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Love & Philosophy
#66 The Weirdness of the World & Harmonizing the Dao with philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel
This show is about harmonizing the Dao and embracing the world's weirdness at once. Our guest is Eric Schwitzgebel, an analytic philosopher and professor at the University of California Riverside. As they unfold the Dao and the world’s weirdness, Andrea and Eric explore everything from robot consciousness, the love darts of snails, triads, axiology, and the philosophy of opening. Eric shares his journey into classical Chinese philosophy, how we understands harmonizing with the Dao, some of his writings about consciousness, and the importance of appreciating the world's inherent weirdness. This conversation offers a delightful blend of profound ideas and joyous reflections, encouraging us to see weird as a way into new perspectives and perhaps even into love.
00:00 Introduction to Love and Philosophy
00:20 Meet Eric Schwitzgebel: Philosopher and Author
01:37 Exploring the Concept of Harmonizing the Dao
01:52 Journey into Classical Chinese Philosophy
03:59 The Tension Between Analytic and Chinese Philosophy
06:22 Understanding the Dao and Harmony
11:16 The Weird and Wonderful World of Zhuangzi
17:40 The Value of Diversity and Conflict
33:14 The Consciousness of Garden Snails
41:57 Exploring Relationality and Consciousness
43:50 The Consciousness of Plants and Robots
46:52 Philosophical Perspectives on Consciousness
55:38 The Philosophy of Opening vs. Closing
01:10:06 Ethics and Moral Behavior of Ethicists
01:17:43 Love, Marriage, and Harmonizing with the Dao
01:22:16 Final Thoughts and Farewell
The Book we discuss:
Writings we discuss:
Imagining Yourself in Another’s Shoes versus Extending Your Concern: Empirical & Ethical Differences
A Robot Lover's Sociological Argument for Robot Consciousness
Cosmic Muse: Vol. I: Your Voice (Mercury)Find your mercury placement in your birth chart and activate your personal voice codes.
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Eric Schwitzgebel Harmonizing the Dao
[00:00:00] Hi everyone. Welcome to Love and Philosophy. The paradox we're holding here today is harmony and weirdness, specifically harmonizing the Dao and the weirdness of the world, which are both topics of writings and books. Weirdness of the World is a book title actually by my guest, Eric Sch Gable. Eric is an analytic philosopher and a professor of philosophy at the University of California Riverside.
He's also the author of A Theory of Jerks and Perplexities of Consciousness. So just those titles probably already tell you a lot. I'm not sure if you've listened to my conversation with CT Noian, but these two philosophers, C Thi Nguyen and Erich Schwitzgebel have been two of my favorite to read over the years because they always get me thinking deeply, and yet they're also real craftsmen in their writing.
In this conversation, we discuss everything from robot consciousness to the love darts of [00:01:00] snails, to triads to axiology, to the philosophy of opening. it's always a pleasure to discuss the wonderfulness of being weird, and also to hold that alongside
ideas about the DAO So those are two words I know well, I hope you indulge in some weirdness today and uh, it's definitely one of the best routes to love loving what is weird, can really open you up to the world in a new way. So be and do well out there. And here we go.
Andrea Hiott: Hi Eric. Thanks so much for being on love and Philosophy. It's wonderful to meet you.
Eric Schwitzgebel: nice to meet you too.
Andrea Hiott: So we're gonna talk about harmonizing the DAO today, among other things that will hopefully lead us into a few other ideas relative to your work. But just to start, how did you come upon this phrase, harmonizing the Dao?
When did this become an idea that you wanted to explore?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Well, I've always been interested in classical Chinese philosophy, at least well since undergrad. And [00:02:00] it is a central idea in classical Chinese philosophy, especially my favorite, uh, Chinese philosopher Za. But you also see it in the ancient Confucians, and it's generally part of ancient Chinese thinking that there is this thing, the Dao, which we can.
Talk about what the DAO is, uh, and it's good to harmonize with it. So it goes way back into my roots in, uh, classical Chinese philosophy.
Andrea Hiott: I wanted to ask you about that. How did you come upon that as an interest? Sounds like it started young
Eric Schwitzgebel: as an undergraduate. Yeah, right. So when I was an undergrad at Stanford, I took this amazing class with, uh, PJ Ivanhoe, who was a professor there at the time.
And I was just fell in love with the classical Chinese thinkers. Then when I went to graduate school at Berkeley, hun was there and he also studies classical Chinese philosophy. [00:03:00] And he was delighted that there was, uh, an incoming student. I mean, most graduate students in philosophy in the United States don't know anything about classical Chinese philosophy.
He was delighted. There was someone who already knew a little bit about it and was interested in it. So he kind of took me under his wing, I TA'ed for him, and, uh, gave him comments on one of his books. And then PJ Ivanhoe had liked one of my undergraduate essays and asked me to turn it into a publication for an anthology he was working on.
So it was actually my first publication was in the area. So, and I started learning the, the chi, uh, ancient Chinese language that I was thinking maybe I would do a dissertation in that. Uh, I ended up not. Um, but ever since then, it has been a continuing secondary interest of mine. I, uh, occasionally publish articles on it and, uh, regularly teach a class on it, uh, even though it's not, even though my main research uh, moral psychology and philosophy of mind,
Andrea Hiott: [00:04:00] I wonder about that.
Was that a tension? I mean, you said there's not a lot of people in the states who go into Chinese philosophy that might be changing now, but I wonder, you know, in your experience, did you ever, it sounds like you had a very fortuitous experience in the sense that you kind of flowed right along. You were harmonizing with the Dao, so to speak.
But, uh, that's not what I usually hear because I was also interested in it when I was younger, and I found it very hard to find a way in philosophy to do that. So I just wonder about that. Right. Did you feel that tension between traditional, especially analytic philosophy and these interests in Chinese philosophy?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Um, kind of yes. And kind of no. Um, one of the nice things about PJ and Kang Loy is they're very analytic. Well, nice thing to me because I'm an analytic philosopher. Right. Nice thing to me is that. They're very analytic in their writing and thinking style. So, you know, it [00:05:00] harmonizes with the style of philosophy that I'm comfortable with.
So it's, I was very fortunate to be supervised by two of the very best kind of analytically trained, analytically thinking, classical Chinese philosophers just because of the universities I was at. So in that sense, I didn't feel attention, um, in another sense, right? There's always been a little bit of, it's classical Chinese philosophy has always been marginalized tradition.
And I think these days, people more than in the nineties when I was in grad school, uh, professional philosophers in the United States recognize it as, uh, potentially interesting tradition that has something to Um, but even so, they don't really know much about [00:06:00] it. So you're always, when you're talking with people about it, you're always doing a little bit of introduction.
It always seems a little foreign and alien to most, not to everybody, but to philosophers uh, the traditions I work in.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. It can even be intimidating just to try to say the names. I find that right now that I feel a little bit nervous to even try to say them, even though I know them. But, um, okay, let, right, let's talk about harmonizing and, and dao we brought up both those words, so maybe Dao first, what, I know we, we can't give, you know, it's kind of everything and nothing and, but what, what, what should people know about that word relative to this discussion?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right. So the word means different things to different thinkers in different traditions, but the way that I want to That I think fits nicely with my kind of secular century anglophone in general is the [00:07:00] dao is basically everything, but it's not everything, uh, conceptualized as a collection of things.
Rather, the emphasis when you're thinking about the Dao is being everything is the processes and patterns, right? So what is the Dao? It is the spinning of the earth, the coming and going of the seasons. It is the way that trees grow and die and shed their leaves. It is the way that people interact harmoniously or un harmoniously in society.
It's all of that stuff conceptualized as the regularities and patterns of
Andrea Hiott: I wonder, is harmony always harmonious or is harmonization always about harmony?
