Philosophy in politics

I wrote a letter to Philosophy Now (April last year) in response to an article about whether philosophy is still relevant in the modern, economically and technologically, driven world. (Yes, they published it.)

Basically, I said that philosophy is not considered of any economic value, either to governments or corporations, and that is the measure of everything these days, from education to infrastructure to charities. Yes, even charities are being privatised in my part of the world, where you can legitimately make a profit without paying taxes; why else would an overseas corporation want to ‘own’ a charity in Australia?

No, the reason I’m writing this is purely political. But, first, I need to give some context and backstory. You need to understand where this is being written in history, because that’s relevant. Donald Trump is facing an election for a second term as President of the United States (POTUS) in November this year. In his first term, he faced down an investigation into Russian meddling in his inaugural election (Nov. 2016), which saw a number of his colleagues and close associates face gaol time. And more recently, he survived an impeachment trial that centred around his alleged attempt to coerce a foreign power into investigating a political rival in exchange for military aid, which had already been approved by Congress. In my lifetime, only Richard Nixon sat at the centre of a more damaging constitutional storm whilst President. Trump has successfully weathered his storm and even come out stronger, I’d suggest.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the UK has just left the EU, after 3 years of anguish and political infighting, but with a lot of details still to be sorted (as I understand it). However, both countries show a determination to insulate themselves from the travails of the wider world. It’s called isolationism. Trump has methodically sought to exit all treaties, on the premise that they are of no benefit to the US, only its rivals. He’s yet to exit the nuclear arms treaty, but one expects he’ll seek to do that if he wins a second term.

I need to point out that I’ve come to philosophy via science and that’s relevant as well. In science, you learn how to analyse, not just data but the theories themselves, and to value evidence over everything else. There is also an historical relationship between science and philosophy (in Western culture) that goes back to the Ancient Greeks.

Politics has become increasingly partisan in recent decades and that is evident, not only in America and the UK, but also Australia. Our conservative party, called, confusingly, the Liberal party (we say ‘large L Liberal’ and ‘small l liberal’ to signify the difference), has been effectively hijacked by its most conservative adherents in the last decade, and that has deepened the political divide in this country, as it has in other parts of the world.

All over the world, you can divide political groups into so-called ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, which corresponds to liberal and conservative agendas. ‘Conservative’ means exactly what it says: to maintain the status quo and keep to traditional norms, values and customs. ‘Liberal’ generally means open to change and expanding people’s freedoms. Historical examples include the abolition of slavery and women’s right to vote. Gay marriage will one day be viewed in the exact same light. Hindsight would suggest that conservatives have found themselves on the wrong side of history.

But the Left are not immune to intransigence, nor the temptation to censor voices they disagree with. As I’ve said before, intolerance begets intolerance against itself. The partisanship we are witnessing everywhere is a direct consequence of this. Militance in religion, for example, creates militance in its opposite, which is atheism. The same is true for politics.

You’re probably asking, what has any of this to do with philosophy? Well, the split in politics is arguably symptomatic of a deeper philosophical divide. You can view everyone as a potential competitor or you can view them as a potential collaborator. I know from personal experience that people achieve a lot more when they stop working against each other. It’s common sense, but it’s the exception and not the rule in politics.

The relationship between philosophy and politics has a long history. Socrates died as a consequence of a political motion. He supposedly said, ‘I was too honest to be a politician and live.’ We don’t know the details, but we know that Socrates had proven himself courageous in battle. He’s probably one of the very few people in history who literally died for his principles.

If you go on social media, virtually everything is being perceived through a political lens. An obvious example is climate change. I keep asking myself: how did a thoroughly scientific issue become a political one? On top of which, it became one of the most divisive and partisan of our time. The answer is that it requires substantial change to address, and conservatives resist change by definition.

But here’s the thing: the strongest and most virulent argument against climate change is that it’s a ‘hoax’ – the whole thing is a conspiracy. I would put this in the same category as other conspiracy theories, like astronauts never went to the moon, the Earth is flat and the Universe is 6,000 years old. Something else they all have in common is that they are all anti-science, even though their proponents claim otherwise. I don’t find it surprising that Trump’s campaign promoted a lot of conspiracy theories, and his Presidency has been rife with purported conspiracies and hoaxes.

