PHILOSOPHY PATHWAYS Issue 61

II. 'Contracts, Coercion, and Condo Boards: A Reply to Stuart Burns'
by Anthony Flood

         +================================================+

                       Discourse on Malady

                  Attributed to Rene Descartes

                    Edited by Jurgen Lawrenz

                             Motto

                 Preparing to enter the stage of
                 learning, I come forward wearing
                 the mask of a simple soldier.
                 (From the 'Register' [DescartesÕ
                 notebook] 1619)

        +================================================+

Some few years ago, a study of Descartes by Bernard Williams bore the magnificent title 'The Project of Pure Research'. A good case can be made out that the noble sentiment reflected in this title also reflects the historical truth; it is after all, a claim put forth by Descartes himself. One should every so often, he wrote, descend to bedrock and examine the very idea of a human capacity for knowledge, its preconditions, and the dangers lying in wait for anyone who might enter upon such a novitiate.

Taking Descartes' self-analysis at face value does not seem to require justification. What could be nobler than such a sentiment, such a selfless service rendered to philosophy, especially at a juncture in its career when the sheer quantity of bric-a-brac brought life-threatening obesity in its wake and urged a radical slimming cure? History vindicated the 'project of pure research', indeed triumphantly so. Descartes belongs among the major saints in its hall of fame.

The setting could not have been more propitious. A brilliant mathematical genius, Descartes cracked at the age of 19 a problem left unsolved by Pappus 1700 years before and proceeded in short order to lay the foundations of analytical geometry and reductive-eliminative physics, which comprise jointly the power base of modern science. At the same time, his metaphysical papers revamped a whole branch of philosophy, so there is indubitable truth in Eric Bell's observation that "it is given to but few men to renovate a whole department of thought. Descartes was one of these few". And he renovated two, of course.

The 'Discourse on Method' (hereafter: MET) with its scientific appendages, which inaugurated this revolution, is too famous to require any dilation on my part. The 'Discourse on Malady,' however, is evidently an early and by all appearances hasty sketch of what was destined to become the MET, as may readily be confirmed by noting the transfer of verbatim phrases and whole sentences. What the MET lacks in its highly polished and manicured exposition, however, is the very immediacy of experience which distinguishes this draft. The 18 years separating this document from its published sibling were clearly devoted to gaining an objective distance and allowing all-healing time to close psychological wounds, thus enabling the writer to paint a fine glaze of rational thinking and aristocratic reserve over it.

The MS was discovered as long ago as 1898 under a wooden staircase of a small Black Forest homestead leading from the kitchen to the chicken pen. The staircase broke as the woman stepped on it. In the course of digging out its lower part, a carpenter found what seemed like a pouch or wallet enclosing some (mostly rotted through) papers. Noting the foreign language, and worried that it might have some connection to an espionage ring then known to be active in the region, he reported it to the police and from there the papers eventually came into the hands of the curator of rare and ancient manuscripts of the Swabian State Library. It was soon identified as written in Descartes' own hand, confirmed by the letters "[o]itevin" running into the last page from the torn-off margin. The piece was not, however, ever published owing to its corrupt state. The present effort is the first to make that attempt.

As much as could be reconstructed from the fragment is herewith offered to the reader. Ellipses indicate breaks in the author's text.

*Superstition is of all things in the world so evenly distributed, and everyone so abundantly endowed with it, that scarce one of even the most hard-to-please men feels bereft of their share and desires more of it. And it seems to me unlikely that we should be mistaken in trusting our powers of judgement and discernment of the true from the false in respect of it; for what is properly called good sense or reason is by nature equal among all men. And so the disparities in our opinions arise not from a want of largesse of mind, but from the habit of scattering our attention in too many directions at once, rather than concentrating upon the objects of our thoughts as they occur to us. Reason, which makes us men and separates us from brutes, I believe to be completely vested in every man; yet when I gaze through the eyes of philosophy upon the doings and motives of men, and especially the deeds and reasons displayed in the name of those supe[rstitions] ..., many seem so devoid of sense to me, and vain and useless, that I have come to doubt the very foundations of truth in all that I had been taught. And so at length I resolved little by little to discard those many errors which obscure the natural light of reason ... [and resolved?] no longer to be duped by the promises of alchemists, the predictions of astrologers, the impostures of magicians and the assurances of priests that flames cleanse the souls of witches. And I resolved to study my own nature as well, and to employ all the resources of my mind with a view to choosing a path which henceforth I might fo[llow] ...