I mean, I think you say sometimes that, you know, conflict is the harmony. So how do we unpack that a bit? Because it can just sound like, oh, we're trying to find this very perfect balance, which is almost like a stasis state. And that's definitely not what I got the impression you [00:08:00] were discussing.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right? So yeah, there's a bunch in there.
So we might have to do a little bit of it at a time in your question. Right. So let's start with a stasis state. 'cause I think that's one important difference between, especially, uh. ZA style approaches. And za for the, those of you, your listeners who don't know is, is one of the great uh, pre unification, uh, Daoists, along with the better known, uh, LAA, who is probably a mythological figure.
Um, and people might know the Da de Jing, right? So alongside the DA Jing, uh, the other pre unification really ancient Taoist text is Thea. So, um, and in that text there's a kind of canonical seven chapters, inner chapters that are seen as the most reliable kind core And we don't know [00:09:00] whether Juza actually was a historical figure who wrote those seven chapters are exactly. I like to kind of think of it that way, but that might be a little bit of a So Juza, um, dais is not what's up with juza, right? The coming and the going. One of the big differences uh, a kind of joist perspective, I think, and a nearby perspective that you the ancient Greek tradition, especially Aristotle as typically interpreted, is, so you have this idea from Aristotle and virtue ethics that there's a thing called human flourishing that we should strive for and flourishing involves being ethically good and being creative and being productive, maybe being beautiful, maybe being athletic.
We can't have all of these right? But in a way it's um, a static [00:10:00] picture, right? You develop toward an ideal and then you hold that I hold that ideal form as long as possible or right. Whereas Forza uh, death is itself part of what's being celebrated, right? The Dao includes. The process of dying. And if you die in the right time and in the right way, then that's appropriate part of the dao that is to be, uh, as celebrated as being born and flourishing in the middle of life.
And likewise, things like disability, I think are celebrated by Joza as part of the wondrous diversity of the world. Rather than kind of having in the, at least the cartoon version of Aristotelian flourishing, you kind of have like a single ideal of the, the per perfect FMO wise person with all the virtues, right?
Andrea Hiott: What about the Ds? You mentioned death and disability. There's another D in there that you talk about in the writing. I can't remember writing. [00:11:00]
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Uh, diversity.
Andrea Hiott: Diversity. Right, right. So yeah. That's, that's, that's messier than that. Aris Italian or even platonic. I mean, of course there's differences in that, right?
But picture, um, yeah, but sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, just
Eric Schwitzgebel: Oh, no, that's fine. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the distinctive things about the, especially Taoist version of harmonizing with the Dao, and especially within the Dao tradition, za version, is that, well, if you think about the idea of harmony already builds in this idea of difference, right?
You don't have harmony if everyone's playing the same note. Yeah. Right? Uh, part of harmonizing is the instruments and the players doing their different things. Soza, he celebrates the weird and the wonderful and the misfits. It's his, the inner chapters especially are just [00:12:00] filled with goofy characters like this, this king who has no holes in his face, no eyes, ears, nose, mouth, right?
Then he is right. It's like, what's going on with this guy? Right? Or, you know, some guy who's, you know, he is totally bent over and, and, and disabled. Uh, but he's got like. The spiritual insight race. You got all these, it's magical almost.
Andrea Hiott: It's great you bring that up. 'cause when I, I was thinking about that connection with science fiction, I mean, it's too much to jump now, but there's a similar sort of, uh, freedom and beauty in this, this idea, which I'll just kind of pinpoint for now, but, um, you were talking about the harmony and, and, and, and that's different from the melody, right?
What's that idea in there that we are not the melody? I think that's important too because that kind of gets at what you were just trying to talk about before I interrupted you about everybody needs to play a different instrument and maybe sometimes even it's dissonant. So what's that idea that you're not the melody?
You say that a couple times in different pieces.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Um, and I don't wanna lose track of [00:13:00] part of the initial motivation of your earlier question about what
Andrea Hiott: is that one about?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Conflict conflicts in harmony. But let's get to the melody thing, right? So one of the things that I think. Is invited by say, an alter alternative views, but especially I think consequentialism, is the idea that you should try to maximize good consequences, or at least that what's ethically good is maximizing good consequences.
Um, that invites you. And you, you know, consequentialist can do various things to soften this, right? But at, at kind of first crude pass, it invites you to think, okay, this is the way that I think the world should be, so I should do whatever it is maximizes, uh, good consequences for the world. So everybody becomes, in a certain sense, the decider for the whole world, right?
So if you have a button that you could press that would radically change the [00:14:00] world, and you're, when you do your calculus, you think, ah, the odds are we'll change it for the better, then you should press that button, right? And so should everybody else who might have different. Calculations. Right. I mean, it, and it creates kind of, uh, certain kinds of risk, right? So if everybody were in a position to risk the entire universe for something they think is good, then even if 99.9% of people think, you know what the odds are that this isn't good, so don't press the button.
If there's one person who does their calculation and says, oh, yeah, actually the risk is worth it, then the button gets pressed, right? We don't want that button. We
Andrea Hiott: might have that button, unfortunately. But
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah. Right. So that's, that's the idea of being always the melody that I worry about, right? It's, there's something admirable about, about, as [00:15:00] it were, shouldering the burdens of the world.
Trying to do what's best for the world as a whole, and in some sense, treating yourself as the decider. But I think there are also downsides to that way of thinking. And another way of thinking that's more, modest, is to think, okay, the world is already flowing in certain ways. Not my job to direct it.
I'm not the conductor. I'm not lead violin. I'm not the lead guitarist, right? My, my role is harmonizing. So you know, I'm playing the triangle in the background or whatever, along with this awesome thing that's going on. And I want to do it in a way that helps it become even more awesome. Uh, but I don't need to be the one in charge.
Andrea Hiott: And how does that open us to better understand what I was originally getting at that harmony? Um. Value, plural. Plural, [00:16:00] pluralism or, um, you, you brought up consequentialism also deontology. This, the difference there. And because, you know, like I was thinking of all the instruments and that we're all in different positions, and this can be very hard to hold this, this tension that we wanna do the best for the harmony or for the melody.
We wanna do the best for the melody, but we're all gonna have a different even kind of experience of what the melody is and what our part is like. That's a hard thing, I think to really get a grasp on. But isn't that part of this difference between traditional value propositional philosophy? I,
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah, so I am a value plural list.
I think there are many things that have intrinsic value. I also think there are many melodies and harmonies that are going on Uh, and so I harmonize in one way with the world when I do my thing. Other people harmonize with the world in a very different way when they do their things.
And that can all [00:17:00] be wonderful. So if I harmonize with the world by, I dunno, playing jazz piano at home or by coming to my office and having conversations with people like you, right? That's my contribution. And other people, like, they go to the Renaissance Fair and they participate in that kind of like weird, amazing thing, you know?
And that's not my thing. Interesting contrast
Andrea Hiott: to add there. Yes, that's true. You know, but that's great.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right? And other people, you know, do other like things that I can't relate to at all. They, you know, their whole worlds of competitive sports that I like, have no idea about. And there's a whole, like something wondrous about all that.
Um, but of course they can come into conflict with each other, right? So any ethics needs, I think some way of thinking about. What to do when there are conflicting demands, right? So if my mother is asking me to do one thing and my wife is asking me [00:18:00] to do the opposite, right, then I can't fully harmonize with either of their requests.
And I need to think about, okay, what pattern, what unfolding patterns in the world do these different requests fit into? And which ones do I, which one do I prioritize more? Which one seems healthier? Uh, is there a way to, to kind of harmonize with both through some kind of compromise action? Is there a way to.
