhaps more importantly, it is inconsistent to state that the structure determines the superstructure, if sometimes the makeup of the superstructure (e.g. what legal rights people have) will influence the basic economic conditions of society (e.g. what people’s economic powers are in the relations of power).
Cohen claims that if the intended explanation is a functional one, as he believes, then historical materialism is coherent. If not, then the Marxist theory of history is incoherent and must fail.
Functional explanations are a type of explanation, whereby the existence of some phenomenon which has a certain effect is explained by the fact that it has that effect. An example often given is that of birds having hollow bones. The fact that birds have hollow bones is explained by the fact that hollow bones facilitate flight. Or, more formally, if x is a cause, and y it’s effect, then a functional explanation would be that x occurred precisely because y would happen, or at least that the situation was such that if an event such as x occurred, then it would cause another event like y
.
Using Cohen’s reasoning, we may view Marx’s explanation of the formation of social consciousness, and the formation of the superstructure, as functional. Marx says that consciousness is determined by social being; taken as functional, the social consciousness of a society is that which will support and sustain the current economic structure (i.e. the relations of production) required to make the best use of the forces of production. The social consciousness is as it is because it supports the economic structure.
Combining this explanation of the formation of social consciousness, with the idea that the economic structure is that which will allow the greatest use and growth of the forces of production, it may be argued that Protestantism arose when it did because “it was a religion suited to stimulating capitalist enterprise and enforcing labour discipline at a time when the capital/labour relation was pre-eminently apt to develop new productive potentials of society”[9] Meaning that Protestantism reinforced the relations of power made possible the maximum advancement in the productive forces.
When giving functional explanation, one has to show both that x is actually functional for y, and also that the fact that x is functional for y functionally explains x. For example, when functionally explaining biological processes such as the hollow bones of a bird, stating (even correctly) that birds have hollow bones because it facilitates flight is merely to explain the presence of hollow bones and flight. It does not explain how a bird having hollow bones facilitates flight. In KMTH, Cohen gives the example of small workshops usually advancing to becoming large workshops - “We can know that something operated in favour of large scale, because of its effectiveness, without knowing what so operated….We might be able to claim that the change is explained by its consequences without being able to say how it is so explained.”[10] It may be that we are perfectly happy with simply asserting that x explains y without explaining how x explains y, though we may eventually be called to elaborate on our explanation in order to justify it.
Cohen gives an example in KMTH concerning 10 societies on the verge of collapse, each of which could be made stable by religion. A prophet visits each, and one society accepts his religion, and is saved. The other societies decline, and collapse. However, imagine that it is not because they wanted religion that the remaining society chose to accept his proposal, but instead that they liked the look of the prophet. Just because the society needed a religion for stability, and had a religion fulfilling that need, is not to say that the need for religion explains it’s having one. This is sloppy functional explanation, and Cohen is critical of it. He distinguishes between giving an explanation where x explains y, and elaborating on that explanation as to how x explains y, “A satisfying elaboration provides a fuller explanation and locates the functional fact within a longer story which specifies its explanatory role more precisely.”[11]
In order to give a complete functional example, one must identify the mechanisms at work within the explanation, and then elaborate it. Within historical materialism, we must say how the fact that the economic structure promotes the development of the productive forces functionally explains the character of the economic structure. Then we must explain how the fact that the superstructure protects the base functionality explains the character of the superstructure.
Therefore, we must find this mechanism of elaboration, and Cohen identifies several – though perhaps these two are the most relevant. Firstly, there the Darwinian, where the functionality of some phenomenon is explained in terms of natural selection amongst a group of competitors with different capabilities, each vying for some scarce resource, meaning that “plants and animals have the useful equipment they do because of its usefulness, and specifies in what manner the utility of a feature accounts for its existence.”[12] Cohen claims that even if we lacked knowledge of such a theory as Darwinism, we may easily observe “provocative correlations between the requirements of living existence and the actual endowments of living things,” This supposedly works in economics, where by a business may expand, not because of an agent’s will being disposed in that way, but because of certain Darwinist elements: “chance variation (in scales of production), and selection (on the market of those variants which, by chance, had a superior structure).”[13]
As well as Darwinian elaborations, we have the purposive. Simply put, a purposive elaboration is an explanation in terms an agent with the ability to act intentionally in the world. For a purposive elaboration, we suppose that the industry expands along the lines of the plans of the industry’s ‘decision makers’ rather that expanding naturally due to chance variation or selection. The head of business x knows that increased scale would yield economies, and so enlarges production out of awareness of this fact. The functional fact would then play its explanatory role by accounting for the formation of the (correct) belief that an increase in scale would be beneficial.
