30. Evolution in society

De basic processes of evolution are the creation of variety, selection, and transmission of characteristics if their carriers survive selection. Those processes may also be seen as processes of self-organization in economic or political systems and organizations. Herman van Gunsteren noted that in those cases one could add an additional process of indirect control. Such control does not aim directly at the content or outcomes of the processes of variety, selection and transmission, which would obstruct evolution/self-organization, but affects the way in which those processes work, or fail to work.

In the further specification of the basic processes fundamental differences arise between evolution in biology and in society. Van Gunsteren made the useful distinction between the principles and the mechanisms by which they are realised. The principles may be the same but the mechanisms differ radically.

In the capitalist economy and in democracy variety is generated by invention. While there is much trial and error, the creation of variety here is not entirely blind, since unlike biological evolution it is informed by learning and experience obtained from the selection process. In failing one learns what not to do and to look for novel ways. And that may limit variety, preventing attempts that seem insane but might turn out to be strokes of genius. 

Selection takes place by means of competition, for markets viz. votes. A question then is to what extent that selection environment can be affected or even created by the carriers (firms, politicians) of the units that are selected (products, political programmes), in what is called co-evolution. That happens to some extent also in biology, but here the opportunities for it are much greater. Entrepreneurial firms make markets, and entrepreneurial politicians set the political agenda. Scientists may create their own journal to publish work not accepted by others. That may have a positive effect, when it allows innovators to create an initial niche in which they can survive for the time being, before jumping to a larger market. But when the fabrication of the selection environment becomes stronger or faster than the selection process, evolution fails. The process can then get locked up in a struggle between vested interests. 

Third, the transmission of success is based on communication, and there meanings are not duplicated, as genes are, but shifted, supplemented or transformed. That means that transmission is also a source of variety. Conversation and training not only carry over but also create ideas.   

In sum, in so far as one can form one’s own selection environment, variety is constrained by existing common sense (established ways of solving problems), and transmission is part of variety generation, evolution can fail and the result may be a different process altogether.

For evolution in society we must study cognition and language, which can yield features that are sui generis and may no longer correspond with evolutionary logic. Nevertheless evolutionary logic is useful for luring policy makers, in economics and politics, away from their predilection towards intelligent design.

29. Object bias

In their book Metaphors we live by, Lakoff and Johnson argued, in 1980, that apparently self-evident categories, even in what appears to be direct observation, are in fact metaphors rather than ‘literal descriptions’. In fact, literal description does not exist.

An apparently literal description is always already a conceptualisation. We grasp our actions in the physical world, in which we have learned to survive, to construct meanings of abstract categories. ‘Up’, ‘upwards’ and ‘rising’ according to Lakoff and Johnson indicate something good, and ‘downwards’ and ‘falling’ something bad because when we are alive and well we stand up while we are prostrate when ill or sick.

The basis for far-reaching metaphorization lies in ‘primary metaphors’ that build on proprioception (groping, grasping) and bodily survival. Think of our own movement in the world, the speed and direction of the sabre-toothed tiger, the shelter of a roof, a spear and its trajectory, the whereabouts of a lost child, the carrying of a burden. We would not have successfully evolved if we hadn’t been reasonably accurate with such categories. This yields a certain basic conceptualisation in our thought and language, in terms of things, including actors, their movement in time and space, distinction between subject and object, and their action, including causal action.

This is reflected in Chomsky’s universal grammar, where the basic elements of sentences are noun phrases and verb phrases. The basis for thought lies in things (including living things) that ‘do’ something. Those ‘things’ form the paradigmatic nouns and the ‘doing something’ forms the paradigmatic verb.

The object bias would suggest that we think in terms of distinct, discrete entities that appear in sequence in time, and that it does not come easily to us to see entities connected in a continuum, or in a field of force, or in an integrated process of duration, in which moments are not experienced as discrete but as integrated in a flow, as Henri Bergson proposed. We experience it but are unable to conceptualise it.

When we move a word from one sentence to another we are inclined to think that its meaning remains the same, as if we move a chair from one room to another, while in fact the meaning shifts. As if the legs drop off the chair or it changes colour. We think of communication as the transfer of meaning-things across a communication ‘channel’, while in fact in expression and interpretation meanings are transformed.

In sum, my thesis is that in our conceptualisations we have an object bias and an actor bias, a difficult to dodge inclination to see everything, including abstract, immaterial things as objects that have a location, move or do something. The grammatical notions of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ still carry intuitions of causal action while mostly there is no question of that. How does that conceptualisation do under current conditions, where abstractions, such as happiness, meaning, truth, morality, not to speak of democracy, identity, and so on, may now be crucial for human survival?

28. Realism?

The question still stands: do we know the world as it is? According to the empiricists we know it through elementary ‘sense data’. According to idealists it is all in the mind. I argued that we see and conceptualise the world according to mental categories that we develop in interaction with the world. That effect of the world on our thought yields a form of realism. However, this implies the assumption that the world exists. On what is that based?  

We cannot prove that reality exists but we can hardly do other than make the assumption, as a ‘natural belief’, as the 18th century philosopher Hume already said. The philosopher Heidegger also argued that we cannot do other than think in terms of being, of a world that exists. It would be difficult to make sense of our life and the world without it. If the world does not exist, how could we have developed ideas to survive in it? But this argument is circular, assuming a world to survive in.

To believe in evolution we need to believe in a reality that forms a selection environment. Let us assume that this reality indeed consists of objects in space and time, things, animals and people that act. Especially those are salient for functioning and survival in the world. We would not have survived if we hadn’t formed a reasonably adequate mental representation and understanding of them. And that implies that we have an inclination to categorize in such terms of time and place, form, volume, matter, mass, place and movement. Those were of predominant importance to find food, hunt prey, and escape from the sabre-toothed tiger. As Gilbert Ryle indicated in 1949, ‘intelligence’ does not refer to some psychic object, but to a constellation of capabilities, inclinations and practices. All this does not prove that reality is indeed as postulated, but it does form a coherent argument. That view of reality, plus evolutionary theory, and an explanation of our survival and the consequences for our thought then form a coherent whole. That makes the assumption of external reality a warranted belief, even though we cannot prove it. Admittedly, it is like a house of cards: different elements supporting each other. Not strong perhaps, but still better than a single card.

