It all started when supporting act, Universum – a death metal band from Adelaide (city of churches) – introduced their second last song as titled, ‘Redemption’. This immediately piqued my curiosity; religious themes (though usually of a denigrating spirit) are typical in the metal scene, which derives so much of its counter-culture identity by standing in tension, if not outright opposition to the mainstream – be it on matters of religion, gender-stereotypes, sexuality, political-correctness or even fashion. But, for a so-called ‘death metal’ band, I couldn’t help but feel that this particularly positive and uplifting Christian notion of salvation sat rather uncomfortably in the supposedly dark and ostensibly vicious environment of a metal concert. My suspicions were all-too-soon confirmed, though, when, through the screaming growls of the singers, I managed to make out that the song’s chorus consisted of the words, ‘Pray for me and I will pray for you.’

Not that everyone in the audience noticed, mind you. During the interval, while going for a slash, I overheard the conversation of a group of fans who had congregated in the toilets for a chat and a beer (as you do). They were all standing around, grunting (as opposed to singing) the praises of Universum for their “brutal” and “aggressive” performance. But, although the consensus seemed to be that Universum were rock solid, one of the discussants had to admit, “I had absolutely no idea what the singer was saying through all that growling and screaming. But I guess that’s the point, right?”

One had to wonder … but, presently, the main act was about to begin.

Admittedly, Dragonforce is not your average metal band. For one thing, they can actually play their instruments with some degree of virtuosity. For another, they don’t really seem to take themselves all that seriously, with playful, self-deprecating theatrics and promos. But what has to be their most distinguishing feature is their highly melodic and melodramatically epic sound; kinda like having the theme-song to Neverending Story sped up and distorted, with a pulsing, double-bass drum belting out underneath it all. For all that, they’re still regarded as a legit’ metal band, as was clear from the amount of black being worn at the Forum that night.

Now, my point isn’t to review the performance itself (though, for what it’s worth, I think they were far better suited to the smaller, more compact floor-plan of the Hi-Fi bar, in which they played the year before; their proverbial boots now being slightly too big for them). But I do want to share a realisation that was later born out, at home, by examining the lyrics sheet. The realisation is this: whether they’re conscious of it or not, Dragonforce are a Christian band.

I hadn’t really paid much attention to the lyrics of their songs before (though I could make out that it had a lot to do with ‘freedom’ and ‘eternity’). Nor had I noticed anything ‘untoward’ in the many reviews surrounding the release of the new Dragonforce albums or their immanent tour Downunder. But, check it: if these lyrics aren’t religiously themed, I’ll go He for tiggy:

‘…our kingdom, we stand as one and we will live for always evermore…’
‘…finally all the world will see / rise again before the endless silence…’
‘…true believers rise now …’
‘… pray now united…’
‘… the vision divine…’
‘…pray for the silence … til we touch the horizon beyond…’
‘… rise again this quest for our salvation…’
‘… one dream in all of us still shining / one star the everlasting light …’
‘… the end in paradise…’
‘… salvation of mankind returns / and still we save a prayer for the world / life brings hope for us all …’
‘… a light for the world will save us tonight / redemption still so far away …’
‘… pray tonight as we try to understand…’
‘… forever my soul will ascend / one last chance of glory …’

Okay, so they’re a Christian music group. So what? Well, perhaps nothing. Perhaps, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that the only difference between a Dragonforce concert and a Hillsong spiritual congregation is that the lights are turned down low at the former, though both involve youths coming together to join in celebration of God, in rapture, in convulsions, in group psychosis. But the thing I really don’t like about it is: I’m not sure that the Dragonforce fans even know that’s what they’re doing.

As I said before, if you head off to church on a Sunday, you pretty much know what you’re in for. Now, I’m all for informed purchasing and have no beef with the fact that Australian music, DVDs, and games all come with warnings regarding explicit lyrics, violence, and supernatural themes. But, you gotta ask: how come religious content doesn’t register on the category of ‘supernatural themes’?

Ross Barham

ROSS CAMPBELL BARHAM
19.08.2008
School of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Social Inquiry
The University of Melbourne

0. In my thesis, I intend to advance an understanding of objectivity as essentially a methodological process that epistemologically underlies all other (relevant) senses of the concept. It is therefore incumbent upon me to demonstrate that previous, alternative conceptions are insufficient. Such then will be the overall objective of this paper [excuse the pun]. The writings of Gottlob Frege, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and Robert Nozick, will all be treated in turn.

1. Immanuel Kant is often cited as the progenitor of the modern sense of the objective-subjective distinction.  After all, it was the profound influence (if not, perhaps, the intention) of his Critique of Pure Reason that led to the inversion of the pre-Kantian understanding, which held that the objective pertained to ideas in the mind, wheeas the subjective pertained to the world external to the mind (i.e. that which is the subject of the mind’s eye). However, while Kant’s philosophy may well have been the efficient cause of the reversal, given that his transcendental idealism does not appear to sit naturally with the realist commitments the concept of objectivity is usually taken to presume nowadays, it would be hasty, I think, to view it as the formal cause. For this reason – and hence also leaving aside the likes of Hegel and Husserl – it is Gottlob Frege’s paper, On Sense and Reference, which will act as the first noteworthy, philosophical employment of the modern concept of objectivity.

In the famous 1892 paper, Frege seeks to invoke proper names as the bearers of reference to ontological entities existing in their own right. He also wishes to acknowledge (but downplay) what he calls the sense of such names; thus, the names ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ have the different senses of evening star and morning star respectively, although both refer to the same object (i.e. the planet Venus).

In contrast to the purely subjective nature of our ideas, Frege classes both sense and reference as ‘objective, inasmuch as [they] can be used by several observers.’ However, for Frege, it is reference alone that is truly objective. This is because Frege holds that proper nouns epistemically refer to ontological objects. Thus he writes, ‘The reference of a proper name is the object itself, which we designate by its means.’ By this we can appreciate, then, ‘… the reference of a sign [may be] an object perceivable by the senses’ and, furthermore, ‘places, instants, stretches of time, are [also], logically considered, objects; [and] hence the linguistic designation of a definite place, a definite instant, or a stretch of time is to be regarded as a proper name.’

In response to the sceptical question as to how we can be sure that reference is not just a particular mode of sense, without any guarantee of being veridical, the second quarter of Frege’s paper is devoted to elaborating the following four points:

(1) ‘we [typically] presuppose a reference’ when we speak;
(2) a sentence ‘loses value for us as soon as we recognize that the reference of one of its parts is missing’;
(3) it is ‘the striving for truth that drives us always to advance from the sense to the reference’; and
(4) ‘the truth value of a sentence is its reference’.

However, although he never explicitly acknowledges them as such, it is perhaps because all of these arguments are, in one way or another, either fallacious or unsound, that Frege embarks upon the more analytic, latter portion of the paper, where he systematically sets out to determine whether, universally, ‘one subordinate clause [of a sentence[ can be substituted for the other without harm to the truth.’

Famously, it turns out that not all such substitutions are unharmful.

‘This [Frege claims] arises from an imperfection of language, from which even the symbolic language of mathematical analysis is not altogether free.’ Whereas, ‘a logically perfect language ([i.e. Frege’s own] Begriffschrift) should satisfy the conditions, that every expression grammatically well constructed as a proper name out of signs already introduced shall in fact [directly] designate an object, and that no new sign shall be introduced as a proper name without being secured a [direct] reference.’

The idea here is that a logically perfect language would finally be able to identify and eradicate any possibility of references without referents, and, so, be able answer the skeptic’s concerns. If, for instance, the proper noun, ‘Ricki Bliss’, were to be introduced into the language, something resembling a background check would be made, so to speak, to ensure that all the indirect references we typically make of Ricki (such as, ‘the girl who says ‘pleeease’ so characteristically’), actually do refer to the object we know by the sign, ‘Ricki Bliss’. And if they don’t, they’d be promptly deleted from the language. Similarly, if we found ourselves with a potentially indirect reference, such as ‘the creator and overseer of the universe’, a logically perfect language would be able to logically determine if its apparent reference existed or not.

