If you don’t read my blog, you will die.

Posted on 2011-04-05 by Andreas Moser

That caught your attention, didn’t it?

And on the face of it, it’s true and backed up by facts and statistics:

  1. About 150,000 people died worldwide yesterday.
  2. Of these, none had read my blog yesterday.
  3. The few people who did read my blog yesterday are still alive today.

Conclusion: Reading my blog keeps you alive.

“Damn. We should have read Andreas Moser’s blog.”

Or does it? You immediately sense that a few things are fishy here, even if you believe that I know each one of my readers personally and know that they are alive: Of the people who died yesterday, many had no access to the internet. If they also live in countries with higher mortality rates, their chance of death is of course higher than those of the bulk of my readers who are in the USA and Europe (see the flag counter on the right hand side). This increased mortality risk might have less to do with lack of wifi, but with lack of food or the danger of diseases or with a war. On the other hand, of the people who read my blog, some might be couch potatoes who never venture outside. They don’t have the risk of car accidents, of being shot or struck by lightning. But again, the reason for their longevity is not reading my blog, the reason is staying inside.

You see that just because two events (reading my blog and staying alive) happen at the same time or to the same people, there is not necessarily a causal connection, as long as there are other possible more causal connections (like the country where you live or the dangers that you are exposed to, in this example).

Correlation is not causation!

In fact, correlation does not even imply causation.

With a silly example like the one I have chosen, this is obviously clear. But keep this sentence in mind when you read or hear about the latest “new study” that tries to show a link between something and cancer or something and crime or something and divorce. This is especially true for the social sciences, because human interactions are so complex that they will rarely be open to monocausal explanations.

A few more examples that we come across regularly:

  • If a study suggests that married people are happier, this is presented as proof that marriage is a way to happiness. However, it could simply mean that happy people find partners more easily than grumpy ones and therefore get married more often.
  • Children who watch TV or play computers too much, have psychological problems. Parents use this as an argument to cut down on your computer use. In fact, it might be interpreted the other way round: Children who already have psychological problems don’t want to interact with other children and thus prefer to sit in front of a screen.
  • Babies who have been breast-fed will have a higher IQ. Proponents of breast-feeding will cite this again and again and probably even petition for tax relief for breast-feeders. However, if we look at the group of breast-feeding mothers, these might be the mothers who generally take more time for their babies, have a closer emotional bond, will be more supportive and will also read books to the child. All of which might have a greater impact on the IQ than where the milk comes from.

To be clear: What these studies pretend to show, could be true. But it could also be false. Even the opposite could be true. – Without the context of many other studies, they just don’t tell us anything of value.

More critical thinking, please!

correlation

Posted in Economics | Tagged , , | 10 Comments

Print is King

Posted on 2011-03-27 by Andreas Moser

I have some information stored on 3.5-inch discs, but I can’t find a computer that still has a slot for these floppy discs. With my old phone, I had taken some cool photos, but I can’t retrieve them because I can’t find a fitting data-transfer cable. On my old laptop, there is a lot of valuable information, but I can’t get it to run.

expires faster than yoghurt

And then I have some books printed a hundred years ago and passed to me through the generations. I can read them without any problem.

Sometimes, technology is not bliss, but loss in the disguise of bliss.

When you buy an e-book or download books on your Kindle, I-Phone, I-Pad or any other e-reader, think about how quickly some data storage formats of the past decades disappeared. There is nothing to indicate that the current formats will stay around longer. You may be investing – not for the first time in your life – in something that will have lost all of its value in 2 or 3 years and that will end up in the bin or a box in the attic.

no updates necessary

With a printed book, that won’t happen. And you can even pass it on to your children. – That sounds like the real future to me.

Posted in Books, Economics, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

A welcome alternative to flag-burning

Posted on 2011-03-26 by Andreas Moser

When I was in Kosovo in February 2009 for the first anniversary of Kosovo’s independence, I spotted this car draped is US flags in front of a mosque in the Southern (i.e. Kosovar) part of Mitrovica:

Of all the countries I have travelled, Kosovo and Serbia have been the only ones where the Muslim part of the population is very strongly pro-West, pro-USA, even pro-NATO and the Christian part of the population is predominantly rather hostile towards the West.