27. Evolution

An ancient, fundamental and recurrent theme in thought about humanity and society is that of stability and change. Traditional conservatives are oriented towards the first, progressives to the second, but both are needed. Without stability one gets into a neurotic roundabout that leads to nothing. Without change life is dead. For change some stability is needed. By not surrendering too soon what exists and pursuing it to the hilt one finds out where precisely its limitations lie, and what the needs and opportunities for renewal are.

Evolutionary logic, with its basic processes of the generation of variety, selection and transmission of success in survival, was a brilliant invention for thinking about stability and change. There is stability in that what does not ‘fit’ in the existing selection environment, has no fitness, is selected out. But in biology novel combinations of existing genes from a ‘pool’ by sexual reproduction, and new genes from mutation, together with changes in the selection environment lead to new forms. This is a solution to the logical problem of how something can arise from what already existed and yet be genuinely new.

A second reason why evolutionary logic is a stroke of genius is that it shows how new forms of life can arise without prior intelligent design. Earlier, one could not but think that a mechanism (such as a watch) requires a designer (the watchmaker), and that therefore there must be a God. In biology one is now accustomed to evolutionary thought but in policy concerning society, the economy and management not by a far stretch. The old intuition still drives thought into the mode of intelligent design.

Evolutionary logic also lends depth to pragmatic thought, of how ideas can arise neither from pre-established essences that they realize nor as a development towards some perfect, fixed ideal that serves as an end station of perfection. Similarly, it helps to see personal identity not as the manifestation or realization of some fixed ‘real self’ nor as the movement towards a pre-established goal of perfection. In other words, evolution yields a logic of imperfection on the move.

Note that there is no genetic determinism. What comes out depends on how genes are expressed in interaction with the physical, cultural and social environment in which it takes place. That environment is diverse and hence this yields a diversity of outcomes that is crucial for evolution, and helps as an antidote to universalism, the idea that a form is the same everywhere.

Evolutionary logic may also apply elsewhere, probably with some adaptation or specialization of the logic, in the economy, for example, or in the development of ideas. Later in this blog I will along that line sketch a theory of invention. I will also consider evolution in society.

26. Pragmatism

Descartes began with radical doubt to arrive at the indubitable ‘I think therefore I am’. But there are many other things we cannot doubt. Nor can we prove everything. Between doubt and proof lies belief that we are prepared to act upon. Beliefs are temporary and fallible, but we adapt or transform them as we gain further experience, in the practice of our doing. That is the insight from American pragmatism, in the work of C.S. Peirce, Dewey, William James and G.H. Mead. The idea goes back further, to David Hume and the practical wisdom of Aristotle.

Pragmatism is a theory of meaning, knowledge and truth. The meaning of a word or expression lies in its implications for phenomena or actions. A proposition is meaningful if it explains: if something could not have happened unless the proposition is true. Once, it was meaningful to claim that God must exist as designer and creator, because it was otherwise inconceivable how complex forms of life could have arisen. Now, from evolution, we have an alternative explanation.    

But how about a priori truths of logic and mathematics, then? Do they have implications for practical conduct? As the philosopher C.I. Lewis argued: yes and no. Internally, in deduction from a set of axioms or assumptions, truth is formal, ruled by the principle of non-contradiction. Deductions are valid given the assumptions. However, different systems of logic and math are judged by their contribution in constructing theories that help in our practical conduct.

Concerning truth, somewhat misleadingly pragmatism has been attributed the view that something is true if it useful or satisfactory. That was more or less the standpoint of William James, but not of Peirce and Dewey. It is nonsense. Lies often work well but are nevertheless lies. Delusions can be satisfactory. However, truth is still meaningful as warranted assertability: we have good reasons for a belief, on the basis of its fruitfulness, its contribution to solving problems, and the ability to maintain it in critical debate. The warrant may be direct, in its contribution to practice, but also indirect, in its coherence with a system of thought that contributes to practical conduct.

In contrast with philosophical rationalism, the warrant of truth is taken from experience, but not the immediate, uninterpreted sense data of empiricism, but experience as mediated by cognition and sense making. Experience is not atomistic sense data but coherent, purposeful ‘things going on, things being done’.

Concerning knowledge, pragmatism is oriented towards action, and opposes the ‘spectator theory’ of knowledge as contemplation of eternal, immutable truths. It has emphasized problems and their solution: situations where an existing idea turns out not to work or not to fit and needs to be adapted or replaced. I add, however, that another source of new ideas lies in new opportunities:  the idea does fit but alternative ideas turn out to also fit while being more fruitful, providing an opportunity for novel combinations with ideas one had.

I thank John Groenewegen for his comments on a previous version.

25. Forms of truth

Notions of truth correspond with ideas of knowledge. For the philosophical rationalist, such as Descartes, knowledge comes from innate ideas that are true because God infuses them. For the empiricist, such as Locke, something is true if it corresponds with reality, on the basis of objective sense data. For others such not already interpreted atoms of truth do not exist, and truth is coherence with a relevant body of knowledge. That can take the form of logical deduction from assumed premises, but also consistency or mutual reinforcement with things that are taken for true. That comes close to the notion of plausibility. There were ample conditions where it might have been refuted but was not. According to a related notion propagated by pragmatic philosophers, something is true if it is fruitful, i.e. contributes to successful practice, if it remains standing in action. 

There is a well-known distinction between analytic truth by definition or logical deduction, and synthetic truths of fact. The strict distinction has been criticized because truths of fact are often dependent on definitions and hence analytic truth. They are also theoretically laden, i.e. are theory-based interpretations of phenomena.

An entirely different notion of truth concerns ‘truth to form’ as in ‘that is not a true work of art’. It can also refer to lack of authenticity, with falsehood referring to insincerity, false pretence, and the like, as in ‘you don’t truly mean that’. One might speak of moral truth, as true to moral precepts, as in ‘he is truly a good man’.

Traditionally, a clear distinction was made between the ‘is’, the descriptive and the ‘ought’, the normative. That also has become doubtful. Observations, and their theoretical interpretations, are routinely subjected to standards of methodology, which are normative. Descriptive statements are mostly intentional, i.e. are part of a project, directed towards a goal, an interest, as a result of which one looks in selected directions and ignores others. In other words, scientific theory is value laden, by both methodological norms and intentions. Many economists, for example, pay no attention to theories that are not mathematically formalized according to the prevailing fashion.   

Much in our use of language is a form of action and a matter of effectiveness rather than a matter of truth or falsity. In his work on Doing things with words, Austin made a distinction between expressions that are locutionay statements, with propositional content, saying something about the world, and illocutionary expressions that are intended to affect someone, such as an order, request, accusation, and the like. Many statements are both at the same time. Earlier I used the example of my wife calling out ‘that is not a screwdriver’ as I use a knife to turn a screw. That has propositional content but the point of it is illocutionary. 

