Ted Gioia and Philosophy

I often don't agree with Ted Gioia and many of his interests I don't share, but he is very often a compelling writer and he sure is a prolific one. His latest, Why I Ran Away from Philosophy Because of Sam Bankman-Fried, is well worth reading.

Where do I even begin in telling this?

It’s not easy. That’s why I’ve never given a full account of my years as a philosophy student at Oxford—despite some readers requesting this. I don’t talk about it because the story is complicated.

But Sam Bankman-Fried gives me the excuse—or even the necessity—of digging into this gnarly matter. That’s because the crypto scammer was deeply involved in a philosophical movement that originated at Oxford. It draws on the same tenets I was taught in those distant days. 

My teachers didn’t run crypto exchanges, and (to my knowledge) never embezzled anything more valuable than a bottle of port from the common room. Even so, there’s a direct connection between them and Mr. Bankman-Fried.

They were erudite and devoted teachers, but I was disillusioned by what they taught. It eventually chased me away from philosophy, specifically analytic philosophy of the Anglo-American variety.

I had no idea that their worldview would come back to life as a popular movement promoted by the biggest scam artist of the digital age. But I’m not really surprised—because it’s a dangerous worldview with potential to do damage on the largest scale.

I won't quote any more, you should read the whole thing. As Ted says in the essay, the problem goes back a long ways to English philosophers like John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham who developed a variety of moral philosophy called utilitarianism. As Ted says, this has proven to be an extremely dangerous philosophy because it offers a plausible rationalization for us to do horrible things today in the belief that the long-term result will be good for large, anonymous groups of people--but of course the claim is that it will result in the maximum happiness and well-being for everyone. As it is all about consequences, another name for this philosophy is consequentialism. And we can't blame it only on Oxford as a very prominent advocate is Peter Singer, who is at Princeton. Blogger The New Neo has written some brilliant posts on him: Peter Singer and the trap of logic: Part I.

So it is really just a bit unfair that Ted blames this unfortunate philosophy on Oxford as it has been underlying all sorts of desperately wrong policies in many places: I might mention Canada's enthusiastic instituting of euthanasia to rid itself of all sorts of inconvenient citizens: the elderly, the incurable or even just the depressed. And indeed, the best critic of this was the Oxford-educated G. E. M. Anscombe who in 1958 published the brilliant essay Modern Moral Philosophy which criticized both current moral theories, that of the British utilitarians and that of Immanuel Kant. This resulted in the reestablishing of a third class of moral theory called "virtue ethics" and there is an excellent volume published, ironically, by Oxford called Virtue Ethics that contains the paper by Anscombe plus many others following her lead. Virtue ethics goes all the way back to Aristotle and the idea that, in the absence of God as moral law-giver, the only proper foundation for ethics is the idea of virtue.

I also encountered philosophy at university, in my case the University of Victoria where I had an introductory class with a brilliant young professor that has influenced my life to this day. I followed this with a course in the philosophy of history and another one on the philosophy of mind. After this last one, a 400 level course taught by the chair of the department, I seriously considered switching from music to philosophy. What decided me was two things: the fear that I might just not be capable of it, and second, that the attraction of playing music for audiences was just so strong that I couldn't imagine forgoing it. The professor in the last course, which was very much in the Anglo-American analytical tradition, said that I did appreciate several distinctions. At the time I thought that this was a discouraging evaluation, but in retrospect, it may have been a compliment!

Looking back now, at all the trials and tribulations and frustrations of my career as a concert soloist, I think, well, maybe pursuing philosophy might not have been so bad after all...

Nowadays, if anyone asks, I tell them I am an Aristotelian.

Philosophy and music don't cross paths too often, but there is one famous example, Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss: