Category Archives: Greek philosophy

why be introspective?

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According to Thomas Chatterton Williams, some leading tech oligarchs are explicitly against introspection. The “venture capitalist Marc Andreessen says that he engages in ‘zero’ introspection—or at least ‘as little as possible.’” Similarly, the billionaire investor Peter Thiel “contends that looking inward can impede action.”

Both men think that introspection is a recent phenomenon, or at least a growing one. Thiel blames “hippies, who derailed American technological progress when they ‘took over the country’ in the late 1960s.” Andreessen says, “If you go back, 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective.”

They are definitely wrong about history. Exactly 400 years ago (in 1626), John Milton began his third elegy: “Silent I sat, dejected, and alone, / Making in thought the public woes my own” (citing Cowper’s translation of Milton’s Latin).

About 2,000 years before that, Socrates had said, “The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being” (Apology 37e), and his premise was echoed by all the Greek philosophical schools. Two millennia of Christian introspection resulted from this Greek heritage plus the Biblical injunction “For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). For example, St. Augustine wrote, “Do not go outside, come back into yourself. It is in the inner self that Truth dwells” (De vera religione, 39).

Meanwhile, verses like this were being attributed to the Buddha: “The mind is fast-moving and hard to subdue, / landing wherever it wishes; / it is good to train it— / a trained mind brings happiness” (Dhp 33–43). And, further east, “The Master [Confucius] said: ‘If you learn without thinking about what you have learned, you will be lost. If you think without learning, however, you will fall into danger'” (Analects 2.15).

Notwithstanding all this ancient advice, the tech bros may spend their entire lives taking pleasure from success and power without suffering the self-doubts and anxieties that result from introspection. Since I don’t happen to believe in a posthumous reckoning, I think their lives may conclude without any penalty for having been (as Williams says) “pathologically unreflective.” If a good life is one of pleasure, then their odds of attaining it are as high as anyone’s.

But is pleasure good? That is an ethical question, in the original sense of an ethos as a matter of character. Here is a very general account of what it means to be ethical:

  1. It is better to be good or right than bad or wrong
  2. This principle both applies inwardly and outwardly. That is, it is better to be good rather than bad to yourself and better to be good rather than bad to others.
  3. It is not obvious what being good entails. Neither the outcome (a good state) nor the appropriate means to reach this outcome is self-evident. For example, it is not obvious whether (or when, or to what extent) pleasure is good, either for oneself or for others.
  4. To know what is good requires wisdom or discernment, which is a matter of character.
  5. To improve one’s character requires knowing what it is.
  6. Therefore, introspection is crucial; the unexamined life is not worth living.

I presume that Andreeson, Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and other oligarchs (financial or political) would disagree with all of these points, and certainly with the final one.

So did Thrasymachus, as he is presented in Plato’s Republic. Thrasymachus has the arrogant, combative, proudly selfish air of a contemporary tech bro. Like them, he is successful, and he is developing a powerful technology (in his case, Sophistic rhetoric).

Socrates tries to prove to Thrasymachus that it is better to be just than unjust. Influenced by previous interpretations, I believe that Socrates essentially fails. Thrasymachus leaves, and Socrates’ disciples observe that he was unconvinced. Once he is gone, Socrates develops a detailed account of justice for them. This is a metaphor for the idea that ethical reasoning is persuasive for those who accept the first point listed above, but not for others. There are ethical reasons, but there are no reasons to be ethical.

Even before Thrasymachus exits the dialogue, Cephalus has departed. He is a character who has lived a conventionally respectable life–he has basically tried to do good but without asking what goodness is. I think his departure is a metaphor for the idea that it can be better to be good than to think too much about it, contrary to Socrates’ premise that the good life is an examined one.

It is possible to live beneficially without giving ethics too much thought, although success is then a matter of chance. It is also possible to live ethically–displaying some introspection and self-improvement.

An ethical life can serve as an example, but it will not inspire everyone. Those who are not drawn to ethics cannot be proven wrong and may not pay any price for their refusal. To the extent that their behavior threatens others, they must (like everyone else) face the restraints and penalties of the law. But they may not cause great harm or break major rules, and they have a right to organize their inner lives as they wish. Although their lives are worse for being unreflective, they will never know it.

See also: Cephalus; varieties of skepticism; introspect to reenchant the inner life, etc.