    

24. Body and mind

A tenacious tradition in western thought, under the influence of Plato, religion and Descartes, is that body and soul are separate and thereby reason and passion, knowing and feeling are separate. For redemption and eternal life it is needed that the soul or mind is not inseparately tied to the perishable body. Also for true knowledge and for rationality the mind must transcend the body and matter. Only universal ideas, abstracted from chaotic, differentiated and mutable reality give certain and stable knowledge, such was the idea of Plato. Also for transparency of the self to the self the mind must stand apart from the body.

On the basis of neural science and social psychology we increasingly understand how and to what extent body and mind, and thinking and feeling are entangled. The embodiment of cognition not only robs us of the illusion of life after death, but also of a free, autonomous self that hovers, as it were, above the body and its limitations. Our self is chained to the body and that gives a feeling of being locked up, and a will to escape from the self. The self wants to escape from imprisonment in itself and for that directs itself to the other human being. That is a basic idea of Emmanuel Levinas (in his early work).

Because of embodiment of thought we should not only consider thought in the reflective, intellectual sense. We should also consider cognition in a wider sense, including perception, interpretation, sense making, feelings and emotions. We undergo, experience much without understanding. The greatest part of our mental activity is unconscious, and intuitive, unconscious ‘thought’ governs many of our choices, and often does it better than rational evaluation would have done. I discussed this earlier in a piece on free will.

A fundamental idea is that cognitive functions (perception, interpretation, explanation, valuation, judgment, language) build on feelings and underlying bodily functions. That idea is not new but becomes more tangible in terms of neural structures and processes. A second fundamental idea, which has by now been widely accepted, is that cognition arises from interaction with the environment, especially the social environment.

As infants develop, reaching for something develops in pointing and calling for something develops into a linguistic capability of reference. The construction of mental categories to a large extent is accompanied by proprioception (motor activities of groping and handling). Maxine Sheets-Johnstone showed the importance of movement, and the feeling and perception of movement (kinaesthetics) of the body in the development of cognition and meaning, in evolution and individual development. The grasp of intentions, goals, emotions of others is narrowly associated with the feeling of one’s own body and comparison of it, and its movement and gestures, with those of others. From that congruence between movement and feeling, bodily, kinetic attunement leads on to empathy of attuned emotions, in ‘emotional resonance’. We recognize emotions because we recognize the kinetic expression of them. That is important for trust, for example.

23. From inside and outside

 

Now I start a series of items on questions of knowledge and truth.

 

What comes from inside the human being and what from outside? The question arises in relation to all three of the true, the good and the beautiful. Here I focus on knowledge. Later I will consider morality and ethics.

Does the self produce its own knowledge? Does that come from innate ideas that are aligned beforehand with reality, by some gift of God? We find this for example with Descartes. Or is the brain a clean slate on which sensory perceptions inscribe themselves and form ideas, in a process of association? This we find with mostly English empiricist philosophers (starting with Locke). Or do we form and understand perceptions by pre-existing forms of thought, such as space, time and causality? The philosopher Kant proposed that, and ever since we are uncertain about our knowledge. Where Kant still assumed that there remains an objective reality, outside our ideas, though we cannot know it as such, subsequent idealists argued that if we cannot say anything about that the only relevant reality is that which is produced by ideas.

 

Who is right? Do ideas come from inside or outside? Do ideas form themselves from perceptions or vice versa? Is there anything like ‘sense data’ that serve as elementary ‘building blocks’ from which ideas are ‘constructed’? The difference is not so large as it may seem, if we look at how ideas and knowledge develop. Descartes already indicated that ideas are not available beforehand in developed form but in potency and arise or not depending on sensory triggers. Empiricists on their side grant that the process of association between sensory perceptions also creates ideas of a ‘higher’ level, in some sense, that affect our perception and interpretation.

 

Nowadays almost everybody thinks along the following lines. As a legacy from evolution we have the potential to produce forms of thought and ideas, but how that happens and what comes out depends on the circumstances of nature and culture in which people develop their ideas in the course of their lives. The mental forms according to which people perceive develop in interaction with reality, in the development of the human being in evolution and of the individual in its life. Ideas thus arise both from inside and outside, in interaction between what mentally we already had as potential and the realization of that dependent on the environment.

The fact that people construct their ideas implies, as Kant said, that we do not know the world as it is in itself. More precisely: we don’t know that either. We don’t know in how far and in what way we grasp the world correctly. We cannot descend from our minds to inspect how our knowledge is hooked on to the world. But we must take into account the possibility that we see the world wrong. Objectivity then is not pure, cognitively immediate perception, which is impossible, but openness to views of others.

22. Romanticism

Partly in response to the radical Enlightenment, in what some have called the ‘Counter-enlightenment’, Romanticism developed from the second half of the 18^th century, with mostly German philosophers, but with Rousseau as an important instigator. In the notion of romanticism, as a style and vision of life, much, perhaps too much, is thrown together. In an attempt to create some order in this I propose a conceptual differentiation between four aspects of romanticism: the romanticism of individualization, of transcendence, of unification and of feeling. These four aspects of romanticism can in various ways go together.

In the romanticism of individualization, partly in reaction to the universalism of the radical Enlightenment, the individual strives for selfhood, in self-expression, development of the self, the creative self, the transgression, breaking or shift of boundaries, making oneself free from the coercion of rules and conventions, in anarchy, heroism, in an intrepid self-consciousness, in the fullness of life. The self is an adventurer, or conqueror, and genius is glorified.

On a national level there is the striving for the nation’s own distinctive identity, with its own spirit (‘Volksgeist’), with its unique culture, in religion, morality, habits, mythology, symbolism, art, etc. and their roots in ‘blood and soil’. The paradox of that is that the individuality of national spirit and nationalism overpower the individualization of the individual. The individual is subordinate to the collective of the nation.

In the romanticism of transcendence one looks for transcendence of the self and the world, groping for the sublime, the infinite, the eternal. There is nostalgia for the religious. Platonism is romantic in this sense.

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In the romanticism of unification one wants to belong to a large whole, to be absorbed in something greater than the self. In the Enlightenment it was found in the whole of humanity. Romanticism found it in the nation, as an organic whole, united in national spirit, in which the individual is rooted. The human being does not make its society but is made by it.

