Does Work Undermine our Freedom?

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Slaves in Ancient Egypt

Work is a dominant feature of contemporary life. Most of us spend most of our time working. Or if not actually working then preparing for, recovering from, and commuting to work. Work is the focal point, something around which all else is organised. We either work to live, or live to work. I am fortunate in that I generally enjoy my work. I get paid to read, write and teach for a living. I can’t imagine doing anything else. But others are less fortunate. For them, work is drudgery, a necessary means to a more desirable end. They would prefer not to work, or to spend much less time doing so. But they don’t have that option. Society, law and economic necessity all conspire to make work a near-essential requirement. Would it be better if this were not the case?

In recent months, I have explored a number of affirmative answers to this question. Back in July 2014, I looked at Joe Levine’s argument for the right not to work. This argument rested on a particular reading of the requirements of Rawlsian egalitarianism. In brief, Levine felt that Rawlsian neutrality with respect to an individual’s conception of the good life required some recognition of a right to opt out of paid labour. Then, in October 2014, I offered my own general overview of the anti-work literature, dividing the arguments up into two categories: intrinsic badness arguments (which claimed that there was something intrinsically bad about work) and opportunity cost arguments (which claimed that even if work was okay, non-work was better).

In this post, I want to explore one more anti-work argument. This one comes from an article by Julia Maskivker entitled “Employment as a Limitation on Self-Ownership”. Although this argument retreads some of the territory covered in previous posts, I think it also offers some novel insights, and I want to go over them. I do so in several parts. First, I offer a brief overview of Maskivker’s central anti-work argument. As we’ll see, this argument has two contentious premises, each based on three claims about freedom and justice. I then spend the next three sections looking at Maskivker’s defence of those three claims. I will then focus on some criticisms of her argument, before concluding with a general review.


1. Maskivker’s Anti-Work Argument
I’ll actually start with a mild criticism. Although I see much of value in Maskivker’s article, and although I learned a lot from it, I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed reading it. Large parts of it felt disorganised, needlessly convoluted, and occasionally repetitious. Although she introduced a central normative claim early on — viz. a claim about the need for effective control self-ownership — later parts of her argument seemed to stray from the strict requirements of that concept. This left me somewhat confused as to what her central argument really was. So what follows is very much my own interpretation of things and should be read with that caveat in mind.

Anyway, let’s start by clarifying what it is we are arguing against. In the past, I have lamented the fact that definitions of work are highly problematic. They are often value-laden, and prone to the sins of under and over-inclusiveness. I’m not sure that there can ever be a perfect definition of work, one that precisely captures all the phenomena of interest to those making the anti-work critique. Nevertheless, we need something more concrete, and Maskivker duly provides. She defines work as paid labour. That is, labour that is undertaken for the purposes of remuneration. This definition is simple and covers what is central to her own argument. My only complaint is that it may need to be expanded to cover forms of labour that are not directly remunerated but are undertaken in the hope of eventually being remunerated (e.g. work of entrepreneurs in the early stages of a business, or the work of unpaid interns). But this is just a quibble.

With that definition in place, we can proceed to Maskivker’s anti-work argument itself. That argument is all about the freedom-undermining effect of work. Although this argument is initially framed in terms of a particular conception of freedom as effective control self-ownership (something I previously covered when looking at the work of Karl Widerquist), I believe it ends up appealing to a much broader and more ecumenical understanding of freedom. As follows:

• (1) If a phenomenon undermines our freedom, then it is fundamentally unjust and we should seek to minimise or constrain it.

• (2) A phenomenon undermines our freedom if: (a) it limits our ability to choose how to make use of our time; (b) it limits our ability to be the authors of our own lives; and/or (c) it involves exploitative/coercive offers.

• (3) Work, in modern society, (a) limits our ability to choose how to make use of our time; (b) limits our ability to be the authors of our own lives; and c) involves an exploitative/coercive offer.

• (4) Therefore, work undermines our freedom.

• (5) Therefore, work is fundamentally unjust and should be minimised or constrained.

You could alter this, as Maskivker seems to wish to do, by turning it into an argument for a right not to work. Though I will discuss this general idea later on, I’m avoiding that construal of the argument for the simple reason that it requires additional explanation. Specifically, it requires some explanation of what it would mean to have a right not to work, and some answer to the question as to why it is felt that we do not currently have a right not to work (after all, we can choose not to work, can’t we?). I think time would be better spent focusing specifically on the freedom-undermining effect of work and its injustice, rather than on the precise social remedy to this problem.

What about the rest of the argument. Well, premise (1) is a foundational normative assumption, resting on the value of freedom in a liberal society. We won’t question it here. Premise (2) is crucial because it provides more detail on the nature of freedom. Although Maskivker may argue that the three freedom-undermining conditions mentioned in that premise are all part of the what she means by effective control self-ownership, I think it better not to take that view. Why? Because I think some of the conditions appeal to other concepts of freedom that are popular among other political theorists, and it would be better not to limit the argument to any particular conception. Moving on, premise (3) is the specific claim about the freedom-undermining effect of work. Obviously, this too is crucial to Maskivker’s overall case. The two conclusions then follow.

Let’s go through the two central premises in more detail. Let’s do so in an alternating structure. That is to say, by looking at the defence of condition (a) in premise (2) and premise (3); then at the defence of condition (b) in premise (2) and premise (3); and finally at the defence of condition (c) in premise (2) and premise (3).



2. Freedom, Time and the 24/7 Workplace
Condition (a) is all about the need for an ability to choose how to use our time. Maskivker defends this requirement by starting out with a Lockean conception of freedom, one that is often beloved by libertarians. The Lockean conception holds that individuals are free in the sense that they have self-ownership. That is to say: they have ownership rights over their own bodies, and the fruits of their labour. This fundamental right of self-ownership in turn implies a bundle of other rights (e.g. the right to transfer the fruits of one’s labour to another). Any system of political authority must respect this fundamental right and its necessary implications.

The problem for Maskivker is that many fans of self-ownership limit themselves to a formal, rather than an effective, conception of that right. In other words, they simply hold, in the abstract, that individuals have this right of self-ownership and that they should not be interfered with when exercising it. They don’t think seriously about what it would take to ensure that everybody was really able to effectively enjoy this right. If they did this, they would realise that there are a number of social and evolutionary imbalances and injustices in the ability of individuals to exercise self-ownership. They would realise that, in order to effectively enjoy the right, individuals will also need access to resources.

Now, to be fair, some writers do recognise this. And they highlight the need for things like adequate education and healthcare in order for the right to self-ownership to be effective. Maskivker agrees with their approach. The originality of her contribution comes in its insistence on the importance of time as an essential resource for self-ownership. Time is, in many ways, the ultimate resource. Time is necessary for everything we do. Everything takes time. Other skills and abilities that we may have, only really have value when we have the time to exercise them. Furthermore, time is a peculiarly non-manipulable resource. There is a limited amount of time in which we get to act out our lives. This makes it all the more important for people to have access to time.

You can probably see where this is going. The problem with work is that it robs us of time. We need jobs in order to live, and they take up most of our time. Some people argue that the modern realities of work are particularly insidious in this regard. Jonathan Crary, in his slightly dystopian and alarmist work, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, notes how work has colonised our every waking hour and how it threatens to colonise our sleep too. We are encouraged to make our time more productive, but also to be available to our workplaces at more times of the day, through email or social media. Indeed, the slow death of the regular 9-to-5 workday has, if anything, encouraged work to monopolise more of time. We have flexible working hours and our work may be more outcome-driven, but the marketplaces are open 24/7 and they demand more outcomes from us. The result is an infiltration of work into every hour of the day.

Some people may not resent this. They may feel that they are living the kind of life they wish to live, that their work is enjoyable, and that it gives them a sense of purpose. But others will feel differently. They will feel that work takes away valuable opportunities to truly express themselves as they wish.

In sum, access to time and the time-limiting nature of work, is one thing to think about when designing a scheme of distributive justice. An ability to opt out of work, or to have much less of it one’s lives may be necessary if we are to have a just society.


3. Freedom and Authorship of One’s Life
There is a related argument to made here about the ability to choose one’s time. It can be connected to Maskivker’s account of effective self-ownership, but it can also be separated from it. That’s what condition (b) is about. It appeals to a distinctive notion of freedom as being the ability to exercise true authorship over one’s life. This is a slightly more metaphysical ideal of freedom, one that joins up with the debate about free will and responsibility.