I was in Germany at the time [ed: November 1619] and on my way from the coronation of the Emperor to my army contingent, when a severe winter stopped me in my tracks and obliged me to seek quarter in a little Black Forest village where, with no society to distract me and cooped up in a small, stove-heated room I had no other occupation than to follow the wanderings of my thoughts. Crouched by the side of the stove, I fell at length into a reverie marked by three long periods in which nightmarish phantoms wracked my peace. A fire gripped my brain and I fell into a state of excited hallucination, as phantoms danced attendance on a stranger of horrid mien, who approached me bearing a melon-sized yellow ball in his hands; the terror of his approach turning my blood to ice, while yet rivers of sweat poured down my temples and my neck and my knees scarce sustained the crouch. And in my fear I felt as though the stranger, without so much as a touch, squeezed me like a sponge and I seemed to be standing barefoot in a lake of mud bubbling with hell's gurgles. The melon bore the title LE MONDE in clear and distinct characters; and as the stranger held it up I saw depicted in it, as in a crystal balloon, my own image: here bent over a seething cauldron scooping droplets of gold from a steamy, sulphurous bath; elsewhere attired in a green and purple robe swinging a charger and chanting a strange and barbaric babylonian abracadabra in a mock ceremonial; and in yet another place lighting a stack of hay and timber gathered in a circle around a pole to which two maidens had been strapped, whose shrieks and wails as the flames gorged themselves on their flesh froze my veins and stopped my heart, so that I broke into a senseless, inane, panicky laughter, whose peal continued to ring in my ears as the vision faded and I awoke, panting and choking and reviling the response of my body to the imaginings of my mind.

Falling asleep from exhaustion, a second dream came to me, even more fearsome than the first, where the stranger, dressed in cap with horns and wearing just one shoe shaped like a coven hoof, while his chest was tattooed with the blood-red inscription MALO SPIRITU in clear and distinctly shaped letters, approached me as if emerging from a gauze-like curtain of fog. But he drew it aside, and behind was revealed the universe entire, the stars and the planets, the sun and the moon; and on earth the flora and fauna in their habitats; and in the cities the people, the traffic, the commerce, the running hither and thither, buying and bartering, haranguing and hectoring. But soon dusk fell, and now I saw men studiously bent over volumes of books, all titled "False Knowledge" and "False Beliefs", while over the chimneys of their houses witches rode on broomsticks towards the lunar sickle, and ghosts clad in pale shrouds haunted the graves of their cemeteries; and elsewhere, in many a secret enclave, men and women were gathered in nakedness to worship before monstrous effigies of Lust and Dissolution. At this the demon snapped his fingers and said, "What is?" And at once the lights of the cosmos, the candles of the men, became extinguished and I stood shivering and alone in the vastness of this emptiness. The demon, too, had vanished; though I still heard his whispered "What is?" echoing from I know not how many millions of corners in a staccato of sibilant hisses. -- Then silence. A mute, soundless, extinguished world.

Alone. I thought I heard a voice, but as I focused on it, I realised the vain endeavour, for my ears and eyes and limbs had vanished. Nothing was left of me but my thoughts. What is? the demon had asked. Somewhere inside me a scream of terror arose and engulfed me, but I heard not a sound. And still the scream endured, filling the whole vastness of this cosmic cathedral with my pain, yet I heard not a sound.