In the romanticism of feeling one seeks an escape from the chains of reason, again partly in opposition to the radical Enlightenment. Rapture and ‘truths of the heart’ replace or qualify reason and empirical evidence, and revelation replaces truth. Especially here, the influence of Rousseau is evident. One reaches for a vitality that is opposed to rationality, imagination as opposed to knowledge, poetry as opposed to philosophy, feeling as opposed to reason, spontaneity as opposed to deliberation, passion as opposed to prudence, myth as opposed to logic, body as opposed to mind, nature as opposed to culture. One wants to say the ineffable. Here we see a striving for fantasy, surprise, passion, mystery, and also the dark, and a fascination with death.

The orientation towards change, growth and transcendence of the self, in a way out from nihilism, which I plead in this blog, may perhaps be called romantic in the first sense of romanticism, moving across or shifting boundaries to the self. 

21. Problems with the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment has brought much good, in freedom, equality, democracy, universal human rights, education, and science, but has run into its imperfections. The ideals, especially of the radical stream, are wonderful but the ideas do not quite work. The individual is not so rational and not so autonomous. Objective knowledge in a strict sense is unattainable. The main source for correcting one’s errors and revising one’s prejudices lies in critical response from others. In social and political structures and processes rationality loses out to conflicts between private and public interest, and to institutional and political interests. Individuals are socialized and indoctrinated into existing practices and views and are locked into them. The moderate Enlightenment had more eye for this than the radical stream.

We cannot do without the use of rational, logical argument with sharp, exact, well-defined concepts, but when that rules supreme, it blocks the vitality of inspiration, invention, innovation and art. Those require doubt and ambiguity, shifts of meaning, and new ideas of which the boundaries are not yet clear. Invention, development and the flourishing of life require the acceptance of uncertainty and ongoing though shifting ignorance.

In their overestimation of the mind some Enlightenment philosophers (but not Spinoza, for example) neglected the body. Cartesian (and platonic) separation of body and soul, needed to maintain immortality of the soul, and to keep the soul free from blemishes of the body, led to underestimation of the body and human nature. I will discuss the relation between body and mind later in this blog.

We should take into account the limits of reason and of knowledge, ill-understood human nature, roots of cognition in the body, lack of transparency of the self to the self, the unconscious in our cognition, the feeding ground of thinking and feeling in social connections, the hidden power of institutions, a penchant for mysticism and an urge to transcend the human being in something that is higher and carries it across death. More than 90% of our thought is unconscious. I discussed this in an earlier piece on free will.

All this pulls the rug from under the radical Enlightenment. To me that is not an occasion for joy. I would that there could be more Enlightenment thinking. I dread a society such as the present, which evolves towards more emotion and less reason, more opinion and less argument and fewer facts, more impulse and less reflection, less patience, and more drama. In due course that cannot but go wrong. The temptation for demagogues to manipulate it with new totalitarian ideologies and fanaticisms is too great. It can lead to new hunts for heretics, suppression, persecution, murder, and war.

We should keep on striving for reasonableness, freedom, justice, peace and universal human rights, and here we can maintain at least the spirit, if not the substance of the Enlightenment. Perhaps the core of it is openness to critical debate.

20. The Enlightenment

Before I move on to the big subject of knowledge and truth, let me first, as an intermezzo,  give a thumbnail sketch of the Enlightenment and Romanticism as two major movements of thought in western civilization. 

Western culture has to a large extent been rooted in the Enlightenment. There lies an important source of the view of the self as rational, autonomous and capable of making its own future.

The Enlightenment is variegated. Jonathan Israël distinguished between a radical stream and a moderate, mainstream one. In the radical stream we find Spinoza, Bayle, and the French radical philosophes (such as Diderot, d’Alembert, d’Holbach, Helvétius, and Condorcet). In the moderate stream we find many of the British enlightenment thinkers (such as Locke, Adam Smith, and Newton) and in France Turgot, Montesquieu and Voltaire. Some philosophers (David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau) are difficult to assign clearly to one of the streams.

There are four central issues on which the two streams differ. A first is whether there is (in case of the radicals) or is not (the moderates) a unity of mind and body. According to the radicals thinking arises from the body, without agency from any external God, and hence there is no immortality of the soul and no hereafter. According to the moderates thinking is infused by God. Separation of mind and body is required for immortality of the soul, which is needed for morality.

The second central issue concerns rationality. Are human beings capable (the radicals) or not (the moderates) of rational autonomy of the self and rational arrangements for a good society. According to the moderates, rationality has its limits and human thought and action depend on habits and on social and institutional conditions.

A third issue is the classic problem of universals, which I discussed in a previous item in this blog. For the radical stream conduct must be guided by universal principles of reason, with a universal notion of the individual, while the mainstream had an eye for the limits of reason, the role of unique individuals, institutions, customs, norms, unintended consequences of social dynamics (Hume), diversity of societies on the basis of climate, location, environment and religion (Montesquieu), and technology and entrepreneurship (Turgot). It is often not so much a mistake, an error of reason, that is in the way of truth and goodness as existing habits, routines, laxity, established interests and resistance to change. The radical stream is a-historical, the moderate stream is not. 

Fourthly, there is a difference of opinion whether there is free will (the moderates) or not (most radicals). I discussed free will in a previous item of this blog.

On the four points of difference one can take a moderate position on one and a radical position on another. One can maintain that there is no separation of body and mind, that thinking arises in the body, there is no providential, miracle-producing God (radical), and no immortality of the soul (radical). One can doubt the rationality of the human being and society (moderate) and one can doubt the validity or immutability of universal ideas and rules (moderate). That is more or less where I stand.

19. Beyond nihilism: Imperfection on the move

The philosopher Nietzsche dealt a death blow to belief in old absolutes, raising the spectre of nihilism. God is dead, and truth, morality and beauty have become subjective, relative and evanescent.

There is weak nihilism: regretful loss of belief, and strong nihilism: no longer seeing such belief as desirable. Could we not see the loss of old absolutes as a discarding of shackles, an opening up to the flourishing of life? What room is there for life and humanity when we are bound by universal, immutable ideas? Nietzsche turned the issue around in condemning the old beliefs as a form of decadence, suggesting even that genuine nihilism lay in the old absolutes, in their denial of the forces of life. He heralded the coming of an ‘overman’, who could live beyond nihilism.