To understand the idea, we need to think more about the individual who truly enjoys their work. As I suggested at the end of the previous section, you could argue that there is nothing unjust about the current realities of work for such an individual. Granting them more free time, won’t really help them to exercise more effective self-ownership. They are getting what they want from life. Take me for example. I have already said that I enjoy my work, and I have been able to (I think) select a career that best suits my talents and abilities. I’m pretty sure I’m employing the scarce resource of time in a way that allows me to maximise my potential. I’m pretty sure there is nothing fundamentally unjust or freedom-undermining about my predicament.

Nevertheless, Maskivker wants to argue that there is something fundamentally unjust about my predicament. My freedom is not being respected in the way that it should. Despite all my claims about how much I enjoy my work, the reality is that I have to work. I have no real say in the matter. She uses an analogy between starving and fasting to make her point. When a person is starving or fasting, the physical results are often the same: their bodies are being deprived of essential nutrients. But there is something morally distinct about the two cases. The person who fasts has control over what is happening to their body. The person who is starving does not. The person who chooses to fast has authorship over their lives; the person who is starving is having their story written by someone else.

When it comes to our work, there is a sense in which we are all starving not fasting. We may enjoy it, embrace it and endorse it, but at the end of the day we have to do it. That’s true even in societies with generous welfare provisions, as most of those welfare provisions are conditional upon us either looking for work (and proving that we are doing so), or being in some state of unavoidable disability or deprivation. We are not provided us with an “easy out”, or with the freedom we need to become the true authors of our lives. (Maskivker notes that the introduction of a universal basic income could be a game-changer in this regard).

As I said, in appealing to this notion of self-authorship, Maskivker is touching upon a more metaphysical ideal of freedom. Within the debate about free will, there are those that argue that the ability to do otherwise is essential for having free will. But there are also those (e.g. Harry Frankfurt and John Fischer) who argue that it is not. They sometimes say that being free and responsible simply requires the reflexive self-endorsement of one’s actions and attitudes. The ability to do otherwise is irrelevant. So what Maskivker is arguing is somewhat contentious, at least when considered in light of these other theories of freedom. She claims that her theory better captures the normative ideal of freedom. But there is much more to be said about this issue.


4. Freedom and the Absence of Coercive Offers
The final condition of freedom — condition c) — is probably the most straightforward. It has its origins in the classic liberal accounts of freedom as non-interference by coercion. It is introduced by Maskivker in an attempt to address a possible weakness in the argument thus far. Someone could argue that the mere absence of acceptable alternatives to work is not enough to imply that it undermines our freedom, or that it creates a fundamental injustice.

An analogy might help to make the point. Suppose you are crossing the desert. You have run out of water and are unlikely to make it out alive. As you are literally on your last legs, you come across a man who is selling water from a small stand. He is, however, selling it at an obscene price. It will cost you everything you have to get one litre of water (which will be just enough to make it out). Because of your desperate situation, you hand over everything you have. Was your choice to hand over everything free? Was it just for the man to sell the water at that price? Many would argue “no” because you had no acceptable alternative.

But now consider a variation on this scenario. Suppose that this time the man is selling water at a very low price, well below the typical market rate. It will cost you less than one dollar to get a litre of water. You gratefully hand over the money. Was your choice free this time? Remember, you are still in a desperate state. All that has changed is the price. Nevertheless, there is something less disturbing about this example. Your choice seems more “free”, and the whole scenario seems more just.

The problem with the first case is that the man is exploiting your unfortunate situation. He knows you have no other choice and he wants to take you for everything that you’ve got. The second scenario lacks this feature. In that case, he doesn’t undermine your freedom, or violate some fundamental principle of justice, because he doesn’t exploit your misfortune.

How does this apply to Maskivker’s anti-work argument? Very simply. She claims that work, in the modern world, involves an exploitative bargain. There is no particular agent behind this exploitation. Rather, it is the broader society, with its embrace of the work ethic and its commitment to the necessity of work, that renders the decision to work exploitative:

Demanding fulltime work in exchange for a decent livelihood is comparable to demanding an exorbitant price for a bottle of water in the absence of competition. It leaves the individual vulnerable to the powerful party (society) in the face of the great loss to be suffered if the “offer” as stipulated is not taken (if one opts not to work while not independently wealthy) 

(Maskivker 2010)

5. But isn’t the abolition of work impossible?
Thus ends the defence of Maskivker’s central argument. As you can see, her claim is that the modern realities of work are such that they undermine our freedom and create a fundamental injustice in our society. This is because (conjunctively or disjunctively) work monopolises our time and limits our effective self-ownership; the absence of a viable alternative to work prevents us from being the true authors of our live; and/or society is presenting us with an exploitative bargain “you better be working or looking for work or else…”. You may be persuaded on each of these points. You may agree that a full (positive?) right not to work would be nice. But you may think that it is naive and unrealistic. You may think that it is impossible to really avoid a life of work. Maskivker closes by considering two versions of this “impossibility” objection.

The first, which we might call the “strict impossibility” objection, works something like this:

• (6) We all have basic needs (food, clothing, shelter etc); without these things we would die.

• (7) We have to work in order to secure these basic needs.

• (8) Therefore, we have to work.

Maskivker has a very simply reply to this version of the objection. She holds that premise (7) is false. Not all activities that are conducive to our survival are inevitable. At one point in time, we had to take the furs and hides of animals in order to stay warm enough to survive. We no longer have to do this. The connection between survival and procuring the furs and hides of animals has been severed. The same could happen to the connection between work and our basic needs. Indeed, it is arguable that we no longer need to work all that much to secure our basic needs. There are many labour saving devices in manufacturing and agriculture (and there are soon to be more) that obviate the need for work. And yet the social demand for work has, for some reason, not diminished. Surely this doesn’t have to be the case? Surely we could allow more machines to secure our basic needs?

The second impossibility objection, which we might call the “collective action” objection, is probably more serious. It holds that while a right not to work might be all well and good, the reality is that if everyone exercised that right, society would not be able to support its implementation. After all, somebody has to pay for the system. Maskivker’s responses to this objection are, in my opinion, somewhat problematic.

She makes one basic point. She says that the existence of a right is not contingent upon whether it may be impossible to recognise it in certain social contexts, or whether universal exercise of that right would lead to negative outcomes. She uses two analogies to support this point. First, she asks us to suppose that there is a universal right to healthcare. She then asks us to imagine that we live in a society in which there is some terrible natural disaster, which places huge strains on the healthcare system. The strains are such that the available resources will not be sufficient to save everyone. Maskivker argues that the universal right to healthcare still exists in this society. The limitations imposed by the natural disaster do not take away people’s rights. Second, she asks us to consider the right not to have children. She then points out that if everyone exercised the right not to have children, it would lead to a bad outcome: humanity would go extinct. Nevertheless, she argues, that this does not mean that the right not to have children does not exist.

In some ways, I accept Maskivker’s point. I agree that a right may exist in the abstract even if its implementation creates problems. But I don’t think that really addresses the collective action objection, and I don’t think her analogies work that well. With regards to the right to healthcare in the disasterzone, I’m inclined to think that the limitations of the available resources would compromise or limit the right to healthcare. And with regards to the right not to have children, I think there is something fundamentally different about the problems that arise when we collectively head towards our own extinction and the problems that might arise if everyone stopped working. In the former case, no individuals would be harmed by the collective exercise of the right: the future generations who would have existed, do not exist and cannot be harmed. But in the latter case, there are individuals who might be harmed. For example, if doctors and nurses stopped working, their patients would be harmed. So I’m not sure that Maskivker has really grappled with the collective action objection. I think she tries to sidestep it, but in a manner that will be unpersuasive to its proponents.


6. Conclusion
That brings me to the end of this post. To briefly sum up, Maskivker presents an anti-work argument that focuses on the ways in which work undermines our freedom. She argues that this happens in three ways. First, work robs us of time, which is an essential resource if we are to have effective self-ownership. Second, work prevents us from being the true authors of our lives because there is no acceptable alternative to work (even in societies with social welfare). And third, because work involves an exploitative bargain: we must work, or else.

I think there is much of value in Maskivker’s article. I like how she focuses on time as a resource, one which should be included in any scheme of distributive justice. I also like how she integrates the anti-work critique with certain aspects of the mainstream literature on freedom, self-control and justice. Nevertheless, I fear she dodges the collective action objection to the anti-work position. This is where I think that technology, and in particular a deeper awareness of the drive toward automation and technological unemployment could be a useful addition to the anti-work critique. But that’s an argument for another day.