I have a working definition of philosophy: it’s argument augmented by analysis. Philosophy requires argument – that’s its method – and is what distinguishes it from dogma. Analysis is another method intrinsic to science. 

The issue with conspiracy theories is that they entail a wider body of people than you might expect. For example, the moon landing footage was received by a radio telescope in Australia, so they would have had to be part of the conspiracy. With climate change, you have data from organisations like NASA in the northern hemisphere and CSIRO in the southern hemisphere, not to mention Europe, South America and elsewhere. The extent of the conspiracy is mindboggling in its complexity.

But there is a deeper philosophical issue here than just trying to maintain a rational perspective in the face of conspiracy theories. We are on a path of mass extinction as a consequence of a philosophy that infinite economic growth is the only criterion for political success. The issue I have with the modern world is that we are totally dependent on science and technology to the extent that we are paradoxically unaware of that dependency; yet we ignore what science is telling us about the future of our planet.

Our long-term future is dependent on a philosophical choice. We can choose that humans are separate to nature, or that we are part of nature. And science plays a role in this, because science can’t be ignored, whichever path we choose to take.

Addendum: I’ve changed the title so it matches the content.

The confessions of a self-styled traveller in the world of ideas

Every now and then, on very rare occasions, you have a memory or a feeling that was so long ago that it feels almost foreign, like it was experienced by someone else. And, possibly it was, as I’m no longer the same person, either physically or in personality.

This particular memory was when I was a teenager and I was aflame with an idealism. It came to me, just today, while I was walking alongside a creek bed, so I’m not sure I can get it back now. It was when I believed I could pursue a career in science, and, in particular, physics. It was completely at odds with every other aspect of my life. At that time, I had very poor social skills and zero self-esteem. Looking back, it seems arrogant, but when you’re young you’re entitled to dream beyond your horizons, otherwise you don’t try.

This blog effectively demonstrates both the extent of my knowledge and the limits of my knowledge, in the half century since. I’ve been most fortunate to work with some very clever people. In fact, I’ve spent my whole working life with people cleverer than me, so I have no delusions.

I consider myself lucky to have lived a mediocre life. What do I mean by mediocre? Well, I’ve never been homeless, and I’ve never gone hungry and I’ve never been unable to pay my bills. I’m not one to take all that for granted; I think there is a good deal of luck involved in avoiding all of those pitfalls. Likewise, I believe I’m lucky not to be famous; I wouldn’t want my life under a microscope, whereby the smallest infraction of society’s rules could have me blamed and shamed on the world stage.

I’ve said previously that the people we admire most are those who seem to be able to live without a facade. I’m not one of those. My facade is that I’m clever: ever since my early childhood, I liked to spruik my knowledge in an effort to impress people, especially adults, and largely succeeded. I haven’t stopped, and this blog is arguably an extension of that impetus. But I will admit to a curiosity which was manifest from a very young age (pre high school), and that’s what keeps me engaged in the world of ideas. The internet has been most efficacious in this endeavour, though I’m also an avid reader of books and magazines, in the sciences, in particular.

But I also have a secret life in the world of fiction. And fiction is the best place to have a secret life. ELVENE is no secret, but it was written almost 2 decades ago. It was unusual in that it was ‘popular’. By popular, I don’t mean it was read by a multitude (it unequivocally wasn’t), but it was universally liked, like a ‘popular’ song. It had a dichotomous world: indigenous and futuristic. This was years before James Cameron’s Avatar, and a completely different storyline. I received accolades like, ‘I enjoyed every page’ and ‘I didn’t want it to end’ and ‘it practically played out like a movie in my head’.

ELVENE was an aberration – a one-off – but I don’t mind, seriously. My fiction has become increasingly dystopian. The advantage of sci-fi (I call mine, science-fantasy) is that you can create what-if worlds. In fact, an Australian literary scholar, Peter Nicholls, created The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and a TV doco was made of him called The What If Man.