However, it does not appear that we may have a purposive explanation within Marxist theory. One of the foundational points of historical materialism is that the relations of production are explicable by the forces of production in such a way as to make them independent of human consciousness and will. This does not allow for an individual agent to influence the productive forces as a purposive explanation would imply.
Jon Elster, in his article Cohen on Marx’s Theory of History[14], claims that Cohen has not given any kind of mechanism for functional explanations which is viable within the social sciences, “I do not…quarrel with the use of functional explanation in biology….Cohen does not, however, provide any similar mechanism for functional explanation in the social sciences”[15] He proposes a rational-choice theory, which works off the “well-grounded presumption that human beings act rationally that makes it justified to assume in any given case that they do so, even if ex post we may turn out to be wrong.”[16] Marx’s explanations are not compatible with rational-choice. As earlier explained, according to Marx, the relations of production are explained by the stage of development of the forces of production. These relations are completely independent of facts about human consciousness and will, as it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
However, in purposive explanations (such as rational-choice theory), social consciousness determines these things, and so relations of production cannot independent of consciousness and will. It appears that a Marxist cannot accept a rational choice explanation of historical materialism.
It appears that we cannot be satisfied with a functional explanation for Marxist theory unless we find relevant mechanism for explaining the function. Darwinist elaboration is promising, though it has been rejected as only being viable within science – not sociology. This is debatable, though it appears that the alternative explanations for the Marxist theory of history also have their flaws, which appear to be rather more fatal. A rational-choice or purposive elaboration simply cannot be accepted as explanation for historical materialism. We must either make do with an incomplete functional explanation, accept Darwinist elaborations, or else reject historical materialism as fatally flawed, and unable to give a plausible explanation of historical change.
Word Count: 2197
Bibliography:
Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, Karl Marx, edited by Bottomore and Rubel, Penguin Books, 1988
Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, G.A. Cohen, Clarendon Press, 1978
Cohen on Marx’s Theory of History, Jon Elster- from The Journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Volume XXVIII, Oxford University Press, 1980.
[1] Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, Karl Marx, edited by Bottomore and Rubel, Penguin Books, 1988
[2] or capitalist, the bourgeoisie being the social class that owns the means of production in a capitalist society.
[3] Marx, p68
[4] It is unclear whether or not the ‘socialist’ state constitutes a state of development in and of itself, or is a middle-state between capitalism and communism. Socialism is certainly distinct from capitalism, though the differences between socialism and communism are less clear. For the purposes of this essay, socialism will be treated as an economic stepping stone, at a point equidistant from both capitalism and communism.
[5] Marx, p67
[6] Marx, p67
[7] Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence, G.A. Cohen, Clarendon Press, 1978
[8] Though the ideology of the society does change, this is, at heart and economic revolution, stimulated by the development of the forces of production. According to Marx, no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there are room in it have been developed. New (or higher) relations of production never appear until the material conditions for their existence have been satisfied by the previous society.
[9] Cohen, p279
[10] Cohen, p280
[11] Cohen, p286
[12] Cohen, p285
[13] Cohen, p288
[14] Cohen on Marx’s Theory of History, Jon Elster- from The Journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom, Volume XXVIII, Oxford University Press, 1980.
[15] Elster, p125-6
[16] Elster, p126
Does Durkheim successfully show that suicide is the result of social causes? Is he right about the particular social causes he claims to identify?