How many aeons did I bear this mute solitude? I know not; but my consciousness did return to me eventually, and throughout this gradual reluminescence a single thought kept fizzing in my mind like a spinning top, "cogito", "sum". Again and again, the mere shadow of a shadow, until at last my limbs returned from their deadness and the taste of blood on my lips and a sharp, piercing pain in my left side assured me that this ordeal had no extinguished my life. How could I have known? How could I be sure, when it had been so easy for the evil demon to make me doubt that anything exists? Because, as my awakening spirits made known to me, the demon had not destroyed my soul, and while my soul remained 'athinking', I continued to exist.

At this, I relapsed into a benevolent reverie in which I reflected on this solitary truth retrieved from the clutches of the evil demon. I think, I exist. I will put this brick into the first corner, as my foundation stone. And I saw another vision, in which an elderly man held down a small sheaf of books on a table, one with "True Knowledge" emblazoned on the title page, another, a collection of poems, opened on Ausonius' verse "What road in Life shall I follow?" And I realised that I must devote my life to cultivating reason and to revealing to mankind the truth with invincible proofs. And at once I resolved upon a pilgrimage to Loreto, to offer thanks at the shrine of the Virgin for thus delivering me from the evils and falsehoods in which hitherto I had found my contentment.

[...] And I determined like a man lost in a dark forest to proceed slowly and with the utmost circumspection, and not to idle in any one spot for long, to avoid being trapped in the snares of error where the agency of my mind might be powerless to guide me in my perplexities. And so I became convinced that I could do no better than to rid myself, forthwith and at least this one time in my life, of all the teachings I had hitherto accepted without question and to reform my own thoughts on this foundation belonging to me alone. I am only afraid that this reconstruction will prove too bold an enterprise for others, for the mere resolution to discard one's beliefs is not an example easily followed ... This is why I thought I must look for some method or rules of the mind, so that I should be enabled to discipline myself through the adoption of a few precepts; and I considered that four should suffice me provided that I remained fixed in my resolve never once to depart from them.

1. I cannot fathom what kind of God the world believes in: that kind of God seems to me a vicious and evil spirit, a phantom and fata morgana of all the evils festering in men's souls. Hence I must fashion my own God: a God who does not lie, who honours faith and truth. My God receives my complete trust and faith and will never fail me.

2. In the world created by my God, demons cannot exist, because my God gives me clear and distinct perceptions, and no demons occur therein.

3. In the world created by my God, no witches need to be burned, because witches, astrology, alchemy and all the other fancies of diseased minds are impossible, simple errors of knowledge.

4. In the world of my God, the spirit belongs to Him and the flesh is mine, a machine to aid me in my need to ambulate. My body and all bodies of men and animals alike are to be mere machines, mere mechanisms, over which no spirit or demon can have power except the soul which controls it.

5. In the world created by my God, all evolution proceeds by orderly progression from the simple to the complex and from the small to the large. Neither ghosts nor demons exist, because these cannot be decomposed into their parts.

6. There is no meliorating false knowledge, for superstition stripped of its vestments today simply returns in another garb tomorrow. It must be desiccated of its substance; it must be PROVED to be an empty husk without possibility of existence in my God's universe.

7. In my God's world, the heathenish and pernicious doctrines of Aristotle are replaced by a true metaphysics. [...] Sorbonne [...]. Finis.

1. After 10 years of studious peregrinations, a series of parhelia observed in 1629 set Descartes aflame with the desire to at last deliver to the world the fruits of his long thinking. Le Monde* was ready for the printer by 1633, when the ban on Galileo was pronounced; and Descartes may well have reflected on Aristotle's words, "I do not wish the Athenians to sin against philosophy a second time." His semi-public excuses are lame subterfuges; in reality he wanted to burn his MS, for his God had meanwhile been created and one look with a cool objective eye at such passages as 11:37-8 or 11:47 would have convinced him that his effrontery in dictating to the almighty Lord the 'rules' under which He was allowed to create the world exceeded the worst that Galileo had dared to print.