There is also a distinction between passive and active nihilism. In the first, there is immobilization, despondency, inability to act, which may end in suicide. Another form of it is withdrawal into the self, or suspension of the self, as in Buddhism. In active nihilism there is an urge to destroy all that is now without sense or aim. An alternative, more positive response, in strong nihilism, is a flight forward, in an attempt at life beyond nihilism, in acceptance of it as a positive opening.

Nietzsche indicated the dilemma that in our criticism of old ideals, including that of truth, we seek that same truth, and thus cannot really step out of it. Nihilism arose from inside: the drive to truth led to the recognition of its limits. To tell the truth, we are unable to quite tell the truth.

Nihilism is a spectre only so long as one thinks that without belief in absolutes there can be no meaningful belief at all. Here, in this blog, I argue that we can escape from the old ideal of certain truth and still seek truth more modestly, in truth as warrantable belief, something that works, for the time being, or in certain conditions, and is imperfect and prone to shift as we stumble on. We seek that makeshift truth because without it we would not survive, and as a result the urge towards it is instinctive. We can act on temporary, imperfect truth on the move, in testing our beliefs, in critical debate.

Key words are imperfection and movement. I plead not for mere acceptance but positive appreciation of imperfection, not just the impossibility but the undesirability of absolutes, and acceptance of change, of ideas, knowledge and morality as provisional but the best we can do now. In change, imperfection can become less imperfect without ever becoming perfect. In that change lies the journey of life. And as Nietzsche indicated, pain, misery, grief, and anguish are part of that life and should be faced rather than hidden in the distraction of false beliefs and hopes. Is there some ultimate goal of that journey, beyond life? Who knows? Probably not. Is it not enough?

In december 2012 I finished a book with the title 'Beyond nihilism: Imperfection on the move'. Now I am looking for a publisher. 

18. Change

Change, of ideas, concepts, knowledge, beliefs, values, rules, and so on, is perhaps the most blatantly obvious part of experience. But for many philosophers it was an insoluble enigma. It was denied for two reasons. First, acceptance of change would mean a denial of immutable absolutes, and that would mean a fall back into the uncertainties and vulnerabilities of human earthly life. That is not an argument but an emotion. An argument was the following. Either novelty is really new and does not arise from what already exists (discontinuity), and then it arises out of nothing, which is not credible, or it arises from what already exists (continuity), but then it is not really new. So, change is illusory, that was the preposterous conclusion.

The argument against novelty in continuity is silly. There can be genuine novelty arising from what existed before. The paragon example is evolution. New species are genuinely new forms of life yet they arise from previously existing gene pools, by mutation and recombinations of genes together with evolutionary selection of their carriers.

How about knowledge? How can new ideas arise out of old ones? In a later piece on invention, in a series of pieces on knowledge and truth, I will show how that might work.

In language new words arise and meanings of existing ones change. Consider poetry and science. In a later piece on meaning change, in a series of pieces on meaning, I will show how that might work. I will also show how universals may change in the process of their application to individuals. I will also discuss how not only the meaning of a sentence depends on the meanings of the words in it, but also the meanings of words depend on the sentence and its context of expression.

That is a crucial point of logic in view of an earlier discussion, in this blog, of how individuals (here sentences) can have features (here words) that have a quality (here meaning) that is uniquely their own, even though there is also similarity of quality (meaning) with the same features (words) in other individuals (sentences). This point is crucial for preserving the integrity of individuals under the sway of universals.

Not only is it possible to account for change, but inclusion of change helps to resolve persistent philosophical problems that are insuperable from a static perspective, the perspective that denies change. Consider what is perhaps the most fundamental, perennial problem of philosophy: the question whether the world (or our view of it) depends on the mind (idealism) or, the other way around, that the mind depends on (is constructed from observation of) the world (realism). From a static perspective it cannot be both, but from a dynamic perspective it can. At any moment we perceive the world according to mental categories (idealism) but those categories have previously been formed in interaction with the world (realism) (and they will keep on changing from experience). 

    

17. Universalism

Communism was universalist, but so is neoliberal market ideology. Friedrich Hayek, one of the inspirators of neo-liberalism, pointed out the importance of the spread of diverse, local knowledge and ideas, which can never be matched by any system of central planning. The paradox now is that this insight into the role of diversity is transformed into a universal notion of markets, without regard to diversity according to industry, organization, technology, culture, religion, institutions, history, education, infrastructure, climate, geography, knowledge, etc. The universalism of markets implies non-intervention, laisser faire. And that gives ample room for smart people to exploit the imperfections of markets. The myth of markets has led to blindness to the perversities of capitalism and an aversion to intervention until it was forced by an accumulation of excesses.

The spread of market processes to public services, such as transportation, education, and health care, has led, not to the proclaimed simplification of society, but on the contrary to an increasingly complex system with a large diversity of controls to govern the market imperfections to which one was blind. And these increasingly complex controls are in their turn understood in universalistic terms.

In organizations people are confronted with a managerial drive towards abstraction and the sway of universal rules, in a compulsion towards control that under the cover of ‘rationalisation’ forms a plague for professional work. From a legitimate feeling of responsibility or ‘accountability’ towards shareholders and citizens, managers in business and public services impose more and more controls. Yet is has been known for a long time, in the relevant literature, that professional practice is too rich, too diverse and too variable, from one application to another, from one patient to the other, one pupil to the other, from one bridge to be built to the other, etc., to be identical, so that room must be left for improvisation and professional discretion of practitioners. This is proven in the condition that when workers shift to exact conformance to the rules (work to rule) this is a form of sabotage.

As indicated in an earlier piece, Aristotle already recognized that human activity often cannot be fully consistent, because practical conduct has to deal with ever changing conditions. With more regulation and regimentation of work less appeal is made to intrinsic motivation in work, in professional ethics and pride and the challenge to mend errors from one’s own sense of responsibility. If people are told precisely and fully what to do they unlearn thinking for themselves what it is good to do.

Because of the increasing complexity of systems of control their design is increasingly entrusted to specialists. We are getting ensnared in vicious circles where managers lose authority because they no longer have control over the controls that obstruct professional work. Professional workers lose authority because they can no longer offer professional quality, and are no longer motivated to do so, and this contributes to a further strengthening of external control mechanisms.