It’s an appealing thought, and may well have inspired, both, the philosophy of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and the verificationist movement.  But, even so, it is not sufficiently grounded to serve here as the basis for an understanding of objectivity. This is for two reasons:

(1) Firstly, the objectivity of the proposed underlying logic (the Begriffschrift) itself remains to be established. While I do believe that the superior objectivity of formal systems, such as are found in logic and mathematics, can be readily demonstrated, Frege’s own account is remiss in doing so.
(2) Secondly (and, I believe, more significantly), even by Frege’s own lights it is admitted that our knowledge of the world is finite and limited. As he writes near the opening of the article under consideration: ‘Comprehensive knowledge of [a] reference would require us to say immediately whether any given sense belongs to it. To such knowledge we never attain.’ But, if this is the case, it seems implausible that we could do away with our reliance on empirical means for expanding our general knowledge of objects in the world (regardless of the supposed logical perfection of his sought-after language). And, while, admittedly, it is outside the scope of his article, nonetheless, Frege himself offers no explanation (general or specific) as to, either, whether or how this subsidiary process might be more or less objective.

In conclusion, then, while Frege’s philosophy indicates promising inroads to a deeper understanding of the nature of objectivity, the account he provides is not sufficiently grounded or comprehensive for the purpose of providing a full account of objectivity.

2. A criticism similar to the one made above, can be levelled against Thomas Nagel’s famous work of 1986, The View from Nowhere.

Nagel writes of objectivity as being a process of ‘step[ping] back from our initial view, and form[ing] a new conception which has that view and its relation to the world as its object.’  But, although he acknowledges that ‘sometimes it will be thought to yield a result when it really doesn’t’,  he offers no explanation for how and when we are to avoid such errors. That is to say, Nagel’s variety of objectivity is not sufficiently explained (or instructed) so as to guarantee authenticity. (Similar such criticisms are often made of mystical transcendence, although at least they provide ‘proofs’ in the (admittedly still contentious) forms of miracles, halos and compassion.) Presumably, Nagel believes that the type of philosophical analysis he undertakes to develop this view, is itself inherently objective. But, in Nagel (as with Frege), this condition of self-reflexivity is left wanting.

That said, this is not the principle criticism to be made of Nagel’s account. Instead, an insight may be effectively borrowed from Andrew Collier’s In Defence of Objectivity.

Therein Collier makes the distinction between intentional and reflexive objectivity. As an example he compares the nature-of and relation-between Theology and Religious Studies. The former is said to be intentional, whereas the latter is reflexive. Thus, Theology intentionally studies God as the object of religion, whereas Religious Studies reflexively contemplates religion (including Theology) as its object.

On the face of it, Collier’s account may seem very close to Nagel’s own characterisation. To quote Nagel at some length:

We can add to our knowledge of the world by accumulating information at a given level – by extensive observation from one standpoint. But we can raise our understanding to a new level only if we examine that relation between the world and ourselves which is responsible for our prior understanding, and form a new conception that includes a more detached understanding of ourselves, of the world, and of the interaction between them. Thus objectivity allows us to transcend our particular viewpoint and develop an expanded consciousness that takes in the world more fully. All this applies to values and attitudes as to beliefs and theories.

Thus, Nagel would presumably hold that Religious Studies is more objective than Theology. This, I suspect, is a fairly natural and common assumption to make, especially insofar as it is generally recognised that the sciences are able to attain to such high degrees of objectivity in their observations and experiments, essentially by measuring the measurer via rigorous processes of calibration, and the calculation of margins of error and degrees of confidence. But, while it is perhaps natural to think this, it is misguided, nonetheless. The sciences use such self-monitoring techniques not to adopt new, reflexive viewpoints. Rather they do so as an inherent part of the base-level, intentional perspective. By analogy, then, a traditional theologian, such as St Augustine, might be thought to ‘calibrate’ his faculties via the recitation of a canonical prayer, rather than the establishment of an additional, reflexive discipline. Furthermore, if, as Nagel’s own account admits, ‘the process [of objectification] can be repeated, yielding … still more objective conception[s]’, when is the process thought to end? As Collier puts it:

If, out of respect for reflexive objectivity, one were to declare only Religious Studies and not Theology as a respectable academic discipline, a sociologist of knowledge who made it their business to study Religious Studies departments could, with as much justice, substitute their discipline for Religious Studies, only to be displaced in turn by a psychologist who studied sociologists of knowledge, and so on.

The force of this scenario is not as trite as it may first seem. Collier is not, for instance, merely saying that, absolute objectivity cannot pragmatically be realised because it would presumably involve an infinite hierarchy of reflexive disciplines. Rather, he is trying to point out that greater objectivity does not necessarily arise from having such transcendental hierarchies, either for the lower or the higher levels. As he quite rightly emphasises: “What reflexive objectivity can never be is the criterion of intentional objectivity. The sociologist of science cannot judge whether the science studied is bad science, only why it is when it is.”  That is to say, the nature of objectivity and its legitimate sources must be established and determined from within the intentional viewpoint itself. The addition of a reflexive viewpoint only raises the further question of how it then can be assured objectivity itself. The reflexive position, however, cannot, merely by virtue of being reflexive, hope for itself greater objectivity than its object. Nor will it provide a criterion of objectivity for the base-level, intentional viewpoint. And finally, while an intentional viewpoint may well be able to attain for itself greater objectivity by becoming more self-reflexive as a result of establishing a reflexive viewpoint, such increased objectivity will only be worthwhile if it pertains to the a greater understanding of the intentional object. So, for Theology, if greater objectivity is to be attained via a self-reflexive appreciation of the findings and theories advanced in Religious Studies, such increased objectivity will only be valuable insofar as it pertains to the intentional object of Theological inquiry (i.e. God). That this seems like a big ask for Religious Studies is, I think, no small charge against Nagel. Obviously, the more ways we come at the world, the greater our chances of comprehensively understanding it will become. But, for greater comprehensiveness to entail greater objectivity (which I admit that it often does), we require a deeper understanding of what it is about objectivity itself that makes it amenable not only to comprehensiveness, but a whole range of other phenomena.

3. In his 1995 work, The Construction of Social Reality, John Searle proposes the statement, ‘Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the year 1632’, as being exemplary of an objective judgement. He claims that such a judgement is objective because its truth or falsity depends entirely on objective facts; i.e. that the person known as ‘Rembrandt’ lived in the geographical location, now called ‘Amsterdam’ by speakers of the English language, during the period of time denoted as ‘1632(CE)’ in the modern, Western calendar. Such facts, we are told, are held to be objective insofar as they are independent of any subjective entities (i.e. ‘attitudes, feelings, or points of view’).

But what Searle calls ‘objective judgements’ would be better referred to as ‘judgements pertaining to matters of objective fact’. This would allow us to more clearly distinguish between the character of the focus to which a judgemental statement pertains, and the nature of the epistemic process or methodology by which a judgement is arrived at.

By way of illustration, we can readily imagine (if not actually recall) an incompetent History teacher that, whenever his memory failed him, would simply make-up judgemental statements, such as ‘Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam during the year 1632’, on the basis of mere whim or fancy. Let us suppose, for instance, that the so-called ‘teacher’ arrived at the particular year, 1632, owing entirely to the aesthetic appeal that this arrangement of numbers had for him. Similarly, the country, Amsterdam, may well have been chosen because, as we can picture him saying, I hope to visit there one of these days.
While the statement in question certainly pertains to a matter of objective fact, such that, ultimately, ‘the facts in the world that [would] make [it] true or false are independent of anybody’s attitudes or feelings about them’, nonetheless, I think it would be remiss to call any statement arrived at via such an inappropriately subjective process, an objective judgement.