Recognize that actually disharmony, um, in the short term can be part of a bigger, harmonious picture. You don't wanna necessarily disagree with everything everyone says, right? Sometimes you need to fight back, and that can actually be part of a larger, uh, more valuable harmony that emerges over time. So, so there's not gonna be, I think, uh, [00:19:00] part of, at least W's ideal is that there's not a formula answering all these kinds of questions, but there is kind of a mood or a spirit of flowing along with things acting in a way that is harmonious and spontaneous and kind of respects what's awesome
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it's more process. More pattern. So that gives us a kind of, what does that give us? A kind of flexibility instead of the deontological rule-based. Take or the consequentialist where we almost have to assume there's gonna be one consequence for everyone. So what does that give, like what kind of space is that open in your opinion?
You could even, I think you talk about the university as an example or um, right, the planet, distant planet or something like why would we, right. Why would this be a nice approach for a, a distant planet or, or the university or,
Eric Schwitzgebel: right. [00:20:00] So what I think of as the distant planet thought experiment is this, and this is a way of getting at, um, what philosophers sometimes call axiology, which is the study of about value.
So here's the thought experiment. So imagine there's a distant planet is blocked by the galactic core. We'll never interact with So what would you kind of hope that that planet was like, would you hope that it's a sterile rock? I mean, I don't think so. I mean, there would be some people who would hope that, but.
That's kind of dark, right? I think most of us will hope that it's not just a sterile rock, but that it's got life and hope for just microbial life. Where would you hope for something more complex? Would you hope for plants and jungles and animals rowing around and, you know, the, the diversity of forests and, and reefs and all of that.
You know, not too much [00:21:00] like earth in some alien key. I think most of us would hope for that. Right? Would we also hope that there is one or more species or entity type that is capable of philosophy and art and, uh, sports and falling in love and science and all of that? Yeah, I mean, I would hope, I think the planet would be missing something if it didn't have all have that too.
Right. So I don't want to totally replicate Earth, but you know, something like that I think I, I would hope for, and I, I think most people, not everybody, uh, would also hope for that if they're kind of benevolently, hoping this planet be great. So that's one way of thinking about, okay, what has fundamental value independent of our interests?
And I think, you know, and I wouldn't want it to just be a planet where everyone was an Aristotelian in front of us, right? I'd [00:22:00] want like a diversity of stuff. I would want all kinds of wild and weird things. And it would be, yeah, a disappointing planet if all humans were the same and all animals were the same, even if that sameness was fit, fit some kind of ideal, right?
And it would be a disappointing planet in a way too, if there was no conflict, right? There's a richness that comes out of, um. Diversity and conflict that that I think be missing we had too simplistic a right? So think about a kind of flourishing world like that as a manifestation of Dao.
And it's gonna involve entities that die, right? It's gonna involve gray predator relations, probably. I mean, maybe there's a way to imagine a planet that doesn't have that. I'm not Right? So that's the kind of thought experiment that I want to [00:23:00] invite as a way of thinking about axiology. And then you think, okay, bring it back to earth.
What kind of planet do we want earth to be? And not in a consequentialist way, figure out how to press a button to bring that about, but think that earth is already has a lot of elements of that and could potentially, and. Have even more of that, have even more of a flourishing dao. Um, and in what ways can I participate in that, contribute to that, help it be even better, help other people participate in it.
So that's the kind of overall way of picturing uh, axi logical ethical ideal of harmonizing.
Andrea Hiott: So we want all that diversity and death and disability actually, because that's sort of an assessment from one position and [00:24:00] from another position. It's actually, you know, the way that we're getting all that good stuff that you just said, that seeming chaos, that all those different instruments, creating new kinds of music, things like that, which doesn't fit very well with something like the traditional, we make some rules and then everyone has to go only by those rules.
Right. Is that connected to the weirdness? Um, because you know, you're, yeah. Obviously you're a well known philosopher for many things, and who knows how many we get to talk about today, but one is this word weird, the weirdness of the world, and that, do you see a connection there in that holding all those tensions, letting all those things be, um, and the weirdness of the world?
Yes. Yeah.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yes, I do. I mean, that's one of the things that I love about Hanza is his celebration of the right. Where, and I [00:25:00] being weird in a somewhat technical sense, right? Something is weird in the way that, I mean it if, uh, it doesn't fit into our ordinary understanding of things very neatly. It violates common sense.
It violates our, our expectations about how things Right. So, right. The wonderful thing about s writing is he's got all of these weird characters and plants and animals even, uh, and part of the wondrousness of the world is that it has these weird things that it defies our understanding that it's got, uh, diverse set of events and entities and processes that Right.
We can't really fully grasp. And one of the things that I think is worth doing is appreciating the fact that the world is [00:26:00] more wonderful and wondrous if it doesn't all fit into the neat packages
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, I like that you use the word awesome a lot and you, you, you seem to have a lot of joy in the world and I feel like you're embracing of absurdity is somehow connected to that.
Am I wrong or am I or not absurdity? Yeah. But this of the weird, which I know is
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yes. Right. I think one can react to the fact that the world defies our understanding in one of three ways. I mean, you could
deny that and say, no, I understand it. Here's my answer to everything. Or you could say, yeah, I don't understand it and be distressed. Or you can say, I think I don't understand it. And it's kind of, [00:27:00] there's something awesome about the fact that the world defies my understanding and. I want to, I want to invite readers to the third reaction, which I think is not well represented among philosophers, I thinks is one of the few philosophers who appreciates the fact that the world defies his understanding as opposed to being a distressed skeptic or a dogmatist who says, no, here's the, here's all the answers.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. It's wonderful you brought that up because I, I was thinking of that, how that's connected. The, the weirdness is almost a way to hold the tension or hold the paradox. I like to say that a lot or those, those options because okay, the world is really overwhelming, even in all its beauty. I mean, sometimes it's just too much beauty and crazy amazing forms and, you know, how, how can you even go shop and like look at the, you know, shape of the bro broccoli.
I mean, it's like incredible [00:28:00] and that's too much. And then, but then on the other hand. You know, so you do want order and stuff like this. So we're constantly, it's not, we're thinking of it as if we're swinging between extremes, but there's maybe another way of thinking about it. And when you were talking, I was thinking of the triad.
There's a quote in one of your pieces, or that you use about Yeah. Like forming the triad. Could you, do you remember, do you know what I'm talking about? Could you
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yes, I know what you're talking about. Because I think that the pure jovana is pretty radical and there is an element that needs a little toning down.
He's wild, right? In the good and the untamed and the, maybe not, maybe we don't wanna be quite as wild as right. So there's a, uh, another thinker of the era who offers a different picture of harmonizing with the Dao. And I think that the, my preferred picture is some kind of compromise and this other thinker is an ancient Confucian named [00:29:00] sza.
So Hunza has this picture of the world in which the world is a triad of heaven, earth, and So what he means by heaven and earth is pretty close to what we mean by kind of natural phenomena, right? So heaven is the pattern of the seasons. The fact that the rain falls at a certain time. Earth is things like, you know, plants and trees and clay, and the basic way things work, right?
So the wilderness is composed of the processes of heaven and earth interacting with each other. But then there's a third corner to the triad, which human society, right? So on gen's view, the ancient sages ancient even to him. And, you know, he [00:30:00] was working in the third century, b, CE, so very ancient. So the ancient sages, uh, discovered the rituals and patterns and customs that allow human beings to get along harmoniously with each other.
So a noble woman should act this way. A farmer should act this way. A merchant should act this way, right? So we've all got our patterns and our roles. And a Harmon harmonious society, everyone kind of fills their roles and fits into their pattern. And that society also harmonizes with heaven and earth, right?
Especially like the farmer needs to plant at the right time and so at the right time and you need to build houses in a certain way if they're not gonna fall down and if rain's not gonna get in the roof and that sort of thing. Right? So, so shouldn't it has this picture where harmonizing with the dao is playing your part in this well ordered, [00:31:00] harmonious society that is in turn harmonizing with heaven and earth.