16. The problem of universals

The ‘problem of universals’ is ancient, and it is still with us. It concerns the status, regarding existence, nature and origin, of a general idea or category (the universal) that embraces a number of individual cases that ‘belong to the category’. For example ‘the horse’ or ‘the human being’. Does the universal, as with Plato, have an independent existence, in a separate immaterial world? In Plato’s view individuals are weak images or shadows of it. Recall his metaphor of the cave. People only see shadows on the wall of the cave, of ‘real’ entities behind them that are lit from a fire outside the cave. Or does the universal, as with Aristotle, exist only as thought in the human mind, and does it refer to some essence more or less shared by the individuals, construed by abstraction from the individuals, by eliminating all other features? If universals exist only in the mind, are they then unreal, purely subjective? How then could science exist, since that rests upon universals? With Aristotle the idea was that they are not without realism since they are derived from observations by abstraction.

Aristotle’s view sounds much more reasonable than that of Plato, yet I do not go along with Aristotle either. An essence in which all individuals take part would entail that in the abstraction the individual is lost. With Plato, compared to the universal individuals do not matter. With Aristotle, all corresponding individuals share an essence, and can in that aspect be seen as interchangeable.

My idea on universals goes back to the 14th century philosopher William of Ockham and is called nominalism. The universal refers to a resemblance, not some shared thing. If things resemble each other in some feature, do they have that feature in the same way, with the same quality or meaning, with only a difference in quantity? That would mean that in that feature they are interchangeable. And there again is the moral implication of indifference, literally and figuratively, concerning the individual, and subordination of the individual to the universal. The individual is not relevant as a unique carrier and a complex whole but only insofar as it is an exemplar of a reproducible feature (worker, consumer, voter, colleague, nationality, race, …). To avoid this, an individual should have any feature in its own way, in a unique configuration with other features that affects the quality of each.

How universalism can lead to totalitarian thought emerges sharply in Rousseau’s idea of the general will, as of a collective subject. The nightmare of his thought is that one is only really free when one completely subjugates oneself to that general will, which is supposed never to be in conflict with what one really wants (or should want). If one wants something and it turns out that the collective wants something else one must admit that what one wanted was a mistake. In this way freedom is enforced. The echo of that sounded in Stalinism.

15. The human condition

The deepest tragedy of the human being is, I think, that it craves to transcend human mortality and the confusion and fragility of life but thereby gets lost in absolutist, i.e. universal and immutable, ideas concerning truth and morality, which have led to suppression, in theistic religion (religion with a God) and political ideologies.

Theistic religion, not in the last place Christian religion, has produced tempestuous violence in persecution, torture, and extermination of infidels, heretics and Jews, in inquisition, pogroms and crusades. With the advent of the Enlightenment, humanism, and modernity, with human rights and democracy, emerged the hope that the violence would be over. The philosopher Kant dreamed of ‘eternal peace’. But since then there has been unprecedented violence, in the French Revolution, the First World War, the Holocaust, the communist Gulag, to mention a few. The shock of it lies not only in the extent and intensity of the violence but most of all in its being systematic, in reasoned design, as part of grand, idealistic projects to improve mankind. Where does that come from? How can what presents itself as virtue produce so much evil, in religion and political ideology?

Is the human condition inevitably and drastically vulnerable, variable, diverse, subject to uncontrollable and unpredictable conditions, or can humanity obtain a rational grip, with fixed, universal, abstract concepts and rules, that apply always, everywhere and for everyone, with which humanity can control its destiny and its environment? That question is as old as philosophy. It goes back to a contrast between the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle.

Plato despised the relativism and rhetoric of the sophists of his time, the spouting of mere opinion, gossip and slander, mystical evocation, the manipulation of truth and the fabrication of falsehood. The Platonic tradition seduces the human being to the higher, the pure, eternal, immutable, in which we reach for the divine. He reached for absolute, universal, timeless concepts, in a ‘heaven of ideas’, beyond the chaotic world we perceive. The soul is liberated from the body. In politics the platonic tradition has offered a breeding ground for disasters of totalitarianism, fundamentalism and extremism.

Aristotle, who for 20 years was a disciple of Plato, continued to share a few ideas with his teacher. However, for Aristotle thought must be turned into action, and relations with others are part of the good life. And in such relations one is inevitably vulnerable. In his practical wisdom Aristotle moves far away from Plato. For Plato the individual, non-universal is a lower form of being; while for Aristotle it is the beginning of all insight. In human choice of conduct there can be no universal that goes beyond a principle or guideline that in each situation requires an adjudication matching the specific conditions, not rigidly, and is always in development, ready for surprises, because of the mutability, indeterminacy and particularity of conditions. Not all relevant aspects and options can be surveyed, and situations are often unique, unrepeated. 

14. Religion without a God

The human being has a religious drive towards transcendence, a rising above the self. That can be but is not necessarily oriented towards a god. In its evolution, human society also needed God as a kind of policeman, to compel people to behave towards each other, on pain of damnation. Now we have regular police and laws for maintaining order, and for that we may no longer need God. But the religious thirst for transcendence remains.

The etymology of ‘religion’ is contested. According to one view it derives from the Latin ‘religare’, connecting, with a tie of the human being to something divine or higher than the self that is ‘holy’, cannot be fully grasped and is awesome, inspires admiration and instills modesty. Transcendence does not imply that there ‘is something’ for the self beyond life, it can be ‘immanent’, part of life, though in life one can aim beyond it, to the life of others and to what one leaves behind after life.

The higher can be the whole or part of nature, such as spirits of rivers, mountains, forests, as with the American Indians, or the gods of the classical Greeks, carousing on mount Olympus, spirits of ancestors that intervene in the world, or, ominously, national spirit or character, revived in present populistic nationalism.

Robert Bellah spoke of a ‘civil religion’ in the US, in an American cultural and political tradition, with sacralization of symbols. The sociologist Durkheim proposed human rights as a new religion. The idea of a civil religion or religion of the state goes back to Rousseau, in his book on the social contract. With Schopenhauer, in aesthetic contemplation the self can momentarily escape the relentless drive of the will. Here we have art as religion. For Friedrich Schiller also art was the replacement of religion.

Emmanuel Levinas sought transcendence in the relation between self and other. He rejected traditional notions of God. After the holocaust, the murder of his family by the Nazis, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ruanda and the like, that idea no longer has any credibility. Yet the tone of Levinas is religious. He still talks about God but not in any usual sense. Levinas allows only for some non-ontological notion of God, not as something that exists. There can be no comprehension of God; we cannot have direct access to him, but ‘we hear his voice’ in the relation between self and other. Levinas said, somewhat paradoxically, that this is all that survives after the death of God. In a sense, the other has replaced God. So, perhaps we can say that Levinas is offering a ‘religion of the other’, in a link of the self to the other who is higher than the self. Now it is the other human being who inspires wonder, admiration, and awe. The beauty of this is that the religious source of awe for the other now coincides with morality. The vertical transcendence to God is replaced by a horizontal transcendence from human being to human being.