In contrast, Searle’s characterisation of subjective judgements certainly comes closer to the mark, when he explains that they ‘cannot be settled “objectively”’. Rightly, any judgement that cannot be settled – that is, arrived at – objectively, must necessarily fall within the category of subjective judgements. However, this is not necessarily the case because ‘the truth or falsity is not a simple matter of fact’. Take, for instance, the statement, ‘Rembrandt had ten siblings, no more than six of which survived’. Obviously, the ultimate truth or falsity of this statement depends on the objective facts of the matter. That is to say, the statement pertains to matters of objective fact. However, we could imagine that, owing to a lack or loss of documentation, records and the like, the issue might have been a matter of some obscurity.  Further, we can imagine that, under such circumstances, the diary of Rembrandt’s nanny could one day be discovered; wherein she retrospectively ponders, from her old age, the very question at issue. Unfortunately, however, she records that she is also at a loss to vividly recall either the exact number of children in her charge or their names (except, of course, for the famous ‘Rembrandt’). Nevertheless, she feels confident that there must have been no more than seven children in total under her charge, “for [(as we could imagine her writing)] any more would surely have exceeded my then limited capacities”. Here we have the case of a subjective judgement being made – for its arrival ‘depends on certain attitudes, feelings, and points of view of the makers and the hearers of the judgement’ – although the matter in question is one of objective fact.

Searle rightly states that a judgement must be subjective if it ‘cannot be settled “objectively”’, but he mistakenly concludes that this must be because ‘the truth or falsity [of the matter in question] is not a simple matter of fact.’ But in the above hypothetical, we have an instance where the truth or falsity ultimately depends upon ‘a simple matter of fact’, and yet our epistemic access to it is obscured such that we may find it necessary (and even acceptable) to rely on the subjective testimony of an individual’s feelings and attitudes. We would certainly agree with Searle that, in this case, the subsequent judgement, ‘Rembrandt had ten siblings, no more than six of which survived’, would then fall under the category of subjective judgements. But only because contingent limitations on our epistemic access means that the matter ‘cannot be settled “objectively”’; not because ‘the truth or falsity [of the matter in question] is not a simple matter of fact.’

To come at this point from another angle, let us attempt an examination of the model subjective judgement provided by Searle: ‘Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens.’

Searle claims that epistemic subjectivity arises because the truth or falsity ‘depends on certain attitudes, feelings, and points of view of the makers and the hearers of the judgement’ [Italics added]. On the face of it, this characterisation appears more promising in that his reference to ‘markers’ and ‘hearers’ implies that it is the process whereby a judgement is arrived at that makes all the difference. However, let us again pry apart the difference between judgements that pertain to matters of subjectivity, from judgements that are arrived at via a subjective process or methodology.

On the face of it, the statement, ‘Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens’ appears as though it must be utterly dependent upon the existence of certain subjective entities, such as pleasure and beauty. In an ontological sense, this is certainly the case; subjective entities, such as aesthetic or moral evaluations, would surely not exist were it not for their instantiation in the attitudes, feelings, and points of view of subjects (human or otherwise). Epistemically, however, the matter is more complicated. Take, for instance, the statement, ‘I, John Searle, think that Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens.’ Admittedly, the truth or falsity of this judgement must ultimately rest with the attitudes, feelings, or point of view of the maker of the judgement (John Searle). That is, the judgement pertains to a matter of, what I shall call, ‘subjective fact’. However, it is nonetheless conceivable that Searle could arrive at an objective judgement regarding this statement. Imagine, for instance, Searle submitting himself to a functional, magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) scan. Drawing upon ever-increasingly-vast neuroscientific research, he could seek to determine whether or not the parts of the brain associated with pleasure, show greater neural activity in his own brain when exposed to the visual stimulus of paintings by Rembrandt, than by that of Rubens. If such results were indeed forthcoming, Searle could make the (more) objective judgement, ‘I, John Searle, think that Rembrandt is a better artist than Rubens.’ If, on the other hand, such results were not forthcoming, then we can imagine the vastly more curious scenario of Searle undergoing deep and protracted psychoanalysis, only to someday realise he only said that he thought Rembrandt was a better artist than Rubens, because, unconsciously, he desperately wanted to please his father, who was a passionate connoisseur of Rembrandt’s work. Again, here the truth or falsity of the judgement ultimately depends upon its focus (i.e. the attitudes, feelings, or point of view of the maker of the judgement), but its epistemic objectivity certainly does not.

Obviously, the more general statement of Rembrandt’s artistic superiority is a far more complicated matter than can be treated of here, but, I think the point stands nonetheless: Searle’s model statement of a subjective judgement does not, by itself reveal anything about the nature of subjectivity, for, it is not the focus of a judgement that determines its objectivity or subjectivity, but rather it is the nature of the process by which one arrives at the judgement that makes it so.

5. Robert Nozick’s last book, Invariances: The Structure of The Objective World (2001), seems to suggest, what is to me, the rather unintelligible notion that ontological entities can be more or less objective than one another.

Nozick holds what is essentially a correspondence theory of truth. Thus he writes, ‘… a statement is true if it corresponds to the facts.’  And, again, ‘If no facts make p true, then not-p is true.’

His characterisation of objectivity is borrowed heavily from the sciences; specifically, from their notion of frame invariances, which determine objectivity according to ‘the degree qualitative and quantitative descriptions of physical phenomena remain unchanged when the phenomena are observed under a variety of conditions’.  Thus, Nozick claims that, that which is objective will remain ‘invariant under all possible transformations.’  I’ve worded this rather unnaturally because it is here, in identifying the ‘that which…’ that we encounter difficulties.

Nozick points out that there are fundamentally two types of possible transformations. One is a transformation in what he calls mapping, and the other is brought about by an actual change in what is mapped. So, when I look and see that there is a glass in front of me, and then I reach out and pick it up, if the two ‘mappings’ – one visual, and the other material or kinaesthetic – rightly correspond so that the glass I see is the glass that I so gracefully raise before me, then I have grounds for thinking my judgement, ‘there is a glass on the table in front of me’ is more objective than might have otherwise been if I had reached out and found there was no material glass to pick up.

To give another example, where a transformation reveals a lesser degree of objectivity: Nozick points out that the statement, ‘Eighty degrees Celsius is twice as hot as forty degrees’ can be shown to be weakly objective, given that were the relative temperature measurements converted to Fahrenheit, they would be 104° and 176° respectively. The reason why this is so, is, of course, that Celsius and Fahrenheit are both arbitrary scales of temperature. Both are as good as each other for our everyday purposes, and both are objective to the extent that the scales are standardised in order that different thermometers of different compositions can be calibrated to produce corresponding results. But if we wished to make the objective statement, ‘Substance A is twice as thermodynamically active as substance B, we would need to produce a scale that mapped (that is, reflected) the deep nature of temperature (i.e. thermodynamics).

This sense of objectivity, revealed through invariances in mapping, reflects the common sense understanding of objectivity, and I believe that it is the one scientists are primarily using when they invoke frame invariances as ‘objective’. However, Nozick also seems to want to attribute objectivity according to invariances of actual changes in the world. Thus, Nozick would want to claim that atoms are more objective than the objects they constitute, because, while the objects will come and go, the atoms will, more than likely, remain much the same. Now, illustrated like this, perhaps Nozick’s characterisation might not seem all that incomprehensible. But, nonetheless, I suspect that he is conflating epistemology with ontology. Consider the following:

The veridical concept of atoms is perhaps more objective than, say, the concept of glasses. This because glasses are predominately cultural artefacts; they are functional and fashionable; the materials and methods by which they are created change and evolve, and reflect all manner of technological, economic, and sociological aspects of our world. For this reason, then, our concept of what glasses are, will necessarily be imbued by our subjectivity. But, I contend, it is the concept, not the object-glasses themselves that will, therefore, only ever be weakly objective.