How do we know whether fish are happy? How do we know whether we are? (Zen, Aristotelian, and Taoist discussions)

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When you watch fish swimming around in very cold water, they look fine. Human beings have a protein, TRPM8, that reacts to cold and affects our nervous system, causing discomfort or even pain when the temperature goes down. But fish do not have any TRPM8 (Yong p. 138). Thus we can infer that fish do not sense cold in the way we do.

This does not mean that we know what cold is really like, while fish do not. Nor does it mean that our pain is nothing real, as if we can make it go away by disbelieving it. Nor does it mean that we know what it feels like to be a fish. But we can perceive a difference between species.

Long before anyone knew about proteins, the behavioral difference between us and fish was obvious enough that it served as an example for several thinkers who asked whether experiences like pleasure and suffering are subjective. More deeply, they asked what happiness is.

Japanese Zen Buddhism uses the term kyogai. Often translated as “consciousness,” it literally means “boundary” or “bounded place,” deriving originally from the Sanskrit word visayah, in the sense of a pasture that has a boundary. The Buddhist Abbot Mumon Yamada (1900-1988) taught:

This thing called kyogai is an individual thing. …. Only another fish can understand the kyogai of a fish. In this cold weather, perhaps you are feeling sorry for the fish, poor thing, for it has to live in the freezing water. But don’t make the mistake of thinking it would be better off if you put it in warm water; that would kill it. You are a human and there is no way you can understand the kyogai of a fish.

I think the upshot here is humility: if things seem and feel very different to creatures that have different senses, we cannot really know how things are. We should be compassionate, but that is harder than it may at first appear because it requires knowing what another feels. It would not be compassionate to move carp to a warmer pond. Our humility must temper even our compassion.

Aristotle wants to distinguish wisdom, which is knowledge of objective truths, from practical wisdom or phronesis, which allows us to act well. For example, “straight” (using the term from geometry) always means the same thing. The line that takes the shortest distance between two points is straight, regardless of whether any creature sees it as such–or sees it at all. In fact, a line would be straight even if there were no sentient creatures. Hence geometry is a part of wisdom.

However, says Aristotle, different things are healthy and good for people and for fish, and human phronesis involves doing the healthy thing for us, not for them. The “lower animals” also have practical wisdom because they also know what to do. If we try to convince ourselves that our phronesis is wisdom because we are higher than fish, we are foolish because there are things far more divine than we are (NE 1143a).

The upshot, for Aristotle, is that each creature has its own nature, and the proper definition of happiness is acting according to that nature. This means that a fish is happy if it swims around in the cold, not because that behavior feels good to it, but because happiness is accordance with nature. One distinguishing feature of human beings is that we can also know wisdom, or glimpses of it, by studying things higher than ourselves. Thus, for Aristotle, observing the behavior of fish does not really encourage humility. It directs us to identify our proper nature and its place in the cosmos as a whole.

Now here is a passage from Zhuangzi:

Zhuangzi and Huìzi wandered along the bridge over the Hao river. Zhuangzi said, ‘The minnows swim about so freely and easily. This is the happiness of fish’.

Huìzi said, ‘You’re not a fish. How do you know the happiness of fish?

Zhuangzi said, ‘You’re not me. How do you know I don’t know the happiness of fish?’

Huìzi said, ‘I’m not you, so indeed I don’t know about you. You’re indeed not a fish, so that completes the case for your not knowing the happiness of fish’.

Zhuangzi said, ‘Let’s go back to where we started. When you said, “How do you know the happiness of fish”, you asked me about it already knowing that I knew it. I knew it over the Hao river’. (17/87–91)

I have virtually no knowledge of Taoism or its context, so it is risky for me to venture an interpretation. But I think the idea here is that neither of the men in the story can know the other, let alone the fish, and therefore all knowledge (including of one’s self) is illusory. However, Zhuangzi was right in the first place. “This” was the happiness of fish. He could not know its content or how happiness would feel to a fish, only that because fish were being fish, they were happy.