Now that's a little constrained, right? Especially, uh, uh, shouldn't have really emphasizes, you know, kind of playing your role in society and conforming to traditional rituals. And that's a little bit of a, a little bit of a straight jacket, right? Yeah. So I don't think we should be. Confucian traditionalists.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. That's where the wildness comes in,
Eric Schwitzgebel: right? So the other side, yeah, we, we need that Ian wildness and to recognize, but, but I think there's a real, there's a real value in SZaS picture in thinking of, um, belonging to a society and having certain roles that you play as part of a valuable way of harmonizing, right?
So I'm a university professor, right? So there's certain things that I should do to kind of in the harmonious way of being a university [00:32:00] professor, and that includes treating students a certain way and, you know, grading in a certain way, maybe. But then on the other hand, right, maybe Aian wants to like defy the usual grading conventions and maybe give everybody as right.
Whereas Aian would say no, there's this tradition where people have to get different grades, right? And how exactly that all. Plays out is complicated. Right. But, but some kind of comp compromise between this genian valuing of a harmonious, well-regulated orderly society and the, the josian wildness.
Andrea Hiott: So that's the weirdness too, because there's something, I feel like in your writing, you're also saying, we want, we want to be able to hold the space and let things be weird.
We want our common sense to be violated up to a point, or to be, I mean, violated is a weird word, but we want, we wanna be surprised in a sense. We want, we want, you know, [00:33:00] these things that you're saying Is that, does that, is that part of it too? Yeah,
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think the fact that we do not understand.
The world is amazing. One of my favorite examples of this is garden snails. I, I just have a certain affection for garden snails. I love that. Am I a chapter of the weirdest I love of the world. I whole chapter. It's wonderful. Part of your work chapter about garden snails, right. And if you wanted to, we could talk about how weird garden snails are.
Like, especially their mating is, is like really strange. You should
Andrea Hiott: tell people, I mean, I'm sure they can find it, but it is pretty wonderful actually.
Eric Schwitzgebel: I mean, if you want me to give you the lowdown on the garden snail meeting, we could do that right now. I mean, you
Andrea Hiott: know, I, I would like a little, I'm sure you have a couple sentence summary by this point.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Well, what's amazing is that it's so hard to summarize in a couple sentences. 'cause you know these, these snails, they've got 60,000 neurons in their central nervous system, right? It's like an ant has a quarter million, right? So they got these tiny little central nervous systems that are mostly in ganglia.
They're clustered around their esophagus. So it's not even clear that they have something worth calling a brain, [00:34:00] right? And they engage in this seven hour, like really complex mating process that involves like shooting love darts at each other. These are the, these calcium, these mucus covered calcium arrows that they shoot into each other and then they're, it's incredible.
Simultaneously, this is love and flos. So
Andrea Hiott: this is very pertinent actually. The love darts.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah, love darts, right? And they've got, and they're simultaneous from Aphrodites and they don't have very much vision at all. So they've kind of got it. Simultaneously insert their genta genitalia into each other and they's circle.
And that's complicated for them. And they circle around each other, tasting each other's slime trails and it's like, like really complex seven hour procedure. Right? And these entities are doing this with 60,000 neurons and so, so that's wonderful already and amazing and weird, right? But also one of the things that I wanna think about is, do they have conscious experiences?
Is there something that's like to be a garden snail, So some philosophers and biologists will [00:35:00] say, yes, there's something that's like to be a garden snail. Just like there's something that's like to be a person or to be a cat. They have experiences, right? Others will say that there's nothing, it's like to be a garden snail any more than, it's like we normally assume, although some people question this to be a plant, right?
So they're kind of just mobile plants basically. Um. I think we don't know the answer to that question. It depends on what theory of consciousness is, right? And we don't know what theory of consciousness is, right? We don't know if consciousness of having experiences depends on something like being able to concept conceptualize yourself as a being who has experiences, right?
Some people think that in order to have experiences at all, in order for there to be something that's like, to be you, you have to have a subjective perspective, an understanding of yourself as a subject, uh, an understanding of yourself as an experiencer, right? Every experience on these kinds of views comes along with a kind of reflective knowledge of itself, [00:36:00] right?
So, and if you require that kind of fairly sophisticated apparatus, probably garden snails don't have that, right? Uh, but you might not experience, might not require that experience might be a much simpler kind of thing. And as soon as you have sensation, basically that's integrated with other. Cognitive processes, you've got experience, and then snails maybe have that.
Yeah. So, yeah. So you got, so I got these garden snails and they're in my yard, they're eating the daisies, and I have no idea whether they're conscious or not. Right? There's like this mystery of the universe, right, right. In my backyard having very complicated sex and, uh, yeah's kinda like, it's magnificent.
Andrea Hiott: Wonderful. I, you know, of course this is, I mean, we already, we brought it up and it's part of your writing consciousness, and it's a whole, I mean, that could be hours and hours, but it does really bother me that we use this word in such different ways. And I mean, those s smells are alive. So why? And they're, they're obviously sensing even no matter [00:37:00] how we use that term, so.
Isn't that a sort of consciousness? I mean, it's not being conscious of your consciousness, it's not being self-aware. But why, how do we just jump past that? I, I, I, I don't, I never understand in terms of phenomenal consciousness. I feel like phenomenal consciousness is talking about that, but we mistake it as no as knowing that we're conscious or the, the Sno knowing that it's conscious.
Um, do you have any good advice for me of, of how to really disentangle that? Because it, it really bothers me and I, I've read all these texts, but I still, it still bothers me.
Eric Schwitzgebel: So I myself lean gently toward a relatively liberal or abundant view of what kinds of And I like snails, so I kind of wanna include them in that.
But let me articulate the alternative view, which I think is, uh, might be true and it's certainly worth taking seriously. [00:38:00] And I kind of. Touched quickly upon what I think is the most attractive way of conceptualizing why consciousness might be sparse and that's this.
So conscious experiences have, at least in the typical human case, as conceptualized by some thinkers. But that's already two important asterisk, the following two features. They're subjective in the sense that there's always an experience. Every experience has an experiencer.
There's a sense in which consciousness is always presented as you know, for me, right? It's not just that there's, [00:39:00] a flower. There is a, a subjective perspective that I bring upon the flower. It's like, I am, I am the flower, right? So the consciousness has this kind of subjective for inherent And it might be that an order for an experience to have an inherent for meanness, I need to have a concept of myself as a subject. It doesn't necessarily need to be in words, right? Maybe an infant could have it, maybe a dog or a monkey could have it, right? But a kind of sense of, ah, I'm a self and here's a thing, and there's a difference between the self and the thing, right?
So, so subjectivity in that sense often is thought to belong to conscious And similarly, um, what philosophers sometimes call luminosity, right? So a lot of people have thought again. [00:40:00] In the typical case, and maybe it's not right, right? But a lot of people have thought that every experience comes along with some kind of grasp upon itself, right?
So if you are experiencing a vi, having a visual experience of a flower, there's some sense in which you know that you're having that experience in, in the process of having that or at least you're in a position to know that you have the in virtue of having that But in order to, but in order for that to be true, you have to be the kind of entity who can self ascribe experiences, who can, who understands what an experience is.
Again, maybe not verbalize right, but if it's true that every experience comes along with some kind of understanding of itself or capacity to understand. As being experienced. Then again, there's like some cognitive sophistication, some ability that seems to be [00:41:00] involved in that, to understand yourself as So if you accept those two features as as being inherent to all experience, then it looks like maybe you need a fairly high level of cognitive sophistication in order to have experiences. And maybe it's limited to social mammals and birds go beyond that, you're not having like a lizard.