This, however, is not what Nozick wishes to say.  For Nozick, the shape of an object such as a wine glass is less objective than that of, say, a sphere. No matter which way you flip, rotate or twist the sphere or the angle from which it is viewed, it will retain the same shape. Whereas the observed shape of a glass changes according to the perspective and angle from which it is viewed. Such relative objectivity, Nozick seems to hold, pertains not to our ability to know the objective shape of an object, but, rather, to the shape of the object itself

Consider, on the other hand, the concept of Atoms. Postmodern theorists have hammered home the seemingly inescapable fact that even our most rigorous scientific concepts are still and will always be cultural artefacts. In this sense, phenomena like scientific paradigms and the nature of induction, may detract from an ideal, absolutely objective conception of atoms.

However, again I want to claim that these considerations pertain only to the possible objectivity of our concepts, not to the objects themselves. Indeed, the fact that our conception of atomic structure relies so heavily on non-individualising entities such as protons, neutrons, electrons, quarks, etc., so that, apart from the highly peculiar feature of spin, most atoms of a particular elemental configuration are indistinguishable from one another, means only that, if our conception is indeed veridical and two atoms are as alike as can be, then our conception of them can more readily be objective than might have otherwise been if their properties were more individuated. That is to say, the properties of an object may allow for greater objectivity in our judgements regarding them, but does nothing to indicate the objective status of the object or its properties themselves.

Again, this not what Nozick wants to say. In reference to the issue of whether objects that limit the objectiveness of our judgements are therefore taken to be themselves ontologically less objective, Nozick asks the following questions, ‘Is the distance between two points less real or less objective than the connectedness of space? Can the distance between two points be less objective than a torus structure?’ He willing acknowledges that ‘a more guarded position [(such as the one I’m rooting for)] would not hold that the topological properties are more objective … but that [they] are deeper, more fundamental, more basic. [Meaning that,] alterations that change other properties leave the[se basic ones] untouched…’  But, as Nozick says himself, “[He] prefer[s] to see the matter less cautiously…’ , instead talking about a thing’s surface and underlying objectiveness.

As I said before, this view is unintelligible to me. Of course, by itself this doesn’t necessarily mean that Nozick is wrong (although I have already provided something of an alternative, workable explanation). Allow me, then, to attempt to pin-point what exactly I think is wrong with Nozick’s account.

If we take both ontological and epistemic objectivity to mean ‘independence from the subjective influences of consciousness (including attitudes, feelings, etc.)’, then, one possible way of construing this would be to hold that the most objective objects are those (un)found on the dark side of the universe, so to speak; that which is beyond our ability to ever know or interact with (such as entities existing outside the event-horizon of our shared light cone). Of course, this is not what is typically meant when we speak of objectivity, but I suspect the contrast will help us more fully understand what we do normally mean.

Objective ontological entities are commonly said to be independent of subjectivity insofar as they and their properties would exist even if no one were conscious of them. But, it seems that according to Nozick’s view, it is an object’s ability to fully reveal itself to consciousness, which determines its ontological objectivity. Consider, however, the two shapes shown in Figure 1: The sphere reveals the same shape no matter which way it is manipulated. But, by stretching our imaginations a little, we could suppose that, no matter how we manipulated the second shape, to us it always presented the one aspect, so that, while we may objectively believe that its shape was invariantly step-like, its true ontological objectiveness would remain obscured from our view.

In this light, we can better appreciate that while objective entities need not exist beyond our ken, the thought that they might is what grounds our normal understanding of them as independent of subjective consciousness. This is to say, contra Nozick: epistemic objectivity is rightly thought to reveal ontologically objective aspects of the world, but it cannot be thought to determine them.

Ross Barham, 2008

Newcomb’s paradox has it that an accurate prediction is made of your future behaviour upon entering a room and being presented with two options. If it is predicted that you will take both $1K and an opaque box, then nothing will have been deposited in the latter. If it is predicted that you will take the opaque box alone, then $1M will have been deposited therein. What should you do?
I will consider the paradox pragmatically, in terms of whether or not our predictive capacities could ever become accurate enough to warrant the apparent game-theoretic disadvantages of abandoning the certainty of (a possibly extra) $1K.
Leaving aside the difficulties presented by Physics (Quantum or otherwise), the scenario remains metaphysically problematic insofar as the participant in the scenario is informed of the prediction (and their freedom thereby called into question). Were they not so informed, then, taking the $1K in addition to the opaque box would obviously be the reasonable option. However, I shall argue that, with advances in Empirical Psychology, these difficulties can be overcome so that taking the opaque box alone must be the right choice. This is possible in that the scenario forms a closed system, where the predictor’s interaction with any participant is predetermined and invariable.
The mistake made by those who take both boxes, then, is to think that the predictor’s interaction somehow ‘opens up’ the system; for, if it were to, then, quite rightly, it would indeed render the possibility of such a ‘prediction’ metaphysically impossible.
In conclusion, then, Newcomb’s paradox is rendered ineffectual in addressing questions of metaphysical freedom.

1. INTRODUCTION

To refresh our memories of what it is exactly we mean by Newcomb’s Paradox, allow me to reiterate the account given in the abstract to this paper:

Newcomb’s paradox has it that an accurate prediction is made of your future behaviour upon entering a room and being presented with two options. If it is predicted that you will take both $1K and an opaque box, then nothing will have been deposited in the latter. If it is predicted that you will take the opaque box alone, then $1M will have been deposited therein. What should you do?

I suspect that most people, upon first encountering this scenario, will typically trust the assurance that the predictor is accurate, and, so, will readily pass up the certainty of the supposedly ‘extra’ $1K. Indeed, from my own experience, even those who eventually come to decide that taking both boxes maximises the expected outcome, usually do so only after they’ve had the paradox laid out in front of them.

So, how do we ‘lay out the paradox’? Well, it usually takes the form of pointing out that, at the point in the scenario where one is making their decision, the opaque box either contains $1M or it doesn’t, and there is nothing one can do now to change that; for all parties agree that there is no reverse causality. At this point, then, game-theoretic tables are usually drawn up …

2-boxer    $1M    $0M
2-boxer    $1.001M    $1K
1-boxer    $1M    $0

… such that taking both boxes seemingly maximises one’s expected utility, because, regardless of whether or not the box is empty or full, the 2-boxer will be ahead of the 1-boxer by $1K.

1-boxers, however, will typically want to draw up their tables …

Correctness Dependent    ✔    ✖
2-boxer    $1K    $1.001M
1-boxer    $1M    $0

… according to whether or not the prediction was correct or not. 2-boxers may still happily accept this table, claiming that, overall, taking both boxes results in the higher expected outcome.

In order to counter such a move, 1-boxers must reflect …

1-boxer    ✔ (x1)    ✖ (x0)
2-boxer    $1K    $1K
1-boxer    $1M    $0

… what they take to be the expected likelihood that the predictor will be right rather than wrong. In this case, the 1-boxer is clearly way ahead of the 2-boxer, because, for the 1-boxer, the predictor being wrong is out of the question.

Leaving aside the ‘correctness-dependent’ table, I wish to consider a number of different arguments as to why a 2-boxer might believe that the 1-boxer table is untenable. I shall conclude that none of the arguments that will be considered here today are able to undermine what I take to be the only 1-boxer argument possible.

2. INDUCTION

As far as I know, all of the various Newcomb scenarios are careful to stipulate that the scanner’s predictive capacities are, prima facie, accurate enough to outweigh the game-theoretic disadvantages of leaving the certain $1K by the wayside. That is, if we wholeheartedly ‘trust’ the predictive accuracy of the scanner to be 100%, then, according to the option we take, the respective presence or absence of the $1M is held to be just as certain as the converse loss or gain of the $1K.

I believe that the only argument that a 1-boxer can offer for such wholehearted trust in the stipulated accuracy of the predictor must ultimately rest on inductive evidence.