13. Which God?

Do I believe in God? The question is difficult to answer because there are at least three different notions of God.

First, the God of the philosophers. Here God is mostly the ‘prime or unmoved mover’, who created the world. Without God as the designer, how could all the complex forms of life have arisen? Now of course we know from evolutionary theory that they can have evolved on the basis of random trials, selection and transmission of what survives. For Spinoza God was not even a prime mover but simply the whole system of nature.

Second, the God for the people, supplied by Christian, Jewish, and Islamic religion. People desperately need God as a higher power that transcends the sorrow, mortality and fragility of human life on earth. He is provident, has an intention for humanity. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and benevolent, deals out ultimate justice, and guarantees morality by the threat and promise of a hereafter. For a long time, philosophers also deemed belief in God necessary for morality.

With this God there is the insoluble problem of evil, of the justice of God (theodicy). If God is all-powerful etc., how can he allow the blatant injustice and cruelty of natural and human disasters? The answer is that even those have a hidden purpose, known only to God. No matter how bad the world seems, it is the best of all possible worlds. In this way one can rationalize any evil on the grounds that it could have been worse. 

Third, the God of the mystics. God is not ‘out there’ but ‘in here’, to be found by delving into the self, aided by asceticism and training by spiritual leaders. God cannot be rationalized. Holy texts do not explain but evoke personal religious feeling. We find mysticism in all three world religions: Meister Eckart and Thomas a Kempis, for example, in Christendom, the Jewish Kabala, and Islamic Sufism. They all tended to be persecuted because the clergy could not tolerate the elimination of their role.

So, do I believe in God? The mystic God would be my favorite. But I am an agnostic: If God is what he is to be, then all we can say about Him is there is nothing we can say about Him, not even that He does not exist. He transcends all human understanding. However, mystical delving into the self is unreliable. Introspection may be a surrender to delusion, and we need some external check of that. 

I wish there were a God. Perhaps God exists in that wish, and one can pray to that wishful being. But the only hereafter is what we leave behind after our life, in the life of others. Life is a unique gift, and it can flourish in contributing to that hereafter. Perhaps we can muster the courage to think that is enough.     

12. Tracing identity

Do Europeans have more shared mental categories within Europe than outside? They also have a number of things in common with the US, though perhaps not to the same extent. They share a penchant for individualism, change rather than stability, and the idea that we can shape our environment. That leads to entrepreneurship and innovation. And to pollution and excessive consumption.

More than many Americans many Europeans have a sense of tragedy, in the classical Greek sense, and an awareness of the danger of overconfidence (hubris). That makes Europe less inclined to intervene in the world. Americans see that as indecision and lack of moral courage, and Europeans prefer to see it as wisdom. What Americans see as fatal relativism Europeans see as beneficial tolerance of difference.

In the emergence of the Netherlands a war with Spain was central. Do the Dutch still defne themselves as enemies of Spain? How does one decide that the Netherlands does and Turkey does not ‘belong to Europe’? Must we take into account history, and how far then does one go back?

Far enough back in evolution we all, humans and animals, were a kind of virus. Later we became animals and next as mammals split ourselves off from birds. However, in the platipus there still is an intermediate species. Evolutionary scientists trace the identity of a species along paths of branching in descent, with nodes where new species split off from a common ancestor. Along that branching the Neanderthal was not an ancestor of Homo Sapiens, but they had a common ancestor.

In a similar way we might trace cultural identities. We might look where for Turkey the points of contact lay, with the Netherlands or another European country, in time, place, and type of contact, including war, domination, alliance, trade, migration, and other exchange of people or ideas. There have been contacts between the Netherlands and Turkey for 400 years. Tulips originally came from Turkey. As points of contact arise more frequently and more recently there is more similar identity. In de 16^th century the Turkish Ottoman empire included the Balkans and Hungary and reached up to Vienna. The French made a pact with the Ottomans against emperor Charles of Habsburg and a joint fleet bombarded the Riviera.

Part of European identity lies in the fact that in varying coalitions there have been so many wars within it. The Dutch will no doubt be closer to the Flemish than to the Hungarians, but a shared essence there is not. Whether Europe has more of a shared identity with the US than with Turkey would have to follow from further scrutiny. And for the Netherlands as the home of the Pilgrim Fathers that will turn out differently from Spain, as the home of a moorish-catholic civilization.  

11. European identity?

Europe needs something like a European identity. If there is no essence to culture or identity, as I claim in a previous piece, what does identity entail? Among other things, identity is associated with a shared destiny. European integration was started to prevent further wars in Europe. Next, Europe was needed for the economy. Now it is needed above all to achieve a coherent financial, fiscal and foreign policy. However, while some shared destiny is necessary it is not sufficient. We should not only need each other but also be willing and able to collaborate. We should not only share interests but also values and views. For example: the relation between citizen and state (democracy), rule of law, separation of powers and of church and state.

On a deeper level there is more at stake. At the basis of culture lie fundamental mental categories according to which people see the world and themselves. Is knowledge of the world objective or constructed, are rationality and emotions separate or entwined, are we at the mercy of our environment or masters of it, oriented towards risk or towards certainty, is the human being fundamentally good or evil, can perfection be reached in this world or only in a hereafter, is stability or change central, unity or diversity, are people primarily individuals or members of groups, is there only self-interest or also altruism?

In such basic categories people in Europe are as different as they are equal. They largely derive from classical Greek and Christian traditions. But those themselves yield opposites. The ancient Greeks fought on the question whether stability or change are fundamental: fixed elements or a flowing river? Plato was oriented towards absolutes and universals, and Aristotle towards specific circumstances. In Europe we have been arguing for a long time about the primacy of reason or emotion, nature or culture, unity or diversity.

Mental categories shift during the development of knowledge, society and economy. In traditional societies people are more one with the (familial, local) group and trust is more personal, while in economically more developed countries people are more autonomous and trust is more based on impersonal arrangements of laws and other institutions.

Any two people will not have the same points in common as any other two. With some we have this in common, with others something else. There may not be a single basic idea that is shared by all. Then there is no essence. That does not mean that we do not form a community. The philosopher Wittgenstein spoke of family resemblance: Pete looks like John, who looks like Charles. Pete does not look at all like Charles, but is nevertheless connected to him through John. Instead of essence we have spots of coagulation of unity in fields of diversity. This coagulation is perhaps more dense within Europe than beyond it. But not as dense as within nations.