Anyway, you can imagine isolated worlds, which evolve their own culture and government, not unlike what our world was like before sea and air travel compressed it. So one can imagine something akin to frontier territories where democracy is replaced by autocracy that can either be beneficiary or oppressive or something in between. So I have an autocracy, where the dictator limits travel both on and off his world. Where clones are exploited to become sex workers and people who live there become accustomed to this culture. In other words, it’s not that different to cultures in our past (and some might say, present). The dictator is less Adolf Hitler and more Donald Trump, though that wasn’t deliberate. Like all my characters, he takes on a life of his own and evolves in ways I don’t always anticipate. He’s not evil per se, but he knows how to manipulate people and he demands absolute loyalty, which is yet to be tested.

The thing is that you go where the story and the characters take you, and sometimes they take you into dark territory. But in the dark you look for light. “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in” (Leonard Cohen). I confess I like moral dilemmas and I feel, I’ve not only created a cognitive dissonance for one of my characters, but, possibly, for myself as a writer. (Graham Greene was the master of the moral dilemma, but he’s in another class.)

Last year I saw a play put on by my good friend, Elizabeth Bradley, The Woman in the Window, for Canberra REP. It includes a dystopian future that features sex workers as an integral part of the society. It was a surprise to see someone else addressing a similar scenario. The writer was Kiwi, Alma De Groen, and she juxtaposed history (the dissident poet, Anna Akhmatova in Stalin’s Russia) with a dystopian future Australia.

I take a risk by having female protagonists prominent in all my fiction. It’s a risk because there is a lot of controversy about so-called ‘culture appropriation’. I increase that risk by portraying relationships from my female protagonists’ perspectives. However, there is always a sense that they all exist independently of me, which one can only appreciate if you willingly enter a secret world of fiction.

Australia’s bush fires; 2019-2020

The one word that was used over and over again to describe this ongoing event over a period of 4-5 months was ‘unprecedented’. Australia is a continent unique in the world, not just because of its fauna and flora, but also because of its landscape and its weather. 

We are the second driest continent in the world (after Antarctica) and our river systems are unique. In the northern hemisphere, ‘flow ratios’ (maximum to average flows) for rivers and natural waterways are in the order of 10 to 1, but in Australia they are in the order of 100 to 1. We have the largest overflows on our dams compared to other countries. We are a country of droughts and floods, and bush fires are a part of the environment ever since I can remember in my half a century (and more) of living here.

Having said all that, in the 200 plus years since 'White European settlement’, no one had witnessed anything of this magnitude and ferocity in Australia, over this period of time and over such a large area of the country. ‘Unprecedented’ is the absolutely right word to describe this event.

Personally, I know of no one who was directly impacted by the fires. Correction: I know of one person who sustained property damage and whose business was affected, but who experienced no serious loss. I spent the Christmas, New Year period in an area directly affected called the Southern Highlands of NSW (it gets a special mention in the imbedded video) and I saw firsthand the aftermath of a very small part of this whole catastrophe. Also, I have a niece who works full time in the RFS (Rural Fire Service) in NSW. She works in logistics, and I didn’t see her this Christmas.

One has to make special mention of the people, many of whom are unpaid volunteers, we call the ‘fireys’ who risk their lives to save people and their property. I can’t watch this video without ‘tearing up’ in places. Once you start watching, you’ll find it very compelling viewing, and you’ll find it hard, if not impossible, to stop watching for its 48 min duration.

Four Corners is a renowned investigative programme in Australia that has won numerous awards for excellence in TV journalism. The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) has taken the unusual step of posting this episode on YouTube the day after it went to air (3 Feb 2020). Normally, you can’t view this outside Australia, but this is far too important for the world not to see.

I hope this is a turning point in the world’s consciousness on the subject of climate change. It’s a contentious subject, even in Australia, even after this event, but I’ve expressed my views on it, on this blog, as early as a decade ago.

This post is directly relevant to my previous post, if you haven’t read it.