Imagine, for instance, that, prior to your ‘live run’ through the Newcomb scenario, you were allowed to conduct as many experimental, ‘practise runs’ as you wished, with as many different participants as you could muster. Imagine, further, that, although you couldn’t exactly figure out how the predictions were being made, each and every time, no matter how you tried to throw off scanner’s predictions, (each and every time) it was correct in either depositing or refrained from depositing the $1M in the opaque box.

Now, although you might not be able to exactly figure out how the predictions were being made, if it was clear that they were being made according to some mechanical process that was directly responsive to the empirical data collected by the brain scan, such that you had no reason to believe that it would respond to the live run any differently than from all of the practise runs, then, when it actually came to the live run, it would be irrational to try your luck in shooting for the extra $1K. Inductively, the opaque box alone would be the safe bet.

Obviously, the Newcomb scenario, as it is normally given, does not allow for such experimentation. The participant’s live run is their first and only turn, and there is nothing in the script of the scenario to suppose that they had any inkling of such a game or such high predictive capacities ever before.

I think it would be mistaken, however, to suppose that the crux of the Newcomb paradox could be merely a matter of the participant’s gullibility. Obviously, if any of us were to find ourselves presented with the Newcomb scenario sometime later today, it would be ridiculous to trust the claim that the present day’s technology could produce a prediction as accurate as is claimed by the scenario.

The Newcomb Paradox, however, is a idealised thought-experiment, unconstrained by real-world pragmatic considerations, such as technological developments. If the scenario stipulates that the scanner’s predictive accuracy is 100%, then those who decide to trust or believe in such claims are not to be uncharitably dismissed as naively gullible.

Therefore, even though the scenario as we encounter it, does not permit the 1-boxer the inductive – even scientific – experimentation suggested, for the 1-boxer position to be in any way tenable, they must, as I see it, indirectly trust that the stated predictive accuracy had been rigorously arrived at via a process of scientific induction. Just as the majority of us do not conduct our own scientific investigations, we are nonetheless rationally justified in trusting the claims of those who do. As Raimond Gaita put it: ‘It would be insane to actually think that a chef in a restaurant might have poisoned our meal.’

If the 2-boxers are right in their thinking about the Newcomb paradox, then they must show how the perfectly sane trust that 1-boxers have in induction can be undermined. But, as I just mentioned, it is not enough to suppose that the 1-boxers’ trust is misplaced, say, because the predictive accuracy was deceptively overstated. Rather, the burden falls on the 2-boxers to prove that there is necessarily some reason why the predictive accuracy could never be high enough to outweigh the comparative certainty of the $1K.

3. RELATIVE CERTAINTIES

At this point, a 2-boxer may be tempted to argue from the relative strengths of inductive and deductive certainty. That is, while the scenario stipulates that the prediction is 100% accurate, this may be thought to pale into insignificance given the comparative strength of 100% certainty of winning the extra $1K (see 2-boxer table).

Many, I suspect, would argue that the latter admits no lesser degree; any given deductive matter is either wholehearted true or false, and nothing in between. However, issues of vagueness aside, I think the real distinction is to be made between the retrospective nature of inductive reasoning, compared to the apparently atemporal nature of deductive reasoning. If inductive certainty is weaker than deductive certainty because of its dependency upon data derived from the past (or, at most, the-present-become-past), which future events may unexpectedly overturn, then, this ought to be reflected in the language. When the Newcomb scenario makes the two statements regarding the accuracy and certainty of the prediction and the $1K, if inductive certainty is weaker than its deductive counterpart, then the statement of the scenario should clearly reflect that.

However, putting this concession aside, even so, I do not believe that the comparative deductive certainty of winning or losing the $1K is enough to outweigh the benefits of gaining the $1M if (and I stress, ‘if’) it could be honestly or scientifically said that the prediction was 100% accurate. While, I am happy to admit that humanity’s inductive certainty is still a long way off from the 100% mark, still, even now, inductive reasoning manages to get us happily through most of our days with just as much success as does our deductive reasoning.

This is especially pertinent considering that our everyday deductive processes also rely heavily on. For instance, when calculating in your head the sum of two numbers, the happy feeling that tells you that you’ve made the right connection and arrived at the correct answer is in no way deductive.

4.0 GETTING A GRIP

There are, then, generally speaking, two legitimate approaches a 2-boxer might take in attempting to refute the claim that the accuracy of the predictor could ever attain a degree high enough to outweigh the certain loss of the $1K. I call these approaches ‘grip’ and ‘slip’.

By ‘grip’ I refer to the possibility of certain metaphysical limitations constraining our predictive capacities. If the Newcomb Paradox can be shown to fall outside of these parameters, then the 2-boxer will have grounds for distrusting the stipulated accuracy of the scenario.

By ‘slip’ I refer to certain arguments that claim our inductive capacities could never reach anywhere near the 100% mark. Although, as I have argued in the last section, I do not believe that this in itself would show that the relative certainty of inductive reasoning could not outweigh the loss of the comparatively small extra $1K, at least it would give the 2-boxer grounds for disagreement.

I will start by trying to get a grip.

4.1 GOOGLEME

Most will be familiar with the ever-increasingly wide range programs that the internet search-engine Google offers, such as GoogleScholar, GoogleEarth, GoogleSky, GoogleMars, etc. Imagine, then, that, one day, Google were to release a program called ‘GoogleMe’, devoted entirely to the ultimate social taboo of googling oneself. (Tell me you haven’t done it.) Imagine, then, guiltily sitting down at your computer to indulge in googling yourself, only to find that, in addition to all the biographical details of your past life, there was a shiny new, blue hyperlink called ’10 seconds into your future’. Curious you open the link to reveal the words, ‘You willing poke yourself in the eye with your finger.’ What do you do?

4.2 FUTURIST EXAM PARADOX

Another thought-experiment that I think helps illustrates this notion of grip, I know as ‘The Futurist Exam Paradox’. It goes like this:

Imagine that Futurism (the practise of predicting the future, normally with regard to technological developments and sociological trends) were one day to become a widely accepted sub-school of university History departments, such that undergraduates would have to take end-of-year Futurism exams where they would be called upon to make informed predictions regarding the future. In such a world, there would surely arise the urban myth of a more-than-usually-eccentric Futurism professor who set an exam with only the one question: ‘Will you pass or fail this examination?’ While students who confidently answered ‘pass’ could happily and unproblematically be awarded a passing grade, the more self-deprecating students who answered ‘fail’ would present the examining professor with something of a paradox: if he failed them, then their answers were right and so they should deserve to pass, which would in turn make them wrong, and so they should rightly fail, which is what they predicted in the first place … and on and on to infinity.

***

Both of these thought-experiments go to show that there are certain predictions that cannot be stated either consistently or coherently; that is, without incurring contradictions. This, however, is not to say that the ability to predict the future is necessarily limited. Rather, it is a restriction on our predictive capacities only insofar as making a prediction is propositional; the limitation is thus only on how and to whom the propositional prediction is made. As Dostovesky’s Underground Man put it:

…even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his [sense of freedom].  And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!  He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse (it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), may be by his curse alone he will attain his object–that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key!  If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated–chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point!

4.3 RHETORICAL DECEPTION

To put it another way, let us briefly consider the necessity of deception in the art of rhetoric.

Roughly speaking, rhetoric – the art of persuasion – seeks to know, for any desired effect, E, to be brought about in a specific audience, A, what utterances, U, must be made by a particular speaker, S.

Socrates frowned upon the orators of his time, arguing that the ignorant nature of the masses meant that the most effective utterances tended unduly towards flattery and, so, away from the truth. In light of the above thought-experiments, however, we can strengthen Socrates’ criticism, arguing that deception must be an inescapable component of any prescriptive art of persuasion. That is to say, if a speaker desires that effects of a certain kind be brought about in their audience (for example, intentionally having the audience rile against what they are told by the speaker), then it will be required that the truth of the prediction not be conveyed to the audience, in order to avoid the difficulties of contradiction that we encountered in the GoogleMe and Furturist Exam examples.

