A Short Treatise on Berkeley and Spinoza

I dare say that you think that a highly respected Anglo-Irish bishop from Cloyne and an excommunicated lens-grinder from a certain district of Amsterdam make curious bed-fellows.

There are, of course, certain details which need never come to light, let alone passed through a lens, should you simply do me the courtesy of paying attention to what I have to say to you. That’s better.

You see, it is one thing to know The Most Important Fact in the Universe, (cue gasps of simulated terror) …

… namely that

**The Order and Connection of Ideas is the same as the Order and Connection of Things**

but it is something else again to have PROOF that is sufficiently rigorous to satisfy the most Ardent Mathematician, and yet also sufficiently Immediately Visual as to convince the readers of the Daily Prophet.

Yes, you heard me right the first time, Queenie … or should I call you … (cure dramatic pause) … R-e-b-e-k-a-h, my dearest, my sweetest, most scrumptious, redheaded psychopath?

Oops, apparently not …

... oh, all right, what do you want, then? Name your price, anything, anything …

Yes, thank you, Media Studies, we’ll be in touch …

… so, to change the subject entirely, how do we reunite the great Early Modern Tribes – oops, I mean Traditions – of RATIONALISTS (in the red corner) and EMPIRICISTS (in the grue corner – yes, I’m afraid so, I think they ran out of bleen paint)?

The good burghers of Kaliningrad are on a different time-zone and it may not be appropriate to waken them from their dogmatic slumbers just yet, so let’s think again, shall we?

(And make no jokes about the fries that always mysteriously accompany them, as the burghers simply do not share your sense of humour.)

Stirring stuff …

…well, now that I have the attention of the whole class, might I ask if anyone knows of a single Undergraduate Module called ‘Berkeley and Spinoza‘ that has ever been taught at any reputable British university? I am not talking about separate modules on Berkeley and on Spinoza (they are ten a penny), by the way. I mean one which combines discussion of both philosophers (and no-one else) in a single taught unit.

No, don’t all shout at once, just raise your arms. It’s quite simple, as young Ludwig here will explain to you – if you ask him nicely.

Well, no doubt, the pedants among you will want me to define the word ‘reputable’, but I am not so easily distracted by the philosophy of language (rather a poor cousin back in the day, a time when it was not advisable to be a poor cousin of any sort).

Nevertheless, I should perhaps explain (if you can hear me over what sounds suspiciously like wolf-whistles) that …

… an Undergraduate Module is not a rocket-powered device for transporting exchange students to our brand new satellite campus somewhere on the surface of the planet Venus

(By the way, students don’t really like things to be that hot, whatever the tabloids might insinuate).

I won’t tell you what sort of Device it really is, either. I think that a little self-directed learning won’t do you any harm, in my professional judgement.

I also won’t explain to you what is meant, in an academic context, by an EXTERNAL EXAMINER, a very, very important sort of personage (and nothing to do with Arnold Layne, who I don’t believe ever really existed in the first place).

So, why do we have to endure all this? You seriously ask me WHY?

Well, some Truths are just ***SELF-EVIDENT***, as all good Enlightenment thinkers know.

What does all that mean, I hear you ask – hopefully, but with a touch of weary resignation …

… well, as I have to explain to my first-year Critical Thinking students – repeatedly, alas – an argument has to start somewhere.

(No, I didn’t say anywhere, I said somewhere – an entirely different place.)

Spinoza understood all this, by the way – and so did Socrates (a fact that rather upset his broad-shouldered pupil, the aptly named Plato. Yes, I know, but just don’t ask.)

The methods of Euclidean geometry are just fine for doing Theology, by the way, but just don’t curve the space you’re working in, or else things will go pear-shaped, as they say up East. You know what I mean, Sunshine.

Well, so much for the point of definitions.

A more pressing matter, however, is whether External Examiners have a duty (or Pflicht, as they used to say in Kaliningrad) of losing at croquet to the Local Professor, a dilemma that actually led to some considered pulling of hair, and the blissful recognition that the trains from Manchester to Birmingham also make return journeys.

However, as nobody else seems to be remotely interested in what I am saying, we shall go straight to our first musical number with its original keyboard solo (playing the keyboard is something I am rather better at than interacting with Human Resources departments, by the way, in case you didn’t know).

Well, you know now, don’t you …

I remember thinking about la Tikaram when, on a hastily-arranged package holiday in Turkey (based in Gümbet, just over the headland from Bodrum, in case you were wondering), I made a long day-excursion to somewhere or other, and made a brief stop at Ephesus, where I saw that the local amphitheatre (they have them in Anatolia, despite the earthquakes) was being used as a concert venue, and guess who had recently been playing there? Yes, indeed, the Blessed Tanita gets about a bit, and possibly even deserves to be macarised (just look it up if you don’t know what it means, for Heaven’s sake).