Does it have a concept of itself as a subject? Does it have a concept of itself as having experiences? You know, you can, that might be What about a cell? Too much of a stretch.
Andrea Hiott: I mean, I think, I think this is a little know a cell wouldn't neither
Eric Schwitzgebel: right? On this view. Right. So that, so I'm just trying to articulate, I'm not saying this is right.
No, I know. I know. You don't necessarily believe it. Yeah. I'm trying to, you articulate
Andrea Hiott: something different even in the book about weirdness, but
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Right. Yeah. But, but I, but I really see that weirdness as a way to
Andrea Hiott: [00:42:00] hold this stuff. Sorry, go ahead.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Oh, no, I just, yeah. The idea is it's an exercise to warm yourself up to the, to how someone might reasonably think experience is limited a fairly narrow
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And, and I, I appreciate that you articulated that because it's very important, and that's a very important view, but I, I feel like it assumes already relationality with a body's relation, relationality with itself, which isn't relationality. I, I feel like you can have relationality and therefore consciousness without it being of the same position or entity.
In question, you know, so yes. Like a a, an infant or whatever, they are conscious. I mean, they're alive in my, in my opinion, because to, to try to break apart the, the idea of a, of a, an entity that's sensing as that [00:43:00] entity, to break that away from consciousness for me, at that very basic level feels a little bit ridiculous.
And, um, it, but it also feels really understandable because we don't, we come into knowing ourselves, right? And that's what we think of as consciousness. Yeah. But that happens like way later and it happens through relation. Um, and I'm, I'm bringing all this up 'cause it does remind me of some of the things in your book, the Weirdness.
And, and I, I feel like that's another way to hold, hold that. But first I'll just stop and let you correct me if you think I should be corrected about that. Or, or how you see just life itself and the, the capacity for anybody to. Be in relation to make its way through an encounter to sense as like how you can separate that from, from a consciousness in the, in the sense of the most basic sense on the Glasgow scale or, you know,
Eric Schwitzgebel: so I think that one thing that makes some people hesitate about [00:44:00] this, but makes other people go not hesitate and maybe go to more radical conclusions, is that fungi and plants also stents in slower motion.
But there's all this interesting research how trees communicate with each other Root networks and Michal fungi and all that kind of stuff. And bacteria are pretty complex in their interactions with each other more than maybe had been appreciated a couple decades ago. And could say even a toy robot, if it gets camera input into its eyes and then is programmed to respond in a certain way to that input, wanna say that thing?
Senses, right? So you end up, whether you go for life or something like [00:45:00] sensation, you might end up with a pretty radical view of like what things are conscious. So you might end up saying, yeah, well trees have conscious experiences too, and so do simple robots. And so does does. But that's different. That's different.
So do groups of people,
Andrea Hiott: right? I mean, the weirdness, right? It's always gonna be weird as you point out. I think that's very important. But that's exactly the thing that I think it's. Confused a little bit is, is that for a tree or something to be sensing and conscious doesn't mean that it has to be conscious in our experience of consciousness, which is what usually what we mean of being aware of ourselves.
That's a very nuanced thing, I think. But if you just think of a body sensing as a child is, or something in relation, it doesn't have to be aware of itself as that body. And also the human body is a completely different kind of body than a plant. So why would we think that a plant's gonna have anything like our consciousness, our experience of consciousness?
So for me, it's like we're already imposing all these human definitions of what [00:46:00] it means to be a sensory body onto everything. And then of course, it's crazy to say a plant is having a human experience. I mean, that makes no sense, but it does drive us crazy that when people say that, because that's what we assume.
Do you know what I mean? Right. Um, and also like with the robot, to me that's a pretty easy one. I mean, people think it's not so easy, but there's no affordances that are pointing back to that robot. They're pointing back to whatever created that robot. Maybe we get to a point where there are, uh, affordances specific to that, to that robot.
But I feel like, you know, all these complicated questions about what life is, of course get, get involved here. And it's not easy in that sense, but in the sense of just a sensory body, it doesn't seem that complicated. Um, if we can take away this human, uh, lens that everything that's conscious has to be conscious in the way that a human is, does that make any sense to you?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Um, I would, I think there's an ambiguity in the way that you phrase it, and I'm not sure exactly [00:47:00] side of this come down. And I have a guess, but, so when you say something isn't conscious in a way, in the way that a human is, a tree isn't conscious You could, I think everyone would agree with that, right?
If it's conscious at all, it's gonna, it's gonna be very different from us. Um, does it have experiences in the sense that philosophers sometimes articulate by using it's like Is there something it's like to or multiple things that it's like, it doesn't have to be one thing, right?
Yeah. But is does it have a, a flow of experience, however alien from humans? It is, does it have a flow of or can you think of sensation as something that happens even without a flow [00:48:00] of So you could say, okay, yeah, there's a sense in which trees have sensations, but a lot of people would say no, but they don't really have a.
It's nothing. It's like to be a tree. They don't really if they sense
Andrea Hiott: they're encountering the world and so as to continue encountering the world. That's all. I mean, of course they don't have, I mean we, this is why it's so complicated because we think of senses through our human body and so on, but, and it reminds me of your other beautiful piece, which I hope we get to about the golden rule and extension and so on, but I'm not trying to put myself in the position of the tree, but if we were a tree body, you know, it's just a different way of relating with the world.
Just so as to continue as the tree, I just think if we can get to the most basic of that. That's in a, that's what I think we mean. We, I would mean by, um, being conscious of the, you know, as a tree, but it has nothing like, it's not what [00:49:00] I mean, uh, by being aware of myself as a human being. And that is really, really, really hard to tear apart because as soon as we use those words, we're thinking of the tree as experiencing the world as we experience it.
Do it's, I feel like it's, um, part of that practice that you talk about in, in terms of extension here, um, something complicated has to happen there before we could even really understand how to dissociate those things.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right? Yeah. You can also think that just the question, does a tree, is there something that's like to be a tree?
Does it really have experiences or not? No matter how alien, you could also think that question is in some sense. Already a mistake to phrase it in that way as though there's a yes or to that. Um, exactly. That's the
Andrea Hiott: triad I was trying to bring out in the weirdness. Yeah.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right, right. So I think for every question there are at least [00:50:00] four answers.
You could say yes, and you could say no. Right. And the way I was articulating it assumed that a yes or no answer does a tree really have experiences would be right. But there's also always some in between. Like well, kind of, kind of, yes. Kind of. No, can't really quite say either of those answers is quite right.
And there's also always a fourth option, which I call gong, which is to like bang a gong and say It's not Yes. It's not, no, it's not in between. The whole question is broken from, from the start and you, you kind of sh. Think in some different way rather than in thinking in the way that's presupposed by the frame of that question.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Right. So, and you just have to get really kind of, you have to understand that we're actually using language, which was an invented through human relation and experience. And like you have to keep going down the rabbit hole, you know, until you can begin to kind of imagine or extend yourself into thinking of a different kind of body, which is [00:51:00] having a different kind of encounter with the world, which we would use words like sense and experience to talk about.
Right.
Eric Schwitzgebel: So one way of thinking about this gong option, right, would be to say, if I were to ask you, is our prime numbers red? You could say, yes, they're red, or you could say, no, they're blue. Or you could say, well, it's kind of in between. They're kind of purple. Right? Or you could say, and here's the gong option.
You know, that question is just like. It's not the question you should be asking. That doesn't really make any sense, right? So, yeah, so I think it's totally reasonable to think that the, I think any of those answers for a garden snail or a tree, I think all of those four answers are on the table. It could be in my mind, right, that a garden snail or a tree really has experiences.
Of course, they'll be alien from us. Mean, how do you have love darts and not have experience? It's blank. It's blank, right? There's nothing going on inside. That's the [00:52:00] no. Right? Or you can say, well, kinda like, does Experie have to be like yes or no? Right? Maybe it's somewhere in between. I've got a whole paper about this.