Posted in Islam, Politics, Travel, USA | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Strangers on a train

Posted on 2011-03-26 by Andreas Moser

I like long train journeys because they provide me with the time to read books, magazines and newspapers.

Once, on a train in Germany, I was reading a newspaper or a news magazine. Across the table sat a man who was looking at me from time to time, so I decided to offer him one of my newspapers when he glanced at me again: “Do you want to have one of the papers to read?”

“No, I don’t read newspapers. They are a waste of time.” he replied, a tad too harshly for the occasion, and continued to stare out of the window.

“A waste of time compared with doing nothing?” I asked after a few minutes. The look I earned as a response was something between unfriendly and non-comprehending.

The rest of the journey passed in silence until the non-reader got off the train a few stops later, not without a friendly “Good Bye” from myself.

Posted in Germany, Travel | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Book Review: “Into the Wild” by Jon Krakauer

Posted on 2011-03-26 by Andreas Moser

“Into the Wild” is the real story of Christopher McCandless, a young American who decided to roam the wilderness of the United States after graduating from university and who eventually died of starvation in Alaska, aged 24.

“Greetings from Fairbanks! This is the last you shall hear from me, Wayne. Arrived here 2 days ago. It was very difficult to catch rides in the Yukon Territory. But I finally got here. Please return all mail I receive to the sender. It might be a very long time before I return South. If this adventure proves fatal and you don’t ever hear from me again, I want you to know you’re a great man. I now walk into the wild.”

Such read the postcard that Chris had mailed to a friend on 27 April 1992. Four months later, he was dead. His dream had been to live in the wilderness of Alaska, without any contact with or support by the outside world. Chris stumbled across a derelict bus (pictured on the cover of the book, above) which he made his home. From there, he set out to collect food and hunt animals. Chris had neither taken a compass, nor a lot of other useful gear. If it hadn’t been for a helpful gentleman who had given Chris a lift on the last leg of his hitch-hiking journey to Alaska, Chris wouldn’t even have had proper boots. – One thing that he did have plenty of stock though, were books, among them works by Henry David Thoreau, Boris Pasternak and Leo Tolstoy. The entries in Chris’ diary also show the influence of Jack London.

self-portrait of Chris McCandless

“I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless you all!” is the entry in the diary, dated 12 August 1992. Chris felt that his body was weakening, that he was losing weight fast, that his end was near. On or shortly after this day, he died. Three weeks later, his body was discovered by a group of hunters. Had Chris still been alive, this encounter would have saved his life.

To die three weeks before a potential rescue and after having walked off into the wilderness a bit unprepared might be considered as a sad or silly thing. And maybe Alaska is really too dangerous for these kind of follies, especially for a kid that grew up in a Virginia suburb.

But one shouldn’t judge a life by its end or its duration, but by its content. Chris may have had a short life, but he certainly had a fulfilled one: After graduating from university, at age 22, he gave away all his savings to charity and went on a road-trip around the United States. The car was lost to a flash flood, so he continued by walking, hitch-hiking and jumping freight trains. He crossed into Mexico by canoe and got lost in the canals there. He lived and worked on a farm in South Dakota for a while. He spent time in Arizona and California, sleeping in forests, on mountains, next to rivers and in the desert. But all the time he was dreaming of the big adventure in Alaska.

the last photo of Chris McCandless

The strongest parts of the book by Jon Krakauer are actually not the last months in Alaska (which had to be recreated based on Chris’ diary and the evidence found at the site of his death), but the memories of people whom Chris had met on his travels, with whom he had caught rides, worked and stayed. I was especially moved by the generosity of strangers and by Chris’ friendship with an old man, whom he managed to convince to (also) give up the monotonous life and take up adventure. These two years of travelling sound like a heck of a time! No obligations, no limitations, no expectations (at least not somebody else’s). Just exploring the world, life and yourself. That’s a life! – In contrast to that, what most of us do is just “passing time”.

One annoying thing about the book: Jon Krakauer could not refuse to compare his own youth with that of Chris McCandless and insisted on writing about himself. Conveniently though, this is confined to two chapters of their own, which I could thus easily skip.