I think Socrates would rightly deem such an occupation to be intrinsically ignoble. Furthermore, although there are many other reasons in addition, I think that this condition in itself rightly precludes Rhetoric from ever becoming a science … at least as Rhetoric has been traditionally conceived. For it is, however, possible to imagine an Art or Science of Rhetoric belonging to the ever-increasingly-rigorous discipline of Empirical Psychology, where the prescriptive element of desired effects would be made anathema, so that only the descriptive element remained. That is, the new Rhetorical program would be to learn and understand the probable effects (desirable or not) on any given audience as caused by any given utterances made by any given speaker.

If we think about this in the context of Newcomb’s Paradox, we see that it is not the intent of the scanner’s informing the participant of their situation and options to bring about any particular outcome. It would, however, be easy to imagine a version of the Newcomb scenario where the predictor did employ rhetoric so as to increase the supposed ‘accuracy’ of its so-called ‘predictions’. Indeed, I suspect, at this superficial level, you and I could readily ‘predict’ the majority of people’s choices to a fairly high degree, such that placing the $1M in the opaque box would almost always be the safer option, except perhaps when you sized someone up as looking particularly greedy, calculating or philosophical.

All of this, I believe, amounts to a failed attempt at getting a grip on the prediction made, so as to be able to thwart it by contradicting it. That the participant is informed of the prediction, and their metaphysical freedom thereby thrown into question, is not in itself enough to get a grip … unless, of course, one were to take the path suggested earlier by Dostoyevsky’s underground man, where one might introduce some external influence, like alcohol, concussion or flipping a coin, ‘in order to be rid of reason’ so as to ‘gain’ one’s freedom. But, to take such a line (like trying to opt for the $1K alone), would be to merely avoid the question posed by the Newcomb scenario; and we want answers.

5.0 LETTING IT SLIP

The other general approach that I suggested earlier, I called ‘slip’. With ‘grip’ the idea was that the prediction made by the Newcomb machine might allow the participant to somehow contradict it. With ‘slip’ the thought is that the predictor itself might not be able to sufficiently grasp the participant’s future thoughts or behaviour in order to make the prediction as accurately as is stated in the scenario as it is given.

5.1 THE GRANDMASTER LIMIT

I suspect that the favoured slipping point in the Newcomb Paradox is thought to arise because, although the scenario stipulates that prediction is incredibly accurate, people tend to believe that their decision must ultimately remain undetermined until it is consciously made and acted upon. What I call ‘The Grandmaster Limit’ clearly illustrates this idea:

We can, I think, happily imagine a chess Grandmaster easily and accurately predicting the future moves of a lesser opponent (say, of a child). However, just as it is inconceivable to imagine an inferior player ever being able to accurately predict (without external assistance) the moves of a Grandmaster, so too is it incoherent to suppose a Grandmaster being able to accurately predict their own moves without simultaneously making them. The Grandmaster stands at the pinnacle of chess playing ability, such that not only is it impossible that another other human could accurately predict their next move, but not even they themselves could, because any such prediction, known to be accurate, would be indistinguishable from the decision itself; the two would inevitably collapse into one.

In this light, we can be sure that there is no possibility of the Newcomb predictor being able to accurately predict what it’s own prediction will be.

***

If, as I suspect, something like this constraint of subjective epistemology is what motivates some people’s inclination to discount the stipulated accuracy of the Newcomb prediction, then, Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence is pertinent here:

We like to believe that Man is in some subtle way superior to the rest of creation. It is best if he can be shown to be necessarily superior, for then there is no danger of him losing his commanding position.

But, as Turing pointed out, although we are all guilty of such thinking at times, in reality it amounts to little more than anthropocentric arrogance, for there is, as yet, no metaphysical reason why another intelligence, such as that of the Newcomb predictor, could not be so far superior to our own, that all of our most sophisticated intellectual twisting and turnings, would be, for it, as straight as a line between A and B.

5.2 CHAOS THEORY (& THE MONTY-HALL PROBLEM?)

Still, some may be tempted to argue that Chaos theory, and not blind anthropocentricism, can be invoked as excluding the possibility of a prediction concerning human thought and behaviour ever reaching anything near 100% accuracy. As it was sold to me by Alan Hazen, Chaos Theory claims that even in a relatively simple system, the effects of even the most negligible elements (think ‘butterfly’) can be so far ranging, that to calculate from one moment to the next would take longer than the entire history of the universe.

So, in the brain of the participant in the Newcomb scenario, between the moment their brain is scanned and the moment they decide to take either one or both boxes, the vastly complex of interactions, not only between neurons, but even between (and within?) quantum indeterminate atoms will result in what is called a chaotic system that could never be 100% accurately predicted … especially not in the short time it took the predictor to scan and deposit or not deposit the $1M in the opaque box (remember that the money has to be either there or not there when the participant is informed of their situation).

Take the Monty-Hall Problem as illustrative of this point: Normally, you have a one-in-three chance of choosing the right door. When the game-show host shows that the prize is not behind one of the two doors you didn’t choose, then offers you the opportunity to change to the other unopened door, probability suggests you should change so as to increase your chances to two-in-three.

M-H    Door 1    Door 2    Door 3    Result
Option 1    $        ✖    ✖
Option 2    $            ✔
Option 3    $            ✔

Legend:
$ – money         – first choice     – door opened
 – final choice    ✖ – lose        ✔ – win

But, while statistical probability assures us that taking the opportunity to change doors is the rational move to make, such that if you had an infinite amount of turns at the Monty-Hall game, your winnings would tend towards 2 out every 3 games, as opposed to the 1 out of every 3 expected winnings if you sat still, given that you only have the one live run (similar to the case of the Newcomb Paradox) a person may wish to remain true to their first choice, because – they might argue – the money is either behind the door that they’ve chosen or it isn’t, and moving doors isn’t going to change that.

This may seem a little unfair, but I think we can try to motivate it a little more charitably. Imagine that the Monty-Hall Problem had, not a mere 3 doors, but an infinite amount of doors to choose from. As the number of doors increases to infinity, the advantage of changing doors decreases, given that the game-show host has more and more options of which empty doors to open. In the original 3-door scenario, the game-show host’s hand is forced, as it were, to show you that the money is not behind one of the door’s you neglected to choose. As it’s more likely that you chose the wrong door in the first instance, it is more likely that the money will be behind the door that the game-show host didn’t open.  But, as more and more doors are added to the scenario, the participant is given less and less information as to which door the money is more likely to be behind, such that, if the scenario consisted of an infinite number of doors, for the game-show host to open one of the infinity of empty doors that you didn’t choose, provides you with absolutely no incentive to change from your original choice; it’s as likely to be right (or wrong) as it was in the first instance.

Now, a participant in the original Monty-Hall Problem, who refuses to regard themselves as a statistic and chooses to throw probability to the wind, may do so on the belief that the chaotic universe which brought them to make their initial choice, requires that it ought to be treated as though it were one of an infinite amount of possible doors, and, so, there is nothing to be gained from changing doors, for either the right door has been chosen, or it has not.

Obviously, this would be irrational, but, when we transfer the same notion across to the Newcomb scenario, we see, I think, that a similar line of thinking must be appealed to if it is to be this notion of ‘slip’ that we’re working with, that permits the 2-boxer’s supposed V-rationality to fly in the face of the stipulated accuracy of the prediction. That is to say that, given that the single-state prediction was derived from a chaotic system which renders our finite brain-cells to be something akin to an infinity of doors, the 2-boxer’s appeal to deductive reasoning is, as if to deny the very meaning of a so-called ‘prediction’ having been made.