A Guide to Skinner's Genealogy of Liberty

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What does it mean to be free? Liberty is the most important concept in modern political theory. That’s an overstatement, of course. There are other important concepts — equality? well-being? — and somebody could no doubt make the case for them. Still, liberty is very important, particularly to those who have temerity to call themselves “liberal”. It would help if they had some more detailed conception of liberty.

The traditional philosophical approach to this is to provide a conceptual analysis of what it means to be at liberty. The philosopher, from their privileged position in a comfortable armchair, thinks deeply about the nature of freedom. They propose a definition — a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of the predicate “liberty” — and then they defend this analysis from a range of counterexamples and counterarguments, some proposed by themselves, some proposed by their philosophical friends and enemies.

This method has a long and venerable history, admirable and frustrating in equal measure. Are there any alternative approaches? In his excellent lecture “The Genealogy of Liberty” (based on his scholarly writings), Quentin Skinner argues that there is. He thinks we can construct a genealogy of all the different conceptions of liberty that have been proposed, rediscovered and defended since the birth of liberalism. The genealogy will highlight the resemblances and tensions between the different concepts, contextualise some of the important historic debates, and provide us with a rich landscape of conceptual possibility.

As I say, I think Skinner’s take on this is excellent, the product of his long years of historical and philosophical scholarship. I encourage everyone to watch his lecture. But, at the same time, I have been disappointed to see that no one (to the best of my knowledge) has provided a detailed summary and illustration of Skinner’s genealogy. That’s what this post is designed to do. Its goal is not to criticise Skinner’s framework (though this could certainly be done); its goal is to share what I believe to be a valuable intellectual tool.


1. The Big Picture
We’ll start with the big picture. The diagram below illustrates all the key components of Skinner’s genealogy.

Don’t worry if this looks confusing. We’ll be going through it step-by-step in a moment. For now, just note three main features of the genealogy. First, note that it starts with a basic two-condition analysis of freedom (throughout we’ll be using the term “freedom” interchangeably with the term “liberty”; this tracks Skinner’s usage of the terms):

Freedom: consists in (a) the power of an individual act and (b) the ability of the individual to exercise that power in a particular way.

This two-condition analysis provides the root from which the rest of the genealogy grows. And it is from the second condition that they grow. This is because the major traditions in the history of liberty have all tended to differ with respect to how they fill out the particulars of that condition.

That brings us to the second point, which is that those traditions are arrayed along the three major branches of the genealogy. Starting in the middle, we have the dominant liberal conception of freedom as non-interference. This has been subject to a number of analyses and elaborations over the years, but remains at the core of liberal theory. Moving to the left of that branch, we have the republican conception of liberty as non-domination. This was prevalent in ancient Rome, and underwent something of a resurgence in the latter half of the twentieth century (partly because of the work of Quentin Skinner). And then, moving to the extreme right (perhaps aptly) we have the more mystical concept of positive liberty. According to this conception, being free consists in the ability to realise one’s true self. This conception is probably less popular than the other two, but it has had some prominent defenders.

One other general point about the genealogy. In tracing out these different conceptions, Skinner focuses on the debate within the Anglophone literature. At times, he calls upon ideas that were initially developed in other languages (e.g. Greek, Latin, German and French). But he focuses on the Anglophone debate in order to sidestep problems that come from assuming that the English word for liberty is the same as the French “liberte” and so on.

Anyway, with that general introduction out of the way, let’s proceed to consider the three main branches of the genealogy.


2. Freedom as Non-Interference: The Dominant Tradition
We’ll start with the dominant branch, the one which conceptualises freedom in terms of non-interference. The guiding intuition here is that you are free whenever you exercise your power to act in accordance with your own will. In other words, when your will to act is not being interfered with. As Skinner notes, this conception of freedom is negative: it holds that freedom is the absence of something else, namely interference. As such, this conception shifts the focus away from the nature of freedom and onto the nature of interference. What counts as a freedom-undermining interference? Broadly speaking, there have been three answers to that question.

The first is associated with Thomas Hobbes and his classic work Leviathan. Hobbes argued that the only freedom-undermining interference was interference by some external agency, acting through the use of force on your body, in such a way as to literally prevent you from choosing an alternative course of action. So, for example, if I put a contract before you and asked you to sign it, and then proceeded to grab your hand, and trace out your signature through the use of force, I would be undermining your freedom. I would be using force, on your body, to prevent you from doing anything other than signing the contract. In this example, I am the one forcing you to perform the action, but don’t assume from this that it is only the use of force by another human agent that undermines freedom. According to Hobbes and his followers, the external agency that interferes with your act could be nature itself. In other words, the predication of “external agency” is being kept as wide as possible.

Freedom as Non-Interference by Force: You are free if (a) you have the power to act and (b) you exercise that power without being interfered with by an external agency, exerting force on your body, in such a way as to literally prevent you from doing anything else.

This classic Hobbesian position still has its followers, but for many it leaves something important out. While they accept that the use of force on the body undermines freedom, they think that less obvious forms of manipulation can undermine freedom too. Consider the famous example of the highwayman. The highwayman pulls over your stagecoach and offers you a deal: “Your money or your life?” No doubt, you give him your money. In this case, the highwayman does not manipulate your body through the use of force. Rather, he manipulates your will through the use of coercion. The question is whether that undermines freedom. The Hobbesian position is that it does not. Indeed, Hobbes famously said that in such a situation you still had a choice and you still had the power to exercise your will. The mere fact that the alternative you were being offered was unpleasant, did nothing to undermine your freedom.

To most contemporary liberals that seems pretty unsatisfactory. John Locke was one of the earliest critics. He argued that coercion could undermine freedom. Now, Locke had a pretty wide definition of what could count as coercion. He suggested that offers, threats, promises and bribes could all undermine the free exercise of the will. That probably goes too far. The politician who votes against a piece of legislation simply because she wishes to receive some bribe money, doesn’t seem to be acting without liberty. So others propose a more restrictive definition of coercion. For them, a coercive act is one that threatens to make you worse off than you would otherwise have been, and is serious, credible and (relatively) immediate. The highwayman’s offer of “your money or your life” fits the bill.

Freedom as Non-Interference by Coercion: You are free if (a) you have the power to act and (b) you exercise that power without being interfered with by an external agency, coercing you into doing something through the use of a threat, to make you worse off, that is (i) serious, (ii) credible and (iii) immediate.

This analysis of freedom as non-interference is usually added together with the Hobbesian one, to give us the classic (and arguably most popular) liberal conception of freedom.

But the story does not end there. As Skinner points out, in the 1800s a group of thinkers added some further complexity to the conception of freedom as non-interference. They highlighted an omission in the prevailing point of view. Note how the two preceding conceptions held that it must be an external agency (broadly construed) that interferes with your power to act. But why must this be the case? Could you yourself not interfere with your own power to act? John Stuart Mill was one of the first to recognise this possibility. Probably influenced by his occasional dalliances with Romanticism, Mill argued that you could be in the grip of inauthentic desires and beliefs, ones which interfered with your capacity to act as you truly wished. Ridding ourselves of such inauthenticity was one of the themes in Mill’s famous paean to freedom On Liberty. Similar “internal” interferences with liberty were highlighted by others. Marxists, for example, argued that many ordinary citizens were subject to false consciousness, and Freudians argued that psychological mechanisms for repression helped to suppress our true desires. This gives us:

Freedom as Non-Interference by the Self: You are free if (a) you have the power to act and (b) you exercise that power without being interfered with by some aspect of your self which prevents or compels you to act by (i) passion, (ii) inauthenticity, (iii) false consciousness, (iv) repression (and, maybe (v) other possibilities).

[Note: the “other possibilities” option at the very end is included by Skinner in order to recognise the fact that classificatory schemes of this sort are never complete].

Again, as with freedom as the absence of coercion, this conception can be added to the preceding ones. In other words, one could have a general theory of freedom as non-interference which accepted that the use of force, the use of coercion, and the prevention or compulsion of action by some aspect of the self, all undermine our freedom. The image below highlights these three possibilities in the general genealogy of liberty. As you can see, this conception of freedom as non-interference takes up the most space.

2. Positive Liberty: The Mystical Tradition
But freedom as non-interference does not exhaust the conceptual space. Skinner argues that in the late 1800s there also emerged a school of thought that rejected this purely negative conception of freedom. For them, freedom as non-interference only captured “the negative portion of the dialectic”. Freedom wasn’t simply the absence of something; it was the presence of something too. It was about realising some property or quality in one’s actions.