Let’s hit “the road” again!

Reading the story of Chris McCandless conjured up romantic feelings in me. I was reminded of many of my own adventures, from the Australian Outback to a hike along the Southern coast of France, from sleeping outside the city walls of Jerusalem because I had arrived in the city too late to find any open hotel to crossing the mountains from Lebanon to Syria in a snowstorm. But even more so, I realised how much I miss these adventures. – And I have vowed to take them up again! Living in England, I have decided to start by walking across the country, from coast to coast, this summer without sleeping in any man-made shelter.

Posted in Books, Life, Philosophy, Travel, USA | Tagged , , , , , , | 25 Comments

“Why don’t you get married?”

Posted on 2011-03-26 by Andreas Moser

“What’s the point?”, I could retort. Or talk about freedom, independence and self-determination.

But for now, I will just point you to the answer given by J. D. Salinger in his novella “Zooey“:

“I like to ride in trains too much. You never get to sit next to the window anymore when you’re married.”

And you get to read on trains even less.

Posted in Books, Life | Tagged , , , | 21 Comments

Assessing the risk of nuclear technology

Posted on 2011-03-24 by Andreas Moser

The nuclear industry is keen on coming up with probabilistic risk assessments that show that a serious accident at a nuclear power plant can only happen every 20,000 years or so (admittedly this number is from a somewhat outdated report from 1974). Apparently, this is supposed to keep people’s minds at ease. But it shouldn’t:

  • This should not have happened. At least not yet.

    This does not mean that once Chernobyl has happened, mankind will be safe for 20 millennia. It’s just statistical, so two accidents could happen in consecutive years (although according to these statistics, the next accident would then be – again statistically – 40,000 years away).

  • If you read carefully, you will notice that these statistics use “reactor years” instead of “years”. A reactor year is one year of a reactor’s activity, so if your country has 20 active nuclear reactors, the probability of a serious accident is already 1 in every 1,000 years.
  • It doesn’t take into account the slow deaths caused by constant radiation and increased rates of cancer in the areas surrounding a nuclear power plant.

But I have a much more general problem with these risk assessments: I just don’t believe that anyone can predict the safety for the next 20,000 years of a technology that has been around for 60 years. I think this is beyond the capability of any statistical model.

I have recently been thinking about our abilities to predict the risks of technologies because I had just come across a study by NASA’s Space Shuttle Safety and Mission Assurance Office that examined the risk of the first Space Shuttle missions and found that these were actually 10 times more dangerous than the current Space Shuttle flights.

Especially in light of the recent catastrophe in Fukushima where the possibility of a combined earthquake and tsunami had apparently not been considered (which in itself is a bit odd, considering that Japan is [a] an island that is [b] quite prone to earthquakes], this report by NASA provides valuable lessons for the risk assessment of nuclear power:

  1. The first Space Shuttle missions (in the 1970s) were ten times as dangerous as the current ones. We have many nuclear power plants currently active that are just as old. A scary thought.
  2. The main reason why later missions became less dangerous was that each mission learnt from the previous one. Nuclear power plants however are being used for decades, without any changes to the reactor’s design. Because a nuclear reactor is expensive to plan and build, but relatively easy to run, the nuclear industry has an incentive to squeeze as many years as possible out of each reactor.
  3. The biggest improvements in safety only followed what NASA calls “major events”, meaning an explosion with lethal consequences. This leads one to assume again that we are not capable of grasping all the risks that are technology-inherent, unless they are being pointed out to us by actual catastrophes.

And then there is of course still one fundamental difference: If a space shuttle explodes, the astronauts die. That is sad, but they had accepted that risk. – The radiation from a nuclear power plant however kills much more indiscriminately.

Posted in Economics, Politics, Technology | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

Why I don’t answer the phone

Posted on 2011-03-18 by Andreas Moser

A warning to everyone: I don’t like it when you call or e-mail me and your first sentence is “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Even if it’s not posed as a question but as a statement (“You didn’t answer your phone, that’s why I e-mail you…”), the reproachful undertone cannot be missed.

Don’t disturb!