2. In 1644 Descartes submitted his 'Principles of Philosophy' to the Sorbonne. He did so in the firm expectation that any sane reader would be compelled to spontaneously accept the truth of his physics in any direct confrontation with Aristotle and that the university would forthwith consign the Stagyrite to the dust bin. Allow me the comment that this was not megalomania, but a conviction with which Descartes had lived for 25 years, and that he must have regarded his intervening publications as a gentle easing of the world into his new concept of God and the world, and that the world was now ready to act without delay: to destroy, once and for all, root and branch, the witch universe in which he had grown up.

II. 'CONTRACTS, COERCION, AND CONDO BOARDS: A REPLY TO STUART BURNS' BY ANTHONY FLOOD

I thank Stuart Burns for his critical essay and Geoffrey Klempner for publishing this reply.

A reminder of context is in order. The question of the moral justifiability of "redistributing" resources looms on the horizon of any exploration of the ethical dimension of offering the redistributionist benefit. Therefore, even if Professor Wolff did not intend to justify redistributionism in the original paper on which Dr. Klempner invited me to comment, failure of justification leaves the exploration suspended midair. Thinking that was a point worth making, I accepted rather than declined the invitation to comment. Now to Mr. Burns's comments.

Mr. Burns finds in Professor Wolff's argument a fallacious shift from the observation of fact, "A has fewer resources than B," to the normative claim, "A is disadvantaged with respect to B." From there it is no great leap to "A ought not to be disadvantaged" and perhaps "A ought to have no fewer resources than does B." Exposing that fallacy, however, and the egalitarianism that Professor Wolff presupposes are not central to my case against redistribution. My point has been that if B is not responsible for A's being disadvantaged, then C, D, E, ... n (severally, or calling themselves "society") have no warrant for picking B's pocket to improve A's condition.

Mr. Burns seems to be of two minds about "implied social contract." He suggests it, retracts it, and then gingerly defends it by speculating about what governmental employees think. That is, if they think they have an obligation to provide the services for which taxes are collected, Mr. Burns's argument seems to be, a contract of some sort must be in force, perhaps social, perhaps implicit. "I would love to see an argument," he writes, "that explains why the many social obligations that we all readily accept do not demonstrate the existence of an implied contract." The short answer is that "ready acceptance" is not a reliable guide to what obligations we do, or do not, have. Now for the longer one.

Once we stipulate what we mean by a word, we may not equivocate. If we use the word "contract" to refer to arrangements whereby we voluntarily deploy our resources or put our property at risk in the expectation of mutual gain, then we may not also use that word to refer to arrangements wherein we do not do these things.

Some contracts may be no more than promises and signaled by a simple handshake. Not every human relationship, however, implies a contract. Nor is every set of mutual expectations. For example, a gentleman named Vinny may drop by my store on Tuesdays expecting to collect payment for "protection services." Our relationship, however, is neither social nor contractual, but anti-social and criminal. Freedom from Vinny's violence does not cost him anything to "provide," so I owe him nothing in exchange for refraining from threatening me. By intending to charge me for what is mine by right he repudiates the moral point of view.

We ought not, then, stretch the word "contract" to cover both my financial relationship to Vinny and my financial relationship to, say, my bodyguard. Philosophers seek clarity in their efforts to understand. They undermine that goal when they equivocate, that is, use one word to refer to two radically different things, for example, a moral principle and its violation.

In "Redistributionism, Continued,"[1] I distinguished between moral ownership and mere physical possession. Along the same lines I distinguish between morally enforceable coercion and the initiation of force. When I am forced to fulfill an obligation on which I am reneging, I may feel just as I would were someone to initiate force against me. The sources of those similar feelings, however, are categorically different, morally speaking. The failure to see the difference signals the absence of the moral point of view.

Mr. Burns is inclined, albeit reluctantly, to conclude that society requires that some individuals impose their decisions on others, much as Vinny imposes his on me. Such is the perennial anti-libertarian suspicion, and I commend Mr. Burns for airing it candidly. Nourishing it, however, is the presupposition that society is an agent apart from its constituent members, one that faces moral choices that they do not.