If this is the 2-boxer’s grounds for adopting their form game-theoretic decision making process, then, again, I feel that it is somewhat unexpected. 2-boxers typically regard their ‘V-rationality’, as Lewis labelled it, to be more straight-forward than the 1-boxer’s hand-wavey ‘U-rationality’. Therefore, I do not think that this is the point the 2-boxers want to make; it may give them ground for disputing the 1-boxers choice, but at too high a cost.

As I pointed-out earlier, the Newcomb paradox is a Philosophical thought-experiment. Chaos Theory belongs to Physics. While some may wish to argue that our metaphysics should be supplicant to the sciences, at present there are no such constraints. Obviously, if Chaos Theory is correct, then we will never encounter a Newcomb predictor capable of making the claims that are made in the thought-experiment; it’s pragmatically impossible for us to make use of more than all the time in the history of the universe to make our calculations. But this doesn’t mean that speculatively, this is the case. Metaphysically, some may wish to argue that, although practically no such prediction could ever be made in real-life, prima facie that doesn’t mean that there’s no sense in thinking about the scenario for what it might reveal about our decision making processes and our understanding of our metaphysical situation.

And, even so, even if the 2-boxers were to willing to make recourse Chaos Theory, as I explained earlier, even if our inductive knowledge can never attain to the same degree of certainty that we find in deductive reasoning, the relative certainty that is available to science, even today, seems strong enough to outweigh the relatively small gain of an ‘extra’ $1K.

6. CONCLUSION

Smith’s principal use of rhetorical wording, involves morally and politically loaded terms such as ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘liberation’, ‘oppressed’, ‘injustice’, ‘respected’, ‘reform’, and ‘inhumane’. With the employment of such terminology, Smith appeals to readers’ aspirations of righteousness, thereby challenging them to regard the incident under consideration as ‘noble’, ‘compassionate’, ‘understand[able]’, ‘important’, and, most of all, ‘justified’.

In order to ensure the reader feels that the situation warrants such morally and politically righteous attitudes, Smith is at pains to arouse pity for the chickens in her readers’ hearts. With words and phrases such as ‘dire plight’, ‘mistreat’, ‘abominably cruel’, ‘most abused’, ‘treated so badly’, and ‘trapped’, Smith encourages the reader to look pityingly upon the article’s image of three caged chickens. Indeed, to more fully bring this image to life in one’s imagination, Smith evaluatively provides the specifications as being ‘only’ of limited dimensions and ‘without proper ventilation’. Thus the reader is invited to sympathetically regard the two-dimensional, static picture as a choking, three-dimensional reality, where the chickens are ‘unable to move’, or to ‘breathe fresh, clean air’.

Of course, pity and righteousness by themselves may not necessarily entail that the reader feels that the particular actions of the activists’ were required. Smith, therefore, aspires to foster a sense of guilt in her audience. By the uniform employment of the inclusive pronoun ‘we’ (subtly moving from the ‘we’ of the AAR, to the more general ‘we’ of you and I), Smith implies that the italicised ‘someone’ of the opening paragraph, ought to have been ‘you’, the reader. Given that it almost certainly wasn’t the average reader who perpetrated the act in question, then the suggestion is that they ought to feel guilty for their inaction.

Similarly, Smith aims to evoke further guilt by suggesting that if the reader wasn’t so ‘self-serving’ and ‘human-centred’ (traits which most would feel to be undesirable), then ‘we could afford to pay more’ to keep our alliteratively-cute, ‘furred and feathered friends’ from further suffering. Thus does Smith prey on her readers’ wish not to regard themselves either  egoistic, uncaring or miserly.

Smith even goes so far as attempting to incite fear in order to serve her cause. With references to ‘[an] over populated … planet’, ‘drastically decreased … numbers of animal species’, and ‘widespread human rights abuses’, Smith designs to draw associations in the reader’s mind between these well-known, epic issues with the comparatively understated matter of animals rights. Especially with regard to the lattermost issue, in the penultimate paragraph, Smith hopes to convey the thought that rights abuses – both animal and human –
are something of a slippery-slope, and that the one type cannot hope to be successfully addressed without the other. Smith thereby seeks to engage the anthropocentric self-interest of those who might not normally concern themselves with issues of animal welfare.

Although the emotional states of righteousness, pity, guilt, fear, and self-interest are encouraged in the reader, Smith endeavours to present her own views level-headed and well informed. By disclosing the fact that, not only that she is a ‘member’ of Australians for Animal Rights, but also their publicity officer, Smith’s own alliteratively-punchy opinions (‘…but I think the activists risked life and limb’) are given extra weight insofar as she has been accorded the responsibility of speaking for an entire organization (though the reader remains uniformed as to exactly how many are so represented). This position of authority therefore works in Smith’s favour as an argumentum ad populum.

In contrast, critics of the activist’s actions are portrayed as at least hysterical (eg. ‘falling over themselves’ and ‘whip[ping] up his listeners into a frenzy’), if not somewhat barbarous (eg. ‘sneering’). With a handful of denigratory quotations from a talk-back presenter’s show intended to make his views appear flippant and uncouth, it is implied that, in comparison, Smith’s own position is level-headed and even respectful of both sides of the debate. This is intended to sway the reader insofar as many will wish to side with the more rational and civilized position; an alignment Smith further augments by later quoting a rhetorical question made by the famous philosopher, Jeremy Bentham.

In conclusion, Smith’s article, ‘Chickens Run Free’ works to persuade readers that recent activism was justified insofar as it brings to light the ‘dire plight’ occasioned by our way of life for both animals and humans. She ventures to accomplish this with an authoritative presentation of a seemingly considered and informed argument, that aims to touch on the readers’ wish to be guiltless, fearless, unselfish, righteous and compassionate.

Introduction
If there is anything to the distinction between high art and popular art with regard to music that is not entirely social in nature, where are we to look for it? Surely not in the mechanisms that work to claim a particular piece of music for the canon of either order; whether it be, say, the inclusion into the repertoire of a well-reputed orchestra or the play-list of a ‘pop’ radio station, it is obvious that both are essentially social in nature. Nor in individuals; the hugely successful advertising devices have both confirmed and augmented the typical correlation between an individual’s tastes and their overall social position. Rather, the answer must be found in the music.
It is therefore the contention of this essay to demonstrate that the distinction between the categories of ‘high’ and ‘popular’ – although admittedly arising through social mechanisms – are in fact discernible by characteristics (other than genre, instrumentation, etc.) intrinsic to the music itself. This undertaking will consist of four distinct sections. By firstly offering a broad understanding of the phenomenon of music we will be thereby facilitated with a conceptual framework enabling an illustration of the general characteristics of high music and popular music without recourse to a plethora of particular examples, technical terms, or musical passages. Having then revealed the characteristic differences of the two paradigms, we shall finally conclude that their distinctions are something more than merely social posturing … they are intrinsic to the music itself.
A Broad Understanding of the Phenomenon of Music
At the most abstract level, one may wish to describe music as any sounds (or audio sense-data) that are framed1 by the audience as artistic. Yet, although this definition encompasses all avowed musical forms, as music is a commonly recognized sub-species of the arts, one may intuitively feel that all we have said here is that “music is music.” And in a sense this is quite true. But in order to qualify our definition, I suggest that we need not attempt to explicitly expand the term ‘music’ (which we already have an intuitive understanding of anyway), but rather examine why it is that humans mentally frame arrangements of sound as music in the first place.
Two-and-a-half thousand years ago, Plato’s response to this question would have probably been centered around notions of either recollections of experiences in past lives or resemblances to the eternal Forms of Beauty or Music.2 Today, however, the most salient explanation lies in an understanding of both the ‘rationalizing’ characteristics of our “biological endowment”3 and our subsequent/concurrent perceptions of time. Briefly stated: our minds are naturally disposed to sense emerging patterns (or lack thereof) in pitch, pulse, overtone relationships, etc., in arrangements of sounds, thereby creating the phenomena of melody, rhythm and harmony, etc. Or in other words: “We hear things as music because their sounds obey a particular familiar logic.”4
That such phenomena are natural or instinctive is evident in the predictable reactions of an infant child to different types of music. This is not to say, however, that an individual’s capacity for musical understanding or framing is fixed and invariable. It is quite obvious that it is otherwise, and it is in this vein that we shall begin our examination of high music.