Emile Durkheim was one of the founding fathers of sociology. He sought to apply the scientific method to social study, and in this way carve out a new academic field separate from philosophy and psychology, based purely on social facts. In his book Le Suicide[1], published in 1897, Durkheim detailed a sociological case study of the phenomenon of suicide. He believed that suicide is the result of social causes, rather than strictly psychological causes, and that by studying statistics he could identify trends which would enable us to better understand the causes of suicide.
Durkheim defined the term suicide as “applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.”[2] This is death resulting from behaviour that the individual knows will lead to his own death, though not necessarily a positive action. This includes both those who seek their own death through action (e.g. shooting oneself), and also those who do nothing to keep themselves from dying. The latter is more difficult to understand, and perhaps is not always included in the common understanding of suicide. An example of death by neglect of self would be the man, who knowing that he requires food and water to survive, takes no action to ingest either – this represents a conscious refusal to take action necessary for survival.
Durkheim’s definition, however, does not distinguish intent; he regards the intent of the individual as immaterial. He states that “Intent is too intimate a thing to be more than approximately interpreted by another.”[3] For Durkheim then, it is suicide regardless of whether or not the individual desires death; they must simply know that their actions will lead to their death. As Durkheim writes: “We constantly explain acts due to petty feelings or blind routine by generous passions or lofty considerations.”[4] It is very rare that we know the reason behind other individuals’ actions, and it is sometimes even difficult to determine why we ourselves do the things we do. Intent then, is subjective. Intent is possibly a field for the psychologist to study, rather than the sociologist. Though beyond Durkheim’s remit, psychology could provide valuable non-social studies on the causes of suicide.
Durkheim believed that his definition was close enough to the common definition of suicide that he could use official suicide statistics in his case study. However, suicide is commonly understood to mean “the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally”[5], and as we have seen, Durkheim does not specify intent. This may well affect statistics, and the findings of his study. For example, Pope notes in Durkheim’s Suicide: A Classic Analyzed[6] that while Durkheim would define as suicide the drowning of a non-swimmer who jumps into deep water to save their child, official statistics would not, as his intention was to save the child, not to die.
Furthermore, it is noted in Pope’s text that J.D. Douglas[7] cited figures indicating that the number of suicides recorded in various European states increased when secular officials replaced religious functionaries as those responsible for recording the cause of death. From this, we may draw the conclusion that factors other than the understanding of the definition of suicide influence the classification of deaths. Therefore it is not simply a matter of harvesting statistics based on a common definition (or something close to one), because it appears that even were there such a thing, there are other factors to consider. Classification of suicide (and the impulse to record death as such) varies depending on group, locality, nation, or perhaps even other factors. This brings into question the reliability of Durkheim’s data, and challenges the validity of Durkheim’s findings.
Durkheim identifies two social variables as the determining factors of the rate of suicide: integration and regulation.
A society is said to be integrated to the degree that its members share a common conscience of shared beliefs, interact with each other, and represent a unified will to complete common goals.
The condition of egoism is identified as due to a low level of social integration. Egoism exists when the individual is detached from social life, due to a weak collective conscience and few common goals. This causes a dedication to personal goals which supersede those of society; society becomes a weaker influence, and personality and individuality continue to develop unchecked. As connection to society disintegrates, the individual realises that his life is meaningless as he no longer gains his purpose from the group. His life now meaningless, is worth nothing to him, and is readily surrendered. Durkheim implies that egoism is a modern social condition, which is caused by a weakening of religion and the development of individualism. To support this claim, he cites figures suggesting that Protestants have a higher suicide rate than Catholics due to its looser social group, and its positive disposition toward individual free enquiry. Catholicism is a much tighter social group, and as such, supports and integrates the individual better. This leads to a lower suicide rate.
Altruism is due to the individual being completely absorbed into and controlled by the social group. His individuality, barely developed, cannot be highly valued, as the source of the individuals reality is not himself, but the group. Society does not value the individual, nor does the individual himself. As such, society does not hesitate to bid the individual to end his life, and the individual does not hesitate to comply.
In Suicide, Durkheim identifies three types of altruistic suicide: obligatory, optional and acute. These are distinguished between the mechanisms which initiate the act of suicide. Obligatory suicide is “characteristically performed as a duty”[8] to society, and is perhaps the most easily understood of the integration-suicide types. The individual commits suicide because it is called for by society, and he is bound to comply. An example of this is the man conscripted to defend his community.
Optional altruistic suicide is very similar to obligatory altruistic suicide, in “all such cases, a man kills himself without being explicitly forced to do so. Yet these suicides are of the same nature as obligatory suicide.”[9] Instead of being duty bound to commit suicide, the individual is instead encouraged toward the act without the force of obligation. He is rewarded with social prestige or praise should he comply, and social stigma if he does not. For example, the individual, who reaching old age, becomes a burden to society, and kills themselves for society’s sake instead of continuing on at their sufferance.
The final type, acute altruistic suicide, is the most extreme of the altruistic types. In this type, “the individual kills himself purely for the joy of sacrifice, because, even with no particular reason, renunciation in itself is considered praiseworthy.”[10] This is the most severe absorption into society, and loss of the self. Acute suicides occur without the “concurrence of circumstances”[11] required for the other two types.
Two types of society are singled out as being particularly conducive to altruism: primitive society, and the armed forces.
In primitive society, the social group is extremely compact, and as such there are high rates of interaction between individuals. Everyone leads the same life, and everything being common to all, everyone is the same. The compactness of the social group favours “collective supervision”[12] which readily prevents divergences from the social norm. These “lower societies are the theatre par excellence of altruistic suicide”[13], and though there may exist examples of this type of suicide in more recent civilisations, it is largely extinct. The homogeneity of primitive society has been replaced with the individualism of modern society - and with this, the altruistic with the egoistic. Durkheim claims there is one social group within which altruistic suicide may still be seen however: the modern military.
Durkheim claims that of all the elements which make up modern societies, the military is the most similar to primitive society. It too consists of a large “compact group providing a rigid setting for the individual and preventing any independent movement”[14] The military morality is such that the individual is not valued, and it is the collective which must be followed and obeyed. This certainly seems to mirror primitive society as earlier defined. In such a social group, the soldier is predisposed toward suicide at the slightest provocation, “a refusal of leave, a reprimand, an unjust punishment”[15]. Durkheim claims that the profession of the soldier “develops a moral constitution powerfully predisposing man to make away with himself.”[16]
The second social variable, regulation, refers to the degree that the members of a society are limited, restricted and influenced in their actions.
Anomie is a consequence of social change toward a decrease in social regulation, freeing the individual from social control. The collective social authority that previously prohibited or guarded against certain acts falters, and individual passions and wants assert themselves. Durkheim claims that people’s desires will quickly outstrip their means, and the result will be frustration, exasperation and weariness with life. These factors in turn lead to an increased inclination to suicide.
Anomie usually coincides with a severe social or economic upheaval. The drastic change in environment leads the previous regulatory controls to become useless or disrupted; the individual, now devoid of controls loses the sense of authoritative regulation.
Fatalism is inspired by “excessive regulation, that of persons with futures pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline.”[17] Durkheim believed fatalism to be of little relative importance to contemporary suicide figures due to the lack of such a society, and included its description for completions sake.
In Durkheim’s One Cause[18], B.D. Johnson argues that Durkheim’s four causes of suicide can be reduced to a single cause. It is argued that altruism and fatalism can be eliminated from Durkheim’s study, as almost all of Durkheim’s study of altruism concerns primitive societies.
What Durkheim means by primitive peoples is never explicitly stated, as he seems to be using examples taken from accounts of both ancient societies, and contemporary societies such as Japan, China and India. Durkheim also seems to accept as given his conclusion from The Division of Labour in Society[19] that any small society is highly integrated, though even if this were the case; it would hardly be relevant in the cases of the three major civilisations listed about. His sources of information on primitive society are also suspicious, as the information is largely collected from ancient authors, early anthropologists and travellers. These do not seem appropriate sources for an academic case study. Durkheim also appears to infer a high suicide rate in primitive society, based on reports of social norms which recommend suicide. This is of dubious validity at best, and would benefit from the inclusion of official records (though it is understood that these would be difficult to come by, should they exist at all).
It has been argued by Johnson that anomie is an aspect of egoism. Egoism is defined as a lack of integration, whereby purposes and goals are lacking due to the absence of a common conscience. Johnson claims that a lack of regulation is implied by lack of integration, as society cannot enforce authority on the unsocialized man. This is further implied by Durkheim himself in Suicide, “egoistic suicide results from the fact that society is not sufficiently integrated at all points to keep its members under control”[20]. This lack of control sounds very much like the lack of regulation identified by Durkheim as anomie.
In so far as fatalism is concerned, even Durkheim admits that it is of little contemporary importance. The only contemporary examples given are of childless married women, and of very young husbands. Both of which are not explained in purely social terms. Childress married women and very young husbands are affected differently by the single social condition of marriage, as “one needs constraint and the other liberty”[21]. Therefore there must be some other factor influencing them toward suicide.
Johnson admits that “Once altruism and fatalism are eliminated, the single case in Suicide that clearly contradicts the theory is the army.”[22] It is the one example of a highly integrated social group which also has a high suicide rate. This is a problem for Johnson’s formulation of the theory, yet does not entirely contradict it.
With altruism and fatalism removed, and anomie absorbed into egoism, we are left with the following. The more integrated (regulated) a society, the lower its suicide rate. The higher the level of egoism (anomie) in a society, the higher the suicide rate[23].
Johnson is correct to regard Durkheim’s work on primitive societies with suspicion, and the reservations voiced earlier about problems in defining suicide and gathering statistics remain. Yet it appears Durkheim may be correct in at least some of what he says. Johnson agrees that there is a social cause for suicide, though he rules out fatalism and questions altruism. Egoism (anomie inclusive) is the most acceptable of Durkheim’s social causes, and the evidence given seems well supported. It appears we must make do with Johnson’s formulation of egoism, perhaps including altruism for the military, and accept lack of regulation and social integration, as social causes of suicide.
Word Count: 2200
Bibliography:
Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A study in sociology, Routledge, 1996, translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson, edited by George Simpson
Whitney Pope, Durkheim’s Suicide: A Classic Analyzed, University of Chicago Press, 1982
J.D. Douglas, The social meanings of suicide, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/
Barclay, D. Johnson, Durkheim’s One Cause of Suicide, American Sociological Review, Vol 30, No. 6 (Dec., 1965), American Sociological Association
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984, translated by W.D. Hall
[1] Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A study in sociology, Routledge, 1996, translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson, edited by George Simpson
[2] Ibid., p44
[3] Ibid., p43
[4] Ibid.
[5] Definition taken from Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/suicide
[6] Whitney Pope, Durkheim’s Suicide: A Classic Analyzed, University of Chicago Press, 1982, p10
[7] J.D. Douglas, The social meanings of suicide, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, p193-4
[8] Durkheim, p220
[9] Ibid., p222
[10] Ibid., p223
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid., p221
[13] Ibid., p227
[14] Ibid., p234
[15] Ibid., p239
[16] Ibid.
[17] Ibid., p276
[18] Barclay, D. Johnson, Durkheim’s One Cause of Suicide, American Sociological Review, Vol 30, No. 6 (Dec., 1965), American Sociological Association, p875-886.
[19] Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, Palgrave Macmillan, 1984, translated by W.D. Hall
[20]Durkheim, p373
[21] Ibid., p274
[22] Johnson, p886
[23] Ibid.
“Come in, come in. Oh my aren’t you beautiful!” gushed Tom’s mother.
“Well done, son.” growled Tom’s father in low, but all too loud tones.
“George!”
“Sorry dear.” Tom’s father winked at Alice, and returned his son’s sheepish grin.
“Come on, let’s get you inside.”