Our heritage; our responsibility

I was going to post this on FaceBook, as it's especially relevant to current events happening right across Australia: unprecedented bush fire season; like hell on Earth in some places. FB is not really a forum for philosophical discourse, but I might yet post it.

There is an overriding sensibility (not just in the West either) that Man has a special place in the scheme of things. Now, I’m going to be an existential heretic and assume that we do. We are unique in that we can intellectually grasp the very scale of the Universe and even speculate about its origins to the extent that we have a very good estimate of its age. To quote no one less than Einstein: “The most incomprehensible thing about the Universe is that it’s comprehensible.” And the point is that it’s comprehensible because of ‘Us’.

As Jeremy Lent points out in his book, The Patterning Instinct; A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, the belief that we are made in God’s image has created a misguided notion that the Universe (and Earth, in particular) was made especially for us.

As I said in my introduction, I’m willing to go along with this, because, if we take it seriously, it has even more serious ramifications. Assuming that there is a creator God, who made ‘Man’ in ‘His’ image, then ‘He’ has bequeathed us a very special responsibility: we are the Earth’s caretakers. And, quite frankly, we’re doing a terrible job.

The irony of this situation is that it would appear that atheists take this responsibility more seriously than theists, though I’m happy to be proven wrong.

The answer to this is also in my introduction, because we have the intellectual ability to not only read the past, but predict the future. It’s our special cognitive skills in ‘comprehensibility’ that give us the ‘edge’. In other words, it is science that provides us with the means to protect our heritage. We are currently doing the exact opposite.

Unlike a lot of people, I don't claim that atheism is superior to theism or vice versa. This is just an argument to demonstrate that either position can lead to the same conclusion.

Is the Universe conscious?

This is another question on Quora, and whilst it may seem trivial, even silly, I give it a serious answer.

Because it’s something we take for granted, literally every day of our lives, I find that many discussions on consciousness tend to gloss over its preternatural, epiphenomenal qualities (for want of a better description) and are often seemingly dismissive of its very existence. So let me be blunt: without consciousness, there is no reality. For you. At all.

My views are not orthodox, even heretical, but they are consistent with what I know and with the rest of my philosophy. The question has religious overtones, but I avoid all theological references.

This is the original question:

Is the universe all knowing/conscious?

And this is my answer:

I doubt it very much. If you read books about cosmology (The Book of Universes by John D Barrow, for example) you’ll appreciate how late consciousness arrived in the Universe. According to current estimates, it’s the last 520 million years of 13.8 billion, which is less than 4% of its age.

And as Barrow explains, the Universe needs to be of the mind-boggling scale we observe to allow enough time for complex life (like us) to evolve.

Consciousness is still a mystery, despite advances made in neuroscience. In the latest issue of New Scientist (21 Sep 2019) it’s the cover story: The True Nature of Consciousness; with the attached promise: We’re Finally Cracking the Greatest Mystery of You. But when you read the article the author (neuroscientist, Michael Graziano) seems to put faith in advances in AI achieving consciousness. It’s not the first time I’ve come across this optimism, yet I think it’s misguided. I don’t believe AI will ever become conscious, because it’s not supported by the evidence.

All the examples of consciousness that we know about are dependent on life. In other words, life evolved before consciousness did. With AI, people seem to think that the reverse will happen: a machine intelligence will become conscious and therefore it will be alive. It contradicts everything we have observed to date.

It’s based on the assumption that when a machine achieves a certain level of intelligence, it will automatically become conscious. Yet many animals of so-called lower intelligence (compared to humans) have consciousness and they don’t become more conscious if they become more intelligent. Computers can already beat humans at complex games and they improve all the time, but not one of them exhibits consciousness.

Slightly off-topic but relevant, because it demonstrates that consciousness is not dependent on just acquiring more machine intelligence.

I contend that consciousness is different to every other phenomena we know about, because it has a unique relationship with time. Erwin Schrodinger in his book, What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a constant present. In other words, for a conscious observer, time is always ‘now’.