I could give all kinds of reasons:

  • I was at the library.
  • I was eating.
  • I was on the other phone.
  • I was sleeping.
  • I didn’t hear it.
  • I was out running.
  • I was in the bathroom.
  • I was climbing up a tree.
  • I was jumping out of a plane.
  • I was in hand-to-hand combat with an assassin who was after my life.
  • I didn’t find the right button in time.

But I won’t.

Because it’s none of your business. I don’t owe an explanation to anyone about what I do with my time. It’s my life. Nobody is entitled to my time or attention.

I am not a slave to anyone. And I definitely won’t become a slave to a little gadget, like too many people have become.

Sometimes, I wonder what aliens would think about us humans if they came to visit from another planet: They would notice that we have machines with us or on our desks that sometimes emit a sound, upon which the humans jump to attention immediately and drop everything else, whether it’s a book, their dinner or even a conversation. The aliens would have to come to the conclusion that we are controlled by these beeping machines. – And maybe some of us are, sadly.

Links:

Posted in Life, Philosophy, Technology | 50 Comments

Deutsche Aussenpolitik schafft sich ab.

Posted on 2011-03-18 by Andreas Moser

Nach Wochen des Mordens, Bombardierens und apokalyptischen Schwadronierens durch den libyschen Führer Gaddafi hatte die Weltgemeinschaft in Form des UN-Sicherheitsrates ausnahmsweise mal selbst genug von den ewigen “Ermahnungen”, “Aufforderungen” und “dringenden Bitten”, mit denen sonst auf Menschenrechtsverletzungen reagiert wird. Vor wenigen Stunden verabschiedete der UN-Sicherheitsrat die Resolution 1973, mit der eine Flugverbotszone gegen Libyen verhängt und militärisches Eingreifen durch die UN-Mitgliedsstaaten gegen das libysche Militär zum Schutz der libyschen Zivilbevölkerung authorisiert wird.

Dies kommt spät; angesichts der bevorstehenden Einmarsch in die Stadt Bengazi durch die libysche Armee eventuell zu spät. Unter Berücksichtigung dessen, daß Russland und China, die ansonsten die “Nichteinmischung in innere Angelegenheiten eines souveränen Staates” über alles andere stellen, ihre Vetostimmen nicht ausübten, ist dies dennoch einer der raren Momente, in denen mich die UNO positiv überrascht hat.

Und was macht Deutschland, das derzeit einen temporären Sitz im UN-Sicherheitsrat innehat? Deutschland enthällt sich der Stimme.

Es geht um den Schutz einer Zivilbevölkerung gegen Bombardierungen, um die Unterstützung einer Demokratiebewegung gegen eine 41-jährige Diktatur, um die Abwägung von Menschenrechten gegen Staatensouveränität; und Deutschland enthält sich.

Hat Deutschland keine Meinung zu diesen Fragen? Vermutlich schon. Bundesaußenminister Guido Westerwelle begründet die Enthaltung des Landes, das gerne einen ständigen Sitz im Sicherheitsrat (und damit ein Vetorecht) einnähme, anders: “Wir sehen hier erhebliche Gefahren und Risiken”, sagte der Außenminister. “Deswegen können wir diesem Teil der Resolution nicht zustimmen. Deutsche Soldaten werden sich an einem militärischen Einsatz in Libyen nicht beteiligen.”

"Außenpolitik? Ich wollte den Job doch nur wegen der Reisen."

“Erhebliche Gefahren und Risiken” also. Für wen? Für Gaddafi? Das ist ja wohl der Sinn der Resolution. Die einzigen, die derzeit “erheblichen Gefahren und Risiken” ausgesetzt sind, sind die Menschen in Libyen, die versuchen, sich von einer grausamen Diktatur zu befreien. Oder meint Herr Westerwelle “erhebliche Gefahren und Risiken” für die deutsche Wirtschaft, falls Gaddafi doch an der Macht bleibt?

Die Zustimmung zu der UN-Resolution würde kein Land zur Bereitstellung von Flugzeugen oder Soldaten verpflichten. Nachdem Deutschland keinen Flugzeugträger hat, wäre ein deutsches militärisches Engagement derzeit auch gar nicht so gefragt, wie es der Außenminister darzustellen versucht.