The house was freshly cleaned, and smelled of citrus and several plants Tom couldn’t name off the top of his head. He’d never really understood why cleaning products all smelled like that. Why not some other nice smell, like potroast, or heaven forfend, no smell at all. Still, it made mother happy. Little did she know that Alice wasn’t much of a cleaner herself. It wasn’t that she was dirty per se, quite the opposite in fact. She just never left any mess. In fact, Tom was quite sure he’d never seen her lift a finger to alter her hair or make up. He wasn’t actually sure she wore any. And he was still quite confused as to how she managed to cook huge meals and never do any washing up. But then, she didn’t need to. Everything around her just shone. Tom had even noticed that his clothes seemed cleaner since he’d been dating her, though he attributed that to a new strict regime of washing them once a fortnight as opposed to monthly before he met her.
“Mum, Dad, this is Alice. My new girlfriend.” Alice shook hands with both of them, and, after a moment’s hesitation, leant in to recieve a kiss on the cheek from Tom’s father. Tom glared at him.
“Lunch is almost ready, I thought we’d have a drink and a chat first. We want to hear all about you Alice.”
“We certainly do.” chirped Tom’s father. Tom continued to glare at him.
“That sounds lovely Mrs—”
“Oh, do call me Audrey dear.”
“And you must call me George.”
“Thank you Audrey, thank you George. You have a lovely home.”
“Oh, nonsense. I’ve barely done any cleaning this week. And you still haven’t fixed that shelf, George.”
“Yes, dear.”
“You know I’ve wanted you to do it, but you never think, sometimes I don’t know—-“
“Mum, Dad. Drinks?”
“Oh! Of course.” Audrey clapped her hands together and scurried off into the kitchen, humming as she went. George turned and spoke in conspiratory tones, “Make sure you tell her you like it. Homemade. She’s been experimenting on me for days.” Just as he finished speaking, she appeared in the kitchen doorway with a tray of glasses and a large, odd looking jug. George ushered them all into the sitting room and the drinks were dispensed.
The lemonade had a distinctive hue, distinctive in that Tom had never seen green lemonade before. It wasn’t green like your supermarket ‘cloudy’ lemonade. Nor was it green in the classical sense. It was green like water you’d just boiled brocolli in, not quite coloured, but definitely not clear. It did not look appetizing.
Now, Tom loved his mother dearly, and would never seek to harm her. It was with this in mind that he managed to keep every muscle in his face from spasming when he took his first sip. After taking a moment to recover, he managed to croak out “Lovely and sharp.” Tom’s father rather obviously stifled a snort, and a full blown scowl was appearing on Mother Dear’s face when Alice swept in and saved the day. Draining her glass in one, huge gulp, she wiped her sleeve across her mouth and shot out her hand, empty glass on display. “That was delicious, Audrey. I don’t mean to seem greedy, but please could I have some more?” Tom’s mother beamed, Tom’s father sat wide eyed, and Tom smiled on the inside. She was perfect. After filling the recently emptied glass to the brim, Audrey shot a quick glare at the boys, before turning back to her brand new beloved daughter.
Crisis averted, Tom relaxed a little. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Black. Everything black.
Inside he howled and raged, thrashed and clawed, desperately searching for something solid, something of substance. But nothing. It was dark and it was silent and it was still. He was drifting; sinking to the depths of a river that should not exist. Down he went. His vision began to fade, and a deep cold crept inside of him. But he no longer cared. All thoughts inside his head were gone. No thought of escape, or life or even death. No thought for the cold that tugged at his bones, and slowly the lids of his eyes slid down and closed.
-*-
It was four years before Tom died and he was introducing his parents to his new girlfriend. She wasn’t really that new, but they pretended to have only just met – it would wound Toms parents to be kept out of the loop on such a large issue.
Tom thought she was beautiful, and she was. In fact, everyone thought she was beautiful, and would remind her of it her every chance that they got. In words and looks, cat calls and guttural grunts of appreciation, men hounded her. They stared when she walked past, and felt an emptiness inside when she was gone. They loved her for the simple fact that she had chosen to be near them, had allowed them into her presence, wide eyed and far from innocent. Not so with women. They scowled and spoke behind her back, and felt themselves to be small, broken things before her. They painted their nails and their faces, hoping to attain a beauty that they did not possess, and never would. Simply put, she shone. All these pretenders who mimicked her ways, her looks, and her shape; all went away with nothing but a hollow simulacrum.