A High Understanding of Music
The institutions of high music explicitly aspire to expand and refine one’s musical framing capacity. The primary facilitator of this development was produced by taking the basic framework of music (melody, rhythm, harmony, etc.) and formalizing it into an expressible and learnable language. This has a two-fold effect. On a creative level; the educated artist is thereby enabled to greatly increase the complexity, diversity and sophistication of the expression of this language. On a appreciative level; one’s ability to frame even the most complex piece is greatly enhanced. However, this is not to say that the audience’s education need be formal nor their understanding articulative. The musician needs to be musically articulative in order to make any music whatsoever. The criteria for an audience to ‘make’ music, however, is simply the capacity to frame it as such. To be sure, a formal education may bolster this capacity in making it articulative, yet, given a reasonable intellect, mere familiarity will often suffice.
Why it is that high art holds these aspirations shall be all too apparent to the person that has undergone this education (formally or incidentally). To make an analogy: tic-tac-toe invariably seems a far inferior game to the person who has moved on to chess. For the person that has not undergone this process, however, this fact may not be so evident. The problem here is that the framing of music is, to degrees, an unconscious process – much in the same way one can’t help but hear words, sentences and meanings from the vocal noises the another person makes. If the articulated language is altogether alien, such as might be the case in a lecture on advanced mathematics, Phenomenology or a performance of the works of Schoenberg, Nancarrow, or Stravinsky (where “the ugly side of the world, originally inimicable to the senses, has been won over for music”5), then only an arrangement of noise-sound will be heard. But as music hasn’t an explicit meaning or logic, people can nonetheless automatically frame the works of, say, Bach or Beethoven and thereby hear it as music whilst at the same time finding it inaccessible. This is much like hearing familiar passing words, but not in sentences and, therefore, without meaning. It is precisely here that the expanding of one’s framing capacities are intended to increase one’s enjoyment. To return to our game analogy; although a person who plays draughts will acknowledge that tic-tac-toe is an inferior game precisely because it is unsophisticated, nevertheless, they will often claim that draughts is a more enjoyable game than chess – which they can play, though they find it too demanding. It is only in this sense, I believe, that beauty can be considered as being in the eye of the beholder. But I digress.
Nonetheless, from this it should be clear that the paradigm of high art judges the merit of a work much in the same way a work of literature is assessed: ie. by the sophistication, ingenuity, lucidity, eloquence, etc., in the expression of this language. It is indeed in this vein that the advocates of high art often regard examples of popular music as bland and repetitive. To be sure, a great deal of popular artists, such as Jimi Hendrix, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, etc. were brilliant musicians. However, they were brilliant as players and soloists. And although recognized to some extent as composers, these compositions were generally of basic popular forms, being designed and used expressly as vehicles for their solo virtuosity.6
But if popular music is so unsophisticated and bland in contrast with high music, where then does its mass appeal lie?

A Popular Contrast
Our broad understanding of the phenomenon of music is also apparent in popular music. However, where high music aspires to push the boundaries of what is framable, popular music (in catering for people who are assumed to be lacking in the education that I spoke of before) strives to create the song with the least amount of fluff … or in other words, the most framable song. Indeed one of the popular paradigm’s most frequent criticisms of high music is that it is inaccessible. It is vital to its success that a pop song is ‘catchy’/readily accessible/framable, this is evident in their common characteristics:
Aristotle wrote in Poetics that beauty is inevitably absent in the “extremely large … for it [can] not be taken in all at once, and its unity and wholeness would be lost to the view of the beholder.”7 In popular music this is gospel, so to speak. Aside from trying to ensure regular air-play on radio stations who don’t wish to alienate their audience with an hour long piece that not everyone would enjoy, a work of short duration (3-5mins) is more easily framed by the audience.
Furthermore, for a piece to be popular to an individual, a sense of ownership is necessary. Popular music accommodates this need by making readily-familiar songs. Aside from the easily framable characteristics of short durations, Common-time, limited voices, and a simple verse/bridge/chorus combinational structure, the most obvious means employed by popular music to achieve this sense of ownership is the inclusion of lyrics. The first time the song is heard the audience listens to what is being said, assisting in making it ‘catchy’. Then, as the lyrics are learnt, one is given ready means to articulate and bolster (in the same sense that was given in the high paradigm) their understanding of the song. Moreover, it is clear that in this sense high art is often considered inaccessible as it cannot be easily sung or danced along to. As Simon Frith wrote: “We absorb [pop] songs into our own lives and rhythms into our own bodies”8
From this we can understand that the evaluative emphasis of popular music lies in the delineation of a particular genre. It is music which is designed to express (and sometimes create, as some may argue in the case of e.g. The Beatles) the identity of a particular sub-culture;- “Fashion and style … remain the keys to the ways in which we, as individuals, present ourselves to the world”9 Admittedly, high art also socially defines a particular culture, yet, for the most part this is considered a secondary effect. It is vital, however, that ‘Dance’ or ‘Techno’ music can readily be danced-to by amateurs for it to be successful as such. In this light we can see that the evaluative emphasis of a piece is more focused on the aural ‘colour’10 that the consumer associates themselves with (“what kind of music do you listen to?”), rather than the content – which, at least from a high perspective, all seems run-of-the-mill. An analogy of this notion can be seen in the nature of computer games where, although the underlying engines or drive-programs are basically equivalent, the colours, characters and depicted actions employed determine whether it is a gay child’s game or a bloody war game. In this sense, we can furthermore appreciate how an unheard-of garage-band can play original pop tunes simply by emulating the colour of more popular bands; it is music fashioned with immediate popularity in mind, hence the idiom ‘Popular music’.

The ‘Chicken or the Egg’ Debate.
But what does all of this tell us about the nature of the distinction between high and popular music? Most importantly, that someone ignorant of the social mechanisms that create and canonize works of music for either category should still be able to discern two distinct types by listening to the music alone. The distinction, therefore, is clearly not just a social one.
One may, however, feel inclined to contend that as it is primarily the differences in the evaluative focus of the two paradigms (which are social in nature) that cause the differences in the music, we have not sufficiently distanced our conclusion from the purely social. But I think this misses the point. Music, in its creation and appreciation, is a wholly social activity. This was never in doubt. The significance of the conclusion reached here, however, lies in direct opposition to this hypothetical contention. In a manner much more subtle and enigmatic than that given in Plato’s Republic11, the potential of what we have shown is that just as our perceptions shape music, likewise, music and not just society must effect our perceptions.12 To what degree this may effect our non-musical perceptions, however, is food for further thought.

ROSS BARHAM 2001
Word Count: 2080

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARISTOTLE. Poetics, in Classical Literary Criticism, trans. P. Murray & T.S. Dorsch (London: Penguin, 2000)

CHOMSKY, Noam. Language and Problems of Knowledge (London: The MIT Press, 1996)

FRITH, Simon. ‘Towards an aesthetic of Popular Music’ in R. Leppert & S. McClary, Music and Society: the Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1987)

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. ‘The Desensualization of High Art’ [217] in Human, All Too Human, trans. M. Faber (London: Penguin, 1984)

FURTHER READING13

HOFSTADTER, Douglas R. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. (London: Penguin, 1979)

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. ‘Empathy’ [142] in Daybreak, trans. R.J.Hollingdale (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1982)

NIETZSCHE, Friedrich. ‘Music’ [215] and ‘Sensuality in Contemporary Art’ [175] in Human, All Too Human, trans. M. Faber (London: Penguin, 1984)

PLATO. ‘Part 3: Education: The First Stage’ in The Republic, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1975)