The punchline to this particular joke, of course, is that the Council of Ephesus (431) is where the dreaded Pelagius was deemed to be a heretic, and the saintly Augustine of Hippo was deemed to be The One when it came to understanding just why you are aiming for Eternal Damnation whether you deserve it or not.

Freedom and Necessity just get alone fine, as you know perfectly well, and everything else follows on from that. This is all down to something that happened at Ephesus, though some time ago, I repeat in case you didn’t hear me the first time.

So there. (Whaddya mean, you didn’t know, you whimpering little heretic …)

Well, you know now, don’t you!

The Turkish holiday went very well, since you ask, and we all behaved very badly back at the hotel. As I recall, we (or rather the psychiatric nurse with whom I struck up a casual friendship) decided that the lights of Kos on the horizon were from the then local, very notorious Greek mental hospital, and that it (the hotel, not the horizon) was the Annexe.

Rather a good joke, I thought.

***

Anyway, enough word-play, it is time to get down to some Serious Metaphysics.

Now, the first thing you need to know about the super-rationalist Spinoza, the purest of the Enlightenment thinkers, is that, according to him there are simply no coincidences.

None. Full stop (or period, as the Americans say).

So how do you prove the Principle of Sufficient Reason (as the Freiherr von Leibniz, one of Spinoza’s least grateful protegés, put it ? Like this …

… I mean there must always be a reason, mustn’t there? Quantum funny business aside (we serious metaphysicians don’t pick fights with the physicists if we can help it), there just must be a Reason – innit?

(Or, ex nihilo, nihil fit, if you want to show off your Latin.)

This surely hits the nail on the head.

I mean, things don’t just happen for no reason at all – as was once pointed out to me, in a very serious tone of voice, by a Very Important Person

who wanted to know just why I was where I was, and at that particular time of night … doing nothing much (if truth be told) … but acting very, very innocently. As you do. …

… well, what does one say?

Apart from the fact that

(1) the answers to certain questions should be “d…..d obvious” even to very important people (as the author of the Flashman Papers might have put it)

and

(2) the even more salient fact that there is a time and a place for indelicate remarks about Essex girls

… there is comfort to be had, if only in hindsight (as the Owl of Minerva found to her cost), to know there probably is a thoroughly rational explanation even for why I suddenly found myself in Bolton shortly after the curious incident that I allude to, at the beginning of what academics refer to the Thatcher Ice Age, and …

… confronted with appalling dilemmas along the lines of whether I should think about Rita first and then Catherine, or the other way round. (You’ll just have to read other pages on this blog if you want to decode that one.)

And don’t ask, by the way, what the difference is between a proper name and a mere place-holder (or even a mere tag, for Heaven’s sake).

***

Ah yes, thinking back on what I just said, I was forgetting that the youngsters among you may never have heard of the Flashman Papers, and were probably not educated at Rugby School (but who on Earth would go there, anyway?), so I suppose I had better interrupt my pleasurable train of thought, to ensure that the slower students do not fall even further behind.

He (Harry Flashman, of course – who else?) was a polyglot (just look it up, look it up) and much decorated Victorian military hero who got about a bit, as they used to say back in the late 20th Century.

They didn’t have ‘moving pictures’ back then, of course, but so what? Here is some useful counterfactual history, that may be of particular interest to palefaced European immigrants across the pond, who had (as I recall) considerable difficulty in understanding what those geeky ethnologists call Amerindian Humour …

Now before pointing out that the relevance to Bishop Berkeley of Cloyne has nothing much to do with Blackadder, but much to do with his (no Berkeley’s, not Blackadder’s, please get your pronouns sorted out, and then their possessive adjectives might well follow suit) desire to ensure that he could meet what the more refined inhabitants of Colorado Territory would refer to nowadays as Native Americans, I suppose we had better have another musical break – I hear you say, breathlessly.

But before that, I should explain that Berkeley wanted to found a university in the New World solely for the indigenous folk. I think it was in Bermuda, and not just adjacent to San Francisco, but never mind.

— It didn’t work, and that is all that matters.

— The native Americans never did ‘get’ Christianity.

You are probably tired of trying to mix High Metaphysics with the Saintly Tikaram Girl in your minds (or what passes for them) so I thought that I should experiment with some American sounds which could almost pass for Music – even in Manchester.

Incidentally, we seldom sing about Religion when on the respectable side of the Irish Sea, but I suppose that it takes all sorts to make a world …

Well, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try and try again, as my elderly piano teacher used to tell me.