I call borderline consciousness, right? Or you could say, Hey, look, just the question doesn't, itself, doesn't even make any sense. When we ask whether something has an experience. We have all these presuppositions built in our concept of what an experience is like, for example, we might think, you know, when we think about it in terms of there's something that's like to be.
And X, right? Maybe we're already presupposing that there's a connection this, what it's likeness and having, I know, self-conception and all that. and, and the concept isn't kind of inherently problematic. And we should probably maybe get rid of this whole concept unless we wanna limit it to cases like
Andrea Hiott: That sounds like to go back to the harmonizing with the Dao, that sounds like that. Either or again, and the third space would be, well, let's look at this question and what is it, it's language and where is it coming from [00:53:00] and Right. How is all that stuff built together? And then you kind of do open up this weird space, which I feel like is a, the space of where perhaps new things could come from and that that justified doubt that you talk about.
Or is it do, is that, is that related here at all? Does that give us a little bit of a, a third space to kind of step that might end up being a portal into a different understanding?
Eric Schwitzgebel: So, um, yeah, the, one of the main themes of my recent book, the Weirdness of the World, is what I call the Universal Dubai thesis, right?
All of these big picture claims about consciousness and are dubious, right? We don't know where the truth lies among various possibilities. All of the possibilities are bizarre. They violate defy common sense, uh, in some sharp way, and you can't really escape that. I think once you start thinking about these concepts [00:54:00] carefully, right?
But we, and we don't know where the truth lies among these various bizarre options. So that's the claim. And then I think that there are various good things that come from recognizing our incomplete understanding of And some of those are traditionally recognized that. It's good that you don't claim, you know things if you don't actually know them.
Right? But then there's also maybe those less recognized. The world is more wonderful in a certain way. If it defies us. The world becomes richer for us if we don't understand certain things about it. Right? The, the world has, is more full of possibility. If it's possible that the snail has experiences and it's possible that it doesn't, or it's possible that it's some borderline case or it's possible that the, just the very conception of experience is already [00:55:00] still laden with suppositions, that we move on to some other different way of thinking about things, right?
All of those as, as once we recognize that all of those are live options now. My garden is richer with possibility. Right? Yeah.
Andrea Hiott: It's like a whole other universe. It's like a science fiction book. There's
Eric Schwitzgebel: a, yeah, there's a, that's real. There's a universe of possibility in there that, that if I kind of already think I know, uh, doesn't exist.
Andrea Hiott: So is this a reason to do philosophy? Is this a reason to read science fiction? And is this a reason to do philosophy? Is there a connection there at all? Like
Eric Schwitzgebel: yes. Yes, yes. To both questions, yes. To all three questions. One reason to do philosophy, and I call this the philosophy of opening, is, so here, let me contrast the philosophy of opening and the philosophy of closing.
so in the philosophy, so imagine you've got, you enter a philosophical conversation thinking there are three viable theories, theory A, theory B, theory C.
Right? If you, if you're trying to. Do the philosophy of closing [00:56:00] what you're doing is try to close off, say possibilities, B and C and say, ah, theory A. That's the correct theory, right? And then you've closed off these possibilities and you've got this thing you, which is good. You know, the theory A is right, right?
But the philosophy of opening says, Hey, here's another way to learn. Maybe theory D is correct. Maybe Theory E is correct. So you add to your sense of live possibilities. Possibilities you hadn't previously considered. So maybe you hadn't considered the possibility that the very question of whether consciousness exists in a snail should be gonged off the stage, or you hadn't considered the possibility it could be a, a borderline case, and it assumed it has to be yes or no.
Right? As soon as you add those possibilities into the mix, if you do, if those possibilities deserve a certain amount of your credence, then you've opened up your sense of how the world could Rather than closing down. [00:57:00] So I think one thing that philosophy can do that science fiction also is really powerful at, is expanding our sense of what's possible.
Knocking us out of our presuppositions about, okay, here's how things have to be. I feel like I understand this right. Let's be imaginative theoretically, and about maybe what could exist in the future or what could exist technologically. Right? And the right kind of imaginative exploration can open our sense of possibility for the world.
And that is, I think, an important, I think that's both intrinsically valuable and instrumentally valuable. It's intrinsically valuable because the world is better. The, this planet that we are, we're on is better if it's inhabited by entities who are struck with wonder at the [00:58:00] various wild possibilities that could be out there.
Right. Rather than kind of dogmatically with their noses down on, here's my truth,
Andrea Hiott: weird is wonderful.
Eric Schwitzgebel: It's also instrumentally good in the sense that I think we're not always what we think is true, is not always true. Sometimes it is, sometimes it was, it might be that a was right all along and you know, by adding d and e, you, you added confusion and those were wrong.
But often, you know, maybe it turns out that D is right. And if you're not opening up yourself up to possibilities, then you've, uh, you might be just heading down a pa uh, a path without, without realizing that the, that that path is not where
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. And maybe when things change.
It'll be good that you had already thought about those other options, even if B is right for now. Right. Um, I just had a discussion with Kevin Kelly. You know Kevin Kelly? He's a Wired magazine co-founder technology guy.
Eric Schwitzgebel: No, I don't know him. Yeah,
Andrea Hiott: I think you'd find him interesting 'cause he is a [00:59:00] big sci-fi fan and he was talking about how a lot of he was, he's kind of predicted a lot of the things that have since happened in terms of technology and he was telling me a lot of it comes from reading science fiction because he already knew what a computer should be like before, you know, there was such a thing and so on.
And he said we should sort of cite our science fiction. I wonder what you think about that and if that strikes a chord in you at all in terms of how your reading experience of science fiction, which I'm assuming you had young, I think I even heard you say you did when you were a kid and then you picked it back up.
Yeah. With Eagan maybe. Um, yeah, yeah. Well how does that, does that feel like it's been important to your work that you've done?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yes. Right. So I've definitely, I'm a fan of science fiction and I think. There, the mode of exploring possibilities that you see in science fiction is, has a similar spirit to the kind of philosophy that they like, that I like to do, which [01:00:00] involves exploring possibilities.
Absolutely. I think that philosophers and others should engage with science fiction and sight it. If that's, if that, if that's the direction their lives are taking. I don't want to be a constructivist i's gotta go read science fiction. Right. But if you're interested in this kind of, uh, opening your mind toward wonder and thinking about possibilities that you haven't really considered before, then science fiction is a great doing that.
Andrea Hiott: And opening to the weird in the way we've been talking about, I think it's, it sort of, yeah. Gives it a little more, what's the word? Uh, like credence or something that you could understand it as a way to get ideas. Open the space in the openness way that you just described.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Right. So one of my favorite books that I've read recently is Kazuo, ISSU Guru's, Clara and The Sun.
Andrea Hiott: Oh, I haven't read that yet. I love that author though. But
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah, he is a [01:01:00] wonderful author. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, he occasionally writes science fiction as well as writing, non-science fiction, literary fiction. So he is got this wonderful book, Clara in The Sun, which is told entirely from the point of view of an artificial friend, a service robot who's conscious.
Seems pretty clear, right, that she has all these experiences and she is utterly devoted to the wellbeing of the girl, to which she's been assigned as a friend and. Be completely treats her own as secondary to that she's wholly defined her not wholly, but almost entirely defined her of the wellbeing of that And it's such a, a lovely portrayal of a kind of devotion, which is in a way beautiful, but also in a way so limited. Right. And I [01:02:00] think as a reader, you want to say, Clara, you matter for your own sake too. Mm. That's fascinating. You are an individual who is an equal of any human. Right. But that would never occur to her.
And it's told so perfectly from her perspective that she never voices that thought that the kind of the reader, at least me, you know, I'm like desperate to, to, to assert that thought for her.
