42 Philosophy Now l^ August/September 2019Unfortunately, the authors’ idea, quoted
by Baron, that the mind is “neither in the
brain, nor in the head... but in the rela-
tions that obtain between epistemic
agents” upset my modest confidence that
I’d grasped the book’s core theory. To
recap on the logic of the book’s central
theory via a catchphrase from the 1960s
TV robot: This does not compute.
NEIL RICHARDSON , K IRKHEATONSelf Representations
DEAR EDITOR: I enjoyed the article,
‘Humanity, Metaphor & the Recursive
Mind’ in PN 130 and wrote this poem.
Hope you like it. I have a book of poetry,
called The Last Hint of Epiphany, available
through Amazon.A Mirror Cracked
Is it a metaphor
you are after?
Or perhaps
a recursive thought?
Embedded in your own
private discourse.
My mind is racing!
Is this a mirror
on our true selves?
Dendrites dancing,
the visual delight
of synaptic impression.
Yet, metaphors are slow
and static.
Not pictures moving.
Welcoming and warmly inviting
unless...
they take their own course.
Fire imagination
cut their own recursive thoughts
reflection
refraction
a splintering and shattering- a mirror cracked!
GEOFF JOHNSTON , SASKATCHEWAN
DEAR EDITOR: Issue 130 was a great
issue. Frank Robinson’s article provoked
some thoughts. Self, Mind, Brain: are
these all the same? Why must there be
one unquestionable place where self
resides, and must it have one specific
path? Could self be the result of culture
or specific circumstances, the order of
their presentation derived from our cul-
tural past? Too much brain is spent on
the need for a simple answer to a most
complex issue.
Perhaps self is an accident of
time/space. Could it not be that onechange in my past and I might have been
a different self? I am 87 and have been
married 61 years; my wife claims she has
been married to five different men.
If we are trying to create a still picture
that we can place in one place, it will
never happen. Myself is throughout me,
and it is a moving picture.
WILLIAM STUARTThe Sense of Perception
DEAR EDITOR: I would like to make a few
points regarding ‘Locke’s Question to
Berkeley’ in Issue 131. First, I think it’s
important to pin down what we mean by
‘perception’. The author appears to find
Berkeley’s argument (‘To be is to be per-
ceived’) implausible since scientific instru-
ments can detect various properties of
matter which cannot be discerned by the
naked human senses. Indeed, the underly-
ing molecular structure of an apple can-
not be discerned from merely tasting it or
examining it within our hands. However,
scientific instruments are designed to
reveal data to those very senses. It is our
eyes that view the atoms on the screen of
an electron microscope. As such, the ulti-
mate nature of the apple, as far as we can
know it, is stillwithin the grasp of our
perception. How could it be otherwise?
Our brains only have the senses with
which to judge. (The only caveat may be
in the theoretical domain, with mathe-
matics. But here, very often, as with
String Theory and others, the conclu-
sions are rendered untestable.)
Is there any reality beyond what our
experiments might probe? We don’t
know; perhaps we never will. The apple
can either be reduced to mystery, or kept
within what we can know via experiment.
I am certainly open to mystery and spec-
ulation, but as far as we know so far, the
senses are the only way for the human
mind to understand reality.
ANTHONY MACISAAC,
INSTITUT CATHOLIQUE DE PARISPerspectives on Visions
DEAR EDITOR: In his article ‘Beauty ver-
sus Evil’ (PN 132), Stuart Greenstreet
makes the assertion that Leni Riefen-
stahl’s 1935 film Triumph of the Will is
‘flawed as art’ because it’s a work of Nazi
propaganda. His argument is that art is
inevitably tied to moral attitudes and val-
ues so judgments about it cannot be con-
fined to matters of formal brilliance, how-
ever spectacular or overpowering. Butisn’t this going too far in the direction of
moralism? In practice, aren’t we always
making a distinction between moral judg-
ments and judgments of talent and skill,
both in the field of art and in everyday
life? A star footballer, say, may have unde-
sirable personal qualities and moral fail-
ings aplenty, but this doesn’t stop us
admiring his brilliant skills on the pitch.
We don’t say his performance is flawed by
his character, or that he’d be a better
player if he were a better human being.
It’s surely the same in the world of art,
where plenty of great works have been
produced by degenerates. As Oscar Wilde
said of Thomas Wainewright, the tal-
ented writer, artist, and murderer, the fact
of his being a poisoner is “nothing against
his prose.” So regarding Triumph of the
Will, it’s surely possible to appreciate its
originality, technical virtuosity and power
of presentation, though knowing that it’s
a work of Nazi propaganda and regretting
that Leni Riefenstahl didn’t devote her
genius to better causes. In this way it can
be seen as something morally bad but
artistically impressive, a striking example
of propagandist art in a long line of pro-
paganda poems, paintings, operas, etc,
which a strict moralism would condemn
as flawed, but which are widely admired.
ANTHONY KEARNEY , L ANCASTEREthics, Actions & Effects
DEAR EDITOR: In PN 132 Michael Jor-
dan asks why it may be right to divert a
runaway trolley onto a track where it will
kill only one workman, not five, but wrong
to kill a pizza delivery man to give his
organs to five patients needing transplants:- Killing the delivery man would be
murder. Diverting the trolley would not. - As Aquinas said, actions which do much
good but some unavoidable harm (divert-
ing the trolley) are widely acceptable, but
it’s very problematic to perform intrinsi-
cally bad actions (killing the pizza guy) in
the hope of achieving a greater good. - The pizza man’s attacked physically, but
there’s no contact with the man on the
track. It is natural that doing the former
should feel worse than doing the latter.
ALLEN SHAW , L EEDS
No Marks For Marx?
DEAR EDITOR: It was disturbing to read
a major part of Issue 131 devoted to Karl
Marx, who formulated the most econom-
ically failed, wrong, and lethal body of
ideas in history. A favorable or neutralLetters