But what is this property or quality? Skinner cites the work of T.H. Green, who argued that in order to be free we must have acted so as to realise the true essence of our selves. I call this, somewhat disparagingly, the “mystical” tradition in the history of liberty. I do so because the notion that there is some true essence to the self strikes me as being slightly mystical. Nevertheless, there have been a variety of proposals over the years. Two are mentioned by Skinner. First, there is the Aristotelian proposal that the essence of the self is political (“man is a political animal”) and hence we are free when we act so as to realise our political natures. Second, there is the Christian proposal that the essence of the self is spiritual and hence we are free when we act so as to realise our spiritual natures (usually done by achieving commune with God).

Freedom as Self-Realisation: You are free if (a) you have the power to act and (b) you exercise that power in such a way that you realise the true essence of your self as: (i) a political being; or (ii) a spiritual being; or (iii) some other possibility.

The two most prominent exponents of this positive conception of liberty in the recent past are, according to Skinner, Hannah Arendt and Charles Taylor. Both of these authors adopt a political/communitarian conception of self-realisation.

3. Freedom as Non-Domination: The Republican Tradition
That brings us to the final branch of the genealogy. The one that conceptualises freedom in terms of non-domination. We come to this last because, according to Skinner, it is the conception of freedom that was suppressed by the birth of modern liberalism. Specifically, he argues that when Hobbes defended his version of freedom as non-interference, he did so in an attempt to refute the alternative, republican tradition, of freedom as non-domination (this makes sense when one considers the historical context in which Hobbes wrote his major works: Hobbes wished to defend the monarchy from its republican opponents).

This alternative tradition adopts an interesting, counterfactual, definition of political freedom. It holds that absence of interference is not enough for freedom. Imagine you are a slave. You are born into slavery. You know no other life. The condition of being a slave is such that you are always subject to the will of another (your master). But now imagine that you are happy to go along with the will of your master. You never contradict him; you always do as he pleases. As result, you may live a life that is devoid of interference. You will never be forced to do something by physical manipulation or by manipulation of the will. But would that be enough to secure your freedom?

The republican claim is that it is not. In order to be truly free, you must not be subject to the will of another in this way. To live under the constant shadow of the master’s good will is problematic in and of itself, and will likely limit your self-expression in other ways too. For instance, the slave will be prone to self-censorship. Because they know that their ability to act is conditional upon the good will of their masters, they will always be cautious about speaking and acting in a forthright manner. This gives us:

Freedom as Non-Domination: You are free if (a) you have the power to act and (b) your exercise of that power is not conditional upon the good will of another (i.e. you are not living like a slave subject to a master).

This republican conception of freedom has been resurrected in recent times by Skinner himself, and by the work of other political philosophers, most notably Philip Pettit (about whom I’ve written before). But it has featured prominently during a number of debates in the past 300 or so years. For instance, at the time of the American War of Independence, the notion was that the colonialists were subject to the will of the British crown (the irony that they permitted slavery within their own borders is not ignored in Skinner’s discussion of this history). Similarly, leading figures in the movement for women’s rights appealed, implicitly, to the republican conception of liberty. Indeed, both Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women and John Stuart Mill’s The Subjection of Women drew analogies between the status of the married woman and the slave.

This branch of the genealogy is highlighted in the image below.

4. Conclusion
So that’s it. As I said at the outset, I didn’t intend for this to be a critical commentary on Skinner’s genealogy. Instead, I merely intended to share what I think is a useful intellectual tool. Hopefully that intention has been realised. As we have seen, there are three branches in the genealogy of liberty. The dominant branch holds that freedom consists in non-interference, with some debate about the precise nature of freedom-undermining interference. The mystical branch holds that freedom consists in the ability to realise one’s true essence through action. And the republican branch holds that freedom consists in non-domination, i.e. the absence of conditional dependence on the good will of another. Although it is possible to combine some of these views, there are also important tensions between them. Nevertheless, they have all featured in the debate about what it means to be free.

Neuroenhancement and the Extended Mind Hypothesis

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Consider your smartphone for a moment. It provides you with access to a cornucopia of information. Some of it is general, stored on publicly accessible internet sites, and capable of being called up to resolve any pub debate one might be having (how many U.S. presidents have been assassinated? or how many times have Brazil won the World Cup?). Some of it is more personal, and includes a comprehensive databank of all emails and text message conversations you have had, your calendar appointments, the number of steps you have taken on any given day, books read, films watched, calories consumed and so forth.

Now consider a question: is this information part of your mind? Does it form part of an extended mind loop, one that interfaces with and augments the mental processors inside your skull? According to some philosophers it does. They believe in something called the extended mind hypothesis, which goes against the neuro-physicalist wisdom and holds that the mind is not necessarily to be identified with the brain. On the contrary, they suggest that humans are natural-born cyborgs, constantly expanding their minds into their external environments.

This is an intriguing hypothesis, and one that has been much-debated in the philosophy of mind. But does it have any ethical implications? If your mind extends into the external environment, wouldn’t we be obliged to treat anything that forms part of your extended mind loop in accordance with the ethical principles that are usually thought to apply to the treatment of any part of one’s non-extended mind? In other words, shouldn’t we adopt a parity-stance when it comes to the treatment of the internal and external mind?

Maybe. One philosopher who has taken up the parity-stance in recent years is Neil Levy. He has used it explicitly in relation to debates about neuroenhancement, i.e. the use of drugs and other forms of biotechnology to enhance and tweak the elements of neural anatomy. In this post, I want to take a look at Levy’s argument and at a recent response to it. I’ll proceed in three stages. I’ll start with a description of the extended mind hypothesis. I’ll then look at Levy’s “parity” argument. Following this, I’ll consider some obvious criticisms of the parity argument.

If that sounds tolerable, let’s proceed.


1. A Quick Outline of the Extended Mind Hypothesis
The extended mind hypothesis (EMH) was first introduced to the philosophical world by David Chalmers and Andy Clark in 1998. Their claim was simple enough. The most prevalent version of mind-body physicalism in the latter half of the 20th century was functionalism. According to functionalism, whether or not something counted as a mental state (e.g. a belief, desire, intention, memory, experience and so forth) depended not so much on the stuff it was made of but on its place within a functional system. In other words, the mind was like a mechanism, with particular mental states playing different causal and functional roles within the mechanism, all leading to the creation of this phenomenon we call the “mind”.

Because functionalism placed such an emphasis causal roles in the production of mental phenomena, it led philosophers of mind to propose a natural corollary. It led to them to claim that mental phenomena were multiply realisable. That is to say, mental phenomena could supervene upon many different physical systems. There was nothing uniquely special about neurons and other brain cells in this respect. In theory, a mind could be instantiated in other systems, for example an artificial neural network or digital computer. All that mattered was whether that system had all the relevant component parts playing the appropriate functional roles. Functionalists are still physicalists. They still think the mind requires some physical system. They just don’t think that the brain is the only eligible physical system.

Chalmers and Clark’s extended mind thesis was another natural corollary of functionalism and multiple realisability. It added that if the mind is multiply realisable it can surely be jointly (or, rather, conjointly) realisable. In other words, the brain and other physical systems could combine to form a mind. Chalmers and Clark provided a striking illustration of their hypothesis. Imagine there is a man named Otto, who suffers from some memory impairment. At all times, Otto carries with him a notebook. This notebook contains all the information Otto needs to remember on any given day. Suppose one day he wants to go to an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York but he can’t remember the address. Fortunately, he can simply look up the address in his notebook. This he duly does and attends the exhibition. Now compare Otto to Inga. She also wants to go to the exhibition, but has no memory problems and is able to recall the location using the traditional, brain-based recollection system.

Chalmers and Clark argue that there is nothing fundamentally different about Otto and Inga. They both remember the location. It just so happens that Otto uses an extended mind loop for recollection, whereas Inga uses an internal one. In this sense, Otto’s notebook forms part of his mind.

To be clear, Chalmers and Clark do not think that everything in the physical environment will form part of an extended mind. Certain conditions must be met. These include:

Accessibility: The external prop must be constantly and easily accessible to the individual.

Endorsement: The contents of the external prop (the notebook in Otto’s case) must be automatically endorsed by the individual and must have been consciously endorsed in the past.