Andrea Hiott: I can imagine that tension, just knowing his other work, I'm sure he builds that tension very beautifully.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right, right.
So, uh, but you also
Andrea Hiott: write science fiction, don't you?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yes, I do. I do. Yeah. So, and I'm interested also in, um, you know, these, these questions about, about, uh, we might think of it as robot existentialism, right? Like, what if we are gonna someday and maybe we will, and of course it depends on what theory of consciousness is correct, you know?
Right. Whether [01:03:00] we will or how soon. Right. But if we someday create robotic entities that have inner lives and experiences, probably not quite like ours, but maybe in some important ways like ours, you know, then what is the meaning of life gonna be like for them? And we shouldn't just assume that it's gonna be like what it is for us.
And we shouldn't just design them so as to maximize our interests. They will have of their own that are worth considering. So one of the wonder, one of the many wonderful things you can do with science fiction is start to think in a more sophisticated way about this, this possible future toward which we're heading.
Andrea Hiott: As you were telling me the example that reminded me of that extension. I mean, maybe you wanna give a little brief idea of it, but you're kind of saying, okay, the golden rule is good, or put yourself in the shoes of others is good. [01:04:00] But another idea is that you can use this idea of extension, so the people closest to you, you sort of, you can probably describe it better, but you think of what it might be like for those people closest to you.
Um, like instead of telling the king to put himself in the position of, you know, whatever someone he's gonna punish think, okay, well what if it was your son? Or something like that.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Right. And when you were
Andrea Hiott: talking about the robot, that's kind of a reverse extension, isn't it, in a little bit or some kind of way of, through science fiction giving us that.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah, so right, so the idea of extension. And I, yeah. In, in some of my recent work, I've contrasted it with the Golden Rule. So the Golden Rule says, do unto others as you would have others do And it's very similar to this idea of imagining yourself in someone else's shoes, right? And then you kind of do for them what you would want if you were in their position.
there's something about, and there's, there's, it's a wonderful rule and there's something I [01:05:00] really like about it, but there's also something just a little, the great, rubs me just a little the wrong way about it, which is, it kind of takes your assumed self concern as the basis of morality, right? So you kind of imagine yourself in someone else else's position.
And then you say, if I were in that position, what would I selfishly want? Or what would I want for myself? Right? So there's a kind of like imagining your own self always it puts, it puts yourself at the center of ethical thinking, if you're always And Munga, the ancient Chinese Confucian.
Munga has this different way of thinking about how to expand your concern for others, and that is base it in immediate concern you have for those nearby. So he is this wonderful example. He says, maybe the most famous passage in the Munga he says that anybody [01:06:00] suddenly came upon upon a child crawling at the edge of a well and about to fall in would feel this moment of alarm and compassion.
And they wouldn't do it because they want to get in good with the neighbors by rescuing the child. They wouldn't do it because they would be annoyed by the child screams as is dying at the bottom of the well. Right? They wouldn't do it because they wanna be famous or anything like that. Right? It's just, it's a pure.
Concern for others that manifests in this kind of spontaneous response, So among the things that we have with respect to nearby others, whether they're physically nearby like this child about to fall into a well, or whether they're kind of relationally, emotionally nearby, like you're in, we have this spontaneous concern for them that doesn't involve us at all.
Mungs is not saying, imagine yourself in the child's shoes and about to fall into the well and what would you do, right? There's no, [01:07:00] none of that self-reference. There's this assumption of, of this immediate, natural concern we have for others. And the way to develop morally, foundationally for Monza is to expand that to more distant others, to notice that others also maybe deserve that concern, right?
So he has this wonderful dialogue with this king who feels compassion for this ox as being led in front of him and is about to be sacrificed and killed to consecrate a. This king is this terrible, vicious king who's, you know, going, you know, invading his neighbors and killing the civilians in the neighboring territory.
And Manza says, and the king at one point says, how could I care for the people? You know, like he just assumes like he doesn't care about peasants, right? And Manza says, Hey, look, you had concern for this ox. Certainly you could have concern for a peasant. You just notice that when the thing is nearby, you're concerned for it.
So just extend that concern [01:08:00] that you felt for the ox to the peasants beyond the wall, right? To say that you could have concern for an ox, but not for a peasant, is like saying you could see the tip tip of a hair, but not a cartload of firewood. Of course, you can have concern for peasants. You just need to reflect on it.
Imaginatively extend. The local concern for you, what you have nearby to the Right. And that kind of extension. He's not saying, imagine yourself as in the peasant's shoes, he's saying notice that a peasant also would be afraid of death, just like an ox. And if you're concerned from the ox, you should be concerned for the peasant too.
Right. So there's no imaginative self transformation involved in, in, in mungs and extension, which I think is nice. 'cause it kind of takes you, it, it makes you less central to
Andrea Hiott: I like that a lot because it feels like we're going into that third space or something and, and noticing our continuity with what's around us in a different way, which feels very important to [01:09:00] me.
But I, I, I asked you like, is science fiction a way to do this? And I asked, is philosophy a way to do this? You said yes to both. And we don't have that much time left. But I did wanna bring up, you've done this whole other, you know, you have this whole other world of thinking about ethics and actually doing a lot of, um, you know, uh, studies and things about.
Ethical concerns and some of what we're talking about here, when I think about that work that you've done, seems almost contrasting, which might be wonderful in the me in the overall melody, you know, but because you know, for example, you found that ethicists aren't necessarily more ethical. I mean, I'm generalizing a lot.
Yeah. But like a vegetarian, uh, ethicist isn't necessarily more ethical than, I don't know, you could probably describe it better, but somehow there's, there's a contrast there in terms of it feels like we're doing all this philosophy in order to become more ethical or improve our life or something. And then in the studies that you've done, that's not really, the opening is not really opening, it doesn't feel, you know, it [01:10:00] feels almost more like what you're describing as closing.
So how do you hold that in your ideas of all this?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. So I've done this series of studies mostly collaboratively with my former student, Joshua Rust. Um, I've done the series of studies on the moral behavior of ethics, professors. What I found over and over again with a couple exceptions is that they behave basically as other professors, right?
And other professors is the right comparison class 'cause they're similar educational backgrounds, similar socioeconomic status and that sort of thing, right? You look at how ethics professors behave on a variety of measures and how other professors behave basically is the same. So it doesn't look like the, a life of studying ethics is having much impact on how people actually behave.
And I find that a little disappointing. Now, some ethicists when I talk with 'em about this, they're like, well, you know, it's an academic [01:11:00] endeavor and we should expect it to an ethicist to be good at writing papers and teaching classes. But like, why think they'd be better in real life? And you know, I, I can see how someone might think that, but I also think, look, if you've spent your life.
Studying the ethics of Aristotle and Kant and Monza or whoever you're studying, doesn't that have some kind of positive ethical impact on your life? And if not, has something gone wrong?
Andrea Hiott: Yeah, it's fascinating. So, yeah, I, I'm remembering what you say about the veg, like on the, one of your, your questionnaires you ask is, is vegetarianism better or should we not eat meat?
Yeah. And people will say, yeah, we shouldn't eat meat. It's probably ethical to eat less meat or something. And then you ask, oh, okay, what did you eat for dinner? And it's like, oh, I had meat. And, right. That seems, that kind of, I think is an illustration of what you were just describing, but also as you were talking, I'm thinking, okay, well what about [01:12:00] harmonizing the Dao?
If we maybe, maybe actually. Or, or, or being the tree or all these other themes we've been talking about. Maybe what, what if you bring that into that world? Because even those studies and the way you just described it are set up in a very dichotomous way of you're gonna say yes or no. And yeah, everyone's already educated in a way.