Ditto, the young lady who tried to get me tell jokes in a way likely to impress members of the opposite sex (and don’t ask opposite to whose sex – some jokes have just no chance of succeeding in the first place.

Pretty-please just accept that you need a good joke-writer or else you are just sunk, even if you won’t believe it however hard you try).

Do I contradict myself in suggesting that some beliefs might be voluntary? Am I just deceiving myself, if nobody else? Notwithstanding the need to improve my Latin,

(Ex Essexo Quodlibet doesn’t sound quite right, to me, and I have not recently met all that many dialetheists in Bolton),

and mindless (groan, groan, I know) of the insult to the ornithological profession of referring to certain Young Ladies of the Academy in such a way as to suggest that they might be of some professional interest, I shall just move on gently, and with as much dignity as I can muster, to the next musical number.

I dare say that, appearances notwithstanding, this artiste smells as sweet as Shakespeare requires him to.

There, now that wasn’t too painful was it?

Anyway, you may dimly recall that the original proposition from Spinoza (no sniggering, please) was this:

**The Order and Connection of Ideas is the same as the Order and Connection of Things**

You have probably had enough of both sides of the identity, and so, come to think of it, have I.

I shall therefore focus on what remains, the rather forlorn verb-phrase ‘is the same as‘, which designates a two-place relation with an extension composed entirely of singleton sets (as someone more sympathetic to that sort of thing than myself might put it).

Now, you really don’t want me to start talking about a German mathematician called Frege (pronounced ‘Fray-guh’, but you knew that already, of course), still less Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein about whom you may have already heard. So I won’t.

Instead, I shall talk about a Real-Life Crime, with an Unsolved (and probably Unsolvable) Mystery that I confess baffled even me, an expert mathematical logician with a taste for the unsolvable.

So what is the crime? Murder? Robbery? No, actually, just Attempted Fraud of a kind-whose-chances-of-success-were-never-that-good-anyway, if you really want to know.

And it remains an Attempted Fraud of a kind-whose-chances-of-success-were-never-that-good-anyway, even if don’t really want to know.

I mention, – or rather – use this last sentence as an Awful Warning to those Classical Logicians who think they know more than I do about conditional propositions.

What are they, I hear some of the more nervous members of the Second Sex ask?

Well, as W.S. Gilbert never quite said in his otherwise philosophically sound masterpiece, Trial by Jury, it is largely about choosing mutton when you are tired of beef.

In other words, I’ll tell you tomorrow.

(Or else … I shall have to explain to you what is really meant by a Relevant Logician. (It is just not what you think it means, as I keep having to explain to senior members of the University.)) Beware of nested brackets, by the way.

Now, your Elders and Betters wish to hear my terrible tale of crime and the depths of human depravity to which even you, O Best Beloved, might sink if not specially protected by Providence.

No, it wasn’t Pelagius who talked in this context about Providence, but an analytical Thomist called Peter Geach …

… no, no, no, you really had better not inquire any further on this matter lest he arrange a meeting with his Master from Hell, the Fray-guh Kid. Don’t believe the rumour that He (the Kid, not the Thomist) “fell under a concept” somewhere in Colorado Territory, as most wise people don’t. Together, they once formed a deadly combination that not even you can handle.

As troublesome little sisters know to their cost, do they not?

All right, all right, my dear, here is a pretty-picture of the Morning Star for you to gaze at in admiration:

Is this relevant? Thus sayeth the crisp, decisive voice of the Classical Logician, who has thoroughly mastered her brief – as always.

We-ell, I confess that I was not being entirely straight with you earlier, when I tried to explain what is meant, in an academic context, by an Undergraduate Module.

The thing is that, in a nearby possible world, and nowhere near any large English city I may have already mentioned, a terrible plot was being concocted to …

… … … … kill TWO birds with ONE stone

And which birds are they, you ask hopefully? (Actually, they are problems to be solved, not feathery creatures to which I allude.)

Firstly, how do we get the more troublesome students off-campus whilst still pocketing their fees;

and, and, and secondly …

… (no, I cannot bear even now to think of this) …

… I need a soothing piece of music, one which reminds me that keyboardists need not spend their entire careers trying to accompany ungrateful Tikaram-lookalikes, as well as one which reminds me that pagodas may also be found outside Japan …

Ah, that’s better. Now for another pretty-picture, in case you are tired of looking at the one directly above …

Well, getting The Government to pay for Modules to transport fee-paying students to places where there are no NHS facilities was the easy part.

The really, really clever part was finding a fool-proof way of turning …

… a ONE-dollar bill into TWO, as some of our more old-fashioned American friends would put it. I.e., to double the loot, as others might say.