What’s more, I argue that it’s the only phenomena that does – everything else we observe becomes the past as soon as it happens - just take a photo to demonstrate.

This means that, without memory, you wouldn’t know you were conscious at all and there are situations where this has happened. People have been rendered unconscious, yet continue to behave as if they’re conscious, but later have no memory of it. I believe this is because their brain effectively stopped ‘recording’.

Consciousness occupies no space, even though it appears to be the consequence of material activity – specifically, the neurons in our brains. Because it appears to have a unique relationship with time and it can’t be directly measured, I’m not averse to the idea that it exists in another dimension. In mathematics, higher dimensions are not as aberrant as we perceive them, and I’ve read somewhere that neuron activity can be ‘modelled’ in a higher mathematical dimension. This idea is very speculative and I concede too fringe-thinking for most people.

As far as the Universe goes, I like to point out that reality (for us) requires both a physical world and consciousness - without consciousness there might as well be nothing. The Universe requires consciousness to be self-realised. This is a variant on the strong anthropic principle, originally expressed by Brandon Carter.

The weak anthropic principle says that only universes containing observers can be observed, which is a tautology. The strong anthropic principle effectively says that only universes, that allow conscious observers to emerge, can exist, which is my point about the Universe requiring consciousness to be self-realised. The Universe is not teleological (if you were to rerun the Universe, you’d get a different result) but the Universe has the necessary mathematical parameters to allow sentient life to emerge, which makes it quasi-teleological.

In answer to your question, I don’t think the Universe is conscious from its inception, but it has built into its long evolutionary development the inherent capacity to produce, not only conscious observers, but observers who can grasp the means to comprehend its workings and its origins, through mathematics and science.

Why is time called a dimension when time is always now?

This is another question posted on Quora, which attracted 100+ answers, apparently, of which mine is a modest contribution.

I’m not presenting anything new here that I haven’t discussed before. But there is a benefit in polishing one’s ideas so that they are more succinctly expressed and, hopefully, easier to follow.

I should point out that, aside from my exposition on Einstein’s theories of relativity, these ideas are not orthodox: specifically, my views on QM and ‘now’.



This is a good question that I’m sure will garner a variety of answers. Even among physicists, the nature of time and our experience of it is a debatable topic. Einstein’s theories of relativity changed our understanding of time irrevocably, but possibly created more mysteries than they resolved.

The most significant revelation from Einstein’s mathematical formulations is the link between time and the finite speed of light. If the speed of light was not finite (i.e. instantaneous) then everything would happen at once. The speed of light, c, turns light into a 4th dimension (by ct) and in combination with the 3 dimensions of space creates a metric called spacetime. Whilst time and length can appear different to different observers in different frames of reference, the metric of spacetime is invariant.

You can see the dimension of time by looking at the night sky, because the stars you see are light years away. In the southern hemisphere (where I live) if you can get away from city lights, on a clear night, you can see the Magellanic clouds with the naked eye, which are over 150,000 light years away. In other words, you are looking at least 150,000 years into the past, and, in that context, time becomes a 4th dimension that you can actually see.

Because the speed of light is finite it means that everything you observe has already happened, which is why we never see the future. Einstein believed that the dimension of time was just as fixed as space and therefore the future already existed. This is called the ‘block universe’ interpretation, but quantum mechanics (QM) doesn’t support this view.

In fact, Freeman Dyson argues that QM can only describe the future, which would explain why we never actually observe a wave function (ψ), because it’s always in our future, and why we can only determine probabilities from a range of so-called superpositions. Note that only one of the superpositions becomes reality when the wave function collapses (or decoheres).

Erwin Schrodinger, in his book, What is Life? made the observation that consciousness exists in a constant ‘now’, and I contend that it’s the only thing that does. Everything else immediately becomes the past as soon as it happens, which is demonstrated every time someone takes a photograph.

In summary, the finite speed of light ensures that everything we observe is in the past which can be measured as a dimension of time. If consciousness is the only thing that exists in a constant present, then, it not only provides a continually changing reference point for past, present and future, it also explains the effect that everything is passing us by.