So when Mr. Burns refers causally to "collective decision-making," I am not sure what the word "collective" is doing. His decision, mine, and that of others to carry on this dialogue, for example, do not fuse into a "collective decision." Similarly, therefore, there cannot be any "collective decision to be charitable" (on which more presently).

To impose a decision by initiating force is to impose a cost. It is forcibly to divert scarce resources into paths that the owner does not prefer, thereby retarding or altogether frustrating the achievement of his goals. My moral intuitions suggest that the would-be imposer is obliged to justify his prospective imposition; the prospective patients of this operation do not have to demonstrate their right to control physically what they own morally. I presume the reader has similar intuitions. That presumption may be mistaken.

Mr. Burns claims to "agree with Mr. [Hubertus] Fremerey's observations that Mr. Flood misunderstands the difference between 'contractual' and 'social' relations." Perhaps Mr. Burns can tell me what Mr. Fremerey means. I grant that I may be simply wrong when I regard contractual relations as a species of social relations, but surely that qualifies as some sort of understanding. How is it a misunderstanding?

People do have moral obligations before they enter into contracts. Each party expects that the other will abide by the contract's terms and, each hopes, not just because of their fear of penalties. You and I cannot enter into an arrangement to exchange titles unless each of us understands that neither may take by force or stealth what the other one has, even if he can. Generally, members of society share an understanding of their moral relationship to each other as requisite to their respective hopes of achieving a good life. That understanding may be unarticulated or implied. But mere understanding does not a contract make.

To satisfy positive, contractually based obligations must cost something. It costs nothing, however, to fulfill negative moral obligations. Recall my example of Vinny the extortionist. He wants to charge me for what is naturally mine and costs him nothing to honor. Formal contracts are impossible without "refraint,"[2] the individual's moral commitment to refrain from violating rights. Being prior to contract, refraint is not a contract, not even an "implicit" or "social" one.

I grant the possibility that I am wrong when I say that redistribution is equivalent to robbery. In doing so, however, I am hardly contradicting my other statement, with which Mr. Burns expressed full agreement, namely, "forcible expropriation is justifiable only to restore property to its rightful owners, not to deprive them of it." To equate robbery with redistribution does not prevent me from distinguishing robbery from restitution.

Before discussing Mr. Burns's imaginary condominium board (with its charitable majority), let us remind ourselves that Professor Wolff was not seeking the protocols of offering charity. That would have exposed him to the rejoinder, which I would have been all too pleased to make, that charity not only should be voluntary, but can only be so. The transfer of resources, insofar as it is forced, prevents us from reasonably counting this act as one of charity toward its beneficiary, either on the part of the expropriated resource owner or the redistributor. Redistributionists interpret redistributed benefits as entitlements. In the normal meaning of words, no one is entitled to another's charity, and no one can give in charity to another that to which he is entitled.

As someone who has sat on a condo board since 1985, I find Mr. Burns's scenario lacking in real reference. I do not find in the collection of common charges a form of "redistribution" from which we may extrapolate a justification of State redistribution.

Charitable expenditures by organizations such as condo boards require a compelling business rationale. Board members are fiduciaries, and as such they must exercise extreme caution when proposing to use their principals' money for gift-giving. Having to draw up and implement budgets, board members know how quickly the uncertainty of future increases in costs (e.g., salaries, fuel, water, etc.) throws charitable sentiments into cold perspective. They therefore do not for very long entertain purely charitable gestures, such as the handicap access ramp of Mr. Burns's example.

Condo unit owners freely obligate themselves to pay common charges. They have not been coerced into agreeing to pay them, even if they may need to be coerced into abiding by that agreement. Coercion becomes a justifiable possibility, however, only if a unit owner reneges on that freely assumed commitment.

