On the well in front of my house
And how to introduce little boys to philosophy
There is a well in front of my house. I have known the well for fourteen years. It is a good well. It gives us water and hardly ever asks for anything in return. It is not a hungry well. Therefore not many things fall to its bottom. However, when things fall in it to its bottom, they, I have every reason to believe, always end well.
On one of those rare occasions where things fall to the bottom of this well, the fetcher — the rope and bucket we use to draw water from the well — fell into it. Thereby making it difficult to draw water from the well. Considering the discomfort this event caused the residents in the compound, we sought the person who caused us this suffering so that we might direct our blame towards him. But I did not feel this way. I did not think anyone was at fault for this incident. This event, as I saw it, left no room for blame.
Now this does not mean that it didn't happen at the hands of a person. Nor did I think that the fetcher sank on its own accord. But I don't think the person from whose hands the fetcher sank was responsible — “responsible" being a loaded word. It seemed clear to me that since the sunken fetcher had served us for about three years now, spending the last six months outside under every weather — come rain and sunshine, that it would deteriorate and break someday. It seemed inevitable since it was a matter of natural decay and weakness. It was only a matter of when, not how. As such, when it did break and then sink, there was no need to blame the person at whose hands the disaster happened. Especially because by some obscure law of nature, this was always meant to happen.
Well, as everyone started dishing out blames, choosing to use mental shortcuts and satisfy their fits and passions, I decided—because I was bored—to take the longer route in my mind and ponder the matter. It was while pondering it that I saw that blurry line that divides the scientific world from the human world. As I drowned out all the blame by suffusing my intellect with my imagination, I reanimated again why I believe in freewill and the moral agency of man despite all the things that imply determinism in our world.
I must say that there is enough evidence to contemplate — not necessarily believe in — the truth of a world where everything is subject to law and a cause; where freewill is an illusion; where everything is impersonal. I contemplate it so much that I sometimes comfort myself with the theory that I was always ‘meant’ to believe in freewill over determinism. Nonetheless, this is not a case for determinism or freewill. But a case for the human world as against the scientific world that is dominated by explanations and law that leave little room for choice.
And it is altogether becoming more important to make this case for the human world because some residents of the scientific world keep swinging in glee that all that there is is the scientific world; and that our human world, if it is not a fleeting illusion, is hilarious fiction at best—one that can be ignored like books that narrates how all the men in Lagos are mad.
And so the well in front of my house and the sunken fetcher allows us again to reflect on how freewill and choice—even if they are illusions—are indispensable from our vocabulary. And not only our vocabulary but also our mental repertoire. Illusion or not, there is a realm of existence where we cannot eradicate these things without eradicating an essential part of our world. It is the world, which projects above — but does not deny — the scientific world that I refer to here as the human world.
It is humans being all human, within their human world, living beyond the immediacies of laws and causes, who resort to using words that indicate praise or blame for an event. And this is what we see between the reaction I had concerning the sunken fetcher and the reaction others had concerning the same event. I thought no one was to be blamed because the rope attached to the fetcher would eventually break. But others reacted precisely because they thought the person’s hands at whom the inevitable happened, caused it.
If you look closely, you will then see how the word “cause” behaves differently in the human world from the scientific world. In the human world, “cause” is something that springs from not just any human action but from a conscious human action—which means springing from a conscious human agent. In the scientific world, we see how “cause” is something independent of human action—such as how a rope and bucket which had been under the open skies for six months expectedly degenerates.
In the same vein, we see how this difference between “cause” and “cause” translates into what we mean by explanation and justification. An explanation lives in the scientific world where we resort to impersonal laws to find what causes what. But a justification (which may contain an explanation on the surface but is of a different character) is deeply personal when it narrates why an action is okay and should affirmed. Like in the example I cull from Scruton’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy: the man who standing before a judge for poisoning his wife’s tea with arsenic says “Because electrical impulses from my brain caused my hand to reach for the bottle and tip it into the waiting teacup.” This is an explanation. But this does not satisfy us as to whether we should convict him or set him free. That is, as justification. Taking the explanation “electric impulses,” we have little room left to negotiate our social relations. After all, we cannot blame the victim of electric impulses.
But should the man tell us that “I had mistaken the bottle for that which contained the whisky,” that “I had intended to administer only a small dose of arsenic as a warning shot,” or that “I had intended to kill her since quite frankly enough was enough,” we see a whole new world of negotiations open up to us which allows for a lot of blame, guilt, praise, condemnation, conviction, and possible repentance.
So we see then that blame, guilt, praise, and commendation belong firmly, like natural vegetation, to a world that admits choice and freewill. That does not shy away from the personal and conscious, to recede into the impersonal and unconscious. A world that admits agents who can swing either way with their actions.
Although some people might insist — because “an illusion is an illusion; fiction is fiction” — that we do away with that human world and stick to the scientific world where all can be explained using laws and causes. I will simply ask them why. I will simply ask them what they find gross or inconsistent about deeply personal things that they think we should eradicate such a world.
The scientific world has its place. And its explanations, because they are impersonal, have brought immense benefits. Nonetheless, there is hardly the need to want to eradicate the world of the arena of blame and praise.
Coming home, and reviving myself to the scene of the hazardous event of the broken rope and sunken fetcher, my thought process came to be simply this: this fetcher was going to sink someday; anyway. And on this auspicious day, the rope broke and the fetcher sunk. This was an inevitable —because determined by laws of ropes— to happen. We did not need to blame anyone, seeing that the appointed time had come. Unless of course, it was by some human carelessness and mismanagement that he broke the rope and sunk the fetcher. It did not need to be deliberate to be his fault. In fact, his choice to have been less than deliberate may be exactly why we blamed him. Yet he could have taken all necessary precautions and it would still happen. So depending on what happened, it was either his fault or not. In one simulation, he could be without blame. In another, he has so much blame. But all in all, it does not appear to me as if the human world and the scientific world are in much conflict. The conflict only happens when that ugly dragon — called scientism — enters into the arena.
I do not, though, assume that this solves the ageless problem and conflict between both worlds. But I do think it was an interesting exercise for the mind and especially a warm elegy to a beloved fetcher. I also think this was fun to do and a way to escape from the immediacies of the world. But most importantly, I think it functions as a puerile introduction to doing philosophy. So, when next that very inquisitive child asks you why the sky is blue, introduce him to doing philosophy in this childish and lighthearted way and watch a child blossom. Enjoy your weekend.