Aber all das ist nicht wichtig, solange der bundesdeutsche Reflex funktioniert und demonstrativer Pazifismus sich in der Wählergunst positiv niederschlägt. So einfach und sicher, wie vor “Krieg” zu warnen und “Ohne uns!” zu rufen, kann man seine Umfragewerte gar nicht nach oben schrauben. – Daß für die Menschen in Libyen der (Bürger-)Krieg schon lange Wirklichkeit ist und wir ihn stoppen könnten, kann nur denen egal sein, die Menschenleben mit zweierlei Maß bewerten.

Und dabei hätte Deutschland eine besondere Verantwortung, nachdem auch wir an Gaddafi Militärtechnik geliefert und seine Einheiten ausgebildet haben. Jetzt könnten wir diesen Fehler korrigieren. Aber dazu bedürfte es einer wirklichen Außenpolitik.

Posted in Germany, Human Rights, Libya, Military, Politics | Tagged | 50 Comments

Must a person have both desires and values?

Posted on 2011-03-16 by Andreas Moser

As one of the reasons behind taking up blogging was to gain writing experience in English for my studies, it might be fair to publish the essays that I am writing for my MA Philosophy course at the Open University, of course only after they have been submitted and graded.

Below is the first essay, trying to answer the question “Must a person have both desires and values?“, posed in the context of the discussion about what constitutes a person in contrast to a human being. It asked to focus on the suggested reading, mainly by Harry Frankfurt and Gary Watson, making this essay completely uninteresting to anyone who is not taking the same course.

I. Introduction

This essay will examine if it is necessary for a person to have both desires and values and it will concentrate on what sort of complexity of mind we require of a human being in order to be qualified as a „person“.

The difficulty of defining what should be understood in philosophical debate as a „person“ is demonstrated by the rush to negative delimitation. Most attempts at this definition do not take long to get to state what might not be a „person“, for example foetuses1, people in a persistent vegetative state2, very young children3 or certain types of drug users4. Nobody who is asked to define a „house“ would start by saying that it is not a bridge. Even other academic disciplines that have to define less tangible terms would for example not define „democracy“ by stating that it is not a dictatorship. A „person“ seems to be a rather hard thing to grasp or pin down.

Any attempt to define „person“ shall therefore be approached with utmost modesty.

Most philosophical writers seem to agree that „person“ is not the same as „human being“5, although in everyday use and in other disciplines6, these two terms are used interchangeably. This leads to the possible existence of human beings who are not persons, but also of non-humans who are persons. Examples for the latter could be anthropoid apes7 or intelligent life on other planets8. I suggest that we don’t have sufficient insight into the mental workings of animals (we will see that we are already struggling enough to find out what is going on in our own brains/minds) and that the existence of any intelligent life outside of this planet is at this point purely hypothetical, and I will therefore refrain from considering possible non-human persons in this essay.

II. Frankfurt

Frankfurt argues that the difference between persons and non-persons is a difference in mental complexity9, specifically the structure of a person’s will10 and their ability (or lack thereof) to form desires11. Frankfurt describes a system of several orders of desires. First-order desires are all the desires a person has12. These may even be conflicting desires and not all of them may push the agent to an action in accordance with that desire13. But then, there are also second-order desires: someone wants to have a certain desire or he wants a certain desire to be his will14, the latter being called “volition” by Frankfurt15. Having these second-order volitions is what Frankfurt regards as essential to being a person16 because he sees this as a prerequisite for the freedom of will17. Those non-persons that lack second-order volitions are dubbed “wantons”18.

With so many new concepts and terms being introduced, it is high time to bring an example. Frankfurt uses two drug addicts to illustrate his thoughts19: Both addicts realise and hate their addiction, so both have the first-order desire to take drugs, but also the first-order desire to refrain from drug use. Whatever both drug users do, using or abstaining from the drug, they will thus fulfil one of their desires.

The first drug user however also has a second-order volition. In the conflict between his two first-order desires, he is not neutral, but he wants the desire to abstain from the consumption to prevail over his conflicting desire of the same order. He wants the desire to abstain to become his will20.