Ed Yong, An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Penguin Random House, 2022); Yamada as cited in Victor Sogen Hori, “Koan and Kensho in the Rinzai Zen Curriculum,” in The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism (2000); Zhuangzi. The Complete Writings, translated by Chris Fraser (Oxford World’s Classics, p. 200). I translated Aristotle from the 1894 Clarendon edition on https://scaife.perseus.org/, but I have paraphrased here because the literal text is thorny. See also: some basics; Verdant mountains usually walk

The Way of Skepticism

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Here is a pitch for a book that I have finished drafting, with the title The Way of Skepticism:

In 2025, I was invited to give philosophy lectures in Kyiv, Ukraine (on the day of the third-worst bombardment in the war so far) and then at two Palestinian universities in the occupied West Bank. In both settings, I spoke as a philosopher and essentially made the following argument:

There are no answers to questions that have sometimes been thought to provide a basis for overall happiness, such as “What is the purpose of human life?”

You might expect that someone who teaches or writes about philosophy will offer ideas that you should believe. Famous philosophers and religious traditions have recommended various beliefs as the foundations of a happy life.

But beliefs are easily overrated, especially when we use them to assess a person’s authority or character. A strong attachment to beliefs can distort judgment, inhibit listening, and substitute for action. Disagreement about beliefs produces unnecessary distress and hostility. On the other hand, suspending the search for such truths can bring valuable relief if we renounce the pursuit in a wise way.

We can experience good things, such as pleasure and justice. These experiences are real enough, but there is no reason to presume that they fit neatly together, so that (for example) being fair to others will surely bring inner peace.

Paying close attention to particular people and animals, both oneself and others, reinforces skepticism about general matters, such as the purpose or the nature of life, by reminding us how different everything must seem to creatures who have different bodies and who experience different circumstances.

A focus on individual people and animals also encourages compassion for them. Genuine compassion spurs action on their behalf. And a life infused with compassion and beneficial action is better than one without those things, although it does not guarantee happiness.

There is an important difference between fact and error. Valuable information can be discovered, stored, shared, and revised collectively and can guide action. The problem is not knowledge (a social good) but individuals’ adherence to beliefs.

Skepticism does not imply that reality is only what can be empirically observed. Human understanding is limited, and reality exceeds what our minds can grasp. Skepticism can coexist with religious faith. It is not a theory of reality but a practical way for finite, fallible beings to navigate a world of suffering.

Skepticism about beliefs does not imply moral relativism. We make good and bad decisions. Ethical responsibility arises most powerfully in face-to-face encounters with other people. Being present with others creates moral demands. Decisions to act or to be present should arise from invitations and relationships. We should be committed to people (and animals), not to beliefs.

My lectures had mixed success, for reasons that I discuss in the manuscript. In neither setting would it have been appropriate for me to share a much longer argument. In the book, I offer more detail.

First, I ground the general points summarized above in a rich intellectual tradition. This tradition begins with the ancient Skeptical School (represented by Pyrrho of Ellis and Sextus Empiricus). Their arguments were intriguingly similar to portions of the classical Buddhist Pali Canon, which I also interpret and discuss.

Renaissance authors rediscovered Sextus’ work, and Michel de Montaigne developed a version of Greek Skepticism while drawing on other sources and adding his own insights. Montaigne did not know anything about Buddhism, but his commitment to compassion made his form of Skepticism resemble the Pali Canon as much as it resembled Sextus. Montaigne’s Essays suggested Skeptical themes to Shakespeare, which echo in John Keats and several modern authors for whom either Montaigne or Shakespeare have been touchstones.

I believe that my position benefits from close readings of Montaigne and some of his predecessors and influences, because these thinkers are complex and persuasive.

Second, the ancient Skeptics did not simply offer arguments in favor of Skepticism. (In fact, as they acknowledged, an argument against belief would risk self-contradiction). More usefully, they practiced and taught methods or meditative exercises that could reduce our level of belief in beneficial ways. Sextus offers several lists of these “modes” (the standard translation of his word for such methods), reaching a maximum of 10 in one text. Montaigne practices some of Sextus’ modes and discusses other ways that he has pursued equanimity.

In modern European authors and in some Mahayana Buddhist texts, I have found mental exercises that are fundamentally consistent with ancient Skepticism but more appropriate for our period. The bulk of my manuscript presents ten such modern Skeptical “modes”:

  1. Don’t strive to be original but think vividly. This method involves acknowledging that our best beliefs are often clichés (which is a specifically modern complaint). Seeing a belief as a cliché reduces our attachment to it without making us negate it.
  2. Adjust your relationship with the past and the future. This method involves identifying problematic mental states, such as dread and nostalgia, that depend on beliefs about time that we can challenge.
  3. Learn from shifting moods. Sextus and Montaigne try to shake our commitment to beliefs by showing that they depend on the mood that we happen to be in. Science offers methods that are supposed to combat all form of subjective bias, including moods; however, science cannot reveal what is good or right. Drawing on Heidegger, I argue that we can derive specific insights from each mood (because it is one way for us to be in the world), while also loosening our commitment to the beliefs associated with any given mood.
  4. Appreciate being oneself. Montaigne is a great student of his own experience, a phenomenologist before that word was coined. He gains happiness from this exploration. (“There is no description so hard, nor so profitable, as the description of a man’s own self.”) The goal of Do-It-Yourself phenomenology is not to discover general truths that will make us happy or better once we believe in them. Instead, DIY phenomenology can reveal complexities, mysteries, and depths that we can appreciate. By seeing ourselves as much more than suffering machines, we can increase how much we can enjoy being ourselves.
  5. Consider the boundaries of experience. Sextus and Montaigne emphasize that the world that we consider objective is actually contingent on whatever senses, values, and reasoning powers we happen to have. A different creature must inhabit a different world. The Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), William Blake, and the young Ludwig Wittgenstein derived consolation from realizing that the world infinitely exceeds our capacity to know it; and we can learn from them.
  6. Don’t try to be perfect but appreciate the turn toward it. Let’s define a “sublime” experience as something far better than our usual life. From a classical Skeptical perspective, sublime experiences are neither true (revealing that the world is really better than it seems) nor false (as if we merely imposed our wishes on reality). Sublime experiences are simply experiences among others, but they are much more enjoyable. Therefore, we should seek them out.
  7. Recognize others in sublime experiences:Many modern views of the sublime are highly individualistic. They assume that anything of spiritual value must be timeless and can be appreciated by a lone individual who is in the right frame of mind. But we always learn what to value from other people, both living and dead. A sublime experience depends on the particular people who have influenced its creator and its audiences. This is a Skeptical point, suggesting that we would find different things beautiful and moving if we had different backgrounds. But it also gives us an opportunity to be grateful to the people who have shaped our values, and this gratitude can deepen our sublime experiences.
  8. Do things for their own sake. Many authors and even whole traditions offer the same valid advice: focus on doing the right thing, not on whether it has the intended outcomes. Derive satisfaction from the act, not its goal. I justify this advice in a Skeptical way and turn it into a “mode.” First try to identify morally good actions and then view them as intrinsically valuable ways of being, not as means to any end.
  9. Be compassionate (not sympathetic). Montaigne is a great proponent and exemplar of compassion. Properly understood, compassion is not a mirroring of someone else’s emotions, so that if they are angry, we must also feel anger. It is a specific emotion that can be positive (or at least calm) and must result in action. I draw on Buddhist texts and Emmanuel Levinas to present a view of compassion that is compatible with Skepticism.
  10. Decide what to do in conversation. Perhaps the most serious criticism of Skepticism is that it may discourage action. If we have no beliefs, then why should we do anything? Yet many people suffer, and we should help them. As Sextus and Montaigne emphasize, we have limited intellectual capacities and unreliable motives. Besides, as individuals, we cannot accomplish much. To put it bluntly, we are both stupid and weak. But we do have other people around us. By listening, talking, and working with others and reflecting on the results, we can make ourselves at least a bit wiser and stronger. Even when a group errs, we are at least in solidarity with the other members.

We live in a period of polarization and conflict, including several cruel wars. These challenges have political causes and require political solutions. Becoming a Skeptic is not a solution to such problems, but it is a way for an individual to navigate our current world with a dose of sanity and responsibility.

This book is also an argument for practicing the humanities–the disciplines that interpret human culture–to improve one’s inner life and one’s relationships with other human beings and animals. Reading for pleasure is in decline. The academic humanities are under political attack for being (allegedly) leftwing and economically unprofitable. And reading and writing risk being replaced by artificial intelligence. This book argues that engagement with texts can improve the inner life, but it also justifies other modes, including ones that require no texts.