Alone and desolate at her departure, these others flew together, holding each other tight in the barren world she’d unveiled to them. They had seen everything, and now they had nothing. All but Tom. He had her whole and complete, and she was his to keep. She was everything he had ever wanted – and more that he thought anyone could ever offer. She was perfect.
Her name was Alice, and that was what she was called.
They’d been poling along for some time now. Whether it had been hours or minutes or days Tom wasn’t quite sure, but at some point he’d started counting how many strokes of the pole the Boatman had made, and had lost count somewhere around eleven thousand. He’d move through a myriad of emotions since the journey began - anger, sadness, maudlin, whimsy, resignation - but had eventually settled somewhere south of curiosity.
Being dead was quite upsetting of course, but being in the underworld? Now that was interesting. Unfortunately for Tom however, the Boatman wasn’t much of a conservationist. Tom had made various attempts to get the figure to speak, but most had been met with non-committal silence. The few times Tom did think he was getting a reaction, it turned out the Boatman was just changing direction, or deciding which way to go next. This was another thing that intrigued Tom, for during the eleven thousandish strokes, the boat had seemed to go precisely no where, and yet changed direction several times; not so much looping back on itself, but never going anywhere in the first place. As soon as Tom had lost sight of the shore, all points of reference ended. The water was absolutely still, neither boat nor pole making any ripple on the surface. This wasn’t particularly disconcerting, as Tom had already dealt with being dead by this point, and he imagined there probably wasn’t much worse that could happen.
So the Boatman continued to pole along, and Tom sat and pondered his situation, finally giving up bothering to count the strokes, or even look around for their destination. He closed his eyes, and let his mind drift.
Tom was startled from his slumber by a sudden jolt that would have seen him overboard if he hadn’t already slipped down into the curve of the boat when he’d dropped off. Muttering about woman drivers and “the injustice of it all”, he pulled himself up on the side of the boat just in time to see the Boatman disappear into the mouth of a cave. Sleepy eyed, and muggy headed Tom tried to call after him, but all that came out was something that sounded vaguely like “Hulum”.
Now, Tom wasn’t usually the sort who had much trouble getting out of bed in the morning, but he found getting up from the boat incredibly difficult. Every time he tried to raise himself above the rim of the boat, he felt awash with tiredness, and a pressure on his shoulders like someone holding him down. Struggling on, he managed to hook one arm over the rim of the boat, and used the other to push up from the bottom. This way, pushing and pulling, he made tortuously slow progress getting up. But it was progress, and by now, Tom realized that there was more to his predicament than an early morning grogginess could account for. Something was wrong. A wave of possibilities crashed over him. He was in trouble. He was dead. He was being imprisoned. Maybe he was alive. Maybe this was a hallucination, and he really was trying to get to his feet in real life. That would make sense; he was alive, and he had to survive.
He redoubled his efforts, giving his everything. He thought of his family, his friends, his life, and he pushed. Nothing. He pushed again, heaving as hard as he could, and thought of the bastard that had ran him off the road. His arm met liquid, and suddenly, there was no resistance. The efforts previously needed just to stay upright were far too much, and he dropped haphazardly over the side of the boat. Water closed over his head.
There is a man without a face,
Who careless flits from place to place,
Upon his head a holly bough,
That pricks, and cuts, and stabs his brow.
And though it hurts he does not care,
And though he breathes, he needs no air.
Rich in madness, rich in grace,
With you the prey begins the chase,
And careless as you are that day,
Are lead unknowing into Fae.
And there though beating,
your heart it rests,
Slows then stills within your breast.
The moonlit pool shows nothing back,
The shadows wrap around you black.
A madness creeps inside your head,
You are alive, but you are dead.
Now he may rest, and you must go,
As above, so below.