The second drug user suffers from the same first-order conflict. However, he does not prefer that one of his conflicting desires should win over the other one21.

For Frankfurt, only the first drug user is a person22, even if he remains a drug user, because he has shown freedom of will.

III. Watson

Watson is outspokenly critical of Frankfurt’s attempt at defining a person, calling it “simply insufficient to the task he [Frankfurt] wants it to perform”23.

For Watson, the decisive concept in defining a person is that of values, which he describes as “more or less long-term aims and normative principles that we are willing to defend”24. Using these values, we rank our desires by attributing different levels of worth to them25. A person is then identified as a being that can make evaluations of its desires and can shape its life accordingly26. Watson himself regards this explanation to be in the tradition of Plato27.

Watson refuses to see any insight that would be gained by Frankfurt’s theory of different levels of desire, arguing that this just increases the number of desires that are competing with each other28.

IV. Discussion

As desires and values are themselves terms that are open to definition, maybe the bridge between Frankfurt and Watson can be gapped by defining “valuing” as “desiring to desire”, as Lewis29 does. Watson’s “values” would therefore be nothing else than Frankfurt’s “second-order volitions”30.

Not quite unlike in contemporary usage of the term, the philosophical interpretation of “values” is however not only descriptive, but also normative. Watson thinks that values need to (attempt to) lead to a “good, fulfilling and defensible life”31. These are largely positive attributes that are not equally required of “desires”. The two theories – of Frankfurt and Watson respectively – can therefore not be seen as congruent beyond the mere use of terminology. Watson’s interpretation of what constitutes a person is narrower and does exclude some human beings from the set of persons who would enjoy inclusion under Frankfurt.

For me, it is hard to make a decision between these two conflicting theories without knowing what the purpose of defining a “person” is, specifically if persons shall have less, more or different rights or obligations than (other) human beings. Going back to some of the often-cited examples of very young children32 or people in a persistent vegetative state33 which are excluded from the set of persons under both Frankfurt’s and Watson’s respective definition because they lack the mental capacity to either influence their own will or develop values, we would on first sight clearly accept that these human beings should not have some rights that persons have, but maybe enjoy other protective rights that persons don’t need. At a closer look however, the difficulty will always be at the borderlines, for example when we need to determine when exactly an infant becomes a person. As this would require a look into that person’s mind, this judgement can hardly be passed by outsiders.

In areas where human beings need to be put into groups to provide them with certain rights or require certain obligations from them, we therefore devise more objective criteria, e.g. by attributing different legal rights to infants or adults, or citizens and non-citizens. This is possible without denying anyone the membership in the set of human beings and it makes me begin to entertain the question if anything can actually be gained by denying some human beings “personhood” in philosophical debate.

The necessity to establish what and thus who is a person and who is not is further undermined if we consider the possibility of somebody being a person (and this is true under both Frankfurt’s and Watson’s respective definition) and that same human not being a person in the next instant, day or week. Neither Frankfurt nor Watson rule out the possibility that someone can form a free will today but will be unable to do so later or that someone has values but won’t have these later (although Watson’s definition of values has a more stable, long-term idea in mind, but they could still change over a long period of time, or under the impression of dramatic life-changing events).

Taking this thought further, maybe someone can even be a person in one respect and not a person in another respect at the same time. After all, it might be that somebody has a second-order desire or values about one aspect of his or her life, but is devoid of any such notions in other respects.

At this point I am reminded of Frankfurt’s statement that “people are generally far more complicated than my sketchy account of the structure of a person’s will may suggest”34. As neither Frankfurt nor Watson could have known when they wrote their papers in 1971 and 1975 respectively, this statement might be more true than both definitions of “person” can possibly endure: In 1979, an experiment by Benjamin Libet seriously shattered the notion of volitions or free will because he was able to measure a surge in brain activity before participants in the “Libet experiment” thought that they had a desire to act35. This suggests that volitions and free will are not as free as we have been assuming from the readings of Frankfurt and Watson. As even the results of the Libet experiment allow for the power to veto the impulse given by the brain and decide not to act in accordance with it (the “free won’t”36), there is still room for some level of conscious volition though. Still, free will cannot be debated in the same way after these experiments as it was in the 1970s.