(Revised for clarity on 1/7.) See also: three takes on the good life: Aristotle, Buddha, Montaigne; consider the octopus; does skepticism promote a tranquil mind?; notes from the West Bank; etc.

from empathy toward compassion

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The English words empathy, sympathy, and compassion are used inconsistently; a dictionary will not sort them out.* For this discussion, I will posit the following definitions:

  • Empathy: An imaginative identification with someone else’s emotion. This is not just a belief that another person’s feels a certain way, but a kind of mirroring of the feeling. For example, if you are angry, and I empathize with you, then I “feel” your anger in some respect and to some degree. My feeling is embodied, affecting things like my heart rate and my involuntary facial expressions as well as any beliefs that I may express or privately think. Empathy can be positive if it mirrors a positive emotion. It is always partial and concrete. I can empathize with a person’s specific feeling or with the shared feeling of a group of people. I could empathize with many different people’s feelings, but only one by one, just as I can only hear one person’s story at a time.
  • Sympathy: An emotion provoked by someone else’s emotion. It is not a mirroring but a different feeling that arises in response. For example, if you are angry, and I sympathize, then I am sad that you are angry. The phrase “sympathetic joy” makes sense in English and covers situations when your fortunate condition triggers a positive feeling in me. However, this phrase almost always translates the Sanskrit or Pali word mudita. Without a modifier, the English word sympathy connotes a negative feeling, something akin to sadness or even pity. Like empathy, it is concrete and partial. I can sympathize for you in your loss, but not for everyone at once.
  • Compassion: an emotion that responds to someone else’s suffering, but it is not similar to the other person’s feeling, nor is it negative. It is calm and purposive. To be compassionate is to will that the other’s suffering ceases; and to will something seriously means being prepared to act accordingly. I don’t think it makes sense in English to be compassionate for someone else’s happiness, only for their suffering. We can use the English word for an emotion that is impartial and general, such as the attribute of God that is named in the first verse of the Quran or the Buddhist concept of karuna. Thus, if you are angry, I can compassionately desire that your anger cease along with the anger of your enemy and whatever is causing both. It is theoretically possible to feel compassion for all sentient beings, even though it would make no sense to empathize with all of them at once.

Against sympathy

Let’s say that I am angry or otherwise suffering. I may want you to empathize, sympathize, and feel compassion for me. I may want you to feel bad because I do. And I may want your feelings to be partial: Sympathize with me!

These desires are human frailties. Ethically, I should only want you to be compassionate. Asking you to feel my pain just expands the amount of suffering. Besides, you cannot really feel what I do, just a dim reflection of it or a different form of distress. Neither of us should fool ourselves that you can feel my pain, as if that were even desirable.

Empathy and sympathy are unreliable guides to good action. Perhaps you will wallow in your pity for me, or give yourself credit for feeling bad, or—worse—allow your partial feelings about me to negate other people’s valid interests. Politicians often stir up sympathy for favored groups to make us hate other people, and they succeed because sympathy is partial.

The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca didn’t write about any of the three words that I defined earlier, because none of those were available in classical Latin. But he criticizes misericordia, and although that word is normally translated as “pity,” it sounds a lot like sympathy. He calls it “a sickness of the soul due to the sight of others’ suffering, or a sadness caused by someone else’s misfortunes which one believes to be undeserved.”

For Seneca, misericordia is a sickness, and “no sickness can affect a wise man, for his mind is serene and nothing can get through to it that he guards against.” Therefore, a wise person does not feel misericordia. For Seneca, “it is impossible to be both great and sad.” Even in a disaster, a wise one maintains “the same appearance—quiet, firm—which he couldn’t do if he were overcome with sadness.”

Seneca warns that pity prevents effective planning in the interests of the person whom we may want to help. “A wise person discerns the future and makes decisions without interference, yet nothing clear and lucid can flow from turbulence. Sadness is unfitted for discerning circumstances, planning useful tasks, evading dangers, weighing equities. Therefore, the [wise person] will not feel pity, because there cannot be pity without suffering of the soul [De Clementia (2.5.4-2.6.4, my trans.]

Compassion as a virtue

Seneca’s idea of disinterested benign sentiments that we exercise freely and with a tranquil mind [2.6.2, 2.6.3] could translate the Sanskrit word karuna, which is fundamental in Buddhism. Seneca also relates this virtue to a political idea: equal standing and a common claim on the public good. A great-souled person

will reach a hand to the drowning, welcome the exile, donate to the poor, not in the abusive way of most people who want to be seen as pitying—they toss something and flinch in disgust at those whom they aid, as if they feared to touch them—but as a man gives to a man from the common pool. He will return the child to the weeping mother, unfasten chains, save people from [gladiatorial] games, and even bury the stinking body, but he will do these things with a tranquil mind, of his own will. Thus the wise person will not pity but will assist and be of use, having been born to help all and for the public good, from which he will distribute shares to all.