Tickets for sporting events often contain printed statements to the effect that the event's sponsor may electronically broadcast the patron's image without compensating him. Such is the "package deal" that comes with one's ticket. No patron may legitimately claim later that the broadcaster "invaded his privacy." Similarly, there is no violation of fiduciary trust if the majority of board members vote in favor of a charitable venture. Caveat emptor. Read the fine print.

Mr. Burns's focus on "a signed legal document" or "a piece of paper" is therefore misplaced. That is not what distinguishes a board of fiduciaries that arises through market transactions from a State that recognizes (in principle) no limitation on its prerogative to override such transactions. When people sign and file their tax returns "voluntarily" they contribute to the fiction that the government's has a "signed contract" to cloak its depredations. The relevant test of contract is whether an interpersonal relationship is formed peacefully, not whether it is memorialized on paper.

Mr. Burns finds it "easy to imagine a challenged State simply mandating that every resident either sign an explicit legal contract or leave the jurisdiction." When it comes to the right to demand or mandate anything, however, imagination is not germane. Either the demand is justifiable or it is not. By what warrant does a State mandate that its subjects "pay up or leave" as, for example, a landlord might announce to his tenant? The State may have the physical power to enforce its demands, but power is not self-justifying. On the local level, a bully has analogous power, but no corresponding right, to push others around. Since taxing entities ring our planet, there is little short-term hope of finding refuge from taxation. That omnipresence, however, does not prove it moral rightness. Might does not make right, to coin a phrase.

As with chattel slavery, which was once as global as taxation is, the only coherent goal with respect to the latter, as I see it, is not containment but abolition. Let parasites and aggressors "up and leave," but let producers and traders be. I see no basis for Mr. Burns's proposition that by remaining on the territory over which a government claims a monopoly of force, I am "implicitly agreeing" with that relationship. (I may, of course, "recognize" that hegemony the way, say, Hezbollah "recognizes" the State of Israel.)

When I contract with others in the expectation of enjoying certain benefits, I may also simultaneously generate obligations to pay for things I may not want. Taxation, however, does not enter peoples' lives that way. By the time it is a live issue for anyone, he discovers that his "social security" number is already his "taxpayer identification" number. It was never optional. There is no correlation between what you pay in taxes and what you want from the State. Any satisfaction is purely coincidental and comes at the cost of the many other satisfactions one is forced to forego.

Peaceful producers and traders are "justified in employing coercive expropriation to recover" fees to which they are contractually due, as long as they do so in a way that is not itself criminal. Nothing justifies impulsive, disproportionate violence in the name of restitution. For example, the man who knocks another man down and takes a watch from him may, for all passers-by know to the contrary, not be a mugger at all, but rather a mugging victim retrieving his watch from one. The uncertain passers-by will not responsibly interfere ... unless the mugging victim with the upper hand seems about to inflict deadly force against the subdued mugger. One purpose of a system of courts is to resolve such ambiguities.

Mr. Burns's question, "does ... the management structure [have] the moral justification to employ coercion?," receives an affirmative answer, then, but I hasten to emphasize the coercion's defensive quality. It does not initiate force or violence, but rather defends against or responds to it. (In this case, "it" refers to the fraud committed by the reneging unit owner, fraud being a species of theft.)

As I wrote in my earlier contribution to this discussion, "... the State has no resources it did not acquire by force or the threat thereof. The State is not a family whose individual members have voted on where to go for their summer vacation and who now must cooperate to make the trip a success. Neither ... is the State a club to which we owe dues." [3] I must now add: And neither is the State like a condominium board of managers who are fiduciaries of unit owners at whose pleasure they sit.

If anyone thinks that the ladies and gentlemen who wield redistributory power are related to taxpayers as fiduciaries to principals, philosophy cannot help him.