V. Conclusion

Reminding the reader of the modesty called for in the introduction of this essay and considering all the doubts pointed out in IV., I would respectfully suggest that neither Frankfurt nor Watson have made a compelling case for the necessity of the definition of a person as something distinct from a human being or for their respective definition of such.

Watson’s definition suffers from his resorting to “values” which is a vague term of subjective moral judgement, and nothing much can be gained from trying to explain what the definition of the hitherto vague term “person” shall be by utilising other terms of no lesser lack of clarity.

Frankfurt is less affected by this criticism as “desires” do not imply the same stamp of moral approval as “values”, although his choice of the word “wanton” for those he deems non-persons also has quite a moralistic tone to it. But his concept of second-order desires has clearly been put into doubt by later scientific research.

Until I come across a more convincing definition of person, I will therefore continue to view all humans as persons. If necessary, they can be grouped into humans/persons of different mental capabilities, moral values, abilities to implement their will, et cetera. But I do not want to go so far as to deny any other human being the right to be called a person.

1Beaney 2008: 29; Matravers 2001: 35

2Beaney 2008: 29; Matravers 2001: 35

3Frankfurt 1971: II:2

4Frankfurt 1971: I:5-10

5Beaney 2008: 29; Frankfurt 1971: 4; Matravers 2001: 35

6For law, cf. Garner 2005: 960

7Beaney 2008: 29, citing an unsuccessful example of a legal action in Austria to get a chimpanzee recognised as a person

8Beaney 2008: 28

9Beaney 2008: 33

10Frankfurt 1971: 5

11Frankfurt 1971: 6

12Frankfurt 1971: I:3

13Frankfurt 1971: I:3

14Frankfurt 1971: II:1

15Frankfurt 1971: II:1

16Frankfurt 1971: II:1

17Frankfurt 1971: III:1

18Frankfurt 1971: II:1

19Frankfurt 1971: II:5-10

20Frankfurt 1971: II:6 and 9

21Frankfurt 1971: II:8 and 10

22Frankfurt 1971: II:9

23Watson 1975: III.10

24Watson 1975: 1

25Watson 1975: 2

26Matravers 2001: 53

27Matravers 2001: 51

28Watson 1975: 12

29Lewis 1989: 6

30Matravers 2001: 54

31Watson 1975: 1

32Frankfurt 1971: II:2

33Beaney 2008: 29; Matravers 2001: 35

34Frankfurt 1971: III:8

35Precht 2007: 152

36Precht 2007: 154

Bibliography

Books

Garner, Bryan (2005) (editor) Black’s Law Dictionary, 8th edition, St. Paul, MN, USA, Thomson/West.

Precht, Richard David (2007) Wer bin ich – und wenn ja, wie viele?, 24th edition, München, Germany, Goldmann.

Papers

Frankfurt, Harry (1971) “Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person”, Journal of Philosophy, lxviii, 1, 5-20 (reprinted as reading 3.2 to accompany A850 Postgraduate Foundation Module in Philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University and quoted by the chapters [in Roman numerals] and paragraphs [in Arabic numerals] of the reprint).

Lewis, David (1989) “Dispositional Theories of Value”, The Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 113-38 (reprinted as reading 3.4 to accompany A850 Postgraduate Foundation Module in Philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University and quoted by the paragraphs [in Arabic numerals] of the reprint).

Watson, Gary (1975) “Free Agency”, Journal of Philosophy, lxxii, 8, 205-20 (reprinted as reading 3.3 to accompany A850 Postgraduate Foundation Module in Philosophy, Milton Keynes, The Open University and quoted by the paragraphs [in Arabic numerals] of the reprint).

Study material

Beaney, Michael (2008) Doing Postgraduate Research in Philosophy, A850 Postgraduate Foundation Module in Philosophy, Chapter 2, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Matravers, Derek (2001) The Nature of Persons, A850 Postgraduate Foundation Module in Philosophy, Chapter 3, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

As I said, to non-students of this course this is not very illuminative. I passed the paper, but there is room for improvement.

The next paper, due on 22 April 2011, will be about the psychological continuity account of personal identity.

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