These conditions are (allegedly) sufficient for something forming part of the mind, but they may not be necessary. What kinds of external prop meet these conditions? Otto’s notebook obviously fits the bill, but that’s an archaic example. I would argue that most smartphones and artificial assistants now meet these criteria. And as I said some of the contents of those props can include information from the (publicly-accessible) web. Of course, this raises interesting questions about whether the information on the web forms part of my mind, as well as your mind and everyone else’s. I think it does, if we follow Chalmers and Clark’s conditions. I frequently consciously endorse information on the web (e.g. the location of my hotel when travelling) and then access and automatically endorse it at a later point.

Strangely, Levy tries to resist this claim (at least in his own case). He says that something like the information on Wikipedia does not meet these conditions because access is relatively slow and effortful, and he does not always trust it (Levy 2011). Of course, I can’t speak directly to his own experience, but it does seem like an oddly out-dated claim. A lot of information on the web is no longer effortful and slow to access (no more so than accessing a notebook) and is automatically endorsed. I readily access information via my smartphone in virtually any location and at any time. Furthermore, the trust issue seems no greater in the case of certain types of web-based information than it would in the case of the information stored in Otto’s notebook.

But this is a digression. The important point for now is to grasp the essence of the extended mind hypothesis. Remember, the claim is that the mind isn’t all inside the skull. External props can form part of extended mind loop, provided that the contents of those props meet certain conditions. The simplest example of this is in how external props form part of our memory system. But it doesn’t end there. External props can form part of other mental systems too, such as our motivational systems.


2. Ethical Parity and the Neuroenhancement Debate
There are many criticisms of the EMH in the literature. I will discuss some a little later on. For now, I want to take it as a given, and see what difference it makes to the neuroenhancement debate. That debate is all about the use of pharmacological and biotechnological devices to alter and enhance the neural anatomy. Examples might include the use of methyphenidates to enhance memory and attention, propanolol to suppress painful memories, and deep brain stimulation to regulate mood. Some people are positively disposed to such enhancements, others are negatively disposed. Each side has a set of standard arguments at their disposal. The positively disposed appeal to removal of barriers to self-optimisation and the associated positive societal effects. The negatively disposed worry about things like upsetting the natural order, inauthenticity and the possible negative societal effects.

Can the EMH be used to break the deadlock between the two sides? Levy thinks it might help. Specifically, he thinks it might help in a way that supports the pro-enhancement side. As he sees it, part of the opposition to the use of neural enhancement is based on the notion that there is some principled distinction between enhancements that are “inside the head” and enhancements that are on the outside. Thus, enhancing my memory consolidation with the use of methylphenidate is deemed to be very different from enhancing my memory through the use of my smartphone.

But the EMH calls this principled distinction into question. If the EMH is right, then both the internal and external realms form part of our mind. And if we have no objection to enhancing the latter, we should (by implication) have no objection to enhancing the former. If we accept that I can enhance my extended mind loop by buying a newer, smarter, smartphone, then why shouldn’t we accept that I can do the same with a smartpill? As Levy puts it:

Much of the heat and the hype surrounding neuroscientific technologies stems from the perception that they offer (or threaten) opportunities genuinely unprecedented in human experience. But if the mind is not confined within the skull…[then] intervening in the mind is ubiquitous. It becomes difficult to defend the idea that there is a difference in principle between interventions which work by altering a person’s environment and that that work directly on her brain, insofar as the effect on cognition is the same; the mere fact that an intervention targets the brain directly no longer seems relevant. 

(Levy 2011, 291)

Levy is working here with an ethical parity principle (EPP), one that claims there is, ethically speaking, no important principled difference between internal and external interventions in the mind. This is a strong parity claim, premised on our acceptance of the EMH. The principle can be formulated in the following way:

Strong EPP: Since the mind extends into the external environment, alterations of external props used for thinking are (ceteris paribus) ethically on a par with alterations of the brain.

This can then be used to support Levy’s argument in favour of neural enhancement:

• (1) Since the mind extends into the external environment, alterations of external props used for thinking are (ceteris paribus) ethically on a par with alterations of the brain.

• (2) We have no “in principle” ethical objection to alterations to external props for thinking.

• (3) Therefore, we ought to have no “in-principle” ethical objection to alterations of neural mechanisms for thinking.

Just to be clear, this argument is not claiming that interventions to the external and internal mind are fine and dandy. It is, rather, claiming that they should be treated to equivalent forms of ethical scrutiny. If it would be wrong to remove the part of Inga’s brain that allows her to remember the location of the Museum of Modern Art, then it would be wrong to remove Otto’s notebook. And vice versa.


3. Is the EPP credible?
Now we come to the crux of the issue. Is the EPP, as outlined, any good? Should we agree with Levy that there is no “in principle” difference between internal and external interventions into the mind? Some are skeptical. They argue that the strong form of the EPP is unsustainable, but that a weak form may be allowed to stand in its stead (something Levy himself falls back on). DeMarco and Ford are two such critics. I want to close by outlining their critique.

To understand this critique, let’s dwell on the example of memory. The EPP claims that there is no in-principle distinction between alterations to external memory props (like Otto’s notebook, or my email history) and alterations to internal memory systems (presumably regions or networks of the brain). While this sounds initially plausible on the EMH, there are at least three important differences between internal and external memory. Each of these differences has some ethical salience:

Dynamic integration: Internal memory is a dynamic, not a static, phenomenon. The information stored in Otto’s notebook or my smartphone is static. Once inputted, the information remains the same, unless it is deliberately altered. Internal memory is not like this. As is now well-known, the brain does not store information like, say, a hard disk stores information. Memories are dynamic. They are changed by the act of remembering. What’s more, memories integrate with other aspects of our cognitive frameworks. They affect how we perceive and how we desire. Perhaps external props can do something similar, but their effects are more attenuated. Internal memory is more closely coupled to these other phenomena. Consequently, tinkering with internal memory could have a much more widespread effect than tinkering with external memory. To the extent that those effects are ethically significant, we have found a reason to reject the strong EPP.

Fungibility: External memory props may be more easily replaceable (more fungible) than internal memory. If I destroy your smartphone, you can always get another one. And although you may have lost some of your externally stored memories (maybe some pictures and messages) you will still be able to form new ones. If, on the other hand, I destroy your hippocampus (part of the brain network needed to form long-term memories), I can permanently impair your capacity to acquire new long-term memories. This isn’t a hypothetical example either. This has really happened to some people. The most famous being patient HM, who had part of his hippocampus removed during surgery for epilepsy in the 1950s, and was never able to form another long-term semantic memory. Again, this difference in fungibility seems like it is ethically significant.

Consciousness: Another obvious difference between internal and external memory is the degree to which they are implicated in conscious experience. Consciousness is usually deemed to be an ethically salient property. Entities that are capable of conscious experience are capable of suffering and hence capable of being morally wronged. What’s more, the nature and quality of one’s conscious experiences is often thought to be central to living a good life. Although the information stored in an external prop may, eventually, feature in one’s conscious experiences, it does not shape the very content of those conscious experiences in the way that something which is internally stored may do. As I noted above, internal memory can get deeply integrated into our mental models of the world, affecting how we perceive and act in that world. So if we alter an internal memory system, it could have a much more significant impact on the quality of our conscious experience.

These aren’t perfect reasons for rejecting the strong EPP. One could dream up examples of external props that seem to elide the alleged distinctions. For example, some external props may get deeply integrated into our mental models of the world and change how we perceive it. And perhaps the difference in fungibility is merely temporary: with advanced technology, even brain parts may be as readily replaceable as smartphones. Nevertheless, taken together, I think these three distinctions provide some reason for doubting the strong version of the EPP, and there are, in any event, more distinctions to be made (see work by Evan Selinger, for example)

The question is: where do we go from there? Levy introduced the EPP in an effort to make people more comfortable about the prospect of neural enhancement. He reasoned that if people had no problem with external enhancement, then if you could convince them that there was no in principle difference between external and internal enhancement, you could, in turn, convince them of the acceptability of the latter. In others words, he tried to draw us from our embrace of external enhancement to an embrace of internal enhancement, via the EPP. Given this, one might be inclined to think that any claim to the effect that there are important differences between the internal and the external would lead us to be more wary of internal forms of enhancement. But this is not my view. I think the differences may draw us in the opposite direction. I think they show that there are greater moral risks associated with tinkering with the internal realm, but, at the same time, there are greater benefits too. For instance, if consciousness is such an important ethical property — so deeply implicated in what it takes to live a good life — then surely that is the very thing we should be trying to enhance?