1. Anthony Flood, "Redistributionism Continued," Philosophy Pathways, No. 56, 20 April 2003 https:--- .

2 In commenting on the ethics of Irving Babbitt who referred to the "Will to Refrain," Henry Hazlitt observed "a curious gap in the English language. The verb restrain has the noun-form restraint, but the verb refrain (though similar in origin through the Latin and the French) has no noun-form refraint. For the noun we are obliged to fall back, confusingly, on restraint (which implies coercion by others) or, asymmetrically, on self-restraint or abstention. The noun refraint would serve a useful purpose." 'The Foundations of Morality,' Los Angeles: Nash, 1964, p. 377, n. 12. Online edition: http:--- . See note 12 of Chapter 22: http:--- .

3 Tony Flood, "A Comment on Professor Wolff's 'Four Forms of Redistribution,'" Philosophy Pathways, No. 53, 9 March 2003, https:--- .

Over two millennia ago Socrates paid a price few of us would today and ended his life rather than give up practicing philosophy. Freedom of speech is a concept rendered somewhat pointless when nobody is listening and this is an experience many of us feel we have in the world today - so many words spoken and so little said. Have you ever asked who else do you talk to about philosophical ideas apart from yourself?

So it's refreshing to find an oasis where the ideas we each hold can be bounced off other like minded people. My introduction to the Pathways Conference occurred when I embarked upon the Pathways program. Initially the conference was operated on servers in the UK and has now moved to Nicenet in California, not that that makes any difference to what we say but the format now makes it easier to follow threads or topics of interest.

Some members visit occasionally and others like me daily when I can. There is however a critical mass or number who need to be involved to make the conference lively and by my own experience having set up a "Philosophers Cafe" this should be a minimum of around six people but more is better.

The topics discussed vary considerably as does both the background and geographical location of the participants and this is part of the benefit of a world wide site. If you hold a particular perspective on life then you may find an ally but more likely you will need to begin to substantiate your position - thus making your examined life worth living.

The Nicenet site started in January this year and is currently around 450 postings. Picking up on some of the past themes these have included:

can philosophy save the world? what is self? artificial versus natural intelligence emotional versus rational thinking practical uses of philosophy in education communities of inquiry hope and freedom genetics and memes religion and politics - always popular! human destiny justice
East versus West consequences of neuroscience

Discussion threads take on a life of themselves and as the forum is not moderated we are not disciplined in keeping 'to the point' whatever you thought that was. The threads evolve in directions that suit the interests of the members but often return to common points of fundamental difference. Frustration appears occasionally when issues of the rational versus the emotional lead to irreconcilable differences (but then I would say that wouldn't I?), still the same members keep returning so there must be a benefit.

Would I recommend that you join, well yes of course or at the very least try it for a while by being a spectator - though if you are anything like me you won't be able to keep quiet for long!

Does the conference have any shortcomings, well yes of course it isn't perfect and cannot challenge face to face contact but given the time difference between the USA and Europe most of us get regular sleep.

From a personal perspective I find myself eagerly logging in to see if the exocet missile I have just released hit the target, most times it fizzled out or the target disappeared. With a spread of participants the discussions are challenging, for if everyone agreed with everyone else then wouldn't life be very boring!

So that's the gauntlet thrown down - you won't know what you're missing if you don't pick it up. I trust Geoffrey will acquaint you with the technical details, speak with you soon I hope.

To join the Pathways Conference at Nicenet.org you must be a member of the Philosophical Society of England (PSOE) and/ or International Society for Philosophers (ISFP).

To sign up for membership of the PSOE or ISFP, complete the Blue form on the Pathways site at https:--- .

1. Send an e-mail to klempner@fastmail.net requesting a 'class key'.
You will receive your class key in a day or two.

5. Choose your user name and password, and enter your real name and e-mail
address (optional).

   New Participants only
   Old Participants only
   The Use and Value of Philosophy

8. 'The Use and Value of Philosophy' is the main area for the conference.
Occasionally messages are posted on 'New participants only'. You can
use this area to carry on side discussions.

9. A tip: set your display to show 'messages posted since last login'.
That is the easiest way to keep track of activity on the conference.

www.geoffreyklempner.net

klempner@fastmail.net

International Society for Philosophers

Wisdom begins with wonder