10. Culture is not essential

We are inclined to put things and people into conceptual boxes, in categorization. That yields categorial identity: To what does a person or a group ‘belong’. People are European or Dutch. That thinking in terms of boxes is useful, up to a point, but next we have a strong inclination to accord an essence to the box. To ‘belong to’ the box one must have certain characteristics, and everyone in the box has them. There can be no doubt whether or not something belongs the category. You are inside or outside. You are a Dutchman or not. That essentialization of cultural identity is a source of imperialism and nationalism that blocks tolerance of immigrants and integration of states because that requires mixed bags of culture.

We have the inclination to think in boxes on the basis of a fundamental metaphor that we do not see as a metaphor: the idea that a concept is like a container of objects. That metaphor arises from our dealings with things in the world, in a struggle for survival in evolution, which has been imprinted on our thought. A chair is in one room or another, never in two at the same time, and it does not change when we carry it from one room to another. Ambiguity concerning inside and outside is as uncomfortable, confusing or even threatening as a home with holes in the roof, or the sabre-toothed tiger that is half inside and half outside the house, or being half inside and half outside your car. However, for concepts and identities that thinking does not apply. If you move a word from one sentence to another its meaning changes. One situation calls forth another aspect of identity than another. One can at the same time have several identities.

Essences are often difficult to determine because they do not exist. What is the essence of a chair? Once I saw a photo in the newspaper of someone sitting in a stuffed cow, saying: ‘See me sitting in my cow’. For natural kinds, such as species, one can say that their genes form their essence, but different specimens of the species have different configurations from their gene pool.

Personal identity is derived from biography, depending on what one has come across along one’s life path, and on expectations and plans one may have. One belongs to different groups, is in different boxes, at the same time. If those boxes had essences one would have a collection of essences, which is difficult to reconcile with the notion of an essence. Your identity flies off in all directions. What aspect of identity counts depends on the situation. In church you belong to one community, and when getting a passport to another.

Perhaps the cultural identity of a person is a collection of positions in networks that intersect in it.

9. Cultural Identity

Culture has several meanings. First, as something opposed to nature: mind as opposed to body, spirit as opposed to the matter, morality as opposed to natural drives. Second, in the anthropologcal sense: the way of life of a group, with its habits, values, norms, rules, ways of doing things. Third, cultural products: architecture, art, music, theatre, science, laws, etc. One might call the latter ‘civilization’. In this piece, the second, anthropological notion is central, but it is connected with the other two meanings. Civilization forms the basis for ways of life, and cultural products are the expression of both.

Now, then, does every arbitrary group have its own culture? It has culture in the anthropological sense to the extent that it shows clearly distinctive behaviour that is rooted in the other dimensions of culture, i.e. distinctive mental and moral categories and cultural products, such as language, buildings, music, sports, art, myths, symbols, etc. The Dutch are supposed to be tolerant, pragmatic, frugal, and to distinguish themselves in ballet, swimming, skating, and water works. Some of these features tend to more myth than fact. Presently the tolerance of the Dutch is questionable. Cultural features can be more or less distinctive, shared, taught, and celebrated. In other words, culture can be more or less strong.

This characterization of culture includes not only ethnic or national cultures but also organizations, such as firms. There, one can encounter fairly strict distinctive features (which in earlier work I called ‘organizational focus’). Next to a function of sense making that also has one of establishing goals, procedures, attitudes, and a division of roles, without at each step having to negotiate the order. Entry is formally free and voluntary but is in fact subjected to selection and socialization, and is conditional on adequate conformity.

Bonding to a group (nation, organization), can have a strong emotional loading, which is connected with a romantic longing for fusion with a larger, organic whole to which one is subservient, which transcends the puny, mortal and vulnerable self. We can see this in nationalism, sects and some organizations.

People have numerous, overlapping cultural identities. One can be Dutchman, European, employee of a firm, member of a sports club, of a profession, belong to a municipality, a religion, or a political party. Nationality is just one of the stronger ones to the extent that it entails unity of language, history, political structure, etc. In Belgium one is not so much a Belgian nationalist as a Flemish one.

8. Personal identity

Behind a number of political debates, for example on immigration, the re-emergence of nationalism, and European unification, there lie issues of identity: personal and cultural. I give a series of five pieces to deal with the different aspects involved.

There is individual identity (‘who am I’) and collective identity (‘who are we’). Also, there is categorial identity (‘to what do I/we belong’) and existential identity (how do we experience ourselves). For the individual, existential identity is personal identity, and for a group it is cultural identity. Existential identity is connected with the question’ What do I/we want’, associated values, and the question ‘how do I/we think’. Individual identity does not stand alone from collective identity: I can hardly belong to a group that is completely at odds with what I think that I am and what I want. And collective identity contributes to the formation of individual identity. Here I consider individual identity.

‘Identity’ here is an intriguing term. It suggests that in having an identity one is identical to oneself, remaining equal to oneself. But the self is wobbly and fragmented, opaque, and changes, develops, within limits. Nevertheless the self has a certain stability. Where does that come from?

It comes from the body. In that body the individual has its own temperament in innate dispositions, and a personality as a whole of attitudes, responses and behaviours. Without body there is no identity and in death we lose it. In the body all impressions, movements, and experiences come together. Those form dispositions, impulses and ideas on the basis of experience, and that experience is bound to that one body along its unique life trajectory.

How does that work, more precisely? According to Antonio Damasio the brain forms images or ‘maps’, in neuronal structures, of the interior body, of organs. Those internal images in the brain are fed by the physiology of organs, and in turn play a role in the regulation of those organs. Next, from observation of external objects and experience with actions those body maps are affected, and a new level of images or maps arises. Here, from interaction with the outside world the notion arises of the self as an independent player in that world. Next that leads to the build-up of a biographical self, with memories of earlier experiences, and expectations and plans for the future, and the whole of all that forms the identity of the self.

Now, if the self is in ongoing development, what then is authenticity, being true to one’s real self? What ‘real self’? Where in time does that lie? How can one be true to something that is under development and that furthermore one knows imperfectly? The idea of the self as something that is given beforehand and manifests itself in life without change is not only unrealistic but also creepy. Then one is condemned to that original self. Is authenticity, perhaps, giving oneself the opportunity of developing identity, in the realisation of one’s potential for it, in interaction with one’s environment?