DeMarco and Ford make a slightly more general point. They think that the differences between the internal and external worlds should lead us to abandon the strong version of the EPP, but retain, in its stead, a weaker version. Levy himself drafted a weaker version of the principle, one that was not so reliant on the EMH. DeMarco and Ford try to modify this weaker version in light of a series of criticisms. I won’t rehearse their arguments here. Instead, I’ll simply skip to the end and to their attempt at a weak EPP:

Weak EPP (DeMarco and Ford): Alterations of external props are ethically on a par with functionally similar alterations of the brain, to the precise extent to which reasons for finding the functional alterations of the brain morally acceptable or unacceptable equally apply to reasons related to the functional alteration of external mental props.

As they see it, this weaker version of the EPP has a modest, but important effect on debates about enhancement and other mental interventions. It forces us to focus on the ethical permissibility of tinkering with different mental functions (like memory, desire, belief, mood and so on). If it is permissible to tinker with a given mental function, then its permissibility should not depend on whether the tinkering is internal or external. It should depend on the moral reasons for the alteration. But this is only the beginning of the ethical inquiry. If the functional alteration is permissible, then other more complex issues will need to be addressed. How effective are current technologies for alteration? What are their side effects? Do they have social implications? And so on.


4. Conclusion
To sum up, the EMH argues that the mind is not all in the head. External props can form part of a functional mind loop. Neil Levy argues that this functional equivalence between the internal and external has some ethical implications. In particular, he thinks it can affect the debate about the moral propriety of neural enhancement. In brief, his argument is that since we typically have no problem with the alteration and enhancement of external mental props, so too should we have no problem with functionally equivalent alterations to and enhancements of internal mental systems.

Others disagree, arguing that there are important ethical differences between internal and external mental systems. DeMarco and Ford argue that these differences should lead us to a revised, weaker version of Levy’s parity principle. I have argued that these differences may indirectly play into Levy’s hands. This is on the grounds that they may suggest that internal alterations have greater ethical priority. To be sure, this is an incomplete argument. But it is one worth developing and one which I hope to develop in the future.

Longer Lives and the Alleged Tedium of Immortality

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Bernard Williams - argued that immortality would be tedious

Back in 1973, Bernard Williams published an article about the desirability of immortality. The article was entitled “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality”. The article used the story of Elina Makropulos — from Janacek’s opera The Makropulos Affair — to argue that immortality would not be desirable. According to the story, Elina Makropulos is given the elixir of life by her father. The elixir allows Elina to live for three hundred years at her current biological age. After this period has elapsed, she has to choose whether to take the elixir again and live for another three hundred. She takes it once, lives her three hundred years, and then chooses to die rather than live another three hundred. Why? Because she has become bored with her existence.

Of course, this is just a story, but Williams thinks that it makes a serious point. He argues that a meaningful life, one that is of value to the one that lives it, is one that focuses on the fulfillment of certain categorical desires. He worries that an immortal life would lead to the exhaustion of such desires, which would in turn lead to tedium and boredom. It is this exhaustion of categorical desires that he feels is captured so well by the story of Elina Makropulous.

Williams’s article is justly famous. Like all of his work, it is well-written and has a provocative thesis. It is also, for better or worse, the starting point for all contemporary discussions of the desirability of immortality. Many have been persuaded by its arguments. They think Williams does indeed say something important about the nature of immortality. I have historically counted myself as one of those people (sort of - see my earlier series of posts on this topic). But perhaps we need to re-evaluate? Perhaps Williams’s argument says nothing at all about the desirability of immortality?

That’s the claim put forward by Samuel Scheffler in his book Death and the Afterlife. Scheffler argues that Williams is wrong about the desirability of immortality, but may have nevertheless highlighted a paradox at the heart of the human condition. I want to examine Scheffler’s argument in this post.


1. Williams’s Tedium of Immortality Argument
I have to start by reviewing Williams’s tedium of immortality argument. I don’t want to spend too long on this since I’ve written about it at length before (and, since I am not immortal, I probably shouldn’t waste the time I have).

Let's assume that most people fear their deaths and would prefer not to die. That is an assumption that guides Williams’s analysis. In preferring not to die, Williams further assumes that they would want to live forever, i.e. to have an existence that cannot come to an end. This is what he means by an immortal life. Such a life should be distinguished from one that is merely very long (e.g. 1,000 years) or super-long (e.g. 1,000,000 years). This distinction has important repercussions for assessing the impact of Williams’s argument on projects aimed at extending human lifespan. I’ll return to this point at the end of the post.

In imagining a life without end, what is it that people would be imagining? Williams suggests that they would imagine a type of existence that satisfies two conditions:

Williams’s Conditions: An immortal human life must:

(a) preserve a sense of self over time, i.e. it must be the same self that is living the life in question; 

(b) be such that the state of being in which the self will be, should it survive, allows the self to satisfy those aims it has in wanting to survive.

As regards the second of these conditions, Williams focuses on the types of desire that motivate us to continue living. He claims that there are two general classes of such desire:

Conditional/Contingent Desires: These are desires that are ephemeral and fleeting in nature, often tied to (or conditional upon) the limitations of our biology and our continued survival, e.g. the desire for food, shelter, sex and so forth.

Categorical Desires: These are more significant desires. They are akin to life projects or plans. They are desires around which our self-worth is organised, e.g. the desire to write a great novel, raise happy and successful children, make important scientific discoveries, and so forth. 

Williams claims that the satisfaction of contingent desires, while important, is not really what makes life worth living. It is the satisfaction of categorical desires that does that. Since they are the focal point of what we do on a daily basis, it is their satisfaction that makes us want to live. Williams’s worry is that there are only so many categorical desires that one self can pursue. In the course of an immortal life, you would end up pursuing and satisfying every achievable categorical desire. Eventually, you would have nothing left to make your life worth living. You would be bored, listless and tired of life.

To put it more formally:

• (1) In order for life to worth living, one must have a set of categorical desires that one wishes to satisfy, i.e. a set of life projects around which one’s sense of self and value is organised. 

• (2) If one lives an immortal life, one would exhaust the set of categorical desires and become bored and apathetic as a result. 

• (3) Therefore, it would not be worth living an immortal life.

There are several criticisms one could make of this argument. I have pursued some of them in the past. Here, I want to focus on the second premise. For it is there that Scheffler’s concerns are directed. He claims that the arguments and examples Williams adduces in support of premise (2) are not really about immortality at all. Instead, if those arguments and examples are persuasive, they have a much wider significance.


2. Scheffler’s Criticisms
Scheffler’s critique comes in two parts. The first part argues that Williams’s argument applies just as much to a very long or super-long life as it does to an immortal one. The second part argues that — despite its irrelevance to the issue of immortality — Williams’s argument nevertheless succeeds in saying something important about the human condition.

Let’s focus on the first part of the critique. Recall that Williams uses the story of Elina Makropulos to defend his claim that an immortal life would lead to the exhaustion of categorical desires. In the story, Elina grows tired of her life after 342 years, having seen and experienced enough of the world. The first thing to acknowledge here is that no one really knows if Elina’s desire to die after 342 years is representative of what an actual human who had lived for 342 years would desire. Since no has lived that long, we are in the realm of speculation and fiction. Nevertheless, we have to also acknowledge that Williams’s argument is not dependent on this particular story. His claim is merely that we would grow tired of our lives at some point, whether that is at 342 years or 342,000 years or 3,420,000 years. This is linked to his in-principle claim that the number of categorical desires that can be pursued by one individual are limited and so will be exhausted at some point in time. The Makropulos story is simply a neat illustration of this claim. There are other fictional examples such as Robert Heinlein’s story of Lazarus Long, who lived for over 2,000 years before deciding that he wanted to die.

As it happens, the claim that the pool of categorical desires open to an individual is limited is something that Williams has been challenged on in the past. Donald Bruckner, for example, has argued that more members could be added to the set, or that there could be a renewal of interest in long-forgotten categorical desires. But let’s set this critique to the side and assume that Williams is right. If he is right, does this tell us anything about the undesirability of immortality? No; not according to Scheffler. As he points out, Williams’s complaint about the exhaustion of categorical desires has nothing to do with immortality per se. Rather, it has to do with all abnormally long life spans. If the pool of categorical desires is limited, then it will be exhausted in a finite period of time, not in one that never comes to an end.