Even though Seneca addresses his book On Clemency to the Emperor Nero, I think that in this passage, he describes a republican virtue, appropriate for relations among equal citizens who co-own a commonwealth.

I can wish that you feel compassionate without wishing any harm on you, because compassion is a tranquil state that anyone can welcome. A compassionate person is not exposed to chance. If we feel worse as another person worsens, and better as he improves, then we demonstrate sympathy, which subjects us to fate. But compassion remains unchanged regardless of the state of the sufferer.

In fact, to the extent that a person is absorbed in compassion, that person’s own negative emotional states recede. While willing the end of other people’s suffering, we are not desiring concrete things for ourselves, and so we escape from the inevitable frustrations of a selfish will.

Quiet is his wisdom,
Calm his emotion,
Serene and firm his reasoning.
His will has departed. His self-consciousness has been abolished,
Making him serene.

(Lotus Sutra, translated by Reeves, 2014)

It is no accident that the Boddhisatva of Compassion is depicted with a serene expression.

One pitfall is to attach one’s happiness to accomplishing the relief of other people’s suffering. Most remedies fail. Even if they succeed, suffering recurs, and while you address one problem, suffering also afflicts everyone else. However, we can focus on the action, not the outcome, thus avoiding disappointment.

How do we know that compassion is a virtue?

In contemporary courses on moral philosophy or ethics, we usually present students with difficult moral choices about which reasonable people disagree, such whether punishment or war can be just, whether people have a right to health insurance, or whether abortion is acceptable. The overall message is that it is not easy to know what is right, but we should reason about justice, developing and assessing competing arguments. Students may also learn that the ultimate basis of ethical reasoning is hard to determine, a matter of controversy. Value claims may be objective or subjective, discovered or created. We often assign competing arguments about this question.

Until the late 1700s, moral philosophers in the European languages made a different assumption. They thought that all reasonable people knew what was right (Rosen 2022). The philosophical challenge was to develop a theory that matched all our moral intuitions so that we would understand the overall structure of ethics better. The practical challenge was to get people to do what they already knew they ought to do, whether through education, social pressure, rewards and penalties, or in some other way.

Emily McRae (2017) summarizes a similar tenet of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism that I think is widely shared in classical Asian thought:

Most of us understand that there is great and unbearable suffering in the world and that it would be better to alleviate that suffering than ignore or increase it. The moral problem, according to Buddhist ethics, is not that we do not understand what we should do, but we may not have the emotional and psychological resources to actually do it. … One of the basic assumptions—and, I would argue, insights—of Buddhist ethics is that most of us, most of the time, fail to adequately respond to suffering. This failure is not because we are especially bad people, or that human beings are inherently evil or selfish, but it is simply the result of the sheer amount of suffering that is part of the sentient condition (samsara) combined with the habits of thought, feeling, and action that make it difficult for most of us to respond to or sometimes even notice suffering. An appreciation of the myriad ways in which beings suffer and having an adequate response to that suffering is not a basic set of moral skills in Buddhist ethics; it is a rare moral accomplishment that requires a major transformation of our habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. Empathy is one of the main ways by which this transformation can occur.

Thus empathy reemerges in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism not as a goal but as a step along the way. First, we can imaginatively project ourselves into the experience of a concrete person or animal who is suffering. We strive to feel its pain while retaining our own consciousness, so that we attain a dual perspective. This is a practice that requires attention and time. It is a continuum. We can never replicate another creature’s feelings, but we can work on it.

Next, we can shift our empathy to other creatures. One reason is to avoid partiality. We are trying to develop a general capacity. The goal is compassion, which includes empathy along with a lack of selfishness and a genuine desire to act to alleviate all suffering. A moral exemplar, a bodhisattva, demonstrates empathy plus “other skills and virtues such as wisdom, mindfulness, perceptiveness, and responsiveness” (p. 129)

The overall picture is of compassion as an ideal that does not need a foundation in beliefs but that does require cultivation.

Indeed, there is a path from skepticism to compassion. We can begin by applying skepticism to all beliefs that seem to justify suffering or explain it away, including the Aristotelian idea that people have a telos; theologies that attribute suffering to divine will; the Third Noble Truth (enlightenment frees us from suffering); and all political ideologies that make some people’s suffering seem necessary for a better future.