So in a sense, like the critical thinking is a part that's probably actually changing the way you behave towards others. So these Yes. No questions maybe aren't reflecting that. So I mean, does that make any sense to you if you tried to open up into the third or thinking about it in this more Tao Stick way?
Yeah, it actually might just be, they're being inconsistent when they say they had me, but not necessarily less ethical.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Um,
the world is complex and so I think you can say, and I, you know, I'm an example of this actually, right? So. If I had been a participant in my own, [01:13:00] one of my own studies, the one on or one of the ones on meat eating, I would've said yes, regularly eating meat not morally good, and yet I actually eat, eat pretty, pretty regularly, right?
So I myself an example of the kind of phenomenon that I'm criticizing. So I wanna own up to that. And I want to say that in some sense it makes sense to have high ideals and recognize that you don't live up to them rather than then rationalizing and defending yourself always, right? So there, I think there's a tendency for people.
say, oh, well, eating meat, there's nothing wrong with if they, if they eat meat and they don't want to give it up, right? There's a tendency to say, oh, so there's nothing, absolutely, there's nothing wrong with it. And then they come up with a [01:14:00] story. But I think sometimes what we should do is say, okay, look, you know, that story doesn't necessarily work and shouldn't we recognize that we are not ideal and we maybe aren't harmonizing as well as we could or should with our ideals,
Andrea Hiott: but also you're not the melody.
I think it's, it's great you brought up yourself because
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah.
Andrea Hiott: Um, just interacting with you a little bit. We don't know each other, but I, I, I, I have a, a sense that you're actually just, you, you really care about your family. For example, I've seen, and you have this, you have this space of care that's very obvious about who you are, and you can fill it in your writing too.
And I would imagine that that calms through. The way that you are in the world, in the sense that you are noticing, which is a philosophical practice. And all that kind of goes into, all into what you're really asking in those questionnaires, but it's not reflected in the questionnaire. [01:15:00] 'cause it's a dichotomous Yes no thing.
Yeah. And um, because you know, like, like what you're saying about like, uh, that everyone's gonna have a different instrument. Some people maybe should be vegetarians or should is a weird word, but Right. Maybe that's the right choice from some positions and others not. And maybe it is either or, or maybe you do need to hold that tension in the way we've been saying where both aren't always right or always wrong, but you know, there's a different way of thinking there that I feel like you're trying to open up with the weirdness and the harmonizing the doo and you know, does that make sense to you at all?
Eric Schwitzgebel: It does. I mean, I want, I was doing this, I'm doing this ethics professor stuff and it has to be simplistic because if you're gonna do like real scientific psychology, you need clear measures, clear dependent variables. It needs to fit a fit onto lines where, where you can, you know, come up with averages and do statistical tests.
And I wanna participate in that way of doing science because I don't think anyone had ever before, Josh and I did it, and anyone had [01:16:00] ever done that with the question of do ethicists behave ethically, so let's like get some numbers and do some t tests and stuff like that. Right. So, uh, but yeah, of course it's simplistic.
And while not wanting to be self excusing too much and saying, Hey look, it's fine to eat the meat of animals. That's just part of how I am Harmon harmonizing with the Dao. It's not my priority to, to shape that side of my life in that direction, right? While not wanting to like let myself off lightly with a rationalization.
At the same time, I do think it makes sense to say we need a certain kind of forgiving ethic. And one of the nice things about this harmonizing, ideal harmonizing idea as opposed to like an idealized consequentialism [01:17:00] idealized virtue ethics. So you can say, look, there's only so much you can do. You're only playing one note.
You have a limited life and you've gotta make choices about where your priorities are and what respects you're gonna live, uh, an ethically good life. And it's not realistic think that you're gonna be ideal in everything. So you need to make. Voices and find your own way of participating in, this awesome thing, which is this amazing planet full of cool, impressive, wonderful, incomprehensible stuff.
Andrea Hiott: Yeah. Well said. I have to ask you about love before we go and Yeah, it does. It is a word that comes up in your work in all kinds of different ways, which is wonderful, uh, as a philosopher in the way that you use it. But in the context of this conversation, what, what does that word bring up, or when it comes to this idea of [01:18:00] the, of the melody and the harmony and so on, do you, do you, or care, care is another word that you, that you use a lot that's very connected.
Do you have any thoughts about connecting those dots at all?
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah, I haven't written much about love. One thing that I'm attracted is. Some version that's close to Harry Frankfurt's idea of when you love someone or something, or some process that involves wanting, it's wanting thing. Good things happen the sake of the beloved. So I like that idea a lot. And I've thought about a little bit in the context of love in marriage or conjugal love, right? And what's involved. There's this [01:19:00] kind of, I think, almost paradox, not quite a paradox in the marriage vows, the sense that you are promising to love someone forever in the sense that you're promising to build a life jointly with them.
Where what you want for their own sake. And how can you promise that when you're 25 years old? Because who knows what your lives are gonna become. And love for a spouse is gonna have to be contingent upon their developing in a way that harmonizes with your values and your life projects.
And it it, if you go different directions, which of course you could, then it can no longer be that. So, [01:20:00] so the marriage vow involves this kind of trust in the other that they are already firmly enough on a path that you can join with them together. Right? So even though there's a contingency that you can only continue to love them in the Frankfurt Ian way.
If they retain certain features, At the same time, you're trusting them to committing to harmonize and build a life together with that that, uh, on the your love,
Andrea Hiott: I think speaks very beautifully to the weirdness, actually, because Yeah, it is a, I think it is a paradox that we decide when we get married that we're gonna be with someone and we're both gonna let be changing because we have no, I mean, yeah, you could marry when you're 25 or [01:21:00] 55, still in five years, you might be completely different.
You might be different people because of everything that's happening, right? So you're, you're holding this space where you're gonna be yourself changing and you're gonna love another person who's changing and you're gonna be this third entity together and so on. But I, yeah, if you enter into that with an understanding of the weirdness, you know, and the way we've been talking about the way you write about, of.
That you can't fully, everything that's true is gonna be a little bit strange. Yeah. That seems like a beautiful way to think about love in, in a sense. I hadn't thought of it till now, but
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah, you can't fully anticipate it and you can't totally keep it inside the box. In a way, the marriage vow is a leap into something that you, you know, is too complex for understand and there's something beautiful about taking that leap.
Andrea Hiott: Yes, definitely. And I think just the fact that you could harmonize just to come back to that or that [01:22:00] you could even experience the Dao Exte in this extended way that we've been talking about through that relationship is actually very potent. And if, if people, if you can stay with it and, and, and be part of that, it is, I think, you know, really worth it.
But
Eric Schwitzgebel: yeah.
Andrea Hiott: I don't know if you have any final thoughts or anything you wanna say before we go. I know we have to go now, but I just wanna say I really appreciate your, your work and all these things that we've opened up here and there's plenty more that you've opened up for me too. So thanks. Is there anything before we go that you wanna be sure we say or talk
Eric Schwitzgebel: about?
Well, I've, I've enjoyed this conversation and I hope that the world has become more wondrous for containing it.
Andrea Hiott: I, I, I think it has for sure. I mean, if, if only because we learned about love darts from snails then,
Eric Schwitzgebel: you know,
Andrea Hiott: but there's many other reasons too. Thank you, Eric. Thank you so much. Yeah, I hope you have a good day.
Thanks for having me. Good day there on the other side of the world.
Eric Schwitzgebel: Yeah. Alright, bye.
Andrea Hiott: Bye.
Thanks for listening everyone. Hope you enjoyed [01:23:00] that. Hope you're off to something weird now. Please support the show in whatever way you can. It really helps. Uh, I'm doing this in a weird way, so anything, uh, you wanna contribute, any ideas you have for how to keep this going, I welcome them and I appreciate you.
All right, bye.