So much for the first part of Scheffler's critique. It is the second part that is more interesting. It challenges us to think a little more deeply about why it is — according to Williams — that Elina Makropulos grows tired of her life. To do this we need to draw a distinction between two things: (i) the set of possible categorical desires; and (ii) the set of categorical desires possible for a particular self. The first set may be relatively expansive, possibly unlimited; the second set is much more constrained. And it is the second set that Williams appeals to in his argument. To be a self, a person must have a relatively fixed set of characteristics over time. For example, a shared set of memories, beliefs and desires. Williams’s point is that the set of categorical desires that it is possible for a self with a relatively fixed set of characteristics to meaningfully pursue will exhaust itself. They will run out of categorical desires that are appropriately linked to their sense of self. It is only by changing the self that the problem is avoided.

And this is where Scheffler thinks that Williams captures something fundamental to the human condition. He thinks Williams captures a tension between having a constant character (a constant sense of self) and the ability to be absorbed in or engaged by one’s activities. The problem is that becoming absorbed in one’s activities allows one to lose the sense of self. Think about entering a true “flow” state: there is nothing but the activity and the experience of the activity. The self disappears. A permanent state of such absorption would lead to the death of the self. Therefore, if we wish to maintain a sense of self, we must retreat from total absorption. But if we do this, we must recognise the limitation on the set of possible categorical desires that can be pursued by a constant self. And this is a problem because the sense of a continued self is what motivates much of the desire to continue living. As Scheffler puts it:

We want to live our lives and be engaged in the world around us. Categorical desires give us reasons to live, and they support such engagement. But when we are engaged, and so succeed in leading the kinds of lives we want, then the way we succeed is by losing ourselves in absorbing activities. When categorical desire dies, as it must do eventually if we have sufficient constancy of character to define selves worth wanting to sustain in the first place, then we will be left with ourselves, and we ourselves are, terminally, boring. The real problem is that one’s reasons to live are, in a sense, reasons not to live as oneself.   

(Scheffler 2013, 94-95)

This is the paradox at the heart of the human condition: a desire to live as oneself, but an incompatibility between that desire and a very long life as oneself.


3. Some Thoughts on Scheffler’s Argument
Is Scheffler’s second critique any good? Does he really raise an important point about the human condition? I want to close with three observations. The first is pretty simple: there is nothing in any of this that calls into question projects to extend the human lifespan beyond the current upper limits (say, about 115 years). Scheffler and Williams are talking about very long or super long lives, not about the kinds of lives we currently live. They may be right that we would eventually grow tired of ourselves, but that shouldn’t necessarily stop us from trying to see whether they are right.

The second observation is that Scheffler’s critique concedes a lot of ground to Williams’s original argument. If you reject Williams’s key concepts, you might be less persuaded by what Scheffler has to say. One thing that niggles with me is the concept of self, and constancy of the self, that seems to be operating in this discussion. Both Scheffler and Williams assume that the self must be pretty constant over time, otherwise the self dies. But it’s not clear to me that this must be true. One popular theory of self-identity is the Lockean or psychological theory. According to this, in order for a particular person to remain the same over time, all that is required is that the different temporal stages of that person share, overlapping psychological states. So, for example, in order for the me-today to be the same self as the me-tomorrow, the me-tomorrow must remember the me-today, and share some of my beliefs and desires. But there is no requirement that the set of shared psychological states remain absolutely constant over time. The me-in-fifty-years-time may remember nothing about the me-today, but that wouldn’t necessarily rule out a continued sense of self. Each link in the chain between me-in-fifty-year and me-today may share overlapping characteristics, even if the me-today shares nothing with the me-in-fifty-years. That wouldn’t compromise the sense of self over time, nor the desire of that self, at all times, to continue living. Of course, it may still be true that the pool of categorical desires will be exhausted, but it needn’t be because we grow tired of ourselves.

The third observation is perhaps more important. It is that Scheffler and Williams may nevertheless say something important about the value of having a constant sense of self. I value my sense of self. Having certain projects and plans, and weaving them into some kind of coherent narrative is something that I strive to do with my life. But maybe this strife is misguided. One of the recurring themes of mystics and gurus down through the ages is that true enlightenment comes from the abandonment of the self. This insight has often been linked to religious ideologies, but there is nothing intrinsically religious about it. Indeed, this is the central thesis of Sam Harris’s book Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality without Religion, which is all about how secularists and atheists can embrace spiritual practice. And it may be the case that the insight gained from such practice, specifically the loss of self, will reveal that the desire for continued, perpetual survival of that self is also misguided. It may be that the pure momentary absorption in experience will call into question the value of a self.

What this means for the desirability of immortality is another question, and Scheffler has an argument of his own about that. I will take a look at that argument another time.

Enhancement and authenticity: Is it all about being true to our selves?

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I’ve met Erik Parens twice; he seems like a thoroughly nice fellow. I say this because I’ve just been reading his latest book Shaping Our Selves: On Technology, Flourishing and a Habit of Thinking, and it is noticeable how much of his personality shines through in the book. Indeed, the book opens with a revealing memoir of Parens’s personal life and experiences in bioethics, specifically in the enhancement debate. What’s more, Parens’s frustrations with the limiting and binary nature of much philosophical debate is apparent throughout his book. The result is an interesting blend of meta-philosophical and personal reflections, with particular arguments about aspects of the enhancement debate.

This isn’t to criticise the book. Far from it. I found it an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. Parens and I certainly come from different starting points: he is far more inclined to resist the use of biotechnological enhancements than I, and has written about the phenomenon negatively in the past. But it would be silly for me to dwell on this difference here. Parens’s book is explicitly designed to offer a corrective to this “pro” or “con” mentality. His central argument is that those who care about how technology is used to shape our lives should embrace binocularity. That is: they should be willing to oscillate between competing perspectives. For example, they should acknowledge that humans are both biological machines, capable of being tinkered with and adjusted, as well as subjects and agents, capable of dreaming, desiring, willing and experiencing.

The binocularity thesis is an interesting one, and one that Parens explores in several different ways. I want to focus on one of them in the remainder of this post. In chapter 3 of the book, Parens makes the claim that there is something that unites both the “knockers” and “boosters” of human enhancement, namely: they are each committed to a certain ideal of human authenticity. This is interesting since that ideal is more typically associated with the knockers of human enhancement, not the boosters. What’s more, Parens actually presents some evidence for this claim. Is this evidence any good? What are its implications? Let’s find out.


1. The Moral Ideal of Authenticity
We have to start with a closer look at the concept of authenticity. There is no sense in evaluating Parens’s evidence if we don’t know what he is talking about. We all have a vague sense of what authenticity is. It is about being true to something, to some ideal, principle, concept, or person. An authentic expression of one’s opinion is one that is pure, uncontaminated by the desire to be duplicitous or deceptive. That much is straightforward. But obviously philosophers would like a more precise and refined concept. So, unsurprisingly, Parens obliges. In his analysis, he focuses on the moral ideal of authenticity. What does he mean by this?

The answer lies in the work of Charles Taylor, a Canadian philosopher, communitarian and critic of secularism. Taylor does not write about the enhancement debate itself, but he does write about the related debated between the knockers and boosters of modernity. By “modernity” Taylor means to refer to the philosophical, political and scientific ideals that emerged from the enlightenment era. One of those ideals was the ideal of authenticity. This ideal can be understood in the following way:

Moral Ideal of Authenticity: In living your life, you must be true to your own way of being, i.e. your own path to self-fulfillment. If you are not true to this, you miss the point of life, you miss what being human is really all about. Being true to oneself means overcoming impediments to self-understanding, and knowing what is important to one’s sense of self.

In short, you must to true to yourself, to your sense of what your life is about. When Taylor and Parens speak of this being a moral ideal, I do not think they mean for it to be an ideal related to obligation or duty; rather, I think they mean for it to be a statement of prudential axiology, i.e. as a claim about how to live the good life.

One of Taylor’s most important arguments is that this ideal of authenticity has been misunderstood in the debate between the knockers and boosters of modernity. Critics of modernity think of the ideal in terms of selfishness, self-indulgence and the egotistical desire to get what you want from life, without any real concern for others. The critics propose, in lieu of this, the ideal of the virtuous life, one that involves the cultivation and sustenance of certain forms of excellence. Taylor argues that the critics miss the fact that both they and the boosters share the ideal of authenticity. They both have a particular conception of what it means to live a human and fulfilling existence — one that is true to the self. Where they differ is in how they cash out that ideal.