Once we have made ourselves appropriately skeptical about such beliefs, all that is left is the realization that other creatures suffer for no ultimately good reason. And this realization comes close to compassion.

One might ask: Why care about the others’ suffering? What reason compels concern instead of indifference? This question is the mistake that Stanley Cavell analyzes in his famous interpretation of King Lear—thinking that we need a reason to love (Cavell 1969). Skeptics do not believe in the kind of truth that could serve as a foundation for caring in the face of prevalent suffering. Nor do they believe in the negation of such truths: in moral nihilism. Rather, they teach that seeking beliefs as the basis for happiness and ethics is a habit that we can train ourselves to drop.

We can simply care. And as we do so, we may experience some of the benefits recommended by proponents of compassion, such as diminished self-clinging and increased serenity. We will not escape from our own suffering, but we can find a measure of relief.

*Indeed, sympathy and compassion come from words that mean exactly the same thing—“feeling-with”—in Greek and Latin. The Greek word sympatheia originally meant harmony within nature more than a human emotion, and our modern sense of sympathy as well as the Latin translation compassio come well after the classical period. Empathy was coined on p. 21 of Edward Bradford Titchener’s Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought-Processes (Macmillan, 1909) as a translation of the German word Einfühlung, which goes back at least to Herder.

Sources: McRae, Emily. “Empathy, compassion, and “exchanging self and other” in indo-Tibetan Buddhism.” The Routledge handbook of philosophy of empathy. Routledge, 2017. 123-133; Rosen, Michael (2022) The Shadow of God: Kant, Hegel, and the Passage from Heaven to History (Harvard University Press); Stanley Cavell, “The avoidance of love: A reading of King Lear,” in Must We Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays (Cambridge University Press, 1969, updated ed., 2002), pp. 246 – 325.

This post is an amalgam and revision of several previous ones, so apologies for the repetition.

consider the octopus

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Ancient Greek members of the Skeptical School taught methods or habits that helped people to live better. One method involved pondering how different the world might seem to different animals, considering that other species have diverse types of eyes, ears, and tongues; preferences and aversions; and perhaps whole senses unknown to us.

Skeptics said that we are animals and not fundamentally different from the “so-called irrational animals.” Meditating on examples of animal psychology would prevent people from believing that their own experience was true or that the pursuit of truth was possible. In turn, suspending judgment was a path to inner peace and good treatment of others.

In this spirit, consider the octopus, as described in detail by the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith. People who study this animal almost universally conclude that it is curious, intelligent, and interactive and that each octopus has a personality that persists over time. Yet the species is so remote from us on the evolutionary tree that it is like an alien visitor to our planet. Or we could be the aliens on theirs.

For one thing, an octopus has quite different senses from ours, such as suckers that each have 10,000 sensors and eyes of a fundamentally different design. Since an octopus lives underwater and has a soft and flexible body, its whole relationship with its environment must be profoundly different from ours.

I gradually became who I am over many years–the first period now barely a memory for me–and I was deeply connected to other people from the start. I have persisted for almost six decades, building up (and losing) memories. An octopus emerges from an egg and for lives for two years, if it’s lucky, before it dies of old age. Its combination of substantial intelligence and a brief lifespan is unusual on earth and would presumably give it a different sense of time from mine.

An octopus doesn’t have a brain, because its complex nervous system is distributed through its body, and its arms have considerable autonomy. “Octopuses [may] not even track where their own arms might be” (p. 67). Nevertheless, each octopus functions as a coherent organism with an individual personality.

I think of myself as one thing, my body parts as something a bit different (because I control them imperfectly), and the external world as something distinct from both my self and my body. This experience deeply influences my assumptions about fundamentals like self and other, thought and matter, cause-and-effect, intention, and the objective world. It is hard to believe that an octopus feels the same way, yet my experience is no more valid or true.

If you doubt that an octopus has enough mental capacity to have a model of its own world, fine—just imagine an extraterrestrial creature with a similar design as an octopus and 10 times as many neurons. It doesn’t matter whether an alien like that exists on other planets, only that it is plausible. The thought-experiment is enough to tell us that we experience just one of many possible worlds.

Sources: Sextus, Outlines of Pyrhhonism (see 1.13:61 on humans as animals); Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017). See also: thinking both sides of the limits of human cognition; ‘every thing that lives is holy’: Blake’s radical relativism;