Is there a problem here? Oh dear, yes I’m afraid so, and you are not going to like it, I remember dimly saying, and in a very authoritative tone of voice as befits one who knew lots about the ancient wisdom of the Babylonian astronomers,

before falling into an Enchanted Sleep (luckily I had spilt half of my not exactly lukewarm coffee into my lap, so managed to stay half-awake, though not in a very happy state, as you can probably imagine …

(here beginneth the Dream Sequence)

… there are TWO senses here, screamed one strange-looking youngish lady, recently appointed, I fear, to a Named Chair (no, I don’t know what the chair was called, since you ask. To repeat, names are for sweet-smelling roses and for little birdies, not for items of furniture – as far as I am concerned).

Two! Two! Two! My lucky number’s Two!

God only knows where she came from, but maybe also Nature might know a thing or two as well – you can never tell these days, I muttered to myself darkly, desperately trying to fight my way through some hellish soporific I think they might have put in the coffee.

I then thought I heard some avaricious-looking colleague talking about Loads-of-Spirituality, which struck me then at the time as a category mistake with or without the hyphens.

Just before a strange rushing noise overcame me, I distinctly remember seeing another person of indeterminate gender, but of a deeply Teutonic appearance telling me about recent Chinese politics, and that despite the many ways of seeking him, there is nevertheless only one, just one Bee-Doy-Tung

and that s/he believed in the Eternal Return … and – furthermore – practised Continental Philosophy without charging a fortune.

Moreover, she felt obliged to wreck my elaborate joke by pointing out that there is only so much comic mileage to be gained out of the fact that the Morning Star and the Evening Star are not two different entities, but simply one and the same entity described in two different ways. This means – yes, really – that we are only required to resource one satellite campus, not two, and that it follows that attempts to charge the Government for two such projects involves gross fraud.

I hope I never have to meet her/him again, especially on a dark night.

And it is not as though External Examiners get paid all that much, even the honest ones (of which there are many, if truth be told), I muttered to myself weakly …

So, can we name names?? – as a rather sceptical detective later (much later) asked me (after some discussion)?

Well, after some more inner debate, I said that I always imagined that names were the very last thing that needed naming. Imagine trying to make money out of a novel called The Name of the Name of the Rose, for example.

I was just trying to help the young lady with her inquiries, if you really want to know.

Relevance to the matter in hand? Thus asketh the Judge, thinking, as always, of the Man on the Clapham Omnibus.

Well, the BBC will have nothing to do with fake news (especially on Question Time)

and BB King talks of metaphorical hummingbirds,

and I wonder lazily what John Locke really meant by nominal essences, and why he thought that the real kind were so inaccessible.

Yes, I know that Corpuscles sound a bit rude – and good people don’t inquire too deeply about them.

And what would the good citizens of Nagasaki have made of a Corpuscular Bomb? Even the pagodas would laugh, I fear.

But I also fear that I may have been given a truth-serum in my inexpertly served Mickey Finn, as we used to call such devices, back in the day …

… but am now coming round …

***Phew!! Back to normal consciousness again*** 🙂 🙂 🙂

Anyway, thank God = Nature that I am not back in Liverpool, where you may find, almost everywhere you look …

… a Visage that could easily Launch a Thousand Lawsuits

And although Oxford has its charms, the aptly named Tom Quad (don’t ask), with its fountain full of mercury (I think), really does have enough space to stock half the remaining Amazonian rainforest. (Read the ur-paper if you want to know more about forestry matters.)

Meaning that …

… young ecclesiastical gentlemen from Hibernia

who merely wish to amaze rather than convince with their very empirical sort of idealism (don’t ask – I keep telling you this, but you just won’t listen) need to take note that it is impossible to describe what a target-person actually looks like without a name to start from.

That also applies to you Benedict de Spinoza, or should I say Baruch …?

And vice versa. To put it another way, names and faces cannot be communicated ‘just like that’, as the late, great Tommy Cooper used to say. They are not capable of being captured by any cluster of descriptive or qualitative features … as Other People put it.

Ideas and Things just aren’t connected as intimately as you would have us believe.

A-and, I am n-not talking to you – B-Baruch or B-Benedict, or whatever your real name is …

I am addressing My Lord, the Bishop Berkeley. So there.

***

Okay, I am now going to fly by Trans-World Heirlines (I’m afraid you just have to be of a certain age to understand this allusion) to a nice, soothing world full of golf, rowing and cricket, and where the Local Authorities do not sport Charlie Chaplin moustaches and speak with comical Teutonic accents.

By-eee!

Nice knowing you …