Parens claims that a similar misunderstanding plagues the debate between the knockers and boosters of bio-enhancement. What is this misunderstanding? (Note: throughout what follows I will be assuming no major difference between what is referred to as “enhancement” and what is referred to as “treatment”. This is somewhat in keeping with Parens’s own approach, since he prefers to conceive of the debate in terms of technology that is used to shape the self, and prefers not to prejudge whether it is actually an enhancement. No doubt, I should have switched to Parens’s terminology, but I persevere with the term “enhancement” on the grounds that the term is so prevalent and can reasonably cover the types of biotechnology discussed in the following examples.)


2. Authenticity and the Enhancement Debate
Parens argues that the misunderstanding between the knockers and boosters of enhancement hinges on the attachment people have to certain aspects of their characters and abilities. The knockers of enhancement are grateful for certain fixed characteristics and feel that those characteristics are essential to who they are (their authentic selves). Likewise, the boosters of enhancement are impressed by the human ability to create identity, to act to fulfill certain projects, plans and aspirations. They feel that following that model of self-creation is being true to their authentic selves.

But this is just a general characterisation of the competing conceptions. As I said in the introduction, one of the more compelling aspects of Parens’s argument is the evidence he amasses in support of the claim that these conceptions share a commitment to authenticity. It is really this evidence that I want to focus on. That evidence comes from two main sources. First, from academic commentators — members of the knocker or booster brigades — and second, from statements by people who have used or rejected the use of bio-enhancements. In the interests of clarity, I will simply list this evidence, coding it as E₁, E₂…E_n as I go along. I will also provide links to the original sources after each description:

E₁ - Elliot’s Discussion of Medical Enhancement: The first bit of evidence comes from Carl Elliot’s book Better than Well, which is a critique of how Americans engage with certain types of medical treatment. Elliot has two major concerns about how certain drugs — e.g. anti-depressants — are promoted and used. He worries in the first instance that the drugs will alienate people from who they really are, and in the second instance that they will alienate us from how the world really is. For example, an anti-depressant might cure us of our melancholy, but also lead us to ignore problems with our personal and social environments. Maybe we are depressed by our unfulfilling jobs or by the degree of social injustice we experience, and maybe the drugs mask what is a proportionate response to our predicament. In other words, maybe the drugs prevent us from living a truly authentic life. (Source: Elliot)

E₂ - Kramer and DeGrazia’s Support of Anti-Depressants: The second bit of evidence comes from the work of Peter Kramer and David DeGrazia. They both make arguments for the use of drugs like Prozac that appeal to the ability of the drugs to remove certain impediments to self-fulfillment. A person could be crippled by depression and unable to achieve some goal or project that is an important part of their self-conception. By using the drugs, they free themselves to be true to their own ideals of self-fulfillment. Again, that seems to be an appeal to the ability to live an authentic life.(Sources: Kramer, DeGrazia)

E₃ - The Paxil Ad: Paxil is an anti-depressant drug, similar in chemical operation to Prozac (i.e. it’s an SSRI). An ad appeared for Paxil in a medical journal many years ago which spoke of the “imprisoned patient” and then showed an image of an unfinished sculpture. The message was clear: the patient suffering from depression was like the unfinished sculpture. They were trapped in a block of marble, waiting to be freed. Paxil would enable them to do this. It would free the true self that was being masked by the illness. (Source: Could not find a copy of the ad)

E₄ - Debate about Cochlear Implants: The fourth bit of evidence comes from the debate between those who use and those who reject the use of cochlear implants. As Parens points out, some members of the Deaf community reject the use of such implants on the grounds that deafness is an essential aspect of their self-identity (partly constitutive of their authentic selves). Contrariwise, there are those who embrace the use of cochlear implants because they allow them to be more truly human. For example, Michael Chorost, who wrote a book entitled Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made me More Human, claims that the cochlear implant allowed him to experience the world more fully — almost the opposite of Elliot’s concern about anti-depressants alienating us from reality. (Sources: Crouch, Chorost)

E₅ - Women who get Cosmetic Surgery: The fifth bit of evidence comes from the work of Kathy Davis, a sociologist who interviewed women who received cosmetic surgery (e.g. breast enlargements or reductions). She was struck by how these women tended to report a similar motivation for seeking the surgery. They claimed to have a body part that didn’t belong — that didn’t fit with their true identity — and they needed to have it altered to express their true selves. (Source: Davis)

E₆ - Debate about Treatment for ADHD: The sixth bit of evidence is drawn from ethnographic work by Ilina Singh on children diagnosed with ADHD. Again, Parens notes how the language of authenticity permeates the views of those who embrace and those who reject pharmacological treatment for their condition. Those who embrace it think the drugs enable their moral agency (their ability to express themselves through action), while those who reject it think the drugs change who they really are. (Note: the majority of Singh’s subjects seemed to think they benefited from treatment). (Source: Singh)

E₇ - Poets using Anti-Depressants: The seventh bit of evidence comes from the experiences of poets using anti-depressants. Some poets think the drugs remove a barrier to doing their work, while others think the drugs separates them from a crucial aspect of their identities (Source: Berlin (ed)).

E₈ - Debate about Transgender Surgery: The final bit of evidence comes from the debate about gender reassignment surgery (another example of using technology to shape ourselves). There are those that reject such surgeries on the grounds that it amounts to a denial of one’s true, genderqueer, norm-challenging self. On other hand, there are those that embrace such surgeries on the grounds that they allow people to become who they truly are. Once again, we have a debate about the ideal of authenticity (Sources: Raymond, Green).

Parens also comments on similar disagreements among anorexics and those with body dysmorphia, but I’ve decided to skip over those since it is more of the same thing (with respect to the language and concepts used, not with respect to the nature of the different conditions). I think, taken together, these eight bits of evidence do provide some reasonable support for Parens’s claim about the pervasiveness of authenticity in the enhancement debate. Of course, Parens’s argument isn’t intended to be a true scientific or empirical argument. It is, rather, an interpretation of a range of different textual sources. It provides some initial support for a hypothesis that could (if the interest was there) be taken up by psychologists and other researchers in the future. Further experiments could be used to determine whether people really do conceive of the pros and cons of enhancement in terms of the ideal of authenticity.


3. What are the implications of this?
But assume for the moment that Parens is correct. What follows from this? Does it matter for the enhancement debate? Or should that debate continue as it has done? Does the pervasiveness of authenticity have any practical implications for how we approach the use of enhancement? I think some things do follow (weakly), and I want to close with three examples.

The first, which maps with what Parens himself seems to think, is that it may encourage a less divisive approach to the issue. The ideal of authenticity is about remaining true to some characteristic or aspect of yourself and your situation in the world. If Parens is right, then the knockers of enhancement prioritise some characteristics (e.g. their ADHD, depression or deafness), whereas the boosters prioritise others (e.g. their desire to pursue certain goals, to free certain aspects of their selves that they feel are hindered by a condition or disability). Within certain limitations, there is no reason why these different ideals cannot live side by side. Indeed, this is something that disability theorists often claim. They say we should not view one mode of living as being intrinsically better or worse than another; rather, we should accept that there are simply many different modes of living, each with their own value. There is no reason why the knockers and boosters can’t embrace this pluralism.

The second observation is that there is some reason to retreat from this pluralism, at least if it is understood in an extreme way. Although it is no doubt true that several different ideals of authenticity can live side-by-side, it is also true that certain ideals have implications beyond the implications to the one living the authentic life. For example, should a paedophile or serial rapist be encouraged to reject chemical castration on the grounds that their sexual preferences are an essential part of their authentic selves? The proposition seems troubling. Surely there are some conceptions of an “authentic life” that cannot be wholly tolerated and which people should be encouraged to reject? If that’s right, then we can only have pluralism up to a point. (Note: I speak here of “encouragement” not of “compulsion”).

The final observation is of a more personal nature. By this, I don’t mean that the observation is about me and the way I live my life, but rather that it is about the kinds of decisions we all make about our lives. By drawing attention to how different ideals of authenticity operate within the enhancement debate, Parens’s argument also encourages us to think more seriously about what is important to us in our own lives. What characteristics and attributes are of value? Which of them would we like to preserve? Which would we like to modify? Maybe our melancholic moods are integral to our creativity and self-expression, maybe they are not. Either way, maybe we should take a more reflective and considered approach to the use of particular enhancement technologies. In doing so, we could avoid falling into the trap of being a knee-jerk knocker (as Parens once was) or a knee-jerk booster (as I tend to be).

That might be the most important lesson to draw from Parens’s book.